Death of a Pusher (13 page)

When we uncovered the cache, Goodie White looked at his ex-assistant with an expression of revulsion on his face.

“You louse,” he said. “How many kids do you figure you’ve put on the skids?”

Jack Carr sullenly looked at his feet.

White turned to me. “I don’t understand all of this, Matt. Did he kill Benny Polacek too?”

“We’ll get the answer to that when we get him down to headquarters,” I said.

“If he did, why? Seems to me it loused up his original plan.”

I shrugged. “Maybe Benny backed out and was going to turn him in. Don’t worry, we’ll find out. I’ll let you know.”

When we led Carr outside, we told Lincoln and Carter to follow us back to headquarters.

Contrary to popular conception, more crimes are solved through police interrogation than through scientific methods or brilliant deduction. Once we get hold of a suspect whom we’re reasonably certain is guilty, it’s only a question of time before he breaks down under interrogation and admits everything. We don’t use rubber hoses. In fact, we don’t lay a hand on him. It isn’t necessary if you know the techniques of interrogation.

It was only two-thirty P.M. when we got back to headquarters. The four of us threw questions at Jack Carr until six o’clock without getting him to admit a thing. Wynn sent Carter and Lincoln to eat at six, while the two of us continued to pound at the man. At six-thirty Carter and Lincoln came back, and Wynn and I went to eat.

After that we took him in relays. By eight he was beginning to contradict himself and make a few minor admissions. By nine he had admitted being the local wholesale supplier of heroin. By ten we had the names of twelve pushers he had been supplying. At ten-thirty he gave us the name of the syndicate contact who brought him the stuff from out of town and told us where and when he was supposed to make the next contact with the man to receive a shipment.

But he steadfastly refused to admit that he knew a thing about Benny Polacek’s death. By eleven we began to believe him.

At eleven-thirty we had him sign a statement admitting all his misdeeds except murder. Then we took him down to the felony section, had him thrown in a cell, and quit for the night.

Since we had put in a fifteen-hour day, Lieutenant Wynn generously told us we didn’t have to report for duty until ten the next morning. I got home shortly after midnight.

The spring lock on my apartment door hadn’t caught again, as I discovered when I shoved in the key and the door opened from the pressure. Resolving to call my landlord about it the very next day, I closed the door from inside and pressed hard against it until I heard the bolt click home.

A lamp was burning in the front room, which surprised me, for I certainly hadn’t left it on that morning. Walking into the bedroom, I switched on the overhead light and discovered I had a visitor.

Beverly Arden lay sound asleep on the bed in her favorite bedtime wear: nothing but a long-sleeved blouse. This time it was a black one, unbuttoned and hanging open.

My first reaction was to be irked. It would be a fine situation if I had walked in with another woman. Then, gazing at the rhythmic rise and fall of her bare breasts, I began to forgive her. Despite a fifteen-hour day, I wasn’t particularly tired, for I had gotten in seven hours’ sleep the night before and ten hours the night before that. I decided it was kind of pleasant to find such a nice surprise waiting.

Hanging my suit coat in the closet, I went over to the bed and ran my eyes up and down her softly curved body. She was certainly well built, I thought. It was a shame she always insisted on retaining that one garment. I had the desire just once to see her completely nude.

On impulse I rolled her over on her stomach and, before she was awake enough to know what was going on, jerked the blouse down over her shoulders. Another quick jerk and it came off with the sleeves turned inside out.

Beverly swung around to a seated position, stared up at me in confusion, then realized she was stark naked and an expression of consternation crossed her face. Her arms went across her bosom to hug herself.

But not in time. I had already seen the tiny scars from countless needles on the insides of her forearms.

For a long time I gazed at her, and she stared back at me whitely. Finally I let out a long breath.

“No wonder you’re so impulsive,” I said heavily. “I should have known when you practically threw yourself at me the first time we met. Junkies don’t have any inhibitions.”

Jumping from the bed, she snatched up her blouse and tugged the sleeves right-side out. Slipping it on, she rapidly buttoned it to the throat, grabbed her skirt from the back of a chair, and stepped into it. Momentarily she sat on the bed to slip on high-heeled shoes. Then she jumped up again and headed for the door. All the time she hadn’t looked at me once.

