Микки Спиллейн - The Last Cop Out

“It’s all in the report, Mr. Burke.”

“I know. I read them. Now I want to hear you tell me about it.”

“Well, I was an hour from coming off duty. I had called in from the box, crossed over to the south side of the street and continued west.”

“On schedule?”

“A few minutes early, I suppose. It was cold as hell that night and I was figuring on a hot cup of coffee in Gracie’s Diner at the end of the beat. The Chinaman’s laundry and the pawnshop were open and...”

“Any incidents?”

Corrigan thought back and shrugged. “I checked an alley out when I heard a garbage can go over. It was a dog. Right after that some half-lit broad stopped to tell me what a son of a bitch her boy friend was because he had another woman in his apartment when she had helped him buy the furniture.”

“Many people on the street?”

“Too cold. I saw a couple, that’s all.”

“Where were you when you were talking to the dame?”

“By the doorway of the grocery store.”

“Lights on?”

“Nope. The place was dark.”

“Then if Proctor entered the pawnshop then he couldn’t have seen you.”

“Guess so. I didn’t see him go in, either.”

“Okay, go on.”

“So I told the woman to forget about it and she left. I went on up the street. When I got to the pawnshop I looked in and saw the owner standing there with his hands up and Proctor facing him. I pulled my own gun out and went in right then and told the guy to drop his weapon, but instead he swung around with the gun in his hand and I thought sure as hell he was going to start shooting and I shot him.”

“He say anything?”

“No, but he sure had a crazy look on his face.”

“Describe it?”

Corrigan squinted and shrugged, “Been a couple of years, Mr. Burke. I can still see that expression but the only way I can describe it is crazy. Believe me, it was all so damn fast you really can’t tell what’s happening. You just react and hope you did the right thing.”

“You did.”

“I wish I could be sure.”

“What makes you doubt it?”

The cop rubbed his hands together, his eyes trying to peer at a dim, indistinguishable picture in his mind. “You know,” he said, “I try not to, but I keep seeing that whole damn thing over and over again. I even dream about it. There was something there that just wasn’t right and I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it was.”

“Don’t you think the follow-up would have spotted it?”

“I keep telling myself so,” Corrigan said. “Anything else?”

“No, I guess that’s all.”

“I thought that was a closed case, Mr. Burke.”

“That’s what the sign says,” Gill told him, “but sometimes closed cases just make room for new ones.”

Corrigan said, “That’s life,” shook hands and left.

Over in records, Sergeant Schneider took Burke back to the files and found the packet he requested. He spread the contents out on the table and said, “There it is. Not much, but we didn’t need much.” He pulled out photos of three bullets that had taken a life and pointed out the configurations on the enlargements that showed they all came from the same gun, then moved over another verifying the groove marks from the murder weapon. “I wish they were all that easy,” he said.

Burke picked up the composite showing the prints lifted from the murder weapon. They clearly matched those taken from the body of Proctor. Schneider pointed out the similarities with expert ease.

“We were lucky here,” he said. “The usual crosshatched walnut stock had been replaced with a clear plastic that picked up those three beautiful prints. The rest were smudged, but even then it didn’t matter. The gun was lying right under him where he fell.”

Burke jammed his cigarette out in an ash tray, his finger flicking against the photo. “What’s wrong with this, Al?”

Schneider took it out of his fingers, studied it and gave it back to him. “Nothing. It’s beautiful.”

“There’s something wrong.”

“Like hell.”

“Maybe we’re just stupid.”

“You don’t make sergeant being stupid,” Schneider told him. “What more do you want?”

“Be damned if I know.”

“Why don’t you just leave it alone, Gill?”

“Because I don’t like to think of myself as being stupid,” he said. He looked at his watch and it was closing in on two o’clock.

Just then Trent came in with an eight-by-ten color print and held it out for Schneider to file along with the typed report. “Want to see a beauty? It’s the guy they found in Prospect Park.”

Sergeant Schneider didn’t mind the black-and-whites, but those damned color photographs they were sending down these days made him sick, especially when they were of entrails, mutilated glands and torn flesh. He gagged, and when Burke said, “Let me see that,” he was glad to give it to him.

“Who’s handling this?” Burke asked Trent after a minute’s scrutiny.

“Peterson.”

He pointed to an area in the picture where a gaping wound had been gouged into the corpse’s belly. “Tell him to check the Minneapolis and Denver files for an M.O. Go back about ten years. Two of the Caprini clowns from the Chicago family were rubbed out by a hit man who liked to tear out belly buttons.”

“Why the hell would he do that?” Trent asked.

“Maybe he ate them,” Gill said.

Schneider gagged again. Gill laughed and left.

The answering service told him he had had a call from a Mr. Willie Armstrong who didn’t leave a number, and after he thanked the operator he fished another dime out of his pocket and dialed the apartment on Lenox Avenue.

When he heard the rumbling hello, he said, “Gill here, Junior, I got your message.”

“Where are you?”

“Phone booth. What’s up?”

“If you want Henry Campbell hell talk to you but it’ll cost.”

“No sweat.”

“I promised him no heat.”

“Deal.”

“He ain’t no boy, bossman, and you can bet he’s covered. If there’s any kickback I’ll be the sucker.”

“Junior,” Gill told him, “right now I’d like to kick your black ass for that remark.”

He heard his friend chuckle on the other end of the line. “Sorry, buddy. It’s been a long time since we lived in the same foxhole.”

“Forget it, ape. Where do we meet?”

“You remember where Perry Chops met his just reward?”

“Exactly.”

“Right there at ten P.M.” Junior Armstrong chuckled again. “And see heah, boy. Don’t play the big white hunter. Yo in Black Panther territority theah.”

“Yo bigoted, man,” Gill laughed back.

Perry Chops was a long-dead narcotics pusher who bought it in a five-floor fall from a rooftop assisted by the fist of an irate father who caught him about to introduce his two teenage kids into the screaming glories of heroin. The father had a cousin who had a detective on the case for a friend and the fall became a suicide dive on the books. The two kids made the acquaintance of a leather belt on bare asses and both went on to be city firemen with great respect for the parent they regarded as a slob and greater respect for the second cousin and the cop who held them in position while they learned the truth of life the leathery way.

The street hadn’t changed any, the buildings were just as dilapidated and the eyes that looked at him as he parked the car just as suspicious as ever. For a white man to be there at all, far less alone, meant he packed so much power that nobody had better touch anything until it was all spelled out loud and clear and they knew the score.

He locked the car and went up the steps, not even bothering to look at the pair in tailored suits wearing the cocked berets. The tenement was quiet, without the usual odors he knew so well. Too many times Gill had been up and down buildings like this and he didn’t have to be shown the way.