Уильям Макгиверн - Rogue Cop

Carmody went up the stairs quietly. The wallpaper was torn and filthy, and he breathed through his mouth to avoid the greasy, stale smell of the building. Two doors stood open on the third floor, revealing the interiors of small, messy rooms. The third and last door was closed. Carmody eased his gun from the holster and tried the knob. It turned under his hand. He pushed the door inward and stepped into the room, his finger curved and hard against the trigger of his gun.

Longie Tucker lay fully dressed on a sagging bed, one hand trailing on the dusty floor. The room was oppressively hot; the single window was closed and the air was heavy and foul. Tucker breathed slowly and deeply, his body shuddering with the effort. There was an empty whiskey bottle near his hand, and two boxes of pills.

Carmody shook his shoulder until his eyelids fluttered, and then pulled him to a sitting position.

Tucker blinked at him, confused and frightened. “What’s the beef?” he muttered.

Carmody’s hopes died as he stared at Tucker’s drawn face, at the gray skin shot here and there with tiny networks of ruptured blood vessels. The man was half his former size, a sick, decaying husk.

Tucker grinned at him suddenly, disclosing rows of bad teeth. “I get you now, friend. Mike Carmody. Is that right?”

“That’s it,” Carmody said, putting his gun away.

“I didn’t do the job on your brother,” Tucker said. “I couldn’t do a job on a fly. I ain’t left the room in two weeks. I got the bug in my lungs. Ain’t that a riot? I go west and get the con.”

“Who killed my brother? Do you know?”

“God’s truth, I don’t. I heard the job was open but I wouldn’t have touched it if I could.”

“You heard about it? Did they advertise in the papers?”

“Word gets around.”

Carmody rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead and turned toward the door.

“Mike, can you spare a buck? I need something to drink.”

“No.”

“Coppers,” Tucker said, making an ugly word of it.

Carmody looked down at him coldly. “Why didn’t you save the money you got for shooting people in the back?” Then, disgusted and angry with himself, he took out a roll of bills and threw a twenty on Tucker’s bed. “Don’t die thinking all coppers are no good,” he said.

“Thanks, Mike,” Tucker said, grinning weakly as he reached for the money.

Carmody drove across the city to the Empire Hotel and went up past the police detail to Karen’s apartment. She opened the door for him and he walked into the cool, dim room. The shades had been drawn against the afternoon sun and Nancy was lying on the studio couch, asleep, an arm thrown over her eyes.

“Must you wake her?” Karen asked him. “She just got to sleep.”

“Yes.”

“You have to, I suppose,” she said dryly.

“Look, I didn’t invent this game,” Carmody said. Then he felt his temper slipping; the pressure inside him had reached the danger point. Wilson, Father Ahearn and now Karen. They couldn’t wait to give him a gratuitous kick in the teeth. “Stop yapping at me,” he said abruptly. “If you think I’m a heel write your congressman about it. But lay off me; understand?”

“I understand,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

The reply confused him; it was simple and straightforward, with no sarcasm running under it. He sat down on the sofa facing the studio couch and lit a cigarette. “I’ll give her a few minutes,” he said. “How has she been?”

“Not too good. She cried a lot and tried to leave several times. I gave her a few drinks and that seemed to help.”

“She had a rough time.”

“Yes, she told me about it,” Karen said. She sat down beside him on the sofa and shook her head slowly. “What kind of men are they, Mike?”

“Big men, tough men,” he said. “With the world in their pockets. They don’t believe in anything but the fix. They never heard of Judgment Day.”

She didn’t answer him. He glanced at her and saw that she was rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers. She was wearing a white linen dress and her hair was brushed back above her ears and held with a black ribbon. The faint light in the room ran along her slim legs as she moved one foot in a restless circle. She looked used up; pale and very tired.

“She told me about your break with Ackerman,” she said quietly. “And the fight. She thinks you’re the greatest guy in the world.” Again her voice was simple and straightforward, with no bitterness or sarcasm in it. “That’s why I told you I was sorry. You tried to save him. I didn’t know that this morning.”

“I was a big help,” he said bitterly.

“I can’t believe he’s dead,” she said, moving her head slowly from side to side. “Just last night he sat here full of health and hope and big plans. And now he’s gone.”

“Well, he lived in a straight line,” Carmody said, “no detours, no short cuts.” He spoke without reflection or deliberation, but the words sounded with a truth he hadn’t understood before; it was something to say of a man that the shape and purpose of his life had remained constant against all pressure and temptation.

“It’s been a ghastly day,” she whispered.

“You ought to get some rest.” Without thinking of what he was doing, he put a hand on her back and began to massage the taut muscles of her shoulders and neck. He felt the malleable quality of her body under his fingers, and the small thin points of her shoulder blades, and he wondered irrelevantly what held her together, what supported all of her poise and strength. There was something inside her that was impervious to attack. She had countered his contempt with a confident anger, as if hating him was a privilege she had earned. Father Ahearn’s words struck him suddenly: Hating sin ... belongs to us poor fools who believe in right and wrong. Was that her pitch? That she was on the side of the angels?

“Don’t do that,” she said suddenly.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t want you to touch me.”

Carmody took his hand away from her slowly. “I’m not good enough, is that it?”

“Don’t make a big thing out of it,” she said wearily. “I just don’t want you to touch me, that’s all. Not because I think you aren’t good enough and not because I don’t like it.” She looked at him, her face a small white blur in the dim room. “Can’t you understand that?”

“Wait until you’re asked before you say no,” he said, wanting to hurt her as she had hurt him.

“That’s a cheap thing to say. It isn’t what I meant, Mike, I was just—”

“Cheap?” he said, cutting across her sentence. “That sounds funny coming from you.” There had been a delayed reaction to the feel of her body under his hand; now the memory of it crowded sharply and turbulently against his control. “What about Danny Nimo?” he said, his voice rising angrily. “Would you call that just a little cheap around the edges?”

“Oh, damn you, damn you,” she said, pounding a fist against her knee. “That’s all you’ve got on your mind. You’re infatuated with evil. Goodness bores you. Because the devil is more exciting to you than God. He’s your kind of people, a real sharpie. All right, I’ll tell you about Danny Nimo.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Oh, yes you do. It’s low and depraved. It’s your meat, Mike.”

“Stop it,” he said sharply.

“I lived with Danny Nimo for a year,” she said. “This was six years ago. Then there was the automobile accident. Danny paid the bills and took care of me for two years although I was in a cast most of that time. That was goodness of a sort, although you’d never understand it. During that time I had plenty of time to think about myself and Danny. I tried to understand why I had got mixed up with him. But I couldn’t figure it out. Not neatly and simply, anyway. My father was an electrician, my mother was a good-hearted woman and I’d had a fair education. And I had a little talent for music. It didn’t add to the way I was living. Maybe it was the fun of being a racketeer’s girl. Living high without working for it. Being on the inside. I don’t know. But I did know that I’d taken a big step in a direction I didn’t want to go. So when I was well enough to walk I told him how I felt and left him. There’s the whole story. Did you get a kick out of it?”