William P. McGivern

Shield for Murder

With Gratitude To

Howard Browne

Whose editing makes writers

happy and. whose novels make

them envious

1

The man Nolan planned to kill came out of an all-night taproom about one o’clock in the morning. He stood for a moment, taking a few last drags from his cigarette, and glancing idly across the wet, gleaming street. His name was Dave Fiest, and he was a gambler; not the biggest in Philadelphia, but far from the smallest.

Nolan watched him from the shadow of a building entrance about twenty yards away. His hands were deep in the pockets of his suit coat and there was a dead cigar in his mouth.

Dave Fiest flipped his cigarette away and strolled south on Broad Street, the collar of his camel’s hair sport coat turned up against the fine misting rain that was falling.

Nolan spat the cigar from his mouth and moved out from the shadow of the building, traveling fast for a man his size, and came up behind Fiest at the corner of Crab Street.

“Hold it a second, Dave,” he said.

Dave Fiest turned and regarded Nolan with surprise. “What’s up, Barny?”

“I’m taking you in, friend.”

“Taking me in?” Dave Fiest turned his palms up and smiled. “What’s the gag? I’m an honest citizen, Barny.”

“Yeah, sure,” Nolan said, and reached inside Dave’s coat and fished into an inner breast pocket. He brought out a roll of papers and looked at them with an expression of satisfaction. They were horse bets and numbers slips. “Honest citizen, eh?” he said, staring at Dave.

Dave Fiest shrugged slightly. He was a small man, with narrow shoulders and a pleasant alert face. His hair was graying at the temples.

“I’m all right with the vice squad boys,” he said.

“That’s their business,” Nolan said. “Let’s go.”

“Barny, wait just a second. I don’t get this.” Dave Fiest smiled good-naturedly. “Supposing you let me buy you a drink, eh?”

“Let’s go.”

“Barny, what’re we going to prove? You slate me as a gambler, and I make a call to Delaney and he has me out on a copy in an hour. We’re just making work for everybody on a rainy night.”

Nolan took Dave Fiest’s arm and walked him down Crab Street. They passed an all-night diner, a closed cigar store, a gas station, and then crossed an intersecting street and kept walking.

“Say, Barny, is there heat coming?” Dave Fiest asked, a new interest in his voice. “I read they shifted some House Sergeants around in South Philly. Is that the angle?”

“The lieutenant doesn’t want gamblers hanging around Center City,” Nolan said.

Dave Fiest laughed shortly. “Ramussen should be leading a cub scout pack. Does he expect to clean things up by locking up a few gamblers?”

“I don’t know what he expects,” Nolan said.

Dave Fiest stopped at the intersection of Ellens Lane and Crab Street and put a hand on Nolan’s arm.

“Now listen to me just a minute, keed. I know you haven’t worked downtown long, but you must have heard by now that I’m okay. And here’s the pitch: I don’t want to hang at the Sixty-fifth even for the hour or so it’ll take Delaney to get a copy. The point is, I’ve got to meet Mike Espizito in about fifteen minutes, and you know how he feels about people being late. Especially when they owe him money.” Dave Fiest smiled as he said this, and watched Nolan’s big square face hopefully.

“No deal,” Nolan said.

Dave Fiest shrugged. “So what’re you going to charge me with?”

“Common gambler, maintaining an illegal lottery, pool selling, loitering.”

“No arson and rape?” Dave Fiest said.

Nolan didn’t answer. He glanced back toward Broad Street, scanning both sides of the dark quiet block, and then looked in the other direction.

“Come on,” he said, and turned Dave Fiest into Ellens Lane.

“Hey, what’s up? The Sixty-fifth’s the other way.”

“Walk ahead of me.”

“Are you nuts?” Dave Fiest stared at Nolan, suddenly suspicious. “What’s the deal, chum? I offered you a note, didn’t I?”

“Turn around,” Nolan said. And Dave Fiest obeyed slowly.

“Now walk,” Nolan said, and glanced up and down the street once more. A bright patch of red light from the diner lay on the wet sidewalk; and two blocks away, on Broad Street, a couple were shouting for a cab. Nolan could hear their voices clearly in the still night.

Dave Fiest had walked ten feet into the lane. He glanced over his shoulder and said, “You aren’t God, chum. I got rights, remember.”

“Keep walking.”

When Dave Fiest had gone another ten feet, Nolan pulled out his gun and followed him into the dark lane. The gambler heard his footsteps and turned around suddenly. He saw a splinter of fight break off Nolan’s gun.

“Hey!” he said, the word nothing more than a soft gasp. “What’s this, Nolan? Listen, you don’t need to make a stick-up out of it. I got dough with me, Barny.”

“Turn around.”

“Nolan, please—”

“Turn around.”

Dave Fiest turned his back to Nolan, and his body moved stiffly, jerkily.

Nolan yelled: “Halt! Stop, you bastard!”

And then fired twice, once in the air, and once into Dave Fiest’s slender, neatly tailored back.

The shots went banging down the lane and into the quiet night, and Dave Fiest’s last sob was lost in their shattering echoes.

Nolan ran swiftly forward and bent over the sprawled figure. His hands moved swiftly, surely, through Dave Fiest’s pocket, and found the thick wad of money. He stripped three bills from the roll and pushed them back into Dave’s pocket, and then straightened and walked toward Crab Street. But a powerful impulse caught him suddenly, and he wheeled and ran back to Dave Fiest’s body and kicked it twice, savagely, furiously.

Then, confused by his action, he ran out of the lane and crossed the street to a police call box. He pulled out the phone that was connected to the house sergeant’s room at the Sixty-fifth, and when Sergeant Brennan answered, he said, casually: “Nolan, Sarge. I just shot a guy here at Crab Street and Ellens Lane. Send over a wagon, will you?”

“Is he dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

Nolan put the phone back in place and closed the door of the call box. Several people were in the street now, and two young men were running along the sidewalk.

Nolan walked back across the street and stopped at the entrance to Ellens Lane. When the two young men came panting to a stop before him, he said, “Okay, boys, everything’s taken care of. Just drift on about your business.”

“We heard some shooting,” one of them said. “Two shots.”

Nolan took out his wallet and flipped it open. The fight from a street lamp danced on his shield.

“No kidding?” he said, and stared at them until they turned and walked hesitantly back toward Broad Street.

They stopped after about twenty yards and stood together, talking in low voices and watching Nolan’s big bulky figure.

2

Three well-worn stone steps led from the street to the Sixty-fifth police station. Above them hung a single white electric globe.

The district occupied a three-story brick building that seemed sturdy, and a trifle smug, in a block of luncheonettes, shoe-shops, curio dealers, and unpainted frame homes.

The Thirteenth Detective Division had its headquarters on the second floor of the building, in three high-ceilinged rooms that were separated by wooden partitions.

A card game was going on in one of these rooms the night Nolan killed Dave Fiest.

Detective-Sergeant John Odell and three of his shift were playing poker, while a reporter, Mark Brewster, lounged in the doorway, smoking and watching the game without any particular interest. Sergeant Odell slapped cards down on the desk with a steady voluble comment on the caprices of fortune. He was thickly built with rimless glasses, thinning brown hair, and a complexion the shade of top round steak.

“Ten a possible straight, nine, possible nothing, K-boy, nothing yet, and I get a miserable damn deuce. K-boy bets.”

The king was owned by George Lindfors, a thin man of about forty with gray skin and tired eyes. He seemed irritable.

“A nickel. And I wish to hell you’d stop announcing cards like you was dealing in a home for the blind. We can see.”

“The dealer’s got to call the cards,” Odell said cheerfully. “If I didn’t, you’d be crying about that.”

Mark Brewster yawned and glanced at his watch. One-fifteen. The beat had been quiet since eight. He dropped his cigarette on the floor and put it out with the toe of his shoe.

From the center room of the Division the police radio blared monotonously. Mark listened to it automatically, unconsciously.

“Car 393... report. Car 75... Disturbance highway, Lancaster Avenue at Forty-third. Car 64... Hospital case, Olney at Sedgemore. Car 71... Hold-up, Sixth and Edgeton. Car 72, car 73, car 74, Hold-up. Car 548, Smithton and Banks, Local fire...”

“Where was that hold-up?” Odell said, frowning at his hand.

“Sixth and Edgeton,” Mark said. “It’s not ours.”

“That’s in the Northeast,” Lindfors said. “There’s a bakery on that corner.”

“Yeah, Peterson’s bakery,” a detective named Smith said. He was young, stockily built, with curly black hair and an aggressive confident manner. “We used to go by there on the way home from school.”

“Well, let’s play cards,” Odell said. “It’s up to you, Smitty. What’d you say?”

“Nickel.”

Mark Brewster yawned again and walked into the middle room where there were several desks, filing cabinets, a bulletin board with a number of flyers tacked onto it, and a small-scale map of the city. The floor was littered with cigarette stubs, and dusty. Green shades were pulled down over the two windows that faced Gray Street. Two detectives were dozing in chairs, and another reporter sat at the sergeant’s desk, glancing through a late paper. His name was Richardson Cabot, a man of about sixty, who dressed neatly and used a cigarette holder.

“Everything seems pretty quiet,” Mark said.

“Thank God,” Cabot said. “Let’s hope it stays this way. I remember though it was a night just like this when Slick Willie Sutton broke out of Holmesburg.”

“How about coffee?” Mark said. He knew from Cabot’s tone that he was about to retell the story of Sutton’s break from start to finish, with considerable emphasis placed on the part one Richardson Cabot had played in reporting that news to the people of Philadelphia.

“Oh, very well,” Cabot said with only a trace of disappointment in his voice. “I’d better check the morgue and a few districts first.”

“Okay,” Mark said. He sat on the edge of a desk and lit another cigarette. He was thirty, with pale narrow features, dark brown hair and alert eyes. His air of casual good humor had made him dozens of friends through the police department, and he was regarded as an efficient and trustworthy reporter, one who wouldn’t betray confidential information or jeopardize a case by breaking a story too soon.

He walked back to the card game while Cabot was making his calls. Odell was raking in a mound of silver. “Get this,” he said to Mark. “I’ve got sixes showing, mind you, showing, and Lindy bets into me with only a queen.”

“I didn’t see the sixes,” Lindfors said. “Let’s play cards.”

