Harlan Ellison - Web of the City

“Maybe that’s what you wanted it to look like,” he shot back at me.

I could feel my face getting red, like it does when I’m boiling, and my duck-rasp had a real waspish tone. “Now you come patty-caking in here trying to whipsaw me and scare me with tales of the fry-seat. I don’t much care for it! So unless you got something logical to say, or a charge to make, or a warrant to back you, or you want to talk more civilly, beat it. I don’t feel so hot right now.” I turned toward the wall.

Instead of cowing him, it got him all the madder. He grabbed me by the shoulder, yanked me back facing him. He was all the harder looking.

“Listen, Campus, this isn’t any catered affair! We’ve been having trouble with this bunch of juvie hoods for six months now, and we’ve got a hunch they aren’t figuring out three hundred thousand dollar muggings on their own. We’ve got a hunch someone is ringing these jobs for them—and we’ve got a hunch the guy that’s been spotting for them is you.”

His finger was in my face. I felt like biting it, but I didn’t. His arm looked too big behind it.

“Nurse!” I hollered, and the sweet young thing appeared as though by magic. “Haul this character off me, or call my company to send me a lawyer. I’m supposed to be an invalid, aren’t I?”

She shrugged her neat shoulders, made a futile motion with her hands and said, “Doctor Eshbach said it was all right for Lieutenant Harrison to speak to you. Nothing I can do.” She shrugged again and promptly disappeared at a wave from Harrison.

“She on strings?” I asked sarcastically.

“Okay, Campus,” Harrison chimed me off. “Now you got the word, let’s have a few answers.” I pursed my lips. My head was splitting, and I rather thought I’d gotten a concussion, though they hadn’t mentioned it. But it was better to get this cop off my back early, and just lie back—till I could catch up with those punks.

Oh, I’d decided to get them. That was settled in my mind by the time I started talking to Harrison.

“Shoot,” I said.

“Yeah,” he answered nastily, “that too.” He reached into his topcoat pocket and brought out a little black notebook. “I’ve got to warn you, it says here, that anything you say may be used against you, and…” He went on like that, the usual patter, all in a bored tone of voice. I told him to can it and get his questions over with.

“What do you know about the mugging of a guy named Tanen-baum? A rug importer. About two months ago?”

I looked at him blankly. Then a memory stirred. “That was in the papers. Got robbed of close to fifteen thousand dollars, didn’t he? On the way to pay someone for a big shipment of goods, wasn’t that it?”

“Unusual you’d remember the exact amount, that long ago,” Harrison shot at me.

“I’ve got a good memory—any law against that ?” I drove back at him. He lowered his bushy brows in anger, and his glasses slid an inch down his nose.

Then the grilling started for real. About halfway through, another cop came in—a detective—and he went at me when Harrison was taking five.

I managed to piece the story together. It was interesting and made me all the more anxious to get the hoods that had plastered me. The story ran something like this:

About six months before, big robberies and muggings had started cropping up, all of them pulled off by trained teenage punks in black leather jackets—the juvie set. One guy had been shot through the head with a zip-gun .32, another had been knifed in the chest a couple of times, this Tanenbaum had lost an eye when they’d stomped him—and now Pessler, a diamond merchant, was dead.

It appeared to the police—and I could easily see why they were casting out for such unlikely suspects as me—that someone was ringing for the pack. And a cabbie was as neat a sentry as they could hope for.

Particularly since they’d found a couple of diamonds, raw, uncut, and pretty, nestling in my pants cuff.

“A plant!” I yelled when they popped that to me.

“Maybe,” Harrison answered.

“Maybe, hell,” I jumped back. “Look, I got a good record. I’ve never had any trouble more serious than a locked bumper. Now why the hell are you trying to pin this thing on me?”

He didn’t have to say it. I could read it in his eyes. He was being crucified like a voodoo doll, from Downtown. All the way up the line, they were getting hot pants. From detective to lieutenant, to inspector, to chief, to D.A., even up to the mayor—all of them were roasting. To pull the pan off the flame, they’d decided to temporarily fry a guy named Neal Campus. Because I’d been there, I looked good, and I had a couple of blue-whites in my pants cuff.

“Look, Harrison,” I said, a little more quietly, “I know you’ve got it rough, but don’t try to hang any of this wash on my line. I’m clean and you know it. Now if it’s just that you’ve got to make a pinch to shut the papers off, then find someone else. Because you know damned well you haven’t got a shred of a case to take before a jury. You’ll look like a sap, and I’ll sue you for ten years’ pay.

“Those diamonds were planted on me just to throw you off, as they have. Now if you want a line on what happened—as much of it as I saw—maybe I can fish that out for you. But otherwise, I’m not your boy.”

We went around and around for a while longer, and then they asked me, “What did these kids look like?”

“I didn’t see their faces,” I answered, smoothing the sheet across my lap. “Too dark.”

Harrison leaped up, the chair fell over, he was bellowing at me, “You were up over the curb, Campus. You must have had them dead in your spots. If you’re telling the truth, and haven’t got anything to hide, why are you holding out on us?”

They were damned mad, and I didn’t want to rub them any more. I clammed, and put on the honest-to-god-I’m-not-holding-back attitude. After a while, they took it for straight talk.

I didn’t want to turn them loose on those kids just yet. If those kids had planted the diamonds on me, they must have wanted me for a patsy. They probably didn’t realize I’d gotten a good look at them. I’d had enough guys shoving me around in Korea, and I’d learned to dislike it real intense. Now, to have anybody start shoving me in my own city—that was too much.

I wanted a crack at them before Harrison and his squad got to them.

It took them an hour and a half to pump me dry. Or at least to pump me what they thought was dry.

They got up to leave. Harrison clapped a battered porkpie down on his head and stood up. “That’s it for now, Campus. We don’t have anything really solid on you yet, but it’s still smelly, some of the dodges you’ve handed us. So take it true when I tell you not to leave town, or the fare you run up on that hack of yours may pay off in a trip to the fry-seat.”

He wasn’t kidding, and it was easier just to shut my eyes than to try reassuring him. I wasn’t leaving town.

They left, and all I could see, with my eyes shut, were three young hoods. I was going to get out of this hospital in another week, and I wanted them. Bad.

Liggett, the dispatcher, caught me on the way out one morning about a week after I’d been released. I’d been out for a week, and asking plenty of questions around town—if anybody knew the kids I’d described. Nobody had, of course, but I hadn’t given up.

I’d had a bit of a time getting my cab back, but I threatened to get the union on their tailpipes, and they slapped me back on schedule fast. They didn’t like the idea of a cabbie suspected of murder tooling one of their crates around, but they liked the idea of the union beating around their ears even less.