Gat Heat (23 page)

“What was it he said?”

“Vanda, wiggling his mouth and waving, softly said as he passed Dilly, ‘Zex! It's Scott in the lobby ridin' the Earie!' And she said, ‘Hell and damnation. O.K., Sweet, you tip the boy and I'll boost his heat.' The geezer thought it was some kind of poem, not Vanda telling her to look out, and that I was the guy paging—”

I stopped, because Rawlins was laughing, getting a big kick out of the story. “I wish she had,” he said.

I ignored him. He knew “boost” is a pickpocket's term for stealing, or pocket-picking. “Anyhow,” I continued to Sam, “it's clear that while I was with her, he was rounding up the goons who chased me for, it seems, approximately fifty miles.”

“It's not good enough.”

“What the hell do you want? A picture—” I smiled.

Sam wasn't smiling, though. “Look,” he said, “you know what we're up against. I don't doubt you're right, Shell, but it isn't enough just to bring these punks in, or book them. We've got to have enough for indictment, arraignment, trial—and conviction. Otherwise it's a waste of time. For us
and
the D.A.'s office. Worse than that, if they go to trial and beat it, they're cleaner than before. We can't try 'em again. That happens a couple times and the punks start thinking we can't touch them, and they get worse. Cockier, bolder, big-headed, more reckless, more dangerous. Why not? They beat the last rap, didn't they? And the one before?”

He cut it off, grinding his teeth together, big jaw wiggling. “Shell, what I mean is, you can jump to conclusions. We can't. You can do things we can't do. You can have a hunch—I know you and your fool hunches—but we've got to have facts. Concrete evidence. The whole package.” He paused. “If I knew that album you talk so much about was at Violet's, or any other solid, certain evidence of crime, we'd get a warrant and go look. But it can't just be a hunch, or reasonably logical deduction. I've got to be damn near certain there's conclusive evidence of felony—or we blow the whole case.”

He was just a bit heated, and I knew frustration gnawed at him from time to time, so I smiled and gave it the light touch. “Hell, I was being pessimistic when I asked for a hundred cops, Sam. I'll go out there by myself, and once I've found the clues and evidence and fun pictures and dead bodies and guns and grenades and such, I'll write you a formal letter requesting—”

Sam didn't let me finish. But he did lift his upper lip in a small smile. Lifted it about a sixteenth of an inch. “We get a little information ourselves here and there. Like we know right now Violet and eight, maybe nine of his men are at that house of his on his little lake. Don't know yet if it's normal procedure, or the start of a new Apalachin.”

“He's always got three or four of the lobs there with him.”

“More than that this time. It's barely possibly that, while blundering around in your usual comatose fashion, and shooting people here and there, and there, and there, you may have stirred up the animals.”

I let the comment pass because something else had come into my mind when Sam spoke of shooting people. “Say, can you fix me up with a gun?”

“What's wrong with that .38 you're in love with?”

“Well, uh, when this Dilly was … saying hello to me, just before she said goodbye—I kind of mentioned the way she took off there in the woods, didn't I? Yeah, I remember mentioning it. Well, she kind of took my gun with her. That's the real reason I didn't shoot all those hoods to death—”

Rawlins howled. “Took your
gun
? That petted and pampered Colts?—Shell, you mean she
did
boost your heat? She lifted it right off you? How in hell—”

“Bill, cool it, hey? You haven't met this lady genius. Take it from me, pal, I'm extremely fortunate that she didn't steal my shorts—”

“Stole his gun!” He smacked a fist into his palm looking at Samson. “That's the best news I've heard since they got Dillinger outside the—”

“Bill, if you value our friendship, our long, rewarding—”

Samson cut it off. He stood up and said, “Come on. When's this precious movie of yours supposed to be here?”

“Any time now. I left word to bring it straight to the squad room, soon as possible.”

“O.K. Come on up to SID with me. I'll show you a gun. Not for you to use, however—we're testing it.”