Mark blew smoke at the ceiling.

“...Car 45 report... Car 197, meet complainant, Ridge and Somerset.” A fire box came in with ten loud rings. Then the announcer. “Box 654 Allegheny and Broad. Car 22... Box 654. Car 610... Assist officer... Car 611, report to Ellens Lane and Crab Street. Assist officer. Car 84... Men loitering at Bainbridge and Gray Streets.”

Sergeant Odell held up his hand. “That assist officer. It was ours, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Mark said. “610 is the wagon, 611 is the street, Sergeant.”

“Probably a cop with a drunk he can’t handle,” Lindfors said.

“They wouldn’t send the street sergeant on that,” Odell said. “Mark, call downstairs and see what it was, will you?”

Mark walked into the next room and picked up the police phone on Odell’s desk. He asked the operator to connect him with the house sergeant at Sixty-five.

“This is Mark Brewster,” he said, when Sergeant Brennan answered. “Did you send out the call for 610 and 611?”

“Right, Mark. Nolan’s got a dead one at Crab Street and Ellens Lane. Somebody he shot.”

“Thanks.”

Mark walked back to the card game and said, “Brennan says Nolan shot some fellow at Crab Street and Ellens Lane.”

“Yeah?” Odell tossed his cards down. “A dead one?”

Mark nodded and Odell said, “Lindy, you and Smitty go over and see if Nolan needs any help.”

“Look, don’t touch these cards,” Lindfors said, getting to his feet. “I just hooked the case ace.”

Sergeant Odell laughed at his sulky expression.

“You want to ride along?” Smitty said to Mark.

“Sure.”

“Okay, wait till I get my coat.”

Mark lit another cigarette and said casually to Odell: “What sort of guy is Nolan?” He knew Nolan’s reputation of course, and had come across him a few times on routine police assignments; but he wanted a slant on him from another cop.

Odell glanced up at him, his big face impassive. “Why?”

Mark shrugged and flipped his match away. “I was just curious. He hasn’t been here long, and I haven’t got to know him.”

“He’s okay, Mark,” Odell said. “Kind of grouchy at times, and not very sociable, but he’s all right. He’s been working out in Germantown for the last six years or so, and before that he was with Foot Traffic. He must damn near have his time in.” Odell glanced at the last man at the table, a dumpy, balding detective in his early sixties. “How about it, Joe? Hasn’t Nolan just about got his twenty years in?”

“Now, lemme see,” Joe Gianfaldo said. He ran a hand over the rough granular skin of his forehead, and twisted his lips so that the two gold teeth in the front of his mouth gleamed in the overhead light. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “He’s about four years short.” Gianfaldo had been a detective for twenty-eight years and his one pride was a memory that was little short of miraculous. He knew every street in the city, and could name the stores or houses at most intersections, and he never forgot a name, a face or a date.

“He was appointed in ’thirty five,” Gianfaldo said, nodding. “That gives him sixteen years in the business. He’s a mean bastard.”

“In what way?” Mark said.

“He’s too damn quick to use his gun,” Gianfaldo said, turning to Mark. “He shot up two colored kids in Germantown a few years back, and then when he was in Foot Traffic he killed a sixteen-year-old boy breaking into a market out near City Line.”

Sergeant Odell leaned forward and put his big elbows on the table. “Joe, you’re getting all twisted up,” he said. “You’re forgetting things in your old age.”

Gianfaldo returned Odell’s gaze uncomfortably. “Well, I could be wrong, of course,” he said.

Mark knew better than to ask any more questions. Odell was boiling mad now because Gianfaldo had violated the first rule of the Bureau’s strict but unstated censoring code. That first rule, Mark reflected, if written down might read: bad cops are nobody’s business but the police department’s.

Lindfors and Smitty came out of the locker room and called for Mark. He joined them and saw that Cabot was also ready to go. As they went out Mark heard Odell’s voice go up a notch as he started on Gianfaldo. Smitty glanced at him as they went down the stairs.

“What’s eating Odell?”

Mark shrugged. “Beats me.”

There was a crowd at the intersection of Crab Street and Ellens Lane when they drew up in Smitty’s car. Lindfors and Smitty got out and walked over to Nolan who was talking with a street sergeant and two uniformed men from the Sixty-fifth.

Lights were on in rooming houses on both sides of the street and people were peering out curiously.

Mark walked down to the lane where Nolan was standing with Lindfors and Smitty beside a huddled body that lay face-down on the brick paving.

“Who is it?” Smitty said to Nolan.

“Who sent for you guys?” Nolan said, glancing from Smitty to Lindfors.

“Odell told us to come over.”

Nolan put a cigar in his mouth and took his time about lighting it. “It’s Dave Fiest,” he said, flipping the match toward the body in the lane. “I was bringing him in and he made a break. I let one go in the air, and then tried to bring him down. It was a little high, I suppose.”

Smitty squatted beside Dave Fiest’s body. “What do you suppose he made a break for?”

“How the hell would I know?” Nolan said.

Lindfors said, “Where did you make the pinch?”

“Over at Broad and Crab.”

Smitty turned the body over and went through the pockets. He found several hundred dollar bills, an empty wallet, a letter postmarked Miami from one Sol Ninski, a hotel key, a sterling silver combination cigarette case and lighter, the stub of a theatre ticket, a palm full of change, a pair of toy dice, and a piece of paper torn from a restaurant menu with a phone number on it.

Two men from the wagon came down the lane with a stretcher. Smitty put the collection of personal effects back in Dave Fiest’s pockets, and then stood up and brushed the knees of his trousers. Mark saw him glance at Lindfors; and saw the faint smile on his bps.

“Okay, you can have him,” Nolan said to the men from the wagon.

Mark Brewster lit a cigarette as the body was carried out of the lane. He had known Dave Fiest casually and had very little feeling one way or the other about his death. His murder, he amended mentally. For he was quite certain that Nolan was morally guilty of having murdered Dave Fiest. Mark had covered a police beat long enough to know when a cop was doing his job right; and this present case was an impressive example of a cop casually behaving like an executioner simply because he had the legal right to use a gun. Still, Mark thought, attempting against his inclinations to look at all angles of the situation, murder was a man-made term to describe a certain kind of killing. And maybe it wouldn’t fit here. Off to the semantic labyrinth, he thought tiredly. Well, what would fit? Manslaughter? At the very least. If you gave Nolan every break, it was manslaughter. Smitty and Lindfors knew that too, he guessed. Their knowledge and complicity was in the brief, unamused smile they had exchanged when Smitty finished examining the gambler’s body.

Mark took a few sheets of folded copy paper from his pocket and walked over to Nolan. He nodded to him and said, “My name’s Brewster. I’m with the Call-Bulletin. Could you give me a fine on what happened?”

“You can see for yourself,” Nolan said.

Mark forced himself to smile. “I need a few details.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“The details,” Mark said quietly.

The two men appraised each other in the filmy light from a street lamp. Nolan was a big man, inches taller than Mark, and weighing well over two hundred pounds. There was a bulge of fat about his waist, but he looked strong and powerful. His features were thick, coarse, and his complexion was ruddy with animal health, He was hardly handsome, yet there was something oddly compelling in his heavy jaw and hard sullen expression. His eyes were light blue and as steady as glass. The hair that showed beneath his gray fedora was a rusty brown.

“I’m busy now, Brewster,” he said, turning away. “See me at the District.”

“We’re on deadline now,” Mark said.

Nolan wheeled back, to him, his face and eyes angry. “What the hell do I care if you’re on deadline? I’m not working for the Call-Bulletin. You want to blow this into a big story, don’t you? Well, there’s nothing to it. A punk tried to make a break and got shot. That’s all.”

Smitty and Lindfors came over and Smitty slapped Nolan on the back. “Brewster’s all right, Barny. He’s been with us at Thirteen for years. He’s okay.”

“Yeah, he’s all right,” Lindfors said. “The boss gives him everything.”

“Well, what do you want?” Nolan said to Mark, making no attempt to conceal his anger. “Let’s get it over with.”

Nolan’s hostility struck Mark as curious; but just as curious, he thought, was his own instinctive dislike of the detective. The hatred between them was as palpable as a stone wall.

“How did you happen to arrest him?” he said.

“He was taking a bet at Broad and Crab Streets, so I made the pinch. We were walking along, west on Crab, when he makes a break down the lane here. I yelled at him to stop, and fired a shot over his head. But he kept going. So I let one go at his legs. But the shot was a little high.”

“What were you charging him with?”

“Gambling, pool selling, loitering.”

“I see.” Mark made quick notes. Then he said, “Who was the character Fiest was taking a bet from? Anybody you knew?”

“Never saw him before.”

“Why didn’t you arrest him?”

Nolan swore. “You trying to tell me how to do police work?”

Smitty glanced at Mark with a puzzled expression. “We don’t pick up the suckers, Mark. You know that. Just the bookmaker.”

“All right, what else?” Nolan said.

“You just fired the two shots, one over his head, and one at his legs?”

“Don’t you listen when somebody’s telling you something?” Nolan said.

“I’m just making sure I have it straight,” Mark said.

“Well, there’s no mystery about it. For God’s sake, see me at the District if you need any more.”

“I think I’ve got enough.” Mark hesitated deliberately, then said: “And thanks.”

Nolan turned without answering and strode out to the sidewalk.

Smitty fell in step with Mark as he left the lane. “Want a ride back to the District?”

“No, I’ll find a phone around here. But thanks.”

“Look, don’t worry about Nolan. He’s all right. Kind of sullen, but okay.”

“He’ll never creep into my heart, I’m afraid,” Mark said.

“Well, don’t let it worry you,” Smitty said, and walked across the street to his car.

Cabot had been hanging about in the background, and now he came over and said, “Did you get everything, Mark?”

“I think so. Let’s find a drugstore. I’ll fill you in then,” he said.

“Fine,” Cabot said. “I was just going to talk to Nolan when you latched onto him.”

Mark stood at the intersection, staring down the lane where Dave Fiest had died. The crowd was drifting off to their homes or to taprooms. Everything seemed anti-climactic. Mark lit another cigarette, for some reason reluctant to leave.

He listened without interest to the comments of the few men and women who lingered at the scene.

