Уильям Макгиверн - Rogue Cop

“I told you we’ll find the killer,” Ackerman said. “When we do he’s all yours. That’s settled.” He lit a cigarette and glanced through the smoke at Carmody. “Now, we’ll get on to something that isn’t settled. I had a call from Fanzo. He tells me you beat hell out of him. What’s the story there?”

Carmody smiled slightly. “He called me a name I didn’t like. Also, he wasn’t being helpful. I traced Nancy to his place, and asked him about her. He got lippy so I had to calm him down.”

Beaumonte put a hand on his arm. “What did you find out about her, Mike?”

Carmody turned to him and shrugged. “Nothing at all,” he said. He was slightly surprised at the pain in Beaumonte’s face. He must have loved her, he thought. The imitation lady, the little bottle girl, Beaumonte’s true love. It was almost comical.

“Fanzo had no lead on her?” Beaumonte asked him anxiously.

“He was no help.”

“She shouldn’t have run off, damn it,” Beaumonte said, rubbing his forehead.

“She was at your hotel, Mike,” Ackerman said. His eyes were on Beaumonte, warning him to keep quiet.

“Was she?” Carmody said, turning to Ackerman. “I’m sorry I missed her.”

Ackerman studied him for a few seconds. “One of the cleaning women saw her. But the elevator boys didn’t know anything. Probably she just went through the lobby.”

“That’s odd,” Carmody said, making a mental note to take good care of the elevator boys. Then he shrugged. “What’s all the fuss about? She’s raddled from too much booze, and scared to death after the job Fanzo’s boys did on her. She’ll turn up when she’s had a night’s sleep. Can’t you wait a day or so until she comes to her senses?”

“No, we can’t,” Ackerman said. “Beaumonte wants her back right away because he thinks she’s a cute kid. I want her back for another reason. She walked out of here with a bundle of bills, Mike, sixty-two thousand bucks to be exact. I want it back, and fast.”

“Now that makes sense,” Carmody said. He tried to keep the excitement from showing in his face. When they started lying they were scared. “How’d she get her hands on that kind of money?”

“Dan left the numbers pay-off for Northeast laying around,” Ackerman said, shaking his head disgustedly. “So we’ve got to find her.”

“Sure,” Carmody said. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything. By the way, Myerdahl’s set to clamp down hard. I guess you know that.”

“Let me worry about it, Mike,” Ackerman said. “This is the seasonal slump in our racket. There’ll be raids, arrests, public displays by all the reform groups. Our boys will have it rough for a while. But these things blow over.”

“I wouldn’t mind a fight,” Beaumonte said. “We’ve made some of the biggest men in this town. If they try to unload us I’d like the chance to ruin the bastards.”

“There isn’t going to be any fight,” Ackerman told him coldly. “I’m not tossing this city up for grabs. Remember that.”

Carmody couldn’t help marveling at their cool arrogance. The city was their private hunting ground, created and maintained for their express pleasure. They fed on it. Like protected vultures. How did they do it? he wondered. Just how in God’s name did they do it? He remembered a phrase of his father’s; in weakness there is strength. The old man had used it to spur them on in school. If you were weak at something, but worked like the devil on it, you would become strong through the weakness. Ackerman used a variation of the principle; the city’s weakness was his strength. The average citizen’s indifference, cynicism and willingness to compromise, was the weakness that Ackerman used as the foundation of his power.

“You’ll keep in touch?” Ackerman asked him as he picked up his hat. “Remember, nothing’s changed.”

“Sure, nothing’s changed,” Carmody said. Just Eddie, he thought, forcing a small smile to his lips. Yesterday he’d been alive, today he was dead. That was the only change. “I’ll keep in touch,” he said to Ackerman. “Don’t worry.”

Downstairs in the lobby Carmody put through a call to Lieutenant Wilson. “I’m just checking,” he said, when Wilson answered. “Any progress yet?”

“No. We’ve got seventy men in the street and they haven’t turned up a lead. But I’m glad you called. A guy has phoned here three times wanting to talk to you. He says he’s got some information you can use. He wouldn’t tell me anything else, except that he was phoning from a drug store and not to bother tracing the call. I gave him your hotel number, and the number of your brother’s home. He said he’d try both places till he got you.”

“Okay,” Carmody said. “He’s probably a gravestone salesman. Now look; I suggest you start digging into Ackerman’s background immediately. There’s a loose end in his past that can trip him up, I think.”

“The D.A. has covered that ground before, Mike. Ackerman always kept in the clear. You know that.”

“I don’t run the department, it’s just a suggestion,” Carmody said. “But take it to heart, Jim. I know what I’m talking about.”

Wilson hesitated. Then he said, “I’ll pass that upstairs. You got anything specific in mind?”

“No, that’s the trouble. It could be anything, any time.”

“I’ll pass it on. Keep in touch.”

“Of course, Jim,” he said.

Half an hour later Carmody parked his car before Eddie’s home in the Northeast. It was almost noon then. Sunlight filtered through the chestnut trees along the block, and faded to a softer tone as it struck the pavements and lawns. The kids playing ball in the street stopped their game to watch Carmody with round solemn eyes. They all know Eddie’s dead, I guess, Carmody thought. He was probably a big favorite with them.

The front door was unlocked and he went inside. For a moment he stared about at the familiar furniture and pictures, frowning slightly. Then he walked upstairs to Eddie’s room, which was at the rear of the house, overlooking the back yard. He had come here for two reasons: to look through Eddie’s things and to wait for a call from the man who had been trying to reach him at Headquarters. Carmody went through Eddie’s closet, drawers, desk, looking for nothing and anything. Eddie might have made notes of his identification of Delaney, or he might have noticed that he was being tailed and kept a record of that. Working with trained speed, Carmody opened insurance policies, police department circulars and a bunch of old letters, most of them yellowing notes he had scribbled to Eddie when he was away at school. In the bottom drawer of the bureau were athletic programs, news clippings, class pictures, English compositions with inevitable titles: My First Vacation, When I Grow Up, The Pleasures of Daily Mass. And there were pictures of Mike Carmody, dozens of them; running with a football, getting set to pitch, smiling in his rookie’s uniform. There’s nothing here, he thought bitterly, unless someone wanted details of the great Mike Carmody’s career.

Downstairs again, he stopped with his hands on his hips and looked around the cool dim living room. He frowned at his father’s big upright piano, and wondered why Eddie had never got rid of it. It was a space waster and dust trap. But the room played its usual trick on him; the gentle eyes of the Madonna stared at him reproachfully; the silent piano and empty chairs made him guiltily aware of the old rupture between him and his father. Exasperated with himself, he picked up a stack of music from the piano and looked at some of the titles. It was the old Irish stuff. Kevin Barry; Let Erin Remember the Days of Old; O, Blame Not the Bard; Molly Brannigan. Carmody had heard his father sing them all a hundred times. What had he got out of these songs? Each one told the same poignant story of betrayal and death, of vanished glories, of forsaken people dying grandly in fruitless battles for betrayed causes. Why did he cherish these bitter memories? They belonged a thousand years in the past; why were they important to him in America?