Warren Murphy: Murder's Shield

It was his stomach that suddenly lost all feeling and sent the signal to his mind to block out thoughts of anything other than what was around him. Some men lost touch with their surroundings when frightened, and tried to shut out reality. Duffy closed off emotion instead. Which was why he returned from World War II, and some of his colleagues didn't. It was not a virtue that Duffy had perfected. He was born with it, just as he was born with a heart that pumped blood and lungs that took oxygen from the air.

The kind of stomach-rotting fear that most other people experienced came to Francis X. Duffy when he couldn't manage his son, or in a close election, or when his wife went into St. Vincent's Hospital for an operation. That was when his stomach jumped, his palms sweated, and he had to fight for control of himself. Death was another matter.

So here it is, said Frank Duffy's mind. So here it is coming at you. He stood before the Justice Building, a fifty-five-year-old man, his fine, neat combed hair graying, his face lined with the marks of life, his briefcase filled with reports he was sure he would never use. And what amazed him was how well his body remembered to prepare for the possibility of death.

He strolled to a bench. It was speckled with fallen red, yellow, and brown leaves; he brushed them aside. Some youngsters must have spread them there because leaves did not fall that heavy, least of all in Washington in late October.

Things to do before death. The will was all right. Two. Tell Mary Pat that he loved her. Three. Tell his son that life was good and that this was a good country to live it in, maybe the best. Nothing too heavy, though. Maybe just shake his hand and tell him how proud he was of him. Four, confession. That would be necessary, but how could he honestly make his peace with God when he had used methods to have only one child, methods not approved by the Church?

He would have to promise to amend his life, and it seemed dishonest to promise such a thing when the promise didn't mean anything any more. He knew full well that he would not have more children if he could now, so the promise would be a lie. And he did not wish to lie to God, not now.

God had been a problem since his arguments with the sisters at St. Xavier's, extending all the way through the formality of joining the Knights of Columbus because Irish-Catholic politicians from the 13th C.D. all belonged to the Knights of Columbus, just as the Jews sprinkled themselves on hospital boards and social agencies. The religions met at Muscular Dystrophy.

Duffy smiled and breathed the autumn in Washington. He loved this city to the very depth of his being. This crime-ridden brothel on the Potomac where the best hope of mankind still legislated its tortuous way toward a system where people could live safely and justly with other people. Where the son of an Irish bootlegger could rise to congressman and vote with sons of oil millionaires, paupers, farmers, cobblers, racketeers, clergymen, hustlers, and professors. That was America. What the radicals of both the left and right hated about it was its very humanity. They wanted to model America on some abstract purity that had never existed and would never exist. The right with the past; the left with tomorrow.

Duffy looked at his briefcase. In it were reports on the deaths of a pimp, a female recruiter of prostitutes, a heroin dealer, and a judge who had been obviously earning a tidy profit from acquitting people he shouldn't have. And in that briefcase were the signs of great danger to the beautiful country that did exist. America. What to do? The Attorney General had been a good first step, but already it could be dangerous. Could Duffy trust the Justice Department or the FBI? How far had this thing gone? It was big enough to kill a half dozen people already. Was it national? Did it infect the federal agencies? How far and how deep? On that question depended how long he would live. His enemies might not know it yet but they would kill a congressman if need be. They could not stop at anyone now. They had cut themselves free from reality, and now they would destroy what they sought to preserve.

What to do now? Well, a little protection from someone he could trust would do for a starter. The toughest man he knew. Maybe the toughest man in the world. Mean on the outside and mean on the inside.

That afternoon with a pile of change in front of him, Congressman Duffy dialled a long distance number from a pay phone.

"Hello, you lazy sonofabitch, how are you, this is Duffy."

"Are you still alive?" came back the voice. "That candy-ass life you lead should have put you in the grave long before this."

"You'd know on national television or the New York Times if I were dead. I'm not a nobody police inspector."

"You wouldn't have the brass for police work, Frankie. You'd only live three minutes with your weepy West Side liberalism."

"Which brings up why I called you, Bill. You don't think I'd just want to say hello."

"No, not a big-shot faggy liberal congressman like you. What do you want, Frankie?"

"I want you to die for me, Bill."

"Okay, just so long as I don't have to listen to your political bullshit. What's up?"

"I think I'm going to be a target very soon. What say we meet at that special place?"

"When?"

"Tonight."

"Okay, I'll leave right away. And Fag-Ass, do me a favour."

"What?"

"Don't get yourself killed before then. They'll make you into another martyr. We got enough of those."

"Just try to read the map without moving your lips, Bill."

Frank Duffy delayed telling his wife he loved her and his son how proud he was of him and God that he was sorry. Inspector William McGurk was another two weeks at least. Guaranteed. Maybe even a natural death.

He drove into Maryland to escape the heavy liquor tax and bought ten quarts of Jack Daniels. Since he would not be stopping at any other stores, he also purchased some soda to go with it.

"A quart," said Congressman Duffy. "A quart of club soda."

The clerk looked at the row of Jack Daniels bottles and said, "You sure a quart's what you want?"

Duffy shook his head.

"You're right. Make it a pint. One of those little bottles."

"We don't have little bottles."

"Then, that's okay. Just what's here on the counter. Hell, make it an even dozen."

"Jack Daniels?"

"What do you think?"

Duffy drove to the airport and loaded the Jack Daniels onto his Cessna, making sure the bottles were flat and even, a central weight on the plane. Not that they would make that much difference, but why take chances? There were old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.

Duffy landed that night in a small private airstrip outside Seneca Falls, New York. A car was waiting. McGurk had driven from New York City. The cold night, the unloading of the plane, and the meeting with McGurk, reminded Duffy of the night in France when he had first met the best weapons man he would ever know. It had been early spring in France and although they knew an invasion would come soon from England, they did not know when or where because high risk people are never given information that the upstairs would not want to see in enemy hands.

It was a weapons drop in Brittany. McGurk and Duffy had been assigned to distribute and teach the use of said weapons in a manner consistent, and with a degree of skill commensurate with, the practical use of such weapons in the field of operations. That is what their secret orders had said.

"We gotta show the frogs how not to blow their feet off when they fire these things," said McGurk.

He was taller than Duffy and his face was surprisingly fleshy for a man so thin, a moon of a face with a button of a nose and rounded soft lips that made him appear about as incisive as a balloon.