“They blazed away at each other for a couple of minutes.”

“Two of ’em got killed, I understand.”

“Yeah, a cop was shot.”

“Naw, you got a bum steer. I got here right after the shooting, and it was just one cop, and he shot this guy for pulling a broad into the alley.”

“Let’s go,” Cabot said, touching Mark’s arm.

“Okay.”

They walked two blocks to an all-night drugstore where Mark gave Cabot the story of the shooting. Then he went into a phone booth and called his paper.

He talked to an editor on the city desk, told him briefly what he had, and then was switched to Paul Murchison, who was on re-write.

“This is Brewster,” he said. “I’ve got a shooting.”

“Ah, yes, the name is familiar,” Murchison said. “I must have seen it on a book jacket or in some latrine. Now who are the persons of your tawdry drama?”

“Dave Fiest is the victim. He was shot by a cop, Bernard Nolan, of the Thirteenth. Nolan. N as in nothing.”

He heard the faint rattle of Murchison’s typewriter. Then Murchison said, “N as in no-damn-good, you mean. I knew that bum when I covered Germantown. What happened?”

Mark gave him the story and Murchison whistled softly into the phone. “That’s rather raw, even for Nolan, who isn’t noted for his diplomacy. He’s got no reason to shoot a man picked up on a gambling charge. Hell, he could have sent out a call on the police radio and they’d have picked Fiest up in an hour.”

“Well, he shot him, and it didn’t seem to bother him.”

“No, it wouldn’t. He’s a very bad guy, Mark. Hell, I think he’s killed five or six people since he’s been on the force. All fine of duty, naturally. I remember one time he shot two colored kids in Germantown, killed both of them too, because they ran when he put a light on them.”

“Colored boys often die running,” Mark said, and decided that he was being sententious. “What else do you know about him?”

“Well, he shot a drunk one night on Allegheny Avenue, near A Street. Claimed the guy attacked him.” Murchison laughed shortly. “The alleged attacker was all of five feet tall, and probably weighed a sturdy ninety-five pounds, in addition to having been pickled thoroughly in some variety of bonded Sterno. Then there was a sixteen-year-old boy. Nolan claimed the kid was trying to break into a food store. He went up before the civil service commission on that one, but you know how it is. Who the hell’s going to call him a liar? The witnesses are all dead.”

“It’s a lousy shame,” Mark said, and was surprised at the heat in his voice.

“You keep out of it,” Murchison said. “Take an elderly gentleman’s advice, and leave Barny Nolan alone.”

“Hell, I won’t do anything about it, but it annoys me to see a character behaving like God Almighty because he’s got the right to use a gun.”

“Forget it,” Murchison said. “A bad cop is a rarity, despite what the stone-headed man-in-the-street thinks. But I think I’ll look up Nolan’s other cases in the library. Maybe the boss will go for a rundown on his homicidal propensities in the line of duty. Hell, the Superintendent might even see it.”

“That’s an idea,” Mark said. “Good luck.”

He left the booth and sat at the drug counter to wait for Cabot. He ordered coffee and passed the time in an unsuccessful attempt to float his cream from a spoon onto the surface of the coffee. The waitress watched him curiously. Finally she said: “You hear about the shooting down the block?”

“Yes, I did,” Mark said. He glanced up, saw that she was a blonde, nearing forty, with streaked hair and a bitter mouth.

“A cop shot a guy,” she said. “You can have cops.”

Mark thought of Lindfors and Smitty and Sergeant Odell, and, of course, Lieutenant Ramussen. They were hard-working, fairly decent men, not too-bright about many things, but extremely bright about their business; and while they weren’t as easy-going and tender-hearted, as say, hair-stylists, they weren’t mean for the sake of meanness, or cruel or bitter or without mercy.

He said, “There are some good cops, too.”

“You can have ’em all,” the waitress said. “Lemme tell you something.”

She told him a long story about a cop who had beaten up her father after shaking him down for fifty dollars. Her father, it seemed, had had an interest in a truck that ran untaxed alcohol into the state during prohibition.

Cabot joined him a little later and drank a cup of coffee gratefully. He was getting too old to cover a district, Mark realized. Cabot couldn’t handle re-write or general assignment, and that left nothing but a job in the library or the district. His paper was on his neck all the time for better coverage, and were threatening in their kindly way to send a copy boy out to take over if he didn’t shape up. And Cabot had a sick wife and a thirty-four year old son in a sanatorium.

“I’ll check the beat when we get back,” Cabot said now, putting a cigarette in his holder. “And thanks for the story, Mark. The office liked it pretty well.”

“You’ve given me plenty,” Mark said, smiling at him. “Let’s go.”

They walked the four blocks to the District. The rain was still falling gently and the center of the city was dark and quiet. At the station Mark checked the house sergeant’s room to see if anything was going on, and then went upstairs. Lindfors and Smitty were playing Casino in the middle room, and Lieutenant Ramussen’s office was dark. Cabot sat down at Odell’s desk and began a patient check of the beat, calling all the districts, the morgue, Accident Investigation, and the Fire Board.

Mark lit a cigarette and watched the Casino game. He pushed his hat back on his head, and in the strong overhead fight his face was pale and tired.

“Nolan gone?” he said.

Smitty nodded. “He put his report on the boss’s desk, and cleared out just a few minutes ago. Why? You need something?”

“No, I had it all.” He drew on his cigarette, and said, “And that’s that.”

Smitty glanced at him oddly. “Yes, Mark, that’s that.”

There was nothing overt in his voice or manner. But Mark knew a line had been drawn between him and Dave Fiest’s death. And beyond that line he wouldn’t be welcome.

3

Nolan thought about the report as he drove through the light rain to his rooming house in West Philadelphia. Ramussen would raise hell, of course; but that didn’t matter. He felt the unfamiliar bulge of money in his pocket and the windshield reflected his small smile.

There was just one annoying thing: the mythical sucker he’d invented for the reporter’s benefit. That had been a snap decision, and now he wondered if it had been a wise one. He was stuck with the story that Fiest had been taking a bet from someone at the time of the arrest. Well, so what? It was a good safe angle. The sucker would never turn up, that was certain.

Nolan didn’t like Brewster, and thinking about him brought a frown to his face. Mark Brewster was another of those goddamn superior college kids who thought they had the world by the tail.

He turned off Walnut Street into Forty-third and found a parking place a few doors down from his rooming house. It was two o’clock then, and his date with Linda was at three. He cut the motor and sat for a moment enjoying the deep unmoving silence. There wasn’t anything that could go wrong, he decided. Everything was perfect.

The rain was coming down a bit harder, so he turned up his collar and trotted across the sidewalk and up the steps of the three-story frame house in which he lived. He let himself cautiously into the dusty-smelling hallway and tip-toed up to his room.

Something was wrong with the overhead light. He snapped the switch up and down a few times, and then crossed the room and turned on his bedside lamp.

“Damn lazy slob,” he muttered, thinking of his landlady. She wouldn’t replace a burned-out bulb for him; but let him get half-a-month behind in his rent and watch the explosion. Nolan felt a sudden hot anger, and he kicked the front of an over-stuffed chair viciously. “Lazy slob,” he said again, and went into the bathroom for a tumbler and poured himself a drink from the bottle on the dresser.

He took the liquor down in one swallow and remembered that he had kicked Dave Fiest’s body just as he had kicked the over-stuffed chair. But why? He removed his hat and coat slowly and ran a hand through his strong curly hair. He had nothing against Dave.

“Take it easy,” he said to himself in a gentle voice, and stood breathing slowly and evenly. That damned temper always got him into trouble. Something took hold of him when he got mad, and he couldn’t help lashing out at anything in his way.

He sat on the edge of his bed, reflecting that there was nothing to be mad about now. He took the roll of money from his pocket and got up and locked the door. Then he returned to the bed and began to count the money. He hadn’t any exact idea of how much there would be, but he knew that Dave Fiest, like all bookies, carried his assets in a liquid form and close at hand.

The money was in two sheaves, and in the first there was sixty-three hundred dollars. Nolan grinned. This was better than he’d hoped for. He had figured Dave for about three or four thousand. The second roll of money was held flat by a silver clip made in the shape of a horseshoe. Nolan removed it and straightened out the bills; and then his heart began to pump a little harder. They were grand notes. He went through them, with fingers that were suddenly stiff and clumsy. Twenty-five. Twenty-five thousand dollars.

Nolan stood up and walked around in an aimless circle, holding the money limply in his hands. Something was wrong as hell. That twenty-five thousand didn’t belong to Dave Fiest. It must be pay-off money, the pay-off on a big bet. He remembered then what Dave Fiest had said: that he was on his way to see Mike Espizito, and that Mike didn’t like to be kept waiting by people who owed him money. Mike Espizito.

“Judas Priest,” Nolan said, and sat down on the edge of the bed. This was a fine goddamn note. Espizito was probably sitting out in South Philly right now, waiting for his money, and getting more annoyed every minute. Nolan stood up and walked around aimlessly again, trying to decide what to do about the money and Espizito. Mike wouldn’t care that he’d killed Dave Fiest, of course. All he’d want was the twenty-five grand.

And then he felt a stirring of anger. This was the kind of break he always got. Just when things seemed to be going all right, a monkey wrench came flying into the works from somewhere. “To hell with the wop,” he said aloud, and shoved the money down into his pocket. “It’s mine now. Let him go find some more.”

He glanced at his watch, went to the mirror above the dresser and inspected his face. He ran a hand over his jaw and decided he couldn’t get by with a dusting of powder.

Half an hour later, shaved and wearing a clean shirt, he went downstairs to his car. The rain had stopped and the night was slightly cooler, he noticed, as he drove back to the center of the city. He parked near Broad and Market and walked to the Simba, a fashionable nightclub with an elegantly dressed doorman and a green-and-white canopy that extended from the club’s double glass doors to the street.

Inside, Nolan gave his hat to a pretty girl wearing a white blouse and a blue velvet skirt, and turned into a small oval barroom that was adjacent to the dance floor and main dining room.

The bartender, a sleek young man in an immaculate white jacket, said, “Good evening, Mr. Nolan.”

Nolan nodded, sat down on an upholstered stool, unwrapped a cigar and put it in his mouth. The bartender held a light for him, and then moved an ash tray a quarter of an inch closer for his convenience.

