Death of a Pusher (12 page)

Apparently it was only when she received men at home alone, or when she visited their apartments in the middle of the night, that Beverly dispensed with underclothing. Tonight, probably because her brother was present, she was wearing a brassiere. It was obvious. She was dressed very simply in a long-sleeved tan blouse and a cotton skirt of the same color.

When she opened the door to my ring she said breathlessly, “Matt, why didn’t you mention that you’d captured those payroll robbers?”

“I assumed you knew about it,” I said. “It was in the morning paper.”

“We just got around to reading the paper. We’ve been driving in the country all day.”

By then I was inside, and she had closed the door. Norman Arden came from the direction of the kitchen with a tray containing three martinis.

“The modest hero,” he said. “Now Bev has really flipped.” He handed me a martini and another to his sister.

Beverly wanted me to repeat the whole story, though it had all been in the paper. I explained that there was nothing to add to the news account. This wasn’t wholly because of modesty. The paper had made it sound like a brilliant piece of police work, and I hated to disillusion her by letting it be known that I had merely accidentally blundered into the bandits’ hideout.

She accepted it as modesty, though. She gazed at me starry-eyed over the top of her martini glass.

Beverly proved to be a much better cook than April. We had broiled lamb chops, and the meal was excellent. Afterward Norman and I sipped brandy in the front room while Beverly did the dishes.

“Making any progress on our neighbor’s shooting?” Arden asked.

“Not much,” I said. “It’s still pretty much up in the air.”

“I suppose, with a man such as that, the suspects are practically limitless. Do you think it was an underworld killing?”

I shrugged. “The percentages are that it was. It would help if we could locate someone who saw the killer enter or leave the building. We’ve talked to everyone along the street, but the only person who saw anything at all was the woman who happened to glance out her window when you were waiting for the police.”

“The killer probably used the back door,” Arden said. “There’s a parking lot back there, you know.”

“Yeah,” I said glumly. “I looked at it. Beyond the parking lot is an alley, and beyond that the backs of a row of stores, all closed at that time of night. There aren’t any neighbors to question in that direction.”

“Well, here’s luck in your investigation,” he said, raising his glass. Then he made a wry face and said, “Cancel that. I’m not sure I care about your catching the man. My opinion of our ex-neighbor has dropped since I learned he was a dope peddler. It bothers me a little that I used to actually like the man.”

“Your sister made a similar remark,” I said. “We didn’t like him much either, but you can’t let people take the law into their own hands. We’ll continue to go after the killer as hot and heavy as though he had killed some respectable gray-haired old lady.”

The young doctor nodded. “One of our democratic principles is equal protection for all. I suppose if you started to make exceptions, you would end up with anarchy.”

It was about seven-thirty when Beverly rejoined us. When her brother asked if she would like a little brandy, she said, “It’s too nice a night to sit around here. I thought maybe I could talk Matt into taking me for a ride.”

I could hardly refuse. Politely I asked if Norman would like to come along, and he as politely declined. Three minutes later I was helping Beverly into my car.

As I slid under the wheel, I asked, “Where would you like to go?”

“Why, to your place,” she said in a voice indicating surprise at the question.

So we went to my place.

When I pushed the key into the lock of my apartment door, the door opened without my turning it.

Beverly raised her eyebrows. “Do you often leave your door unlocked?”

“The spring lock doesn’t always catch,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to get it fixed for a couple of years. I guess I’ll have to soon, because it’s getting worse. The door’s unlocked half the time.”

As I closed the door behind us, the phone began to ring. I walked into the bedroom to answer, Beverly following me as far as the bedroom door.

When I said, “Hello,” April French’s voice said, “Hi, honey. Just get home?”

I wasn’t pleased to hear from her, because I don’t like phoning women. Beverly had a habit of phoning at odd hours, and even of showing up unexpectedly. If I was going to have two women phoning, eventually I was going to find myself in the middle of a cat fight.

“Yeah,” I said a trifle shortly.

Apparently she was not only an understanding woman, but a perceptive one, for she instantly got the point from that one short word.

“I don’t make a habit of phoning men,” she said quickly. “I just called because of that story in the paper. I thought you were kidding last night.”

Her tone of near apology made me a little ashamed of my shortness. I said in a friendlier tone, “I never kid. I’m a very serious fellow.”

My change of tone seemed to encourage her. “I’m just getting ready to go to work. Were you planning to pick me up at closing time?”

I glanced at Beverly in the doorway. It seemed unlikely that I would be in the mood for another woman at two A.M.

“I don’t think so, tonight,” I said.

“All right, honey,” she said cheerfully. “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be there. Except tomorrow night, of course. There’s no show on Mondays, so you’ll find me at home.”

“O.K.,” I said. “Maybe I’ll drop by.”

