Death of a Pusher (4 page)

After glowering at me for a time, the lieutenant said grudgingly, “We can probably locate her easily enough. April French isn’t a very common name.” Then his tone turned irritable. “If that damnfool young intern across the hall would let me talk to his sister, we might get a description of the killer.”

“The sister saw him?” I asked.

“According to her brother, she was over here for coffee when it happened. This is secondhand, because I haven’t seen the woman, but he claims she told him she was sitting with her back to the kitchen door and Benny was just getting ready to pour her a cup of coffee when the killer fired from the doorway. He says she was too hysterical to get any more than that out of her, and he doesn’t know whether she recognized the killer, or even saw him. He gave her a sedative and put her to bed. Says she’s in shock and can’t be questioned until morning.”

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Her name’s Beverly Arden and her brother’s name is Norman Arden. He says she’s twenty-two and is a secretary at Whittiker Aluminum. Norman is just out of med school and is interning at City Hospital. But he’s still a licensed M.D., so I can’t force my way past him without getting up to my ears in grief.”

Carl said, “Think he might be covering for her, Lieutenant? Maybe she knocked him off.”

Wynn gave an impatient shrug. “Anything’s possible. Norman claims there was nothing between Benny and his sister. Says they just had a neighborly cup of coffee together now and then. Claims he dropped over occasionally, too, and Benny sometimes dropped in on them. But they were only casually friendly and didn’t move in the same social group.”

“This Norman guy was in his own apartment when it happened?” I asked.

“Yeah. Says he was in the shower when he heard the shots. He says that by the time he got dried off, dressed, and over here to investigate, the killer was long gone and Beverly was having the screaming meemies. He gave her some kind of shot to knock her out, put her to bed, and then called us.”

Carl said, “If the killer came and went by the front entrance, maybe Graves can describe him, Matt.”

Wynn asked, “Who’s Graves?”

“A narcotics cop we had planted out front,” I said. “We’ve had Benny staked out ever since we released him.”

“Well, get him in here,” the lieutenant snapped.

Ordinarily I have Carl run little errands such as that, since I outrank him, but I can stand only so much of Robert Wynn before I need a breath of fresh air. Before Carl could move, I said, “Yes, sir,” and headed for the door.

The door to Apartment 2-A was now closed, I noticed as I stepped into the hall.

Outside the crowd had thinned somewhat, but a few curiosity seekers still stood on the sidewalk. Howard Graves wasn’t among them, but I spotted someone seated in a car across the street and guessed that it was he.

Crossing the street, I peered into the car and saw that it was.

“Hi, Matt,” he said. “The rumor’s circulating among the bystanders that somebody got shot. Was it our boy?”

“Uh-huh. He’s colder than a carp. Has he been home all evening?”

“No, he had dinner out. At an Automat over on Twenty-sixth. Then he had a couple of drinks in a tavern next to the Automat and came home. He walked in the front door about a quarter of ten.”

“Hmm. He was shot only fifteen minutes later. Anybody follow him home?”

“Just me. He didn’t even talk to anybody while he was out.”

“You see anyone walk in or out of the building after he was in?”

Graves didn’t say anything.

“Well?” I asked.

He said slowly, “You’re not going to like this, Matt.”

“What?”

“Well, Benny made a habit of staying home, once he got back from dinner. I’ve been covering him over a week, and never once has he gone out again once he was home. When I saw the light go on in his front room, I figured he was set for the night.”

“For cripes sake!” I growled. “You picked tonight of all nights to goof off!”

“How’d I know somebody was going to take a pot shot at him?” Graves said defensively. “I just walked around the corner to a little place where you can get coffee. I only figured to be gone a few minutes.”

“How long were you gone?”

“About a half-hour, I guess,” he said reluctantly. “I came hightailing back when I heard the sirens.”

“This is great,” I said. “They want you inside to find out if you saw the killer arrive or leave. You know who’s in charge of this case?”

“Who?”

“Bob Wynn.”

“Ouch,” Graves said. “He’ll have me busted down to a beat.”

“I’ll try to cover for you, you damned fool,” I said. “Come on inside and keep your mouth shut.”

Climbing out of the car, he followed me across the street and into the building. I walked down a hallway off the lobby to a door leading out back, Graves a step behind me. The door was unlocked, I was gratified to discover. Out back there was a concrete parking lot for the benefit of the tenants.

“Did Benny park back here or in front?” I asked.

“He keeps his car back here,” Graves said. “But tonight he used the front door. He walked to the Automat. It’s only a couple of blocks.”