“What will you have this evening, sir?”

Nolan wondered why bartenders began acting like nances when they got jobs in an expensive joint.

“Whisky,” he said, and was going to ask for a beer chaser, but remembered that Linda was always amused by that combination. “With water,” he said, and put two dollar bills from his wallet on the bar.

His drink was served and the change returned suggestively on a silver tray. Nolan stared resentfully at the half-dollar and quarter. Where he was raised a bartender would be quite likely to slug you with a bungstarter for leaving a tip. They weren’t shoe-shine boys, or porters; they were solid merchants. But not in these joints.

“Keep it,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.” The bartender slid the coins dextrously from the tray into his palm. “Miss Wade should be on soon now.”

“Yeah,” Nolan said. He glanced through the archway of the bar into the main dining room and saw several magistrates, a couple of judges, a District Attorney, some bookies and promoters, and quite a few people who were just people. It made him feel good to be a part of this rich, important world. He belonged to it, and he had the money to stay in it.

The band played a fanfare and the chubby smiling M.C. trotted out and, after a few fairy jokes which were his specialty, introduced Linda.

Linda Wade was a slim graceful girl, with dark brown hair which she wore in a shining page boy, and candid gray eyes. There was a quality of good-humored friendliness in her face and her smile; and she sang her songs in a clear sweet voice. She didn’t seem to take herself or her songs very seriously, and that was the simple secret of her appeal. Actually she worked very hard for her seemingly casual effects.

Nolan watched her and forgot about everything else. Sometimes, when he sat like this at the softly-lighted bar, it seemed as if she were singing to him alone. And moments like that made him feel as if he had the world right in the palm of his hand.

This was almost the best part of their relationship. Nolan could make her mean anything or everything to him while he sat alone in the dark with a drink and listened to her songs.

Now his thoughts ran back, comfortably and idly, to the time when they had first met. Four months ago, almost to the day. He had been transferred downtown from Germantown just a short while before that, and had been in a foul, confused mood. He hadn’t liked Germantown, either, of course, but for different reasons. Germantown had been a pasture, a monotonous dead-end. But Center City had baffled and frustrated him. Everybody had money, but there wasn’t a chance for him to get at it. Some cops, just a few to be sure, were in on the take from the night-club owners, racket men and gamblers. But not Nolan. He had lived on the fringes of a set that enjoyed easy money, easy living and easy women. Nolan had seen all that, but none of it ever came his way. He had gone along as usual on forty-eight dollars a week; and, as usual, the smart people had written him off as another dumb cop.

And then, one night, a loss had been reported at the Simba, and Odell had told him to check it.

That was the night he met Linda.

She had been standing in her dressing room with Jim Evans, the club manager, when Nolan arrived. Someone had stolen a few pieces of jewelry from her dressing table, it seemed. They weren’t of any value, she had said somewhat apologetically to Nolan, but one of the pieces, a brooch, had been given to her by her father.

“Sure, I understand,” Nolan said.

Jim Evans had patted his shoulder and smiled at Linda. “Barny will take good care of you, baby. I’m going out front now. Barny, stop at the bar and have a drink with me on the way out. Okay?”

Sure.

“Fine.” Jim Evans had smiled again at both of them and hurried out.

“Please sit down,” Linda had said.

“Okay.” Nolan had taken out his notebook and pencil, but he had trouble concentrating on anything but the girl. She was wearing a white net gown with a billowing skirt, and her finely molded shoulders were bare. Her skin was lightly tanned, and he had never seen anyone in his life who looked so shining and lovely and clean. Her brown hair was brushed down sleekly, the ends curved back in a soft roll, and her gray eyes were clear and direct.

“I left them right here on the dressing table while I was doing a number,” she said, crossing her legs.

“And when you came back they were gone?”

“That’s right. I didn’t want to bother the police about it, but Jim insisted.” She laughed. “I was afraid you’d just come over and scold me for being careless.”

“Jim was right,” Nolan had said heavily.

She was swinging one sandaled foot idly, and he noticed the fine slim bones at her ankle and the brightly polished nails. He pretended to write something in his note book, but his fingers were stiff and awkward.

She told him then that she had discharged a maid a few days ago, and gave him her name and address. Nolan made a note of that, and then got a description of the jewelry.

She had put out her hand and smiled when he stood up. “Thanks so much for bothering about this. It’s really my fault, I know, but I’d still love to get my brooch back.”

“I’ll do my best,” he had said.

He had stood there a moment, holding her slim warm hand, and returning her smile awkwardly; and he had been very conscious of his unpressed clothes.

Later that night he had called her from the District. His heart had pounded a bit harder when he heard her voice.

“This is Nolan, Barny Nolan, the detective who was over to see you a while back. I was wondering, could you have a cup of coffee with me when you finish up tonight?”

“Well—” She had hesitated a moment. “Is it about the jewelry?”

“No, it’s not.” He had cursed himself for saying that; but there had been nothing to do but plunge on. “No, I just wanted to see you again,” he’d said.

Nolan had thought that a bumbling, stupid approach. He had no way of knowing it was a perfect one.

“Why, yes, of course,” she’d said, a trifle surprised. “Supposing you meet me in the little bar about three-thirty. Will that be all right?”

“Fine, that will be fine.”

He had met her and they had gone to Benny the Bum’s for a late steak, and when he had looked across the table at her and listened to her chatting cheerfully about her work, he was almost unable to believe that it was actually happening.

And that was how it had begun. There had been more late dinners, a few drives through the park, and eventually Nolan had faced the delightful fact that she liked him. She must, he had reasoned, or she wouldn’t pay any attention to him at all. She had known he was just a cop from the start, but that hadn’t made any difference.

He had chased down her brooch for her by trailing the discharged maid to Baltimore on his day off; and when he had tossed it onto the table one night when they were having dinner, she had let out a cry of delight and hugged his hand in both of hers.

Then Nolan had run into the brute laws of economics. There was fifteen dollars alimony, living expenses, and Linda, to be taken care of on forty-eight dollars a week. No matter how he sliced it, there wasn’t enough.

He had begun to stew over that problem most of his waking moments. There were detectives and patrolmen, he knew, who managed side jobs, and some even had their own businesses. One owned a gas station, another a bar, and some peddled jewelry or made-to-order clothes. But Nolan didn’t want to get involved with something that would take up all his time. He needed money, in a healthy lump sum, and fast.

His resentment toward the politicians and racket men had grown violently during that time. He saw them, night after night, sitting around nightclubs and taprooms, heard them talking about big days at the track, watched them pick up fifty-dollar dinner checks, listened to their stories of money, women, vacations.

One night he had got drunk and slugged a bookie who had offered to buy him a drink. That was all he’d ever got: a drink, a pat on the back. He had jerked the little man off the floor, and slapped him across the face with the back of his hand.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he yelled and stormed out the door.

He could have got into trouble over that if the bookie had lodged a complaint. But the man had wanted no trouble with cops, and particularly with a wild cop like Nolan. Nolan wasn’t aware of it, but he was regarded with a curious respect by certain elements in town. They thought him honest, for one thing, because he never had his hand out; but their respect was based on his record, which was bloody and vicious. No one wanted to bother a man as potentially explosive as Barny Nolan.

The Simbas immaculate bartender cleared his throat gently.

“Another drink, Mr. Nolan?”

Nolan glanced at him, coming back to the present unwillingly. “Yeah, I’ll have another,” he said.

He sipped that drink and watched Linda, now singing her last song. She stood with her hands at her sides, her small head tipped slightly back and sang casually, carelessly, and even the waiters stopped moving around and listened.

Nolan smiled at her, savoring the drink and the moment. And then his thoughts plunged off on a tangent to Dave Fiest. What the hell made him think of Dave Fiest? Dave Fiest and Linda were related in a curious, irrelevant way, he decided. Because of Linda, he had killed Dave. And seeing Linda reminded him of that, made him think of Dave...

He’d met Dave Fiest at a bar in Camden, New Jersey, about two months ago. Dave had been fanning himself with a Panama hat, he’d nodded to Nolan and bought him a drink. Nolan remembered the suit Dave had worn, a beautiful, light-weight gabardine with hand-stitched lapels; and when Dave had waved for drinks, he’d seen the flash of gold cuff links and a diamond ring.

“What’ll be?” Dave had said.

“Beer, I guess.”

“Oh, come on. Have a shot.”

“Okay.”

Nolan shook his head irritably, tried to concentrate on Linda’s singing. Why in the name of God was he dredging up this stuff for? What did it matter what Dave had said, and what he’d answered, at a chance meeting three months ago in Camden?

“I understand you’re working downtown now,” Dave said. “Like it better being close to the money?”

“It makes no difference to me.”

“Don’t be a humorist. Berle’s got that racket tied up.” Dave had said that as he’d paid for the drinks. He had noticed Nolan’s eyes on his roll. He had held it up, grinning: “My favorite shade of green, Barny me boy.”

“You travel loaded, don’t you?”

“Well, I need capital close at hand. Five thousand’s about the minimum I need to keep in business.”

They’d had one more drink and Barny had drifted off...

Nolan watched Linda again, frowning. That had been when he decided to kill Dave Fiest. Nolan knew nothing about making money, but he knew a lot about killing. He had been killing people for quite some time now, and there were no moral hurdles to take in deciding to kill Dave Fiest.

And so in his stolid and unimaginative way he had prepared a plan. It had no fancy stuff in it, no triggered alibis, no involved time-table. All he’d done was wait outside a certain taproom a few nights in a row, until Dave Fiest had walked out alone...

Linda finished her last song and the applause was generous and genuine. She smiled her thanks and left the stage. Nolan ordered another drink and watched her make her way through the tables toward the small barroom.

A tall young man in a dinner jacket stood up, said something to her and smiled. He had a blond crew-cut and his teeth were very white in his tanned face.

“I just wanted to tell you how much I liked your songs,” he said.

“Thank you very much.”

They were close enough for Nolan to hear their conversation; and it brought an angry flush to his face. Who did these punks think they were? They went to Princeton or Penn, and because they kicked a football around and had money they felt they owned the world.

He walked to Linda’s side, ignoring the young man. “Ready?” he said.