Beating her to the door, I put my back against it.

“Not so fast, Beverly,” I said. “How long have you been on the stuff?”

“Is that any of your business?” she asked frigidly.

“I think so,” I said. “I’m investigating the murder of a pusher who was killed while you were present. It seems kind of significant that you turned out to be a junkie. You were one of Benny’s customers, weren’t you?”

“Suppose I was?” she flared. “I didn’t kill him. You think I’d cut off my own source of supply?”

I studied her consideringly. “That’s another thing. You don’t exhibit any of the symptoms of withdrawal. Where are you getting it since Benny died?”

“I’m not. I kicked the habit.”

I gave my head a slow shake. “Nobody kicks it that easy. Your brother’s been easing you over the hump, hasn’t he? He has access to all the narcotics he needs. Except heroin, of course. That’s illegal even in hospitals. What’s he been substituting to keep you from shaking apart? Morphine?”

For several minutes she stared at me without answering. Then she lowered her face to her hands and began to cry. Leading her over to a chair, I let her sit and cry herself out. Eventually, when she started to sniff, I handed her a handkerchief.

Wiping her eyes, she said in a small voice, “I don’t want to get Norman in trouble. He’s been wonderful. He just gives me enough to quiet my nerves, cutting it down all the time. He’s going to cure me.”

“Sure,” I said. “The mental hospitals are full of voluntary cures.”

It was true. There are cases of voluntary cure of drug addiction, I suppose, but the only former addicts I knew had kicked it by being locked up long enough to dry out completely. And often even they got right back on the dream wagon the minute they were pushed back into society.

“He is curing me,” she said with a touch of spirit. “I’ve already cut down a quarter of a grain a day in this short time.”

A quarter of a grain, and she thought she was making progress.

While she was crying, I had been thinking. And I was beginning to suspect what might have happened that night. Picking up the bedside phone, I dialed headquarters, asked for Communications, and issued some instructions to be relayed to the radio car cruising closest to 427 Clarkson Boulevard.

When I hung up, I said to Beverly, “Come on. I’m going to drive you home.”

“I have my own car,” she said.

“It’ll keep. I’ll have it brought to your apartment later.”

A squad car was parked in front of the building when we arrived. There was a storm drain right in front of the building, and its manhole cover was off. A uniformed policeman stood over the hole, directing a flashlight downward.

As we climbed from the car, the patrolman looked up. “You Sergeant Rudd?” he inquired.

“Uh-huh. Any luck?”

“I think my partner just found it. He’s coming up.”

A man’s head emerged from the hole, and a second policeman climbed out. He was shirtless, barefoot, and his trousers were rolled above his knees. He had a small, nickel-plated revolver in his hand.

While the man who had been down in the storm sewer went over to the squad car to dry his hands and feet on a handkerchief and get back into uniform, I examined the gun. It was a five-shot, hammerless Smith and Wesson thirty-two, probably at least fifty years old.

“This must have been in the family for some time,” I said to Beverly. “No wonder it wasn’t registered.”

“It belonged to my father,” she said dully.

I said, “Give me your car keys.”

Obediently she probed in her purse and brought them out. Handing them to the policeman, I described her car, told him where it was, and asked him to drive it to the lot behind the apartment building and leave the keys in the glove compartment.

Then I took Beverly inside. Norman was in bed. When I flicked on his bedroom light, he sat up and stared at us. Seeing Beverly’s expression, he gradually paled.

I said, “We just found the gun in the storm sewer out front, Doctor. You were almost lucky. If that woman across the street had kept looking out her window a few more seconds, she would have seen you ditch it.”

“You told?” he asked Beverly.

She shook her head miserably. “He guessed. He found out I was an addict.”

Norman Arden got up and started to dress, pulling his clothes on over his pajamas.

“Want to tell me about it?” I asked.

“Why not?” he said in a colorless voice. “I still don’t regret it. I’d kill him again. You would have too, if you had watched your sister on her knees begging for a hypo.”

“You walked in on them?”

