Джон Макдональд - More Good Old Stuff

Max said angrily, “Why not let him go? Why take the chance?”

“Why, you poor damn fool, he’d have killed the girl as soon as he got clear.”

Marylen, her face against Max’s lapel, said, “I saw him kill Jerry. I remember.”

Lowery, his temporary reaction over, said, “And now, Mr. Raffidy, where do we find Jerry Norma’s body?”

“They’re doing a hell of a lot of cement work at Valley Farms, Captain...”

It was pale, gray dawn and the sounds of the city hadn’t yet begun. Lowery, his well-fed face showing the dragging lines of weariness, hung up the phone. He said, “They got him. They’d slapped him in the face with a spadeful of concrete.”

“How about Antonelli and Walch?”

“Walch is beginning to crack. When he does, we can use the stuff he gives us to crack Antonelli. The little fat man’s name was Stan Norton, Ledecker’s blackmailer.”

Max said slowly, “And now, Captain, may I phone in everything I know?”

“Hell, are you working?”

“With an exclusive like this? I’ve been working ever since I phoned in the eyewitness description of Ledecker’s death from the hospital.”

Lowery sighed. “Can I stop you? I’m going home and get some sleep.”

“So am I. I’m going to stop in at Memorial on the way and check on the girl. As soon as she’s well, I’ll ship her home.”

Lowery stood heavily at the doorway. “In some things, Raffidy,” he said, “you almost achieve brilliance. However, with women, you’re on the dull side.”

Max said angrily, “What should I do? Keep her as a good-luck charm?”

But he was talking to the closed door. He managed the difficult feat of lighting a cigarette. He laid the receiver down and started to dial the newspaper number. By now the waiting wolves from the other papers would be plaguing Lowery.

Halfway through the number he stopped dialing, said softly, “Good-luck charm. Hmmm.”

He hung up and started dialing again.

For many years Bay Street was the place. Bar whiskey for thirty cents a shot, or a double slug for fifty. A waterfront street, where dirty waves slapped at the crushed pilings behind the saloons. A street to forget with. A street which would close in on you, day to day, night to night, until the wrong person saw some pitying old friend slip you a five. They would find you at dawn, and an intern from City General would push your eyelid up with a clean pink thumb and say, “More meat for the morgue.”

Maybe, as he stood up, he would look down at your hollow gray face and the sharp bones of your wrists and wonder how you’d kept alive this long. So very long.

But something happened to Bay Street. The smart developers saw what was happening elsewhere, and they conned the city, county and federal government into a glamorous redevelopment project. A huge mall. Parking garages. Waterfront restaurants on new piers, out over the water. A marina. Smaller shopping malls with quaint stores selling antiques, paintings, custom jewelry, Irish tweed.

So the old saloons were uprooted, and for a time there was no place at all for the Bay Street bums. Then some of the old places started up again on Dorrity Street, four blocks inland, and soon it was all the same as before, with the stale smell of spilled beer, the steamy chant of the jukes, hoarse laughter, the scuff of broken shoes, the wet sound of fist against flesh.

Frank Bard sat on the stone step of an abandoned warehouse and stared down along Dorrity Street through the misty rain. Across the street the rain made a pink cloud around the red neon of Allison’s Grill.

Bard thought vaguely that if the rain increased, he’d have to get under shelter. He didn’t want to go inside; he had come out because he had been sick. The muscles of his diaphragm still ached with the violence of his retching. He turned the ragged collar of his dark blue suit coat up around his neck. He wondered if he ought to walk down the alley and see if anybody had tried to move in on him. Two weeks before, he had found a sturdy packing case and, at dawn, had dragged it down the alley and put it under a fire escape. The effort had left him weak and panting. He had filled it with clean burlap and it made a snug bed. The fall rain was chill; the packing case wouldn’t be any good in the winter. He forced that thought out of his mind.

He was a dark man, with a sullen face. Once he had been solid, almost stocky, but the flesh had melted off him during the past year. He was still capable of sudden, explosive bursts of energy. His hair was long and his square jaw was dark with several days’ beard. His cheeks were hollow and there was a dark wildness in his puffy eyes that the shadows concealed.

Across the street an old man with matted white hair lurched out of Allison’s and fell on one knee. He got up and went on, limping and cursing in a thin, high voice, watered down by age.

Frank Bard heard the slow tock, tock of heels, heavy heels, coming down the sidewalk on his side. He knew who it was without looking. He scowled down at the sidewalk. The slow steps stopped.

He looked up. Patrolman Clarence Flynn, tall and solid, stood looking down at him. Flynn’s raincoat had a cape effect across the shoulders that made him look larger than life.

He said softly, “You okay, Frankie?”

“Give me a cigarette, Flynn,” Bard said hoarsely.

Flynn handed him one, lit it. Over the match flame the two men glanced briefly into each other’s eyes — and looked quickly away.

In the same gentle tone, Flynn said, “When are you going to straighten out, Frankie?”

“I like it this way.”

“You were a good cop, Frankie. You straighten out and you could come back in; your record’s good.”

“I like it this way.”

“You look sick, Frankie.”

“I’m fine. You got a beat to cover.”

Flynn shrugged. He handed the half pack of cigarettes to Bard and walked toward his prowl car. He stopped ten feet away and said, “She wasn’t worth this, Frankie; no woman was worth this.”

Bard called him a foul word and snapped the half-smoked cigarette into the street. After he could no longer hear the sound of Flynn’s heels, he tried to light another one. His hands shook so badly that he couldn’t do it. The matches were damp. They sputtered and went out quickly.

He felt in his side pocket to make certain that the five quarters were still there. They were cool against his fingertips. He stood up, swaying slightly, and then walked across the street, pushed his way into the heat and smell of Allison’s.

The bar was of plywood laid over some heavier substance. Naked bulbs were laid behind the bottles on the back bar, and the light glowed through — amber. The place was narrow and rectangular — with the bar on the left and booths on the right. An ancient jukebox sat against the far wall, bubbles rising endlessly up through the colored tubes. Arthur Allison, a small trim man with Truman glasses and a gray mustache, in a spotless white shirt, waited on bar, his quick eyes flickering ceaselessly from face to face. Allison was a watchful, careful man. Jader waited on the booths and, on occasion, acted as bouncer. Jader was tall and heavy with weak eyes that watered constantly. He too was watchful. Underneath the bar, to the left of the beer taps, was a small drawer. There were usually a few small packages in that drawer. Summer and winter a small hot coal fire burned in the basement. In the winter, the fire heated the building; in the summer, the radiators were turned off. On the under edge of the drawer containing the packages was a small loop of wire. Either Jader or Allison could, by yanking on the loop of wire, drop the bottom of the drawer. The little packages would then drop down a chute into the fire. It was safer that way. For every package held and relayed to the proper pickup men, there was a fee of one hundred dollars. Thirty for Jader and seventy for Allison. On some days as many as eight packages spent varying lengths of time in the drawer.