McBain, Ed - Killer's Payoff

Section 851 picked up where 850 left off, with a definition of what threats may constitute extortion: “Fear, such as will constitute extortion may be induced by an oral or written threat: 1. To…,” etc., etc. The subdivision utilized in the charge against Torr had been subdivision 4: “…oral or written threat: 4. To expose any secret affecting him or any of them.”

Such was the nature of extortion.

Blackmail was extortion in writing.

Section 856 of the Penal Law stated that “A person who…causes to be forwarded or received…any letter or writing, threatening: 1. To accuse…2. To do any injury…3. To publish or connive at publishing any libel…4. To expose…,” etc., is guilty of blackmail.

The distinction was indeed a subtle one in that blackmail had to be in writing, whereas extortion could be either oral or written. In any case, Torr was both a convicted extortionist and an accused blackmailer.

Kling shrugged and looked through the rest of the photostated material in the I.B.’s packet. Torr had served a year at Castleview, the state’s—and possibly the nation’s—worst penitentiary. He had been released on parole at the end of that time, after receiving a guarantee of employment from a construction company out on Sand’s Spit. He had in no way violated his parole. Nor had he been arrested again since his prison term had ended. He was, at present, still gainfully employed by the same Sand’s Spit construction company, earning good wages as a laborer.

He seemed to be a decent, upright, honest citizen.

And yet he was interested in the apparent gangland murder of a known blackmailer.

And Bert Kling wondered why.

2.

THERE HAD BEEN A TIME when Detective Steve Carella had considered Danny Gimp just another stool pigeon. He had considered him a good stoolie, true, and a valuable stoolie—but nonetheless a pigeon, a somewhat-pariah who roamed the nether world between criminal and law-enforcement officer. There had been a time when, had Danny Gimp dared to call Carella “Steve,” the detective would have taken offense.

All that had been before December.

In December, Steve Carella had managed to get himself shot. He would never forgive himself for having been shot that day in December. In fact, he would always refer to December twenty-second as the day of his idiocy, and he would allow that idiotic day to live in his memory as a reminder never to rush in where angels feared. He truthfully had come very close to joining the band of angels on those few days before Christmas. Somehow, miraculously, he’d managed to survive.

And it was then that he had learned Danny Gimp was waiting downstairs to see him.

Steve Carella had been a very surprised cop. Danny Gimp entered the hospital room. He’d been wearing his good suit, and a clean shirt, and he’d carried a box of candy under his arm, and he’d embarrassedly handed Carella the gift and then mumbled, “I’m…I’m glad you made it, Steve.” They had talked until the nurse had said it was time for Danny to go. Carella had taken his hand in a firm clasp, and it was then that Danny had ceased being just another stool pigeon and become a human being.

On the morning of June twenty-eighth, after a call from Carella, Danny limped into the squadroom of the 87th Precinct. The bulls on the squad had recently wrapped up the murder of a girl who’d worked in a liquor store, and now they were up to their ears in another homicide, and this one seemed to require the special talents of Danny Gimp. The men of the 87th would not be called for testimony in the trial of Marna Phelps until August—but this was June, and there was work to be done, and you didn’t sit around on your ass waiting for trials if you wanted to earn your salary. If you wanted to earn your salary, you got up from behind your desk the moment you saw Danny standing at the slatted rail divider. You went to him with your hand extended, and you greeted him the way few policemen greet stool pigeons. But Danny Gimp was not a stool pigeon to you. Danny Gimp was a human being.

“Hello, Steve,” Danny said. “Hot enough for you?”

“Not too bad,” Carella said. “You’re looking good. How’ve you been?”

“Fine, fine,” Danny said. “The rain slaughtered my leg, but you know how that is. I’m glad it cleared up.”

Danny Gimp had had polio as a child. The disease had not truly crippled him, although it had left him with the limp that would provide his lifelong nickname. Carella knew that old wounds ached when it rained. He had old wounds to prove it. It came as no surprise that Danny’s leg had bothered him during the past week of rain. It would have come as a surprise to Carella to learn that Danny harbored no ill feeling toward his leg or the disease that had caused his limp. It would have come as a greater surprise to learn that Danny Gimp lighted a candle in church each week for a man named Jonas Salk.

The men walked into the squadroom. At a near-by desk, Cotton Hawes looked up from his typing. Bert Kling, closer to the grilled windows that fronted on Grover Park, was busy talking on the telephone. Carella sat, and Danny sat opposite him.

“So what can I sell you?” Danny asked, smiling.

“Sy Kramer,” Carella said.

“Yeah,” Danny answered, nodding.

“Anything?”

“A crumb,” Danny said. “Blackmail, extortion, the works. Living high on the hog for the past nine months or so. He musta latched onto something good.”

“Any idea what it was?”

“Nope. Want me to go on the earie?”

“I think so. What about this killing the other night?”

“Lots of scuttlebutt on it, Steve. A thing like that, you figure right away the racket boys. Not so, from what I can pick up.”

“No, huh?’

“If it was, it’s being kept mighty cool. This is old hat, anyway, this torpedo crap. Who hires guns nowadays? And if you do, you don’t do it up dramatic, you dig me, Steve? This crap went out with movies about bootleg whisky. If you need somebody out of the way, you get him out of the way—but you don’t come screaming around corners in black limousines with machine guns blazing. Once in a while you get something with flair. The rest of the time it’s a quiet plop, not a noisy bang. You dig?”

“I dig,” Carella said.

“And if this was a gang thing, I’d’ve heard about it. There ain’t much I don’t hear. If this was a gang thing, there’d be some jerk havin’ a beer and spillin’ over at the mouth. I figure it different.”

“How do you figure it?”

“One of Kramer’s suckers got tired of havin’ Kramer on his back. He got himself a car and a gun, and he went on a shooting party. Good-by, Sy, say hello to the man with the horns and the pitchfork.”

“Whoever did the shooting was pretty good, Danny. Only one shot was fired, and it took away half of Kramer’s face. That doesn’t sound like an amateur.”

“There’s lotsa amateurs who can shoot good,” Danny said. “It don’t mean a damn thing. Somebody wanted him dead pretty bad, Steve. And from what I can pick up, it ain’t the gangs. Half the racket boys never even hearda Kramer. If you’re workin’ what he was workin’, you do it alone. It’s common arithmetic. If you work it with a partner, you have to split everything but the prison sentence.”

“You’ve got no idea who he was milking?” Carella asked.

“If I knew, I’d have tried to get in on it myself,” Danny said, smiling. “I’ll try to find out. But the secret of extortion is just that: the secret. If too many people know about it, it ain’t a secret any more. And if it ain’t a secret, why should anybody pay off to protect it? I’ll listen around, I’ll go on the earie. But this is a tough thing to find out.”

“What do you know about a man named Mario Torr?”