If I had been the killer, I would have parked my car in back and would have come in this way, I reflected. Probably Graves wouldn’t have seen anything even if he hadn’t deserted his post.

We went back inside and upstairs to 2-B.

“Wait here in the hall in case Wynn insists on seeing you,” I said. “We’ll hope he doesn’t.”

Carl and Wynn were in the front room when I walked back into the apartment. Wynn frowned when he saw me alone.

“Where’s the stakeout?” he asked.

“Out in the hall. I thought the place was cluttered up enough by cops. He didn’t see anybody come in or out the front way, but there’s an unlocked back door leading to a parking lot.”

“Nobody came in or out the front way all evening?” Wynn inquired.

“Not since Benny Polacek got home. He had dinner at an Automat over on Twenty-sixth and didn’t get back until fifteen minutes before he was shot. Graves said he didn’t talk to anyone while he was out and nobody followed him home. The killer must have come and gone by the rear door. Want to talk to Graves?”

If I hadn’t brought the stakeout inside with me, Wynn would have sent me back out for him. But since I offered to let him talk to the man, he wasn’t interested.

“Not if he doesn’t have any more than that to say,” the lieutenant growled.

Opening the door to the hall, I said, “I guess you can take off, Howie. Benny doesn’t need a tail any more.”

“Thanks, Matt,” he said in a low voice, and hurried toward the stairs.

Closing the door again, I said, “This leaves us out on a limb so far as Goodie White is concerned, Lieutenant. Of course if you manage to tag him for murder, the D.A. won’t quibble about a narcotics rap. You plan to pull him in for questioning?”

Wynn frowned. “Not until I’ve had a chance to question Beverly Arden. He’ll keep until tomorrow.”

I could understand his reluctance to move against a city councilman. In our case we had been prepared to move in on definite information and catch Goodman White redhanded with evidence he couldn’t refute. It was another matter to go after him on mere suspicion for an offense as serious as murder. In St. Cecilia a cop had better be right when he accused an influential politician of a crime.

“You need us any more, sir?” I asked.

Wynn contemplated for a moment, seemed to come to a decision and said, “Not right now, I guess. But since this thing involves both Homicide and Narcotics, I think we’d better have an interdivisional conference on it tomorrow. I’ll set it up through my chief and have him get in touch with Captain Spangler. Better phone in about one P.M. to learn the time and place of the conference.”

“We aren’t due on duty until five P.M.,” I ventured.

“Neither am I, Sergeant,” he snapped. “But a police officer is on call twenty-four hours a day. You phone your captain at one P.M. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, heavily emphasizing the
sir
and throwing him an exaggeratedly formal salute.

He reddened slightly, but he didn’t say anything. Aside from his tendency to be brass-happy, I didn’t have anything against Robert Wynn, but I could take only so much of his acting as though he were an army colonel and I was a buck private. And from previous experience he knew I was on the verge of telling him to go to hell.

He would have broken any Homicide sergeant for some of the things I’ve said to him in the past, but because I wasn’t under his command, the worst he could do to me was complain about my discourtesy to his own immediate chief, who in turn could do nothing but relay the complaint to Captain Spangler, who almost certainly would take no action. By the rule book, sergeants are supposed to Sir lieutenants, but hardly anyone aside from Wynn took the rule seriously. Up to a point I was willing to take his nonsense just to avoid trouble, but I had reached the point and he knew it.

He merely gave me a curt nod of dismissal.

On the stairs we met a couple of morgue attendants bringing up one of the wicker baskets they use instead of stretchers for morgue cases.

Outside, Carl said, “You were getting ready to pop off at Wynn again, weren’t you?”

I looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Did it show?”

“It always shows. What are you going to do if they ever transfer you to Homicide and you draw Wynn as a partner?”

“Kill myself,” I said without hesitation.

The next day, when I phoned Captain Spangler at one P.M., he said Carl and I could come in at three and that the conference would be in his office.

“You can come in a couple of hours late some other time to make up for it,” he said in such a kindly voice that I immediately felt suspicious.

It wasn’t normal for Spangler to offer time off which hadn’t been requested. For example, when we had checked in at one P.M. the day after bagging Benny Polacek, he hadn’t suggested that we could knock four hours off some later trick.

I said, “You’ve got some nasty detail in store for us, haven’t you, Captain?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Rudowski,” he said in a less kindly voice. “Just be here at three.”

I phoned Carl at home to relay the instructions and tell him what the captain had said about letting us have the extra two hours off some other time. His reaction was the same as mine.

“The skipper isn’t that generous,” he said darkly. “I think we’d better resign from the force.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Lincoln,” I mimicked the captain. “Just be there at three.”

