Эд Макбейн: Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here

Meyer’s eyes played tricks in the darkness. Apparitions that surely were not there seemed to float on the crescendo of sound that saturated the room. Barely perceived pieces of furniture assumed amorphous shapes as the male voice snarled and the female voice moaned above it in contralto counterpoint. And then the babel of other voices intruded again, as though calling these two back to whatever grim mossy crypt they had momentarily escaped. The sound of the wind became more fierce, and the voices of those numberless pacing dead receded, and echoed, and were gone.

The lamp sputtered back into dim illumination. The room seemed perceptibly warmer, but Meyer Meyer was covered with a cold clammy sweat.

“ Now do you believe?” Adele Gorman asked.

Detective Bob O’Brien was coming out of the men’s room down the hall when he saw the woman sitting on the bench just outside the squadroom. He almost went back into the toilet, but he was an instant too late; she had seen him, there was no escape.

“Hello, Mr. O’Brien,” she said, and performed an awkward little half-rising motion, as though uncertain whether she should stand to greet him or accept the deference due a lady. The clock on the squadroom wall read 3:02 A.M., but the lady was dressed as though for a brisk afternoon’s hike in the park, brown slacks and low-heeled walking shoes, brief beige car coat, a scarf around her head. She was perhaps fifty-five or thereabouts, with a face that once must have been pretty, save for the overlong nose. Greeneyed, with prominent cheekbones and a generous mouth, she executed her abortive rise and then fell into step beside O’Brien as he walked into the squadroom.

“Little late in the night to be out, isn’t it, Mrs. Blair?” O’Brien asked. He was not an insensitive cop, but his manner now was brusque and dismissive. Faced with Mrs. Blair for perhaps the seventeenth time in a month, he tried not to empathize with her loss because, truthfully, he was unable to assist her, and his inability to do so was frustrating.

“Have you seen her?” Mrs. Blair asked.

“No,” O’Brien said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Blair, but I haven’t.”

“I have a new picture, perhaps that will help.”

“Yes, perhaps it will,” he said.

The telephone was ringing. He lifted the receiver and said, “8Eighty-seventh Squad, O’Brien here.”

“Bob, this’s Bert Kling over on Culver, the church bombing.”

“Yeah, Bert.”

“Seems I remember seeing a red Volkswagen on that hot car bulletin we got yesterday. You want to dig it out and let me know where it was snatched?”

“Yeah, just a second,” O’Brien said, and began scanning the sheet on his desk.

“Here’s the new picture,” Mrs. Blair said. “I know you’re very good with runaways, Mr. O’Brien, the kids all like you and give you information. If you see Penelope, all I want you to do is tell her I love her and am sorry for the misunderstanding.”

“Yeah, I will,” O’Brien said. Into the phone, he said, “I’ve got two red VWs, Bert, a ‘64 and a ‘66. You want them both?”

“Shoot,” Kling said.

“The ’64 was stolen from a guy named Art Hauser. It was parked outside 861 West Meridian.”

“And the ’64?”

“Owner is a woman named Alice Cleary. Car was stolen from a parking lot on Fourteenth.”

“North or South?”

“South. 303 South.”

“Right. Thanks, Bob,” Kling said, and hung up.

“And ask her to come home to me,” Mrs. Blair said.

“Yes, I will,” O’Brien said. “If I see her, I certainly will.”

“That’s a nice picture of Penny, don’t you think?” Mrs. Blair asked. “It was taken last Easter. It’s the most recent picture I have. I thought it would be most helpful to you.”

O’Brien looked at the girl in the picture and then looked up into Mrs. Blair’s green eyes, misted now with tears, and suddenly wanted to reach across the desk and pat her hand reassuringly, the one thing he could not do with any honesty. Because whereas it was true that he was the squad’s runaway expert, with perhaps fifty snapshots of teenage boys and girls crammed into his bulging notebook, and whereas his record of finds was more impressive than any other cop’s in the city, uniformed or plainclothes, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do for the mother of Penelope Blair, who had run away from home last June.

“You understand—” he started to say.

“Let’s not go into that again, Mr. O’Brien,” she said, and rose.

“Mrs. Blair—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Mrs. Blair said, walking quickly out of the squadroom. “Tell her to come home. Tell her I love her,” she said, and was gone down the iron-runged steps.

O’Brien sighed and stuffed the new picture of Penelope into his notebook. What Mrs. Blair did not choose to hear again was the fact that her runaway daughter Penny was twenty-four years old, and there was not a single agency on God’s green earth, police or otherwise, that could force her to go home again if she did not choose to.

Fats Donner was a stool pigeon with a penchant for Turkish baths. A mountainous white Buddha of a man, he could usually be found at one or another of the city’s steam emporiums at any given hour of the day, draped in a towel and reveling in the heat that saturated his flabby body. Bert Kling found him in an allnight place called Steam-Fit. He sent the masseur into the steam room to tell Donner he was there, and Donner sent word out that he would be through in five minutes, unless Kling wished to join him. Kling did not wish to join him. He waited in the locker room, and in seven minutes’ time, Donner came out, draped in his customary towel, a ludicrous sight at any time, but particularly at close to 3:30 A.M.

“Hey!” Donner said. “How you doing?”

“Fine,” Kling said. “How about yourself?”

“Comme ci, comme ça,” Donner said, and made a seesawing motion with one fleshy hand.

“I’m looking for some stolen heaps,” Kling said, getting directly to the point.”

“What kind?” Donner said.

“Volkswagens. A ‘64 and a ‘66.”

“What color are they?”

“Red.”

“Both of them?”

“Yes.”

“Where were they heisted?”

“One from in front of 861 West Meridian. The other from a parking lot on South Fourteenth.”

“When was this?”

“Both last week sometime. I don’t have the exact dates.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who stole them.”

“You think it’s the same guy on both?”

“I doubt it.”

“What’s so important about these heaps?”

“One of them may have been used in a bombing tonight.”

“You mean the church over on Culver?”

“That’s right.”

“Count me out,” Donner said.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a lot of guys in this town who’re in sympathy with what happened over there tonight. I don’t want to get involved in none of this black-white shit.”

“Who’s going to know whether you’re involved or not?” Kling asked.

“The same way you get information, they get information.”

“I need your help, Donner.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry on this one,” Donner said, and shook his head.

“In that case, I’d better hurry downtown to High Street.”

“Why? You got another source down there?”

“No, that’s where the DA’s office is.”

Both men stared at each other, Donner in a white towel draped around his belly, sweat still pouring from his face and his chest even though he was no longer in the steam room, Kling looking like a slightly tired advertising executive rather than a cop threatening a man with revelation of past deeds not entirely legal. They stared at each other with total understanding, caught in the curious symbiosis of law breaker and law enforcer, an empathy created by neither man, but essential to the existence of both. It was Donner who broke the silence.