When I hung up, Beverly asked, “The cleaning maid?”

I merely looked at her. With a little smile she moved across to the bathroom, disappeared inside, and pulled the door closed.

By now I was enough used to her to know what to expect. I undressed and lay on the bed.

I had expected correctly. When the bathroom door reopened five minutes later, she wore nothing but the tan blouse, and that hung wide open. She stood looking at me with a curious glitter in her eyes for a few moments, her body erect and her back arched to make her firm breasts jut outward. Then she glided across to the bed and threw herself into my arms.

I took her home at midnight, which was earlier than she had left last time. But then we had gotten an earlier start than last time.

Monday morning it seemed apparent that Lieutenant Wynn had run out of ideas. The area that could be covered in this particular investigation was too limited to keep four officers busy, at least until we were able to get some information out of Harry Grimaldi which might give us something to work on. But Wynn was the type of officer who couldn’t stand to see subordinates sitting around idle, even when there was nothing for them to do. He could have given Lincoln and Carter the day off, inasmuch as they had both worked Sunday and had a day coming. Instead, he dreamed up a useless task for them.

He ordered them to shadow Goodie White.

Since the city council was meeting that morning, this struck me as pretty silly. You could almost bank on it that White would spend the morning in the council room, and probably spend the rest of the day at his bowling alley. But, as an underling, I had learned my lesson about trying to give the lieutenant advice. I kept my mouth shut.

Carter and Lincoln trooped off to waste the day.

While the lieutenant was reporting our progress to Captain Spangler, I went down to the basement to the felony section to see if our prisoner was ripe to talk yet.

Checking my gun and penknife at the desk, I waited for the desk sergeant to buzz open the first door to the cell blocks, then waited again until he buzzed open the second. Through the plexiglass walls of the first row of cells, I could see Grimaldi in the second bank.

“I see the guy I want,” I said to the inside guard as he approached me. “I won’t need you.”

Stopping in front of Harry Grimaldi’s cell, I looked in at him. He gazed back at me sullenly. He was seated on the drop-down bunk, his bony shoulders hunched and his hands working together between his knees. His eyes were red and watery, and his shoulders occasionally twitched.

“How you feeling?” I asked.

“I’m sick,” he said. “I need medical attention. I want a transfer to the prison ward.” He meant the prison ward at the City Hospital.

“Sure,” I said. “We’re going to move you over there, where the doctors can ease the withdrawal pains by giving you a little morphine now and then.”

He looked up hopefully. “Now?”

“As soon as you tell us who your supplier is.”

He tried to look puzzled. “Supplier of what?”

“I guess you’re not ready to talk yet,” I said. “See you again about noon.”

“Wait!” he called as I started to walk away. “You got to transfer me to the prison ward. I’m real sick.”

“You’ll get sicker,” I informed him cheerfully, and continued on my way.

He suddenly went into a fit of sneezing.

I stopped to talk to the inside guard.

“Grimaldi may get noisy after a while,” I said. “As a matter of fact, he may fracture your eardrums screaming. Don’t pay any attention to him, and above all, don’t bring in a doctor. I’ll be back about noon.”

“Sure, Sarge,” he said. “I’ve seen junkies before. I won’t get excited.”

When I got back upstairs, Wynn testily asked where I’d been.

“I looked in at Grimaldi for a minute, sir. He’s not quite ripe yet. By noon he’ll be begging to tell us everything we want to know.”

For once he didn’t object to my expression of an opinion, seeming to realize that in this particular field I was the expert and he the novice.

“I suppose you know more about dealing with addicts than I do,” he said begrudgingly. “You deal with them all the time.”

The lieutenant decided to spend the rest of the morning having me go over the entire case with him to see if we had missed any angles. We both knew he was only killing time until noon, but I was too discreet to mention it, and he was too G.I. to admit it. At a quarter of twelve he decided it was time for lunch. We went down to the basement together at a quarter after.

We could hear Grimaldi the moment we approached the door to the booking room. An eerie, long-drawn-out scream of pain rose to crescendo, then gradually faded off.

The booking sergeant was glad to see us. “You better get what you want out of that guy fast and let us ship him over to City Hospital,” he said in a fervent tone. “He’s been sounding off like that every five minutes for the last half-hour. Much more, and we’ll all be as nuts as he is.”

Checking our weapons, we went inside to see the prisoner. The other prisoners gazed at us silently as we walked along the corridor, their expressions subdued. A screamer does that. You never hear another sound from any other cell while he’s putting on his performance.

The inside guard also looked relieved when we passed him.

“See how fast you can make it, huh, Sarge?” he suggested.

Harry Grimaldi lay flat on his back, his hands gripping the edges of the bunk on either side. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and his chest was heaving. Every muscle in his body seemed to be twitching, and he was drenched with sweat.