When we checked in at three, we found Spangler alone in his office. Today he was in one of his pleasanter moods. Waving a benign hand at a couple of chairs, he said, “Sit down, boys. Sorry I had to bring you in early. The others will be along in a minute.”

Carl and I looked at each other. The symptoms of impending bad news were becoming clearer all the time. The captain never calls us
boys
unless he has a particularly nasty assignment for us.

Only moments after we had taken seats, Lieutenant Wynn, Hank Carter, and Captain Hugh Ellis of Homicide arrived. This seemed to be everyone who was coming, because Spangler got down to business as soon as they were seated.

“The D.A. is a little upset over last night’s development,” he said. “As you all know, Benny Polacek was supposed to set up his wholesaler this evening, but of course that’s all off now. Dollinger’s first reaction was to have us pull in Councilman White for questioning about the murder, but I suggested we talk to the chief before we went off half-cocked.”

“Did you talk to him?” Captain Ellis asked.

“I talked to both the chief and the commissioner, Hugh. I think the commissioner must have discussed the matter with the mayor, because he had quite definite instructions when he phoned back.”

Hugh Ellis, lean and slightly stooped and near retirement age, looked impressed. “What did he have to say?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute, Hugh.”

Spangler now included all of us. “We’re involved in a rather delicate matter here. We have a city councilman accused by a now-deceased witness of dealing in wholesale narcotics. And he’s also at least tentatively a murder suspect. Of course a suspect’s status makes no difference in a police investigation, but just to avoid possible repercussions, I thought it best—or, rather, Captain Ellis and I thought it best—to clear procedure with the top echelon.”

Status made no difference, hell, I thought. In St. Cecilia a motor cop could get busted to foot patrol for giving a ward heeler a speeding ticket. So long as the evidence against Goodman White had seemed open-and-shut, and the district attorney himself had been directing the investigation, it hadn’t disturbed Spangler to have a couple of his men closing in on the city councilman. But he wasn’t about to start moving against a man with White’s political influence on mere suspicion without advance clearance from above.

“The commissioner has ordered a thorough investigation of both matters,” Spangler went on. “And he wants a definite answer. If Mr. Goodman White is guilty of either or both crimes, he wants it proved. If he isn’t, he wants his innocence definitely established.”

Translated, that meant that the big brass had conferred on Councilman Goodman White and had decided they had to know one way or the other. If he was engaging in activities which might embarrass the administration, they meant to throw him to the wolves. If he wasn’t, they wanted him cleared of all suspicion.

Spangler said, “Since the case involves both my division and Captain Ellis’s, Commissioner Mason wants coordinated effort between us. He’s asked me to supervise the investigation personally and have the Homicide team assigned to the case report directly to me instead of to you, Hugh.”

Captain Ellis shrugged. “Suits me, Maury.”

That figured, I thought. If Goodie White was innocent, the brass didn’t want him riled too much. And there wasn’t a better man on the force to handle delicate situations than Maurice Spangler. He had the knack of never offending anyone who counted, always managing to maneuver between opposing pressures so that in the end every person involved felt he had been on his side, even though they all ended mad at each other.

Spangler cleared his throat. “Now for the strategy of the investigation. The commissioner has suggested that both the Homicide team and the Narcotics team be kept on the case. As a matter of fact, because of the importance of the matter, he’s ordered that the four of you be relieved of all duty except this investigation.”

Wynn asked, “Does that mean Carter and I will be placed on detached duty with you, sir?”

Captain Spangler nodded. “That’s right. And in order to coordinate effort, I feel you should be unified into a single four-man team. You’ll be in charge, of course, Lieutenant Wynn, and Carter, Rudowski, and Lincoln will take orders from you.”

He threw Carl and me bright smiles while we glared back at him speechlessly. The omens of catastrophe had been right, but I had never expected such dire catastrophe.

Robert Wynn glanced at me with the anticipatory smile of a cat regarding a cornered mouse.

“That’s all, I guess,” Spangler said crisply. “Wynn, you may stay a moment for detailed instructions. You stick around to listen in, too, Hugh, if you want, so you’ll know what’s going on.”

Carl, Hank Carter, and I silently filed from the office. When the door closed behind us, Carter’s normally morose face split into the widest grin I ever saw on it.

“Welcome aboard the ‘Bounty,’ boys,” he said. “You’ll love Captain Bligh.”

“Don’t call us boys,” I snapped at him. “It has unpleasant significance.”

Carl Lincoln said solicitously, “You going to do it here, Matt, or wait until you get outside?”

“Do what?” I demanded.

“Kill yourself.”

“Go to hell,” I instructed him. “And that’s an order.”