“Oh, Barny!” She turned to him, smiling. “Barny, this is Toddy Glenmore, and he liked my song. Toddy, this is Mr. Nolan.”

“How do you do, sir?” the young man said, putting out a strong hand. He was a pleasant-looking boy, scrubbed and polite, and he wore his dinner clothes with easy assurance. Everything about him infuriated Nolan.

“I’m just dandy,” he said, ignoring the outstretched hand. “Come on, Linda.” He walked toward the bar but not before he heard the young man say, “Perhaps I could call you sometime?”

He didn’t hear Linda’s answer. She joined him a moment later. He said, “I ordered you a drink.”

“I don’t care for it, thanks. Would you like to drive me home?”

She hadn’t sat down, and he knew she was angry. He got to his feet, tired and helpless, and his own anger flowed out of him.

“Sure, Linda. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to act that way.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Barny, you behave like the heavy-handed father in a melodrama at times. I don’t need a guardian, really. These kids are a pretty nice bunch, you know.”

“Okay, I’ll stop acting like your father,” he said. He drank his drink down, unaware that his hand was trembling.

“Now, Barny,” she said and patted his arm. She knew she had hurt him, but she didn’t quite understand how. “Don’t be so touchy, please.”

“Let’s go. I’ll take you home.”

She sighed. “All right. I’ll get my coat.”

Waiting for her, Nolan stared at his empty glass, confused and angry. What the devil was he blowing his top about? She hadn’t meant anything.

A man came in and sat at the bar a few stools away. Nolan turned his head and saw that it was Mark Brewster from the Call-Bulletin. He wondered if the reporter were following him; and that thought added to his anger.

“Well, what do you want?” he said.

Brewster glanced at him, and appeared surprised. “Hello, Nolan,” he said. “At the moment I want a drink. Make it rye with soda, Joe,” he said to the bartender.

“Sure thing, Mark.”

The drink was served and Nolan noticed that Brewster’s change was placed on the bar in a respectful pile, instead of being returned suggestively on a silver tray.

“You come in here a lot?” he said.

“Occasionally.” Mark turned to him, smiling easily. “You too, eh?”

Nolan signaled for another drink and didn’t answer. He felt an illogical animosity toward Brewster. Glancing at him, he noted the reporter’s lean good-humored features, his steady eyes and careless clothes, and tried to decide why he disliked the man.

Linda returned, carrying a short fur jacket over her arm. “All ready?” she said.

Nolan nodded and got to his feet. His change was spread out in the inevitable silver tray, and he saw a fleeting smile on the bartender’s lips.

“Keep it,” he said dryly.

He took Linda’s arm, and turned toward the doorway, but Brewster said, “Say, Nolan, excuse me for bothering you, but the boss asked me one question about that Fiest story I couldn’t answer.”

Nolan stopped and regarded him with cold hard eyes. “Well?”

Mark glanced at Linda, smiled an apology at her, and then said to Nolan: “It’s just this: what was the description of the fellow that Fiest was taking a bet from?”

“You’re still worrying about that story, eh?” Nolan said.

Mark smiled disarmingly. “It’s not my idea, believe me.”

“Okay, he was about five ten, stocky built, and wore a dark suit and a gray hat. I didn’t see his face.”

“Thanks a lot.” Mark included Linda in his smile. “Sorry to trouble you with a detail like that.”

“Let’s go,” Nolan said to Linda.

Mark Brewster sat down and toyed with his drink.

The bartender picked up Nolan’s change and dropped it in his pocket. Turning to a porter who was refilling the ice bins, he said: “I clipped sourpuss tonight, but good.”

The porter grunted. “Why she bothers with him beats me.”

“Yeah, she’s a good kid.”

The bartender glanced at Mark, but Brewster was apparently absorbed in watching the softly changing lights behind a bottle display. Satisfied that he wasn’t listening, the bartender turned back to the porter and said: “You know, any cop is bad enough, but a bad cop!” He shook his head expressively. “I’d like to say something to her, but it’s not my place.”

“You bet it ain’t,” the porter said.

They were silent a moment. Finally Mark said mildly: “How about a nightcap, Joe?”

“Right, Mark,” the bartender said, and went quickly to work.

Mark sipped the drink slowly, and let the tensions that had built up in the night flow out of him. He didn’t quite know why he had stopped in at the Simba. Had it been to see Nolan? He had known of course that the big detective would probably be here, because it was common information that he was chasing the club’s girl singer. Yes, he decided somewhat to his own surprise, that was the reason. He had wanted to see Nolan; and that impulse struck him as very queer and, oddly enough, very disturbing.

4

They drove for a few blocks in silence. Then Nolan said, “Linda, I’m sorry. I acted like a fool.”

“Don’t worry about it, Barny. It’s late, and we’re probably both tired.”

He sought for words to tell her how much she meant to him, how much he wanted to please her; but as always he found none.

“How about something to eat? Or a drink?” he said.

“Not tonight, Barny, thanks. I’m really tired.”

“Well, how about a drive. We’ll go out along the river a way. Okay?”

She knew he was unhappy, and so she smiled at him and said, “All right, Barny. That sounds pleasant. But don’t be annoyed if I fall asleep.”

“Don’t worry about that. Go to sleep if you want to.”

Nolan drove out the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, past the Art Museum, and turned onto the West River Drive where it flowed along the darkly shining Schuylkill River. There was very little traffic. They had the trees and the river and the darkness to themselves. Linda fit a cigarette and hummed softly under her breath. Finally she said, “Who was that fellow at the Simba?”

“Mark Brewster, a reporter. He’s a nosy punk.”

“Mark Brewster? That name seems familiar. I wonder if I’ve met him somewhere.”

Nolan glanced at her quickly, then turned back to the road. “Well, did you?”

“No, I hardly think so. Anyway, what did he want with you?”

“Something about a case of mine.” He stared ahead, his eyes fixed on the flashing white fine in the middle of the drive. “I had to shoot a man tonight. A guy named Dave Fiest. Brewster’s acting like it’s the biggest story he’s ever had.”

“Did... did you kill the man, Barny?”

“Yes, I had to.” He cursed himself for bringing up the subject. “I arrested him, see, and he made a break. I fired at his legs, but the shot went a little too high.”

“It’s horrible,” she said. She rolled down the window and threw her cigarette out; and the cool night wind rushing in made her shiver. After a moment, she said: “Was he married, do you know?”

“Who?”

“The man you had to kill.”

“Fiest? I don’t think so.”

“Did he have any family?”

“I don’t know.”

“How old was he?”

“About forty.” He glanced at her oddly. “You ought to team up with Brewster, kid.”

“I know it’s none of my business, Barny,” she said, quietly.

“Now don’t be like that. I didn’t mean that it’s none of your business.”

They were silent for a mile or two, and Nolan was overcome with confusion and anger. He had wanted to talk to her tonight, to tell her how he felt about her, but instead he’d got involved with the story of Dave Fiest. Finally he could stand her silence no longer, and he said, almost harshly: “Why do you like me, Linda?”

The question obviously startled her. “How do you know I do?” she said, an undercurrent of laughter in her voice.

“Don’t kid about it,” he said. “You must like me or you wouldn’t see me.”

She glanced at him and saw the strong sullen lines of his face in the light from the dashboard. “We’ve been friends, Barny,” she said, choosing words carefully. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t, is there?”

“There’s fifty reasons. I’m too old for you, you said that yourself tonight.” This wasn’t what he’d planned, he realized, with a feeling close to panic. But he couldn’t stop himself. “You’re educated, you come from a good family, you’re making big money, and I’m a cop, a meat-ball cop from South Philly. There’s a couple of reasons, I guess.”

They were both silent again; and then she patted his hand and said with an attempt at lightness: “Don’t worry about it, Barny. We’ve been friends so far, in spite of all those silly reasons.” She glanced at his brutally strong profile, moody and bitter now, and realized that for all his toughness he could be as easily hurt as a child.

The touch of her fingers on his hand made Nolan feel better. “I’ve been acting like a damnfool tonight,” he said, with a slow smile. “Forget it all, will you?”

“Of course.”

“You know, Linda, things are getting a little better for me financially, and I thought—” He stopped, fumbling around for words. He wanted to tell her he had money, that he could take her anywhere, buy her anything she wanted; but his cop-bred instincts told him nothing could be more foolish.

Linda was looking at him with interest. “Don’t tell me a long-lost uncle has died and left you his fortune.”

“No, nothing like that,” he said. “But things have kind of eased up for me! Maybe we could drive over to the shore Sunday for dinner. Have you been over there since you came East?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, it’s great. The hotels on the Boardwalk are better than anything in New York. I’d like to take you over there some time. You see—” He stopped, suddenly infuriated at his awkwardness. Everything he said led him to a maddening dead-end.

She must like him though, he thought with a swift change of mood.

And that was enough for now. When he put the money to work, slowly, carefully, over the next few months, she’d like him even more. What had she said? We’ve been friends so far, haven’t we? That meant a lot from Linda, as much as going to bed with a man might mean from another sort of girl.

“What are you smiling about?” Linda said, in an amused voice. “One minute you’re frowning like thunder, and now you’re grinning like a boy with a new red wagon.”

Nolan glanced at her and laughed. “I’m just feeling good, that’s all.” He realized that he would eventually need an explanation for his new affluence, and it was easy to devise one that would also account for his high spirits. “I’m through paying alimony,” he said. “My ex-wife is getting married again, so I bow out as Uncle Sucker. That’s good news, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Linda said. Then: “What sort of woman was she, Barny?”

“My wife? She was a—” He checked the word on his lips. “She was a bum,” he said.

“How did you happen to marry her?”

He shrugged. “Who knows?” he said, honestly bewildered. A scowl came to his face as he watched the shining road racing beneath the car. He had met his wife a few months after he was appointed to the Police Department, while he was working at the old Fourteenth at Twentieth and Wolf. She was a waitress at a neighborhood diner, a buxom chattery blonde, who knew all the patrolmen at the station, and, as Barny learned eventually, knew a number of them in the Biblical sense of the word.

They had remained together four years, and then she had gone off to California with their car and three hundred and seventy dollars from a joint savings account. Nolan heard from her later through a lawyer; and eventually she had divorced him and he was ordered to pay her fifteen dollars a week alimony. Nolan knew that she was living with a musician of sorts on the coast, but he actually wasn’t interested enough to do anything about it. He paid the fifteen dollars a week, and felt happy to be rid of her.

