Микки Спиллейн: The Last Cop Out

But Captain William Long was wrong too. At two-fifteen the next afternoon a taxicab was stolen from in front of a diner on Eighth Avenue. At two forty-eight the same cab was spotted, seemingly abandoned on a Greenwich Village side street, by a driver from the same fleet company. In the back seat Anthony Broderick, the former dockworker who was the enforcer for the organization’s shylocking racket, was slumped in the corner, a bullet from a .357 Magnum in his heart.

Gillian Burke sat in the balcony section of the Automat forking up beans and meat pie, washing it down with milk. In all the years he had been on the force nobody had ever referred to him by his first name. Always, it had been Gill, and even The Gill. Now here was another quarter-page editorial bringing up the past, the departmental trial, his suspension from the force because he was too much cop for the politicians to live with and spelling his name correctly and in three places. The writer reviewed his career in brief, commenting much too late that more men like him were needed, not fewer, even if a few official ears were scorched and perhaps innocent if unsavory hides were scratched.

Gill looked up when he saw Bill Long come over with his tray and pushed his paper aside to make room at the table. There was no doubt about the profession of either of them. The marks were there, inbred and refined to such a point that any aware citizen could recognize them after a minute’s scrutiny, and anyone outside the law could spot them immediately and at a hundred paces. Years of law enforcement, crime prevention-detection and association with the raw nerves and open hostility that fought against the normal society was a mold whose grain was indelible, even to the penetrating depth of a casual glance from eyes that saw more than other eyes could see.

There was one uneasy dissimilarity though. Bill Long was still there and it showed. Gill was outside the periphery of it all now and there was something in his demeanor like the ebbing of the tide on a low, sandy beach, a sadness, growing deeper with each receding wave. Yet the high-tide mark was still there and you knew that the water would be back again, and sometimes even higher when the storms come.

“Why didn’t you wait?” the captain asked.

“I was hungry, buddy.” He pushed the chair out with his foot. “Besides, I’m ready for seconds.”

Long sat down, took the dishes from his tray and arranged them in their usual order, putting the tray on an empty chair. Gill left, was back in five minutes with another meat pie and a wedge of cake balanced on top of a fresh glass of milk. The captain grinned and cut into his meat loaf. “I would have taken you up on going to 21, but I don’t want to get exposed to any of that rich living.”

“Balls.”

“How’s the new job going?”

“Profitably, pal. Not everybody bought that crap about me.”

Long spooned sugar into his coffee and stirred it with a clatter. “Forget it, Gill. You lucked right in. So you dumped a pension because you were disgusted with the system and wouldn’t fight it, but a fifty grand a year job beats it all to hell. Besides, it’s the same kind of work.”

“Not really.”

“You know how many retired inspectors would like to be head security officer at Compat?”

“Tell me.”

“All of ’em.” “And you were just a sergeant. I just hope something like that turns up for me.”

Gill looked up from his cake and smiled. It wasn’t a smile that had humor in it. It was simply one that had to be understood. “Not you, Bill. You always were the idealist. That’s why you bought that farm eight years ago. You’re all cop and a good one, but it’s something you can turn off and stop being when the time comes.”

“But not you?”

“No, not me, Bill. It’s one of those things I hid from the psycho team all these years.”

The captain made a wry face, went back to his meal again, then paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “You seem to have made the transition to civilian pretty smoothly.”

“The job has its compensations. Nobody is on my back for one.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

“Problems?”

“Just this big splash with the syndicate. Nobody knows what’s going on. Six on the slab and so far not one farting lead.”

“Yeah,” Gill said, “but at least the papers have a cheering section going for you.”

“When some poor slob gets caught in the crossfire the mood will change fast, my friend. And it’s going to happen. Right now we have word that all the shooters are on the street covering the bosses and just hoping for some action. The big meeting in Chicago last night laid one thing on the line... since the Manhattan end couldn’t clear things up themselves, get out where you can be a target and make the opposition show themselves. That order’s got the big boys working on their own personal shit hemorrhages. Anyone under the red line in the chain of command has to play this new version of Russian roulette or answer to the big board.”

“And now the department is doing bodyguard duty too.”

“That’s about it,” Long agreed.

“A new twist, covering those punks.”

Long twisted his mouth in a disgusted grimace before he looked up at Gill again. “The only redeeming feature is that you’re not involved any more. Right now it’s distasteful, but at least it’s temporary. If you ever were assigned to that detail we’d all be picking bone splinters out of our eyes and bursting our asses to keep it under cover.”

“I wasn’t all that bad, captain.”

“No, but blood never was a deterrent to working out things your own way.”

“How many times was I wrong?”

“A few times.”

“Never on the big ones.”

“No, not then. You never left much room for discussion, either.”

“There are ways and ways of doing things,” Gill said.

“Like the right way, the wrong way and your way.”

Gill nodded slowly. “That’s the way the other side played the game too.”

“Sure.” The captain got up, wiped his mouth and stuck out his hand. “You take care. I have to run. See you over the weekend.”

“Right.”

At a quarter to six Gill Burke turned the key in his apartment door lock, walked inside and latched it behind him. He caught the news on TV, then opened a mock-secret door in the leg of the old rolltop desk. Three guns of various makes hung there. He inspected them once, nodded silently and went back to watching TV again.

At eight o’clock he switched off the set and went to bed.

Until the present meeting, no one except Mark Shelby had met the Frenchman. Francois Verdun was the special envoy from the head office of the organization, a troubleshooter answerable to nobody save the top three men who controlled the vast machinery of the third government and whose very presence left a pall of fear that was almost a tangible thing. In every respect, he was seemingly medium, a nonentity in a crowd, a pleasant sort of person who enjoyed being called Frank by everyone.

Frank Verdun’s kill record made that of Mark Shelby insignificant by comparison. Administering death was a pleasure he had long ago learned to appreciate, whether done with his own hand during those periods when he decided to polish his expertise, or upon his command when the results were relished through reading the newspapers or watching the report on television. When he was fifteen he had killed his own brother; at twenty his best friend went down under his blade when the organization demanded it, at twenty-five he had personally arranged for a West Coast family of sixteen persons, who had grown too demanding, to be extinguished in a single bomb blast. At thirty he had reassembled a broken European narcotics ring, delivered it intact to his bosses, who, out of sheer admiration for his work and devotion to their cause, had installed him in an eviable position of supreme importance where death became a matter of simple routine to be accomplished quickly and untraceably... with great material recompense to the Frenchman whose tastes were extraordinarily bizarre and extremely expensive.