After a time Captain Ellis and Lieutenant Wynn came out of Spangler’s office. Ellis walked on through the squadroom and out into the hall, presumably to return to Homicide.

Wynn said to me in his crispest army-colonel tone, “Captain Spangler wants to see you, Rudowski. Soon as he’s finished with you, we’ll have our own little conference.”

“Yes, sir,” I said sourly, and re-entered the captain’s office.

When I was seated, Spangler said in an apologetic tone, “I know you don’t get along very well with Bob Wynn, Rudowski, but this was the commissioner’s idea, so I had no choice. It’s only a temporary arrangement, so try not to rub him wrong. O.K.?”

“Did you give him the same advice?” I growled.

The captain waved this aside. “Wynn’s a little G.I., but he’s a pretty good cop.”

“A little, hell,” I said. “He’s a goddamned martinet.”

“Now that’s enough of that,” Spangler said sharply. “I expect you to get along with Wynn.”

“Yes, sir,” I said with a sigh.

“That’s better. There’s one more thing I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve already discussed this with Wynn, but in Homicide they aren’t subject to the same pressures we sometimes are, so they aren’t as used to exercising tact.”

I knew what was coming. What he meant was that Homicide cops seldom had to worry about stepping on influential toes, because the brass made no effort to protect murderers. They made no effort to protect people involved in the narcotics racket, either, but that was only a third of our division’s business. We were also concerned with vice and gambling, and most rackets controlled by local politicians involved one or the other. As a consequence we were walking a tightrope most of the time. In St. Cecilia it was dangerous to arrest, or even investigate, the wrong people for crimes less than dope peddling or murder.

“We have a definite green light to let the chips fall where they may,” Spangler went on. “But there’s no point in uselessly antagonizing a man with Goodman White’s influence.”

This was the sort of thing which had kept Maurice Spangler in office for so many years. Since he was subject to more pressure than any man on the force, by all rights he should have had more enemies than any other division head. But he actually had none with any influence. It was apparent why. Even with a go-ahead from the commissioner himself, he wanted to make sure Goodie White didn’t get mad at him in case the man turned out to be innocent. Spangler always coppered his bets.

I said, “We’ll be tactful, Captain. And I’ll try to keep Wynn in line.”

Spangler looked relieved. “Fine, Rudowski. I knew I could count on you. That’s all.”

Back in the squadroom I found Wynn, Carter, and Lincoln gathered around a corner table. I joined them.

“Our first step is to locate and question Polacek’s girl friend, April French, and this mysterious man named Charlie,” Wynn announced. “If we find the girl, we should be able to get Charlie’s identity from her. There’s no April French listed in either the phone book or the city directory, Rudowski.”

If he expected me to make some comment to this, I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. I merely looked wise.

“Now, here are first assignments,” the lieutenant went on. “Lincoln, get on the phone and start calling theatrical agents to see if anyone knows of April French. If you don’t hit pay dirt that way, you can start making the rounds of theaters and night clubs that use chorus girls. O.K.?”

“Yes, sir,” Carl said. He moved over to another table and started leafing through the yellow section of the phone book.

“Carter, you run over to the coroner’s office and see how far they’ve gotten with the autopsy. Then stop by Fingerprints and the Crime Lab and get whatever they have. Get going.”

“Yes, sir,” Hank Carter said in a relieved voice, glad to get away from his partner.

As Carter hurried from the squadroom, Wynn said to me, “You run over to the Arden apartment and talk to Beverly Arden, Rudowski. Last night I got warrants as material witnesses for both her and her brother, but I didn’t serve them. It was just to keep things under control in case either one tried to get cute. I put two around-the-clock guards on their door armed with the warrants and had a third cover the back. One guard was instructed to accompany Norman to the hospital this morning and stick with him all day. The other was to keep Beverly from leaving for any reason but medical attention. So she should be home.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, standing up.

“I also got a search warrant for both the apartment and persons of Norman and Beverly Arden,” the lieutenant said. “The guard assigned to Beverly has it. I left instructions for Norman to be searched before he was permitted to leave for the hospital this morning, just in case he tried to carry off a gun for disposal. You can search the apartment.”

I had to admit he was thorough. I was beginning to agree with the captain’s opinion that he was a pretty good cop, when he spoiled it.

“It shouldn’t take you more than an hour to search the apartment and get Beverly’s story,” he said. “What you’ll be looking for is the murder weapon, in case I haven’t made that clear. When you’re through, come straight back here. It isn’t necessary to stop for refreshments in some bar en route.”

I stared at him for a moment, then turned my back and marched out of the squadroom.