“I don’t know why I married her,” he said to Linda. “I was twenty-three and healthy and had a job. I guess I figured I should get married.”

“You’re thirty-nine now, aren’t you?”

“That’s right. A real old man.” He smiled at her tentatively.

“That’s an interesting age. Look at Pinza.”

“Pinza?”

“He’s a very great singer, and he’s at least in his middle fifties. My father took me to hear him in Chicago years ago. He sang Mephistopheles, the devil, you know, and darned near scared me out of my seat.” Linda sat up straighter and glanced at her watch. “I think we’d better start back now, Barny. I’m really very tired.”

“Okay, kid, anything you say.” He slowed the car and began watching for a place to turn around...

Half an hour later he stopped before her apartment house on Walnut Street. She was curled up beside him sound asleep, her head resting against his arm. He looked at her a moment, studying the fineness of her skin and the faint blue shadows under her eyes; and then he put a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.

“We’re home,” he said. His voice was husky; and he cleared his throat and said, “Wake up, kid. End of the line.”

She woke, drowsy and apologetic. “I’m not very good company, I’m afraid. Thanks so much, Barny.”

“I’ll drop by tomorrow night, okay? At the Simba?” He had never been in her apartment. She had never asked him in, and it hadn’t occurred to him to suggest it.

“All right, Barny. Don’t bother getting out, please.”

She slipped out of the car, waved to him and ran lightly up the steps to her doorway. Barny waited until she turned and waved to him again, and then let out the clutch and drove off down the street.

Linda stood with her hand on the doorknob and watched the red taillight of his car disappear in the night. She sighed then, and wondered as she had so many times recently, why she was allowing this essentially false situation to continue. And then she thought: Was it really a false situation? There was something about Barny Nolan that appealed to her strongly. He was a rough-neck, of course, and sullen at times, and uncultivated, and crude. Yes, that was all true, she thought, but there was a sense of power and strength in him that was fascinating. Also, he needed her desperately and that was flattering. He didn’t need her in a conventional physical way, obviously, but he desperately needed her company, her friendship, and most of all, her approval.

Linda sighed again, annoyed with herself. She was usually forthright and honest in her relationships and this present indecision struck her as unwise and foolish.

She entered the foyer of her building and walked down the short corridor to her apartment, her high heels tapping irritably on the hardwood floor...

Nolan drove back to West Philadelphia slowly, enjoying his fresh cigar and the empty silent streets. It was about five, and light would be breaking in another hour. He wasn’t due in at the Division until four in the afternoon, unless Ramussen wanted to see him earlier about his report. But that wasn’t likely. Dave Fiest’s death would be wrapped up in official records and forgotten by tomorrow, he thought with satisfaction.

Suddenly, acting on an impulse he didn’t understand, he pulled his car to the curb and cut the motor. He sat for a moment in the dark silence, frowning at the red tip of his cigar where it glowed between his fingers on the steering wheel. Glancing out he saw that he had stopped opposite the black sprawling mass of a high school where he had spent a semester in his sophomore year. He rubbed his forehead slowly and wondered if it were simply a coincidence that he had parked here.

His thoughts were back-tracking on him again. Everything inside him was stirred up tonight.

There had been a chemistry teacher at this school named Simon. Nolan couldn’t remember his first name. Simon was one of Nolan’s few heroes because he taught a subject that was almost as fascinating as Motor Shop.

There had been a girl in that chemistry class, a slender little girl with brown hair, who wore soft wool sweaters, tweed skirts, and even a thin string of pearls about her throat. She came from a family with money, obviously, because she lived in Haddington, and just as obviously she was a high-class sort of girl. She represented a type Nolan had never known at all, but one which he instinctively resented; and it had amused him, for reasons he didn’t understand, to ridicule and embarrass her in any way he could. That hadn’t been hard because she was naturally shy and timid. However, the ambivalence of his relationship to her was such that while resenting her and hating her he also wanted her to be his girl. One day when there was a dance scheduled in the gymnasium Nolan bought a gardenia with thirty cents he had made setting pins in his neighborhood bowling alley. He hated setting pins because most of the regular pin boys were colored, and Nolan’s father had always warned him against working with colored people. It gave them ideas, his father said, with mysterious emphasis on the word ideas.

Nolan hid the gardenia in his locker and then, casually and scornfully, had asked the girl from Haddington to go to the dance with him. She had refused and Nolan, in a sudden frightening rage, grabbed her shoulders and shook her until the books she was carrying tumbled to the floor. Then he strode off, confused and scared. She complained about him to Mr. Simon, the one person he was afraid of displeasing, and Simon had told him to wait after class.

Nolan remembered the scene vividly. He could recall the intermingled smell of dust and chalk, the acid stink of the chemicals they had been working with, and Simon’s white face and the pinched look about his nose.

“Nolan, you’re a dirty lout who should be horsewhipped,” he had said in a cold intense voice. “You don’t belong in a school like this. You belong in South Philly with the Ginzos.”

Nolan had begun to explain about being transferred here after his father died. He hadn’t got far.

“Shut up! I warn you, Nolan, if you pull another stunt like this, I’ll have you thrown out of school the same day, but first I’ll break a ruler over your head. Do you understand that?”

“Sure, sure,” Nolan said quickly. He was still scared and confused. The hot uncontrollable anger he had felt toward the girl had frightened him by its intensity. What had made him behave like such a fool?

“Now I’ve got a job that’s just suited for you,” Simon said.

He had made him clean up the classroom that afternoon, although there was a regular janitor to do the work. Nolan had worked three hours, doing nothing but digging the puttylike accumulation of dirt and grease from between the grooves of the floor with a penknife.

He hadn’t minded the work, or Simon’s loud-mouthed yapping; but what hurt was being treated like a criminal because he’d presumed to date a little bitch from the fancy section of Haddington.

That had been his last year in school anyway. When he cleaned out his locker at the end of the term he found the gardenia, brown and withered, on the top shelf. That had made him feel very sad.

Nolan threw his cigar out the window and grinned at the dark school buildings, tinted now with the first light of dawn. Kids took things hard, of course. Thinking back now, he couldn’t even remember that girl’s name. Odd, he’d never been able to remember it; within a week after he’d left the chemistry class it was gone from his mind forever.

He put the car in gear and drove slowly down the street, thinking of Linda and the bulge of money in his left trouser pocket. He laughed and thought: I’d like to meet that fancy-pants little bitch from Haddington now and tell her about Linda and Dave Fiest’s money. There were a lot of people he’d like to tell about those two things, he thought, smiling now, confident and good-humored.

5

Mark Brewster woke the next morning about eleven. Sun slanted through the Venetian blinds of his apartment and broke on the green rugs and flat gray walls. He drifted for a moment in a hiatus between sleep and consciousness, aware only of a disquieting sense of oppression.

Then he remembered. A cop named Nolan had shot and killed a gambler named Dave Fiest. Mark swung his legs off the studio couch and picked up a cigarette from a box on the coffee table. Why should that bother him? Why did he care what Nolan did?

Standing, he scratched his head and realized he couldn’t answer those questions. He was depressed, and that was that. He walked barefooted into his tiny kitchenette, put the coffee on and opened a can of orange juice; then he slipped into slacks and a sports shirt and went down to the corner for the papers. Murchison had said he would try to do a run-down on Nolan’s line-of-duty killings; but it turned out that he hadn’t.

The story was on page three, with a one-column cut of Nolan, and had nothing in it but the bare facts. “An escaping prisoner was shot fatally early this morning by Detective Bernard Nolan of the Thirteenth Division...”

Mark read the story and walked back to his apartment. He drank his coffee and orange juice and thought about Nolan and the girl who’d been with him last night. He hadn’t noticed her particularly, but his impression had been that she wasn’t Nolan’s sort. What would be Nolan’s sort, he wondered. What was Nolan? That seemed to be the important question in Mark’s mind. He was curious about Nolan, but he didn’t know why. There was a terrible fascination in any man who could coolly and deliberately shoot another person in the back, he decided, finishing his second cup of coffee. He gave up Nolan and shaved and showered with the idea of getting down to work. But, once at his desk, he found his thoughts straying back to the detective. Frowning, he dug a wedge of typewritten manuscript from the drawer and began rereading the last few pages he’d done. It was all going to add up to a novel, one of those days, he hoped. Mark knew only too well that it was traditional for newspapermen to have a novel or a play tucked away in a trunk somewhere and serving as a rather wobbly prop to their conviction that they could clear out of the news racket any time they wanted to and become serious writers.

He hoped he’d be different; he hoped to finish the book.

However, it seemed pretty flat this morning. Even the captain, the character he liked best, failed to hold his interest. He made an effort to get started by slipping a clean sheet of bond paper into his typewriter; but after staring at its discouragingly blank expanse for several minutes, he lit a fresh cigarette and walked out to get another cup of coffee.

That didn’t help much and he finally realized that he wasn’t going to get any work done until he settled some of the questions about Nolan that were picking at his mind. Once he came to that conclusion he immediately felt better. There was that much of the born reporter in him that he couldn’t ignore a potential story — even though the only curiosity to be satisfied was his own.

He dressed quickly and walked outside to his car. It was a bright sunny day, and the air was cool and fresh. A fine day for a ball game, he thought.

Mark drove over to the East River Drive and headed out to Germantown, simply because he had to start digging into Nolan at some point. And his old division was probably as good a place to start as any other.

The Forty-first District was located in the middle of a pleasant residential street and was sparkling with fresh paint. Window boxes of flowers jutted out from the first floor windows. Downtown a cop lived and worked in another world, but here, there was very little activity besides school-crossing duty, dog-bite cases, and in general, the sort of constabulary functions that would be required in a peaceful village.

Mark went upstairs to the clean spacious Detective Headquarters where half a dozen men were sitting about talking and reading the papers. He’d met most of them around the city on various jobs, and they gave him a general welcome.

“Come in and sit down,” Sergeant Ellerton said, beaming at him from behind horn-rimmed spectacles. “Long time no see, Mark. What brings you out this way?”

Mark sat on the edge of a desk and lit a cigarette. “I had to see a dentist on Greene Street, so I thought I’d stop in and say hello. How’re things?”