“Hello, Harry,” I said.

His eyes popped open. He had difficulty focusing them because they were swimming with water.

“Get me out of here,” he gasped. “You got to get me to the prison ward.”

“Sure,” I said soothingly. “Ready to talk now?”

He went into a fit of sneezing which broke off abruptly as his whole body tensed. His hands gripped the edges of the bunk until the knuckles showed white, and his face contorted with agony.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God!” he moaned.

Because we were watching, he managed by a superhuman effort to hold back the scream. Finally the spasm passed.

“What do you want to know?” he whispered.

“You’ve been pushing horse, haven’t you, Harry?”

“Sure, I’ve been pushing!” he almost yelled. “How the hell else can you feed a habit this big? The sonovabitch got me hooked.”

“Who’s that, Harry?”

“Benny Polacek!” he yelled. “What a smooth talker that guy was. Just for kicks, he said. It can’t hurt you if you keep it under control. But you notice the sonovabitch never touched it himself. I’m glad the bastard’s dead.”

“Who made him that way, Harry?”

“How do I know? I wasn’t there.” He started to sob. “Oh God, oh God, oh God! Please get me out of here.”

“In a minute,” I said. “Where’d you get your supply, Harry? From Benny himself?”

His head moved back and forth jerkily. “He introduced me to his supplier. He got a bonus for that.”

“Who’s the supplier?”

He looked up at me beseechingly. “You want me killed?”

“I guess he’s not ready yet, Lieutenant,” I said to Wynn. “We’ll give him another hour.” I started to walk away.

“Wait!” Grimaldi yelled.

I turned back to look at him. His body was shaking again.

“Will you transfer me to the prison ward right away if I tell you?” he asked in a strained voice.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a promise.”

Taking a deep breath, he whispered, “Carr.”

“Carr?” I repeated in surprise.

“Jack Carr, out at the White Bowl. He’s got a corner on the wholesale end. He deals direct with the syndicate.”

Wynn and I looked at each other. The lieutenant looked puzzled. “He trying to cover for Goodie White?” he asked me.

I gave my head a slow shake. “In his condition, he’s interested in only one thing: getting transferred to the prison ward at City Hospital. He’s telling the truth.”

Wynn stared through the bars at the man, then back at me. He was puzzled enough to ask my opinion. “How do you figure it, Sergeant?”

I was thinking back to the day the district attorney made his deal with Benny Polacek. I said, “Something just fell into place.”

“What?”

“Before Benny Polacek would agree to his deal with Dollinger, he insisted on getting a legal opinion from some reputable lawyer. He picked Martin Bonner, which surprised us all, because he’s about as reputable as they come. I can see now that he just picked a lawyer’s name out of the air.”

Wynn merely gave me an inquiring look.

I said, “Dollinger let him to talk to Bonner from a pay phone. As a matter of fact, the D.A. dialed the number and introduced Benny to Bonner over the phone. Then we all backed off so that Benny could converse with his lawyer privately. In the middle of the conversation they were cut off. Or at least Benny pretended they were cut off. Actually he’d finished his conversation with Bonner. Like gullible little marks, we gave him another dime to call Bonner back. Only he called Jack Carr instead, and got instructions on what to say.”

It took a moment for it to sink in. Then Wynn said slowly, “I’ll be damned. Carr sure must be able to think fast on his feet. I guess Goodie White was telling the truth after all. His loyal assistant tried to frame him.”

I looked back at the prisoner. “Where do you pick the stuff up, Harry? Right at the bowling alley?”

His head gave a jerky nod. “He keeps it somewhere under the showcase where the bowling balls are. Nobody notices. They just think we’re buying some kind of bowling equipment.”

His body tensed again, and suddenly he started to scream.

Turning away from the cell, we walked over to where the guard stood.

“You can call an ambulance now and get him over to City Hospital,” I said.

The guard shuddered a little. “I’ve seen the third degree before,” he said. “But this is rougher than a rubber hose ever was. How do you sleep nights, Sarge?”

The guard was only a patrolman, and it was indicative of the way Harry Grimaldi had affected Wynn that the lieutenant didn’t blast him for speaking like that to a sergeant. Wynn wanted nothing but to get out of there. He walked on without a word, and I followed.

Upstairs we checked out an F car and headed for the White Bowl. En route Wynn said, “I don’t think Captain Spangler’s instructions about letting you do the talking to Goodie White apply any more, Sergeant. The time for tact is over. I’ll handle things when we get there.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

When we parked on the lot at the bowling alley, we spotted Lincoln and Carter seated in another F car a few slots away. We walked over to them.

“He’s inside, Lieutenant,” Carl said. “There’s no point going in there, because he knows both of us by sight.”

