Ричард Деминг: The Copper Frame

LT. TED SAXON — He unsuspectingly rang in the New Year with a bell whose tongue never stopped, but his resolution solved his father’s murder

CHIEF ANDY SAXON — His public image, which revealed a will of iron, concealed a heart of gold torn by a lead slug

SAM LENNOX — A veteran cop whose vision and integrity are engulfed in an alcoholic haze

LT. VIC BURNS — He played “Hail to the Chief!” while the bullets rained, but his was more mortal than otherwise

EMILY VANE — The T.L.C. this nurse administers to her bereaved fiáncé, Ted, is not prescribed by a doctor

LT. ART MARKS — Acting Chief, he finds the role too demanding for his talents and the stage set for tragedy

BEN FOLEY — Outgoing mayor, he learns that the political picture looks different when it is framed

ADAM BENNOCK — The lame-duck mayor whose goose is cooked by master chef Saxon

EDWARD COOMBS — This harness-racing accountant wants to turn Iroquois into a racing stable for the Syndicate

SERGEANT HARRY MORRISON — A hustler’s hustler; he finds out that steering and playing the ponies are furlongs apart

GRACE EMMENT — The gangster’s moll who got her mink coat just the way the minks do, but then was skinned alive for it

JENNY WATTE — This meter-maid’s New Year didn’t start with a bang, but she thought that Chief Saxon’s did

ARNOLD KETTLE — A plump D.A. who stands so erect that he seems to lean slightly backward, but then falls flat on his face trying to uphold Justice

ALTON ZEK — A junkie stool pigeon who plays both sides against his own end

ANN LOWRY — A sexpuss who becomes a cat’s-paw

SANDRA NORMAN — A call girl who gets her wires crossed when she tries to make a connection

FARMER BENTON AND SPIDER WERTZ — They prove that gangsters by any other nicknames would smell the same

Lieutenant Ted Saxon was surprised when a radio call came into headquarters from Car One. Car One was the police chief’s car, and it was taking his father and two other police officers to a county law-enforcement officers’ meeting at Rigby. By 8 P.M., when they call came in, it should have been nearly there, beyond the twenty-mile range of its broadcast band.

Nevertheless, the message was quite clear. The voice from the speaker said, “Car One to Control. Can you read me, Control?”

Lifting the microphone from its bracket on the radio panel, Saxon said, “Control to Car One. I read you fine. What’s up?”

The voice said, “This is Sam Lennox. That you, Ted?”

“Yes.”

“We’re on Route Sixty, five miles out of Rigby. The chief and Lieutenant Burns have both been shot by a suspect we stopped. I’m rushing them to Rigby Memorial Hospital. Description of suspects’s car: new Chevrolet two-door sedan, gray with blue top, New York License IUL-053. No description of suspect because it’s dark and he started firing before the chief and Burns got close to him, then took off. Last seen thirty seconds ago heading south on Route Sixty toward Rigby. I fired after the car and believe I hit it a couple of times, but I didn’t give chase because I can’t leave the wounded men.”

Ted Saxon had been too busy jotting down the pertinent data to think of anything else while Lennox was speaking. But now it registered on him that his father and one of his closest friends had been shot.

He said huskily, “I’ll get it right out, Sam. How bad are they hit?”

The patrolman’s voice came over the radio with an edge of bitterness. “Vic’s only nicked, but your dad’s hit bad. I’ll phone you from the hospital. Car One to Control, over and out.”

“Control to Car One, roger,” Saxon said mechanically.

He phoned the Rigby police first, to have a road block set up. Then he contacted the sheriff’s office and the state police by radio. As the Iroquois radio communication system was linked to both, he was able to relay the information to them simultaneously.

Then there was nothing to do but wait.

Ted Saxon was a younger image of his father, with the same wide shoulders and hipless frame, the same wide-mouthed face sprinkled with freckles and the same sandy red hair. The only difference was that usually there was a smile on the younger man’s face, whereas Chief Andy Saxon seldom indulged in any expression at all.

Peering outside, the lieutenant saw that the night was pitch black and the air was filled with tiny flakes of falling snow. By the thermometer bracketed just outside the door and angled so that it could be read from indoors, he saw that it was twenty above zero.

Christmas weather, he thought. In ten more days it would be Christmas. A box of cigars for his dad was already wrapped and hidden at the back of his closet. He wondered if the old man would ever get to smoke them.

Sam Lennox phoned at eight-thirty. “I’m calling from Rigby Memorial, Ted,” the patrolman said heavily. “I’m sorry, but your dad was D.O.A.”

For a few moments Saxon couldn’t speak. It was too hard to adjust to the thought of his indestructible father being dead. At sixty-two Chief Andy Saxon still had been sturdy as an oak and twice as tough. For thirty years he had run the Iroquois Police Department with an iron hand, fair and impartial, but as demanding of perfection as a Marine drill sergeant.

Eventually Saxon managed to ask, “How’s Vic?”

“Just a bullet singe on the right biceps. They patched him up with a Band-Aid. We’re starting back now. I’ll give you the details when we get there.”

Saxon hung up and sat staring into space. He had been closer to his father than most Iroquoisans were aware from their reserved relationship in public. Though Andy Saxon’s public image was that of a remote, unapproachable man, his son knew the hidden side of his character that made him capable of both warmth and compassion. Vaguely, Ted could recall a house always filled with laughter before his mother died, when he was ten. And though the laughter stopped the night his father stonily returned to the house half an hour before the visiting period at the hospital ended, the house remained, if not as gay, at least one of warmth and security.

A single parent, striving to fill the roles of both father and mother, often develops a closer relationship with a child than two parents possibly could, and this had been the case between Andy and his boy Ted.

Sam Lennox and Vic Burns got back from Rigby at nine-thirty. They came in stamping the snow from their galoshes and brushing flakes from their overcoats, both making a to-do of it in an obvious effort to out-wait each other in approaching the desk.

Finally Lennox conceded defeat and moved his thin, lanky frame forward. His eyes briefly touched Saxon’s before shifting to gaze past his left shoulder.

“Sorry, Ted,” he murmured. “Twenty, twenty-five years ago it would never have happened, but I guess I’m getting old.”

Despite his grief, Saxon felt a twinge of sympathy for the veteran patrolman. After twenty-eight years on the force, Sam Lennox was not, by a country mile, quite the police officer he had once been. The gradually increasing redness of the veins in his cheeks and nose suggested the reason. Long ago a younger man with Sam Lennox’s drinking habits would have been bounced from the force by Andy Saxon. But disciplinarian that he was, even the hard-bitten chief couldn’t bring himself to rob a veteran of so many years of his pension. For the past two years Lennox had been relegated to the relative sinecure of the chief’s driver.

Saxon said, “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault, Sam. The old man was still fast as a whip, so if he was caught flat-footed, it must have happened too suddenly for anyone to save him.”