“When we stepped out of Sam's office the squad room was even more crowded than before. I spotted another man from Burglary, one from Administration, a couple from Auto-Theft. Must be a slow night, I thought. Rawlins stayed behind while Samson and I went up to the fourth floor. I didn't think anything about it. Probably that should be: Like a
fool,
I didn't think anything about it.

In the Crime Lab Sam spoke to a technician who walked to a case against the wall, unlocked a door, and took out a fairly large box and brought it over to us. Sam opened it, exposing several boxes of cartridges—new boxes to me—and the damnedest looking pistol I'd ever seen.

It had a row of holes in each side of the barrel, an oddly-shaped grip. It appeared to have everything a pistol should have, including sights and trigger, but I couldn't see any hammer.

“What is it?” I asked. “A water pistol?”

Sam grinned. “Well, it
can
be fired under water, but it packs more wallop than the little .38 you have—used to have, I mean. More than a Magnum, for that matter. Great semiautomatic action, too.”

“Where's the hammer?”

“Up here.” He pointed. “In front of the magazine. Hammer hits the front of the cartridge—little rocket's what it is—and bangs it back against the firing pin. That sets her off, and she whooshes down the barrel, cocking the hammer again on the way.”

“Rocket? Yeah—a rocket pistol. I remember reading about these things. Something in
True
magazine a while back, wasn't there? Called a—a Gyrojet?”

“This is a special model we're trying out. Who knows? They might become official equipment.” He was handling the thing like a kid with a new toy. He spent a couple more minutes explaining how the gun—or little rocket launcher—worked, and showed me some of the cartridges, all of which had four little holes in the base. The escaping gas shot out those little holes, Sam said, and pushed the whole shebang along.

There were three or four different kinds of rounds for the gun. Some were copperplated and a little bigger than a .45 caliber slug, and another box had metal-piercing slugs in it. The prettiest, with a colored tip, were about halfway between a tracer and a midget napalm bomb, the way I got it. At least they were incendiary and hotter than hell wherever they hit, so Sam said.

I asked him to let me fire the thing, but he shook his head and handed the box back to the lab man, commenting that he felt I had done enough shooting for one day.

Then we went back down to the third floor and into the Homicide squad room.

And my hour of trial, of nausea, of sheer, unadulterated misery, began.

19

The film still had not arrived, but I called the lab and learned it was on its way over. Learned also, to my decided satisfaction, that the film was beautifully exposed considering the failing light when I'd shot the roll. That had been the one thing I was a bit worried about.

And I will confess to a feeling of real relief at that point, for had the pictures been of the inside of a lens cap it would have been quite anticlimactic, since the squad room was now crammed with what could have passed for a small town's entire police force with possibly half of the fire department included. A projector was set up at one end of the room, silvered screen at the other, and apparently the word had spread that something conceivably of unusual interest was going on in Homicide.

In fact, one of the men asked me, with obvious interest, what we were about to see, so while waiting for the film to arrive I let myself be persuaded to speak a few words of explanation, and self-praise.

There was the usual raillery and vulgar comment—crude “man” talk, but rather stimulating nonetheless. Jolly good fellowship and all that, even though some of the raucous comments were quite blunt and, at least, uncouth. But that has to be expected on occasion from men who live on the seamy side of the day, and as some wise man said, to know all is to forgive all. Besides, I did think I gave back as good as I got. At first.

After a brief explanation of the setting in which the film had been made—that I had been pounced upon by four huge, armed, murderous hoodlums while alone and far from aid of any kind, with nothing but my wits as weapons; I went on, “Truly, men, this film must surely be one of the investigative triumphs—”

Somebody—I didn't spot him immediately—said, “Nothing but your wits, Scott? You mean you were unarmed?”

“—of the century. A film, a real …”

I paused, looking about. “Unarmed?” I said. “Well, um, ah …” I'd skipped over that part about losing my gun quite neatly, I thought. But …

I spotted Rawlins, laughing behind his hand. Lots of other guys were laughing behind their hands. Some weren't even using their hands.

“Why, you
sadist,
” I said to Rawlins.

There was a little more amusement, and some comments which do not bear repeating.