“So-so, just so-so,” Sergeant Ellerton said. “You look thinner, boy. They must be working you downtown.”

“It’s not too bad.” Mark glanced at the detectives, who were watching him with good-humored interest. “We had a little excitement last night, though.”

“Yeah, we were reading about that,” Sergeant Ellerton said. “What was the story?”

“Fiest made a break and Nolan tried to bring him down, and the shot went a little high. That’s all there was to it,” Mark said.

“You know, I always said Nolan had too hot a temper,” a detective named Grunhov said.

“He don’t take nothing from anybody,” another said.

The other men began discussing Nolan and the shooting, repeating in essence what had already been said but making their points as if they were pioneer contributions to the conversation. Mark smoked his cigarette and listened with what appeared to be casual interest.

The detectives at the Forty-first were chiefly middle-aged men on the downgrade. They had been passed over many times for jobs that required better-than-average alertness and ability. Some, of course, had been shanghaied here by politicians or superiors who were afraid of them; and men to whom that happened usually went down hill very rapidly. However, an occasional detective in that spot would go on stubbornly doing his best work and hoping against slim hope to get back to where there was something to do besides listen to a housewife’s complaints about the theft of a shirt from her clothesline.

Jerry Spiegel was that sort. He was a thickly built man of about forty with coarse black hair and strangely gentle eyes. He had made the mistake of knocking off too many protected handbooks in the downtown area, and had been sent to Germantown to reflect on his sins. Now he was seated in a tilted chair, listening to the talk about Nolan with a faint smile on his lips.

Finally he stood up and said in a flat voice, “Nolan’s a bum. I worked with him here and in the Northeast, and I never saw him do anything that took any brains. Sure he’s fine at gunning some colored kids or a gambler, like he did last night, but he never made a smart pinch in his life.”

Spiegel spat expressively. “I got no use for a cop that can’t use anything but a gun. Hell, if that’s police work, we should bring in the National Guard and have ’em machine-gun the hell out of anything they see moving after ten o’clock at night.”

“That Guard would do it, too,” a white-haired man named Senesky said, ruminatively, convinced obviously that this was Spiegel’s chief point.

“There isn’t another cop in Philly would have shot Dave Fiest last night,” Spiegel said, with a disgusted glance at Senesky.

“Hell, you weren’t there,” Sergeant Ellerton said. “You don’t know, Spiegel.”

“You can say what you want but the guy’s got guts,” Grunhov said. He was a middle-aged man with washed-out, blue eyes, and a habit of wetting his lips between sentences. “Remember that time in forty-two when he got those guys who stuck up that Super Market at Tenth and Spring Garden? You remember, don’t you, Sarge?” he said, turning to Ellerton. “It was raining like the devil, and Nolan and me and old Jerry Thomphson were coming down Spring Garden when we got the call. Nolan was driving and we took off like a big fat goose, and don’t ever think that guy can’t wheel a car. We got to the Market in time to see the thieves running down the street and waving guns like they was in a cowboy picture. They ducked into that warehouse at the corner of Tenth and Greene and started potting at us from the second floor. We were in a mess then, because we couldn’t get across the street without getting our heads blown off. So we stayed out of sight in a doorway, wondering what the hell to do. About then one of them guys leans out of the window and yells, ‘Come and get us, you bastards!’ ”

Grunhov wet his lips, obviously excited by his reconstruction of the scene.

“Well, Nolan let out a shout like a wild man,” he continued, grinning around at his audience. “He tore across the street paying about as much attention to the bullets as he did to the rain drops. Thomphson and I took out after him, but he beat us up the stairs, and when we got there he’d already shot and killed one of them punks, and was beating the devil out of the other with his fists. He was like a madman. If we hadn’t pulled him off that fellow, he’d have killed him, too.” Grunhov shook his head emphatically. “Yes sir, he’s got guts. If I had a real tough job, he’d be the boy I’d want alongside me.”

Spiegel sat on the edge of a desk, his arms folded, and his eyes were tired and thoughtful. “Yes, I suppose he’s got guts all right,” he said, in a bitter voice. “He came from a neighborhood where guts were essential to staying alive. I should know, I guess. I grew up two blocks from where he lived. But Nolan never learned anything else, don’t you see?” He stared about the room, his face anxious and troubled. “You can’t go along slamming hell out of everything in your way just because you had a rough time as a kid. You got to help people out a little bit. Don’t you see that? How the hell else will things ever get any better?”

Several men looked away uncomfortably. They weren’t disturbed by what Spiegel was saying, Mark judged; but they were embarrassed by the nakedness of his feelings.

“Well, that’s just the way he is,” Ellerton said, with a portentous shake of his head. “People don’t change, you know.”

“Did you ever hear how he came to be made a detective?” Spiegel asked the room in general. His mood had changed, and he spat out the words derisively.

There was a negative murmur.

“Well, it’s a hot one. Nolan’s working the last-out shift, twelve-to-eight, and about seven-thirty he’s drifting along toward the District so he can get out fast when the eight-to-four shift reports. Well, at Allegheny and Thirteenth, I think it was, a car rips through a red light and comes to a stop on the sidewalk. The driver is drunker than hell, but Nolan knows if he makes a pinch he’ll be tied up all morning making out reports, and the next morning at the hearing. So Nolan gives the guy a brush, and sends him on his way.”

“Hell, that’s no way to make detective,” Senesky said.

“Well, wait a minute. The drunk got a look at Nolan’s shield and remembered the number. And you know who he was? Well, he was Tim O’Neill, brother of old Mike O’Neill, the ward leader. Mike hears about the thing from his brother, and so he calls Nolan in and tells him he’s a fine police officer, a credit to the force, a man who can temper justice with mercy and common sense with the letter of the law. You know how old Mike could spin it out. Well, the pay-off is that Mike put the word in and about eight months later Nolan is made detective.”

“Well, that doesn’t prove much,” Sergeant Ellerton said, after a slight pause. “Everybody needs a little boost now and then.”

“It proves he couldn’t make detective except by turning his back on a job that any cop should be glad to do,” Spiegel said sharply. “I wouldn’t let my own mother off a drunken-driving rap.”

Mark lit another cigarette, realizing that he wasn’t learning anything very important. It was obvious Nolan hadn’t been liked out here; but it was equally obvious that he had been grudgingly respected by everyone but Spiegel.

“Well, I’ve got to be running along,” he said, standing.

“Don’t be such a stranger,” Sergeant Ellerton said.

“Yeah, stop in and see us,” someone added.

Mark waved to them and walked downstairs slowly. He stopped on the steps of the station house and flipped his cigarette away; and then the door behind him opened and Spiegel came out.

“Can I drop you somewhere?” Mark said, but then he saw that Spiegel wasn’t wearing a hat.

“No. Look, Mark, you sure this is just a friendly visit?”

“Why, sure.”

“You aren’t working on anything?”

“Well, theoretically I’m always working,” Mark said, and smiled. “Why?”

“Let’s walk over to your car.”

They went down the steps together and strolled along the sidewalk in the warm sunshine. “I don’t like Nolan,” Spiegel said. “I was working with him the night he killed those two colored boys. We came in from different ends of the alley, see, and I got to ’em first. They were scared silly. I calmed ’em down and then along comes that Nolan with his gun out and swearing like a wild man. The kids were edgy anyway and they bolted. Nolan dropped ’em both with shots in the back. It stank, Mark.”

“Well, so you don’t like him. What about it?”

They had reached Mark’s car and were facing each other. Spiegel brought out a cigarette and took his time lighting it. “Dave Fiest got stuck with a bet of Mike Espizito’s, I’m told. You’d hear this pretty soon, anyway, so it doesn’t matter that I’m telling you. The talk goes that he had the pay-off money with him when Nolan shot him. Mike is awfully hot about it. The pay-off was twenty-five thousand, I’m told.”

“A nice round sum,” Mark said. His thoughts went on to the inescapable conclusion. Nolan now must have Espizito’s money; and that put some sense into Dave Fiest’s murder.

“It may be just talk, of course,” Spiegel said.

“Yeah, probably nothing to it,” Mark said, and Spiegel suddenly grinned and punched him lightly in the stomach. “See you, kid,” he said, and walked back to the station house.

Mark drove slowly to a nearby drug store and ordered a cup of coffee at the counter. He sat there a few minutes, thinking of what Spiegel had told him, and realizing with some concern that he was committed to finding out all he could about Nolan. He didn’t quite know why, but he did know that probing into the activities of a man like Barny Nolan was neither very smart nor very safe. For, if the talk was right, Nolan was a murderer and a thief; and digging into him could only lead to trouble.

When he finished his coffee he smoked a cigarette and thought about a few other leads. Finally he went to the phone and called the Simba. He got Jim Evans, who had happened to come in early, and from him got the singer’s address and phone number. He told Jim he wanted to do a story on her for the paper.

He pushed his hat back on his forehead and hesitated a few moments. This was going to be a final step, he knew. Then he shrugged and began dialing her number.

“Yes?” Her voice was clear and fresh.

“Is this Linda Wade?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“My name is Brewster, Mark Brewster, Miss Wade. I’m with the Call-Bulletin.” He mentioned doing a feature on her, and said, “May I see you some time this afternoon, perhaps?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, but I’ll be busy. How about a little later. About six?”

“That would be fine. Where shall I meet you?”

“Well, you could stop by here if that’s convenient.”

“Fine. I’ll see you at six. And thanks very much.”

He replaced the receiver slowly. Linda Wade. A nice name. And her voice was nice, too. Warm and pleasant. He wondered somewhat irritably how she had got mixed up with Nolan. And what the nature and extent of their relationship was.

Well, those were things he had to find out.

He lit another cigarette and realized he had been chain-smoking all morning.

6

It was two-thirty when Barny Nolan left his rooming house. He was working the four-to-twelve shift, and he had an hour-and-a-half to do several important things.

First there was the newspaper-wrapped bundle containing the twenty-five thousand dollars. That was under his arm as he climbed into his car. He had to put it away where Espizito would never find it. And there was the sixty-three hundred dollars he was carrying in his pocket.

Nolan knew he would have a call from Mike Espizito very shortly; and after that Mike would try to get his money back. First, he’d ask for it; and then he’d tear the city open looking for it.