“Sure. I knew what was the matter with Bev. I’d been watching her all evening. She had the hall door open, waiting for that creep to come home, jumping out of her skin—I thought she’d shake apart. When he finally stuck his key in his door, she shot across the hall so fast, she was just a blurred streak. At first I only meant to turn the man over to the police. I deliberately waited fifteen minutes, hoping to walk in and catch him in the act of giving her a shot. Then I meant to hold him at gunpoint and call the police. But it didn’t work out that way, because he didn’t have any heroin to give her.”

“Then why’d you shoot him?” I asked.

Momentarily he closed his eyes. “They were in the kitchen and he was making her coffee, trying to quiet her down. She was down on her knees begging for a shot and he was saying he didn’t have any because he was in trouble with the police and had gotten rid of it. Just as I reached the kitchen door, my sister made her last plea. She said if he would give her just one fix, she would not only pay him double, but he could have her.”

He opened his eyes again and said calmly, “So I shot him.”

No one said anything for a time. Finally I said heavily, “Suck to that defense, Doc. If any jury gives you more than manslaughter, I’ll serve part of your time. Ready to go?”

“I’m ready,” he said quietly.

It was nearly two A.M. by the time I had booked Dr. Norman Arden and had checked Beverly into the narcotics ward at City Hospital. When I headed for home, I was in no mood for sleep. I kept thinking of the wreckage that men such as Benny Polacek left in their wake. How many vital young women similar to Beverly Arden had he hooked into abject slavery to a drug? Even in death he had wrought havoc, ruining the career of a young doctor whose only real crime was devotion to his sister.

They ought to give him a medal, I thought. But I knew they wouldn’t. As the young doctor himself had said, you can’t condone the murder of even lice such as Benny Polacek without risking anarchy.

I felt the need of diversion to take my mind from its depressing thoughts. Heading north, I was nearly to the Palace when I remembered that this was April’s night off.

Two A.M. was a devil of a time to go calling on a young lady, but I continued on to her rooming house anyway. The front door was locked, but I knew which room on the second floor was hers, and there was a light on inside. An instant after I tossed a pebble against the screen, the curtains parted, and she peered down at me.

She smiled delightedly when she saw who it was, then forced her expression into stern lines. “You just wait right there,” she called down in a low voice.

Less than a minute later she let herself out the front door. “I’ve been sitting at home all evening because you said you might drop by,” she said. “I ought to be mad at you.”

“I’m here,” I said reasonably. “I just got off work.”

“Oh,” she said. “In that case I won’t be mad.”

I helped her into the car, went around it and slid under the wheel.

“What time do you have to check in tomorrow morning?” she asked.

“I’m supposed to be in at ten, but I have some time coming. I’m going to phone in and take the day off.”

“Umm,” she said. “In that case we can have a long breakfast.”

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Body for Sale

WHEN I ARRIVED BACK IN RAINE CITY, I DIDN’T GO STRAIGHT to the office. I stopped by Tony Vincinti’s Bar and Grill first. When you know you’re going to be fired anyway, what’s the point in being careful not to breathe liquor in the boss’s face?

At two in the afternoon the place was deserted except for fat Tony. He flashed me his white-toothed Sicilian grin and ran a rag over the already spotless section of the bar in front of me.

“You’ve been gone a while,
amico,”
he said.

“Just three weeks,” I said. I pulled my order book from my pocket and started to flip pages. “Seven fifty, five, three fifty and two. I netted four orders for good old Schyler Tools, Tony. Eighteen-hundred-dollars’ worth of business.”

Tony’s grin widened. “That sounds good, Tom.”

“It sounds lousy,” I told him. “The commission is
ten
per cent. It works out to sixty dollars a week.”

The tavern proprietor’s grin disappeared. “Well, you get expenses too, don’t you?” he said philosophically.

“Yeah. Which cuts Schyler’s profit on my last three weeks’ work to nothing. Make me a double Gibson.”

Tony looked worried. “You reported in yet,
amico?”

“What the hell do you care?”

His dark face flushed. “I thought we was
compari.”

His flush made me a little ashamed of myself. “We are,” I said. “No, I haven’t reported in yet. Make me a double Gibson.”