I went on, “Yes, unarmed. Only my wits—”

I paused, scowling. Probably I should have got that tasteless crack a bit sooner. But, hell, I'd had a pretty wearing day. Even been shot in the head. These jolly good fellows should make allowances. They, of course, would not.

“So, thinking like lightning,” I said, and went on to explain what the men would see. “This unique document, then,” I said, “at the birth of which you are privileged to be midwives, is a film, a real moving-picture film of four hoods
smack in the act of attempted murder
!”

It didn't go over with the impact I'd hoped it would have. But at least some of the men were nodding as though in approval.

I continued, “It required a bit of daring, of course, but also luck. I was simply lucky enough that it was
I
, instead of, say, J. Edgar Hoover, who managed to bring this coup off.”

I went on for a bit, telling them how dangerous the men were, especially huge Fleck and English 'Arry, and perhaps I got a bit carried away.

At any rate, one of the officers, a lieutenant from Burglary, said, “Scott, if you really do have those guys on film—especially the ones you named—I got to hand it to you. But letting them shoot at you is one of the dumbest things I ever heard of.”

“Dumb?” I said. “Where is the line between magnificent courage and stupidity? Can you tell me that?”

“No—and now we know you can't, either.” He grinned.

“Well … It's not as though I
invited
them to shoot at me. They were bound and determined to shoot at me. In fact, that's all they were there for.” I paused. “I merely took
advantage
of the opportunity.”

Fortunately the delivery boy came in then, bearing the film in a tin case.

I threaded it through the projector with some satisfaction, thinking this would silence the Burglary lieutenant, and the rest of these guys, for that matter. As the Chinese say, one picture worth ten thou, and so on. I mentally savored my approaching moment of triumph. Such moments don't come along very often. Then with everything ready I moved my wooden chair near the table on which the projector sat, put a finger on the starting switch.

I had already dwelt at some length on the four men, stressing that two of them, at least, were truly big sonsoguns, veritable behemoths, and that Fleck alone was the size of two, three big guys. Bigger than English 'Arry, who himself was huge and all over muscle. After explaining that because I'd started escaping away from the camera and would not be seen until completing one lap of the track, I finished setting the stage.

“So the first person you'll see will be Fleck, or Gargantua, whom I'm sure you all know by reputation, if not sight.”

I nodded to Rawlins, who was standing by the light switch, and he flicked the lights out. Then he picked his way through policemen sitting on folding chairs, which had been brought in, and others sitting on the floor, and plopped down in a vacant chair next to me.

“This better be good,” he said. “Kind of crowded here—maybe we should have run it downstairs in the auditorium.”

“Perhaps we will next time, Bill,” I said airily. “Probably SID and the Intelligence Division will—”

There was a sudden, explosive roar. It sounded like—laughter? Yes, I was looking at Bill Rawlins and he was bellowing at the top of his lungs.

I turned my head toward my movie. “What's so fu …”

On the screen was a little boy. No mistaking it.

He was about four years old, running over a white sand beach toward the camera, fat little legs going like windmills. In his right hand he held one of those little celluloid propeller things on the end of a stick. It was spinning around and around in the wind as he ran, and when he neared the camera the little boy smiled slobberishly and pointed the stick at it.

Some clown in the room yelled, “Bang! Bang!”

There was already so much stupid noise I shouldn't have been able to hear the guy. But I heard him—and, of course, so did the others in here.

Rawlins actually slid off his chair. He was down on the floor on his fanny, beating both palms on the floor and making ridiculous snorting noises.

I reached numbly for the switch and shut off the projector. “Well—” I said in the darkness, using a word I rarely use unless under titanic stress. “Well—” I said again. I waited to speak further until there was relative quiet—for quite some time afterwards any quiet was only relative.

“Friends,” I said icily. “Idiot friends. I merely forgot that I had exposed a few feet of the film in my camera on
another
day, before taking the rest of this movie which—if you can contain yourselves long enough to watch it—will impress you, I have little doubt, as a high point in the entire field of criminalistics. And perhaps even in the history of
Hollywood,
the film capital of the
land
.”