Уильям Макгиверн - Rogue Cop

Carmody looked around the room. “Was there any sign of a struggle?”

“No. But she left a diamond ring on the basin in the bathroom.” Her hands tightened in his. “Wouldn’t she have taken that if she decided to walk out?”

“I don’t know. She might have forgotten it.” Carmody didn’t believe this and he saw that Karen didn’t either. “We’ll find her,” he said, squeezing her hand tightly. Then he went quickly to the phone in the kitchen and dialed Police. It took him a minute to get through to Wilson. “Jim, Mike Carmody,” he said. “I want to report a missing person. It could be a kidnap job.”

“I’ve been trying to get you, Mike. You’ve got to come in. Myerdahl didn’t buy my brief on you. He insists—”

“Jim, hold that, will you?” Carmody said. “This is the lead to Ackerman. Let’s get it rolling. We can talk about Myerdahl later.”

Wilson hesitated. Then he said, “Let’s have it,” in his crisp official voice.

“The missing person is a girl, Nancy Drake. She’s blonde with blue eyes and a good figure. About five-three, a hundred and ten, I’d say.”

“Nancy Drake? Isn’t that Dan Beaumonte’s mistress?”

“That’s right. She left, or was kidnaped from, the Empire Hotel this morning, sometime between ten o’clock and two-thirty.”

“The Empire? That’s Karen Stephanson’s hotel, right?”

“Yes. I stuck Nancy in her apartment. I thought she’d be safe here with guards at both doors.”

“Damn it, what are you trying to do?” Wilson demanded angrily. “Did it occur to you that Beaumonte’s girl might have blown the head off our only witness? You said you’d work straight with me, Mike. But you can’t drop the prima donna act, even for your brother’s murder.”

“I guessed wrong,” Carmody said. “I didn’t figure Ackerman would pull the guard detail off.”

“That was a mighty bad guess. Look, now; I’ll get an alarm out for this Nancy girl. But you get in here, understand? And bring your badge and gun. Myerdahl wants ’em both.”

“Okay,” Carmody said bitterly, and replaced the phone with a bang. When he returned to the living room Karen was pacing the floor nervously. “I can’t forget that I talked her into helping you,” she said.

“This isn’t your fault. It’s mine.”

“She’d just written a letter to her agent,” Karen said, putting the palms of her hands against her forehead. “She was sure she’d started back uphill.”

“The police of three states will be looking for her,” Carmody said. “Remember that.” He put his hands gently on her slim square shoulders. “I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything,” he said.

Carmody walked through the swinging wooden gates of the Homicide Bureau twenty minutes later, and nodded to Dirksen and Abrams who were working at their desks with a suspicious show of industry. Dirksen pointed to Wilson’s closed door and said softly, “Very high-priced help at work, Mike. Myerdahl and the D.A.”

Carmody smiled faintly at him and rapped on the door. Wilson opened it and said, “Come on in, Mike.”

“Anything on the girl yet?”

“No, but the alarm is out.”

Carmody walked into the office and took off his hat. Captain Myerdahl, acting superintendent of the department, sat in a straight chair beside Wilson’s desk, puffing on a short black pipe. Standing at the windows was Lansing Powell, the city’s District Attorney. Myerdahl was a short stocky man with a coarse dark complexion, and small blue eyes that glittered like splinters of ice behind his rimless glasses. He was a tough and shrewd cop, who took his responsibilities with fanatic intensity. As a rookie he had supported his wife and family on two-thirds of his meager salary and spent the remainder on Berlitz lessons to modify his heavy German accent. He had moved up slowly through the ranks, never compromising his standards, and giving every job the full measure of his dogged strength and intelligence. Detectives and patrolmen hated the discipline he enforced but they relished working for him; in Myerdahl’s district a cop could do his job twenty-four hours a day without worrying about stepping on sensitive toes.

Myerdahl stood solidly behind his men when they were doing honest work, and he couldn’t be intimidated by threats or pressure. Now he looked up at Carmody and took the pipe from his mouth. “I asked the lieutenant for an unfitness report on you this morning,” he said bluntly. “But I didn’t get it. Instead I got some excuses. Well, I don’t take excuses. I’ve got no use for wealthy cops. They’re in the wrong business. So you better find another one.”

Carmody’s expression remained impassive. “They should have tied a can to me years ago,” he said. “Was that all you had to say?”

“That’s all I got to say.”

“How about listening to me then?” Carmody said quietly. “I’ve got a case against Bill Ackerman. I want to give it to you.”

“Hah! You think I’d believe you?”

“Forget about me. Listen to the facts. Ackerman’s your target, isn’t he?”

“I’ll get him with men who aren’t carrying his money.”

“Now just a minute,” Powell said, cutting calmly through the tension. “I’m interested in Carmody’s information, Superintendent.” He came around Wilson’s desk, a tall, slender man who wore horn-rimmed glasses and conservative clothes. There was a scholarly, good-humored air about him, the intangible endowment of a good family, excellent schools and a background of noteworthy achievement in the law and politics. But his graceful manners camouflaged a shrewd and vigorous intelligence, as dozens of defense attorneys had learned to their clients’ dismay. Perching on the comer of Wilson’s desk, he smiled impersonally at Carmody. “In my job I’m forced to use instruments of dubious moral value,” he said. “I understand the superintendent’s position, but I can’t afford the philosophic luxury of observing absolute standards. Call it fighting fire with fire, or whatever you like. I don’t justify it or condemn it. It is a condition I accept. However, let me say this much, without any personal rancor, I don’t like using crooked cops. To me they’re a lost and frightening breed of men, and I would prefer to keep as far away from them as possible.” He studied Carmody’s hard impassive face, a curious frown gathering about his eyes. “You’re what some people call a smart operator, I suppose. I’ve known others like you, and I think I understand your reasoning processes. When you join the force it occurs to you in time that there is a way to make the job pay off more handsomely than the taxpayers intended. In short, to cheat, to trade on your position of public trust. What doesn’t occur to you is that the same course is open to every man in the department. They can cheat, or play it straight. Thank God, most of them play it straight. But you don’t give them credit for that. You see their honesty as stupidity, their integrity as a lack of nerve. This is why I find you rather frightening.” Powell shrugged and crossed his long legs. But he was still frowning thoughtfully at Carmody. “You rationalize your dishonesty with more of the same deadly cynicism,” he said slowly. “You say, ‘If I don’t take the graft then someone else will.’ This isn’t logic, of course, it’s merely an expression of your lack of faith. If you were logical you would test the proposition by being honest. Instead, you simply assume that everyone else is dishonest. You prejudge the world by yourself and steal with the comforting defense that you’re only beating the other crooks to it. The thing you—”

“That’s an excellent speech, sir,” Carmody said abruptly. “I’d like to hear the rest of it sometime. I mean that. But I want to talk now.”