Ed Lacy: Lead With Your Left

“I did okay. Wanted to turn pro but my folks raised too much fuss. So I joined the force.”

Wales smiled, he had neat even teeth—and all of them store choppers. “Nothing in the world like being a young cop, the boss of your beat. Or maybe it's just there's nothing like being young. Get old and all you can do is read about things. I read and read. Why my eyes look shot. I don't need glasses, though and... damn, who's going to tell Jane about this?”

“Jane?”

“Ed's wife. They got a daughter working someplace in South America for an oil company. Had a boy who died when he was a kid. This will be rough on Jane.”

I got out my notebook, wrote down Wales' full name, home address, last precinct squad he worked on, the Owens' home address. “How long you been working here, Mr. Wales?”

“About three years. Ed needed the dough but I'm all alone. I work to keep busy. My wife passed away back in '49, right after I retired from the force. When Ed started working here he got me on. Five hours a day, a way of passing time.”

“You two the only messengers?”

“Yeah. I come on at nine and Ed came in at noon.”

“If the bonds you carried were worthless why—”

“They're not worthless but nonnegotiable: there's a big difference.”

“Sure. But if they weren't worth anything except to the owners, why did the firm only hire former policemen?”

“Because they know we're bondable, in good physical condition for our age, and only a fellow with a pension can fool around with a part-time job.”

“You in the office when Mr. Owens was killed?”

“No. I left at eleven-thirty to take some bonds to a customer up on the Grand Concourse. He wasn't in so I came back here—about twenty minutes before the police arrived. You say Ed's pockets were torn. Was his receipt book missing too?”

“All we found was a torn wallet, identification cards, some change, pack of butts, mints and a lighter. Receipt book mean anything?”

Wales shook his head again. “No. It's of no value. Shows some jerky kid must have done the job.”

I wiggled on the chair. “I don't think so. A jerk doesn't follow a messenger all the way uptown. And if it was a jerky lad in an on-the-spot stick-up, he would have taken the change, Owens' gun.”

“Maybe. And maybe when the punk saw the gun he figured Owens for a cop and got scared. Could be a nut. And if Ed wasn't tailed why would anybody rob him? Ed never dressed like money from home.”

“Did he carry much cash?”

“Ed? Lucky to have a buck floating around his pockets. Every extra dime went on the ponies. Not that Ed was a real gambler, but a few bucks here and there every week. On that little pension they give us you don't raise any hell.”

“Did Mr. Owens have any enemies? Perhaps some character he once collared?”

Wales shrugged, a tired motion. “No. At least none I ever heard of. We were just run-of-the-mill detectives, the usual arrests. We had one big collar, got a killer in a gang war. But that was a long time ago and he went up in smoke in the chair. Of course Ed stayed on the force a couple of years after I left. He was a little younger. But he liked to talk, and he would have told me if he thought somebody was after him.”

“We'll have to dig into his arrest record.”

Wales smiled sadly. “Dig, dig, clear every little detail, that's a detective's life. A crime is like an iceberg, one-tenth showing and nine-tenths hidden.”

“Iceberg—neat way of putting it. That's what they drilled into me at the academy: whenever you're stuck start digging into the case all over again.”

Wales nodded as he licked his thin lips. “They're right, only most times you never get the time. New cases always coming...”

Anderson came in. “Got everything, kid?”

I closed my notebook. “Think so.”

“Come on, Lampkin wants us back at the precinct house. Nothing more for us here.”

As I stood up Wales climbed to his feet. “Mind if I ride up with you? I'd like to look around. Me and Ed—I mean, well, wouldn't hurt none.”

“Come along. The captain probably wants to talk to you anyway.”

Wales left the office and met us at the elevator, wearing an old battered plastic rain hat. I brushed against him as we stepped into the elevator; he wasn't carrying a gun. Wales said, “That's okay, I'm clean.” There was a fresh odor of whisky on his words.

Wales sat in the back seat and I got the siren going and shot up Broadway to Chambers Street, then wheeled over to the highway. Anderson said, “You ain't got your leather jacket on and this ain't no motorcycle, so quit making like a speed king, kid.”

“Close your eyes if you can't take it,” I said, doing more cutting through the uptown traffic than necessary.

Anderson turned and asked Wales, “Ever see anything like this before? Makes a good collar while a rookie and he's an acting detective third grade before he can get corns on his feet. Me, I was a harness bull for over seven years.”

“Probably make a good dick, it's the last thing he looks like.”

Anderson laughed, a real jackass chuckle. “Got something there. He looks like he got his badge with a cereal box top. And not looking like a cop is one way of stopping a slug or a handful of knuckles. Me, I'm glad I look like what I am.”

Wales said, “Force is changing, lots of college boys on it now. I like the way this young fellow speaks, calls people mister. He'll be real good once he stops talking so much.”

“What's that mean?” I asked, glancing at him in the windshield mirror.

Wales gave me his tired smile before he said, “You got to learn to ask questions, not hand out information. Doesn't make any difference in this case, but why tell Mr. Stewart and myself Ed's pockets were torn? Sometimes a little thing like that can trap a man.”

“Damn right,” Anderson said, “you have to—”

“You shoot your gums off too,” Wales said dryly. “Right off the bat you told me the bonds were missing and that Ed was packing a gun.”

“That was part of my questioning you. This is just an ordinary stick-up, let's not make a big case out of it.”

“It isn't ordinary, an ex-cop was killed,” I said. The car on my left got panicky at the sound of the siren and stupidly tried to cut to the right. I made the brakes scream, shaking us all up, then raced around the car as Anderson cursed, swallowed his gum, and finally yelled, “Slow down! And that's a goddamn order!”

At the station house Lieutenant Reed sent Hayes and me out to finish interviewing the people in the surrounding apartment houses. They were all large houses, seventy to a hundred apartments. They'd borrowed some dicks from another squad and had over a dozen men working the houses. It was dull routine and we ended up with nothing; not a soul had seen or heard a thing. There were the usual crackpots who “thought I heard several shots around four o'clock.... Oh, he was shot at two...?”

By nine I was punchy and glad when Reed called us in. By the time I finished my paper work and had a bite with Hayes it was after ten. As I left the station house I saw Al Wales sitting in the muster room, his back against the crummy dirty green-colored wall. He sure had a bulge in his pocket now— a pint. His bleary eyes were open, staring at nothing. As I waved at him he mumbled, “Find the bottom of the iceberg yet?” He spoke like a man full of dull pain.

I turned over in bed, kicked the sheet up from my feet. My toes touched Mary's ankle. I stroked it with my big toe and she broke her heavy breathing with something that sounded like a whimper.

Everybody so certain it was a dumb hold-up, and those are the hardest to solve, dead ends where nothing makes sense. Two retired cops. Never know what Owens was like but Wales was okay, never once called me a runt or a kid. I was in bed, so was Danny Hayes and probably Anderson and the rest of the squad. Reed might still be up, waiting to hear what his stoolies knew, maybe had a man going over the nightly round-up of “undesirables.” We were all safe in bed, doing nothing, while one of us was on a slab in the morgue.