“You come in here once before with that look on your face,” Tony said. “In uniform that time. Remember what happened?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I had six double Gibsons and got knocked off the force for being drunk on duty. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I served them, didn’t I? I always felt bad about that.”

“Rest easy,” I said. “I make my own jams. I’m a slob.”

“You’re my
compare,”
he protested. “You can’t talk that way about a friend of mine.”

I gave him a patient grin. “You going to build me a double Gibson, or do I have to go to some clean bar?”

He pretended he was offended. Slapping ice into a mixing glass, he poured quite a bit of gin before adding a mere dash of vermouth.

“This time it doesn’t matter,” I told him. “Drunk or sober, I get canned the minute I turn in this order book.”

He stirred the mixture. “Why? You been working, ain’t you? You even been on the wagon since you started with Schyler.”

“I’ve been working my head off, Tony. That’s what makes it a boot in the pants. I never blamed anybody for my own mistakes, did I?”

Pouring the drink into a five-ounce stemmed glass, he dropped in a pearl onion and set it before me. I gave him a five-dollar bill. He rang up a dollar twenty and set the change on the bar.

“I never heard you cry about anything,” he said.

I took a sip of the drink. “Up to now I never had anything to cry about. I never held it against the lieutenant who caught me drunk on duty. Hell, he was just doing his job. It wasn’t his fault I let a dame throw me for a loop. And I never blamed anybody but myself for the other two jobs I lost.”

Tony said, “That private-eye job wasn’t so much anyway, was it?”

“That’s beside the point. Know why I got canned?”

He shook his head.

“I got caught trying to shake down a client.”

Tony looked embarrassed.

“Know why I lost my hack-driving job?”

He shook his head again.

“An inspector caught me gimmicking my meter. I told you I was a slob.” I drained my glass and shoved it toward him. “Same way.”

Tony said, “Don’t a lot of them do that? You was just unlucky to get caught.”

“I was an angle-shooter,” I said. “Up to six months ago I’d been an angle-shooter all my life. I woke up when I suddenly realized all it ever got me was trouble. So in six months on the road for Schyler Tools I haven’t even padded my expense account. And I’ve worked night and day. Only I can’t seem to sell tools.” I pointed to my empty glass. “I said the same way.”

A little reluctantly he started to mix another drink. “That ought to count for something, Tom. Why don’t you check in and talk to the boss instead of going off half-cocked?”

I let out a bitter chuckle. “I plan to talk to the boss. I’m primed to tell him good.”

“You will be primed if you keep downing this priming fluid,” Tony muttered. He set the second drink before me and rang up another dollar twenty. “Ain’t it kind of childish to tell off the boss when you get canned?”

“Not this boss,” I said. “You know who the president of Schyler Tools is?”

Tony shook his head.

“George Mathews. He’s president because he married old Lyman Schyler’s daughter just after the old man died. She inherited controlling interest. Without her vote Mathews couldn’t get a job as a stock boy. He spends about three hours a day at the office. The rest of the time he’s golfing, boating and discreetly chasing females. Discreetly, because his wife would kick him out on his can if she ever caught him. That’s the kind of incompetent that’s going to fire me.”

Tony frowned. “That’s not just sour grapes? How’s the place keep going with a guy like that in charge?”

“He’s only nominally in charge. The real brains of the company is the force of assistants Lyman Schyler built up before he died. It goes on functioning just as automatically under a figurehead boss as it did under the old man. This isn’t just sour grapes. My opinion of George Mathews is the same one held throughout the plant.”

“He’s nobody you can reason with then, huh?”

“He wouldn’t know what I was talking about. He’ll just can me and then rush off to play golf. At least I’m going to have the pleasure of telling him he doesn’t know his head from a cobblestone.”

I finished my second drink and Tony mixed a third without my ordering it. “On me this time,” he said.

I had one more after that. I was pretty well primed by the time I reached the office. Not drunk, just courageous enough to spit in a tiger’s eye.

The little blond who served as George Mathews’ receptionist gave me a nice smile and trilled, “Good afternoon, Mr. Cavanaugh.”

