Микки Спиллейн - The Last Cop Out

“Positive.”

“How about you, Remy?” Shelby asked.

All the little guy did was shrug, but that single gesture implied an intense investigation utilizing some two hundred trained men whose reports were analyzed down to the last detail. Finally he said, “Vic and Baggert both handled narcotics, but their territories didn’t overlap. Morse had the books and Rose was handling the shylocking. Nothing connects at all. None of them even had the same friends. I cross-checked them in every possible direction and couldn’t come up with a single connection except that Rose’s and Vic’s kids went to the same elementary school together.”

Almost a minute passed before Shelby let his eyes come up from the papers again. He studied each face in turn, then seemed to take them all in at once. At that moment he looked more like one of those stern faces of past jurists whose portraits in oils hang in the courtroom than the chairman of the underworld’s most affluent board of directors. “No one,” he told them softly, “kills four of our head people without having a reason.”

At the far end of the table the one they called Little Richard because of his huge bulk said, “We can’t be sure there’s just one.” Richard Case was the organization’s liaison man to the political spiderweb of the city. Ostensibly, he headed a mammoth real estate concern, was public-spirited and politically active, but like everything else, it was only a front, a cover for his true business.

“Go on, Richard.”

Three hundred pounds shifted in the chair, making it squeak under his weight. “No two guns were alike. Vic and Morse got it with thirty-eights, Baggart with a forty-five and Rose with a nine-millimeter job. The only thing the same was that each was a one-shot deal expertly placed.”

“We have hit men like that,” Shelby reminded him.

“No,” Case disagreed. “They would have made sure and placed a couple more in there. Besides, our guys wouldn’t have picked the time and places like that. These were all top ambush jobs and it looks like they were done with silenced rods. So far the cops can’t find anybody who heard a damn thing and whoever pulled off the hits must be either an expert at disguise or different guys altogether. The pattern’s the same, all right, but what witnesses were around can’t remember seeing anybody on one kill who matches up with anybody on another. If it is one guy he’s a damn top pro and there’s got to be heavy money behind him. That kind of talent costs.”

Case scraped his chair back, his face still thoughtful. “But one thing with a pro like that... he’ll know we’re alerted now and he won’t feel like exposing himself any further. He’ll take his money and go cool off somewhere and let them shop for another gun somewhere else. He sure as hell is good and although he knows the territory he can’t be local and my bet is that right now he’s long gone from here.”

“Let’s suppose it’s more than one guy,” Shelby offered.

“In that case it’ll be all the easier to find out what the hell is going on. Somebody’s going to make a bad move or a wrong one and we’ll know where it’s coming from. All we need to know is why and we can take it from there.”

“It’s a raid,” Kevin stated flatly.

Across the table Leon Bray squinted at him through the thick glasses. “I’m not so sure. None of the properties have been touched. There hasn’t been a squeal any place. There’s still a chance that this can be a personal vendetta.”

“Vendettas went out with the old regime,” Kevin told him.

“Perhaps,” Bray agreed, “but with girls and greed, they can always be reinstituted.”

Remy looked a little annoyed at both of them and slammed the table top with his palm. “I’ve already told you that there wasn’t any connection between them. That was the first angle we looked into and there’s absolutely no match at all. The only thing they had in common was this group right here and I don’t think I have to go any further than that.”

“Relax, Remy,” Shelby said. His mind had been sorting out the information and the possibilities and when he was satisfied he sat back and reached for a cigar. Everybody else except the three who didn’t smoke did the same. “There’s only one conclusion,” he said. “It’s a raid, all right.”

“So what do we do?” Slick Kevin asked him.

“Simple,” Shelby answered. “We wait. They eliminated our people to shake up our control. Now they try to move into the loose areas and try to take hold. All we do is wait and see who is stupid enough to match their manpower against ours. Meanwhile, we restructure our table of organization and the operations will continue as usual. I don’t think our opponent will be trying any further hits.”

But Mark Shelby was wrong. That night a hollow-tipped .22 went into the left earhole of Dennis Ravenal and the sub-chieftain of East Side prostitution died on silken sheets in a high rise apartment building whose door he thought was absolutely pick-proof.

Nobody heard a shot. Nobody saw an intruder.

At the offices of Manhattan’s Homicide Assault Squad Captain William Long sipped from a paper coffee cup and grinned at the commissioner. “Why break up a nice war like that?” he asked.

“Because it looks like the police department is pretty damned inept,” the commissioner glared.

“Oh, we’re ept, all right,” the captain told him. “It’s just that you can be more useful being useless sometimes. So far there aren’t any innocent bystanders.”

“That won’t last long. The other side hasn’t turned on their hoses yet.”

“Seems to me they don’t know where to look,” Long said.

“I suppose you have a few ideas?”

Long nodded, still smiling. It was nice to get under the commissioner’s skin. In two weeks he was retiring out and he couldn’t think of a better situation to mark the end of his career. “A few,” he admitted. “Nothing concrete, but after twenty-five years you sort of get an instinct for these sort of things.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to explain them,” the commissioner said caustically.

Long finished his coffee, crumpled the cup and tossed it into the waste basket. “There’s only two possibilities, business or personal. Frankly, I can’t picture anybody dumb enough to go after the organization’s top men from a personal sense of vengeance. Ergo... it has to be business. Somebody wants in and they have to move somebody else out first. They have to be tremendously big since this is a move — not against a part — but against the entire network of the syndicate. They wouldn’t dare allow a chunk like that being bitten off without jeopardizing their entire situation. This new force moving in is playing the old cute game of removing the top men to rattle the rest enough to let them get a toehold in the game or an attempt to soften the operation so they can leech in themselves.”

“That’s a pretty dangerous play.”

“Nevertheless,” Long told him, “it’s been tried before and it’s worked before. Sometimes the big guys see the value of assimilating the new ones instead of fighting them. They’re absorbed, making their overall power even greater. There’s always new blood coming along.”

“And that, captain, makes it even worse. For a while there we’ve been able to push them back and with another year or two might even break them wide open, but if they start working from strength again everything we’ve done will be shot to hell.”

“Not if this war keeps on the way it’s going.”

“You know better than that.”

“Yeah. It’s just too good to last. They’re five down and I think the lesson is about over. By now they ought to be ready to expose their hand and call their shots.”