“Stand by,” Wynn ordered.

The lieutenant and I walked on to the main entrance and inside. Jack Carr was again behind the lane-reservation desk.

“Back again, gentlemen?” he said with a grin.

Wynn asked coldly, “Where’s Mr. White?”

“In the bar, Lieutenant.”

“Go get him,” Wynn said to me.

Walking over to the entrance to the cocktail lounge, I glanced in and saw Goodman White seated at the bar. When he looked my way, I crooked a finger at him. Coming over, he gave me an inquiring look.

“Lieutenant Wynn wants to see you,” I said.

Shrugging, White accompanied me over to the desk. “Afternoon, Lieutenant,” he said pleasantly.

Wynn merely nodded. Turning to Carr, he said, “We’ve had Harry Grimaldi, alias Harry Gamble, in a cell in the felony section since yesterday morning, Carr. He went thirty hours without a pop before he finally broke. In your business you must have seen lots of guys carrying monkeys. They’ll do anything for a pop. They’ll confess their most intimate secrets.”

A wary expression grew in Jack Carr’s eyes. Goodie White asked, “Who’s Harry Grimaldi?”

“One of your trusted employee’s pushers,” Wynn said frigidly, without taking his eyes from Carr’s face. “Your assistant is the wholesale distributor of heroin in this town, Mr. White. He operates right from behind this desk. He’s been passing the stuff to pushers right under your nose.”

Carr said in a high voice, “You must be nuts, Lieutenant.”

Wynn said, “You were pretty cute. When the district attorney started to squeeze Benny Polacek, Benny figured a way to phone you for instructions without Dollinger knowing who he was talking to. And you threw a real curve. You told him to confess that his supplier was Goodman White and agree to set him up. Then, after Polacek was released from jail, you had him phone White and give him that nonsense about needing five left-handed bowling gloves. Probably White would have told him to dunk his head if you hadn’t advised him that Benny was a good customer and suggested White should do him the favor. The gloves were never ordered, of course. When your boss told you to put in the order, you merely waited a few days, then told him they had come in. He phoned Polacek, and Polacek told him he’d be in for them at seven o’clock in the evening two days later. If he had showed, White would have handed over the package you furnished him, thinking it contained the gloves. After the pictures were taken and the cops closed in, it would have turned out to be horse instead of bowling gloves.”

Goodie White said in a voice as high as Carr’s, “Jack tried to frame me? Why?”

Wynn shrugged. “Probably for a mixture of reasons. Benny had been offered immunity for turning in his supplier. Carr was probably afraid that if he didn’t throw the cops somebody, Benny would turn him in. Then, too, he’s the second most powerful political figure in the ward. With you out of business, I suppose he figured he could step in as councilman. You would fire him from the bowling alley as soon as you realized what he had done to you, of course, but with the money he must have salted away from wholesaling dope, he could probably buy the place.”

White was staring at Carr, who merely stared back at him belligerently.

Wynn said, “You wouldn’t have had a chance of beating the rap, Mr. White. All your story about the left-handed bowling gloves would have gotten you would be a horse laugh. Carr and Benny would of course deny knowing anything about such an order, and there wouldn’t be any record of the order in your files. You could scream frame until you were blue, but you would have taken the rap.”

Jack Carr said tightly, “You’ve got a lot of proving to do, Lieutenant. So far I haven’t heard a thing but guesswork based on some junkie’s delirious babblings.”

I put in my bit. “Maybe a search beneath the display counter will turn up the evidence we need.”

“Got a search warrant?” Carr flared at me.

“I don’t think we need one.” I glanced at White. “This is your place, Goodie. You have any objection to us searching it?”

“I’ll even help you,” the plump councilman said.

Jack Carr attempted to bar our way when we started behind the counter. When Wynn irritably shoved him aside, he swung a haymaker which would have floored the lieutenant if it had connected. Fortunately Wynn jerked his head back so that it only grazed his jaw.

I was past the lieutenant then. Carr tried for me, too, but I caught the blow on my left palm and laid a hook on his chops that didn’t travel more than a foot. It set him on the seat of his pants clear beyond the other end of the counter.

His eyes were still crossed when I jerked him to his feet and snapped on the cuffs behind his back.

Beneath the showcase was a shelved cabinet in which score sheets were kept. We might have missed the hiding place if Harry Grimaldi hadn’t told us where to look. But when we found nothing but blank score sheets, we examined the cabinet carefully, finally measuring the depth of the shelves. They were six inches narrower than the top of the showcase.

It still required some probing before we discovered the sliding panel at the rear of the bottom shelf. The stuff was neatly packaged in small envelopes of about fifty grains of pure heroin each. There were twelve dozen envelopes, with a total retail value, after the stuff had been cut, of over twenty-five thousand dollars.