The smile turned to a look of alarm when, without even answering, I pushed through the swinging gate and headed for Mathews’ private office.

“You can’t go in there!” she squealed, rushing after me. “Mr. Mathews is in conference.”

I stepped inside and shut the door just before she got to it. She must have been afraid to violate her boss’s privacy further because she didn’t try to follow me. A quick glance about the office showed me that no one was there. This made me feel a little foolish until I remembered the small siesta room connecting to the office. The door to it was closed.

Quietly I crossed over to it. It was unlocked too. I pushed the door open and went in.

This room was a mere cubbyhole, no more than ten by seven feet square. There was a bar across one end with four stools before it and the door to Mathews’ private washroom alongside. The only other furnishings were two leather-upholstered chairs and a leather-covered sofa, plus a couple of ash stands.

A couple of people, stark naked, were horizontal on the sofa.

My unannounced entrance brought on a flurry of activity. With a flash of white legs a shapely brunette bounced up from the sofa, swept a dress and a couple of pieces of lingerie from one of the chairs and darted into the washroom so rapidly I didn’t even glimpse her face.

But I didn’t have to. I recognized the small pink birthmark on the left cheek of her round little bottom. George Mathews wasn’t the only man at Schyler Tools who was intimately acquainted with file clerk Gertie Drake. But he probably did have the distinction of being the first to get intimately acquainted on company time.

Mathews’ look of consternation changed to a threatening frown when he saw who had interrupted his conference. But he delayed saying anything until he had grabbed his own clothing from the other chair and jerked it on as fast as he could. He didn’t sacrifice thoroughness to speed, though. He knotted his tie in the mirror behind the bar and even carefully adjusted his tie clip.

Then he asked in a cold voice, “What do you mean bursting in here unannounced?”

I had intended blistering his ears with my personal opinion of him, but the situation changed my mind. Giving him a chummy smile, I took one of the chairs and lit a cigarette. Mathews glared at me.

“I don’t seem to be much good on the road,” I said. “I think I’d like district sales manager better.”

Striding toward me, he looked down at me with clenched fists. I wasn’t very impressed. At thirty-two George Mathews was lean and hard and well muscled, but at thirty I was leaner and harder and better muscled. And I outweighed his one seventy-five by twenty pounds.

“Of all the unmitigated—” Mathews started to say.

“Would you rather have me discuss the promotion with Mrs. Mathews?” I interrupted.

He opened his mouth and closed it again. After staring at me wordlessly for a few moments, he managed in a slightly high voice, “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

I gave him a pleasant nod.

He stared a while more, unclenched his fists and rubbed the back of his neck. His gaze strayed to the closed washroom door.

“I’ll make as good a district sales manager as you do a company president,” I said reasonably.

Looking back at me, he sniffed. “You’ve been drinking.”

“A little,” I admitted. “We all have our minor indulgences.”

“You’re drunk.”

“You’re an adulterer,” I countered amiably.

His fists clenched again, then unclenched. Instead of staying angry, he decided to make me a fellow conspirator.

Summoning a rueful smile, he said, “What the hell, Tom. We don’t have to insult each other. You’d get a little sore if I barged in on you at a time like this. And don’t tell me you’ve never had a time like this.”

“I won’t. But I’m single.”

He dismissed this hair-splitting with an airy wave. “According to Kinsey, fifty per cent of all married men cheat a little.”

“How many of them have wives who could pitch them out in the street without a nickel?”

He flushed. “You want to be nasty about this?”

“No,” I said. “I just want to be district sales manager.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said testily. “There’s no opening.”

“Ed Harmony retires in two weeks.”

“You know very well Harry Graves is scheduled for that spot. Moving you over his head would create an office scandal.”

I knew I was in by the way he was arguing instead of just telling me to go to hell.

“Then create one,” I said. “I don’t feel like going on the road any more, so I’ll take a two-week leave until the job opens. With pay, of course.”

For a long time he examined me coldly, the false camaraderie gone from his eyes. Then he said in a curt tone, “All right, Cavanaugh. I’ll arrange it. Now get the hell out of my office.”

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