Nolan was frowning as he drove slowly away from his rooming house. The wop could go to hell; he wasn’t getting hold of this money. That belonged to him now.

He drove to the garage where he bought his gas and coasted back to the greasing racks. The mechanic walked over, wiping his hands on a piece of cheese cloth.

“What’ll be, Barny?”

“Take a look at the plugs, will you? I’m having trouble starting.”

The mechanic lifted the hood and began checking the connections. Nolan took the money from his pocket and counted out six thousand dollars. The remaining three hundred he shoved back into his pocket. Then he took a small pry bar from the glove compartment and walked to the rear of the car. He squatted down alongside the right rear wheel and pried off the chromium plate that covered the hub cap. He put the six thousand inside the plate and banged it back in place with his fist.

“Everything looks okay,” the mechanic said, coming around to the rear of the car. “Maybe the points need cleaning. Something wrong with the wheel?”

“I thought the cap was loose.”

“Maybe it’s sprung or dented.”

“It seems okay.”

“Want me to pull it off and take a look?”

Nolan stifled a sudden anger. “It’s okay, I said. You can check the plugs later.”

The mechanic looked at him and wiped his hands again on the cheese cloth. “Okay, Barny, okay,” he said.

Nolan climbed into the car and headed downtown, traveling east on Chestnut Street. The twenty-five thousand dollars was still beside him on the seat, and he didn’t know what to do with it. He couldn’t leave it in his room, and he couldn’t carry it around with him; and he couldn’t risk putting it in his bank account or in a safety deposit vault.

It was a problem, but he felt he could handle it. This sort of thing was his business, he thought with a touch of pride. He was dumb about a lot of things, but he knew his job. Once he found a place to stash the money, everything would be fine. He’d sit tight for a few weeks, a month, maybe, and then he could put it to work carefully. On Linda.

Thinking of her brought a smile to his lips. He remembered the way she had patted his hand last night, and the things she had said to him, and he felt a pleasant warmth flowing through his body.

Suddenly he pulled over to the curb and parked his car. He had time to call her, to say hello, before going on to work; and so he walked into a drug store and found a telephone booth. When she answered the phone he grinned at the sound of her fresh young voice.

“Hello,” he said. “I was on my way to the District, so I thought I’d give you a buzz.”

“That was nice of you.” Her voice was cheerful.

“Look, kid, I’m due for a break around six-thirty, so how about having a drink with me.”

“Oh, Barny, I can’t. That reporter, what’s his name, Mark Brewster, is coming over here at six, and I—”

“What for?” Nolan snapped, and his big hand tightened on the receiver. “Damn it, what for?”

“He’s doing a story on me for his paper,” she said, and her voice was suddenly cool.

“Look, I told you he was a nosy punk, didn’t I?” Nolan felt the starched edge of his collar cutting into his neck, and he had an impulse to tear the phone from the wall and hurl it into the street.

“Barny, if you can’t talk calmly I’m going to hang up,” Linda said shortly. “Also, I don’t feel that I’ve got to explain everything I do to you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Nolan said, instantly defeated and helpless. “I’m sorry, kid. Everything I say seems to be wrong. Our date is still on for tonight, isn’t it? You know we’re having a late dinner with some friends of mine. You said it was okay, remember?”

She hesitated a moment, and Nolan felt something inside him contract painfully. Supposing she said no, hung up on him. Then she said, “Yes, I remember, Barny. I’ll meet you here after my first show.” She didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic.

When he hung up after an exchange of brief goodbyes, Nolan went slowly to the counter and ordered coffee from a listless waitress. It was time for him to be getting on to the Division, but he sat brooding and staring at his figure in the mirror behind the coffee urns.

What was Brewster snooping around Linda for? Why had she got so touchy when he’d asked her about it? That was what he couldn’t stand. He had no defense against her annoyance. One cold word from her and everything inside him became weak and shaky.

A man passed behind him and slapped his back. “Hi, Barny, how’s the boy?”

Barny turned and recognized Petey Felickson, a ward lieutenant he’d worked for before he got on the police force. Petey had been the Eighty-first Ward Leader’s right hand man back in the early Thirties.

“Everything’s about the same, Petey,” he said.

“Still out in Germantown?”

“No, I’m at the Sixty-fifth now.”

“Well, take it easy.”

Petey sauntered out, a small, solidly-built man with graying hair, who radiated a cocky confidence. Nolan watched him cross Chestnut Street and enter a taproom.

Nolan had hated him back in the days when there were no jobs, and Petey had his choice of tough aggressive kids, who’d do anything for a few dimes or a few beers. You took off your hat when Petey looked at you then, or the doors at the Republican Club might be shut to you for good.

Nolan had been born in the section of Philadelphia called Brewerytown and had grown up fighting the Jews from Strawberry Mansion and the Italians that came up from South Philly in loud arrogant gangs. Nolan’s father, a brawling, blustering laborer, championed Barny’s fights, and threatened to beat him senseless if he ever took any dirt from what he called the foreign element.

That was a phrase his father had picked up in some bar, and he shouted it out as if it were the most satisfying of epithets.

Money hadn’t been plentiful in the Nolan home, of course; nor had been any substitute for it such as music, good humor or gentleness. Instead, there was a nightmarish series of fights and wranglings, and endless recriminations from Nolan’s mother, a weary defeated woman who stared at everyone with an expression of baffled and haggard hate.

The only passion in Nolan’s young life had been automobiles. He knew motors and was a superb driver, arrogant and alert; and by the time he was sixteen he was making a few dollars a week hauling alcohol for a local bootlegger. He picked up the stuff on Grays Ferry Avenue, along a stretch called Wet Basin because it was a distributing point for bootleggers, and delivered it to customers in South Philadelphia. But that work hadn’t lasted.

When Prohibition came, Nolan had drifted almost inevitably into the Republican organization in his ward, and that was when he’d met Petey Felickson. There had been no work anywhere, but Petey was a key that could unlock a lot of doors. Nolan had walked himself dog-tired delivering handbills before elections, and on election days he’d worked as a chauffeur to get out the vote. His break came in the ’34 Mayoralty campaign, when the ward leader had been genuinely worried for the first time in twenty-nine years.

Barny had weighed one-ninety then, and had a minor reputation as a street brawler; and he’d used his physical endowments to chase the Democratic canvassers off the streets. He put two of them in Jefferson Hospital, and pretty soon the Democrats were afraid to step into the ward. There had been newspaper stories about it, and the Democratic Mayoralty candidate had appealed to the Attorney General for a complete investigation.

But the Republicans had won, so nothing ever came of that.

Nolan well remembered the victory celebration at Fireman’s Hall. The ward leader had patted his hard shoulder and said: “I been hearing fine things about you, my boy. You’re the sort the party needs.”

Petey had then advised him to take the exams for the police department; and six months later he received his appointment.

Great days, Nolan thought bitterly, finishing his coffee. He’d still be pounding a beat if he hadn’t accidentally got in right with old Mike O’Neill. That fluke had landed him on the detective force.

He paid his check and went out to his car. The things that happened to him were always outside his control, he thought, heading for the Division. Luck, Fate, God’s will, as his mother said. What was it that jerked him around like a dummy on the end of a string? He’d always been on the fringes, waiting for something to fall into his lap, waiting endlessly on street corners during depression, waiting for the nod from Petey, waiting for a break on the police force. Germantown had almost driven him crazy, and then he’d come downtown and found himself still on the outside, a dumb cop that bartenders treated like a sucker.

Everything in his life was gray and empty. His family, his job, his wife. Nothing worked.

Nolan suddenly hammered a fist viciously against the steering wheel. What in the name of God was wrong? Why was it always like this?

Then, mercurially, his mood changed. He was thinking of the past, he told himself, beginning to grin. Everything was different since he’d met Linda. That had been the turning point; she’d given him confidence. He was no longer on the outside waiting for something to happen. Unconsciously Nolan touched the newspaper-wrapped bundle at his side and then drove the last few blocks with a musing little smile on his lips.

He parked across from the station and put the bundle of money in the glove compartment. It would be okay there for a while. But by tonight he’d have to find a permanent place for it...

When he walked into the Division, Sergeant Odell glanced up at him and jerked his finger toward Lieutenant Ramussen’s door.

“The boss wants to see you,” he said.

“Okay.” Nolan walked around the counter and tossed his hat on an empty desk. There were three other detectives on hand, and Mark Brewster was reading a paper at the window. He stifled an angry impulse to slap the paper out of his hands and ask him about Linda. But that would wait. He was aware of a curious tension in the room. The other detectives, Lindfors, Smith and Gianfaldo, were pointedly ignoring him. They had been talking baseball when he came in, and now, after a brief, too-casual glance at him, went on with their discussion.

Nolan walked over to Ramussen’s closed door and knocked sharply. When the lieutenant answered he opened the door and stepped into the big bare office.

“Close the door and come over here,” Ramussen said.

Nolan did as he was told.

Lieutenant Ramussen was a tall rangy man with scanty brown hair and bright blue eyes. His features were lean, composed and unrevealing. But his disturbingly bright eyes gave his face an expression of bold deliberate challenge. Prisoners had difficulty meeting his steady gaze, and even his detectives complained occasionally among themselves that it got on their nerves.

When he smiled, however, the wrinkles about his eyes changed his expression completely; but he wasn’t smiling now.

He flicked Nolan’s typed report with his middle finger. “This stinks like hell,” he said. “You had no excuse for killing Dave Fiest, Nolan.”

Nolan shrugged. “I tried to bring him down. The shot went high.”

“I know, that’s in the report. Now get this, Nolan. You’re new in my Division. You’ve got a reputation in the department for being pretty quick to use your gun. Well, I’m not letting that influence me. I don’t care what you did anywhere else, but here, by God, you’re going to use some judgment. Do you understand?”

Nolan hesitated long enough to verge on insolence. Then he said, “Sure, Lieutenant.”

Ramussen’s eyes grew brighter. He studied Nolan for a few seconds, and then he said, rather unexpectedly: “I’m a cop first of all, remember that, Nolan. I’ll stick with any man of mine who gets into trouble doing police work. But I won’t stand for another instance like last night. Got that?”

“Okay,” Nolan said.

“I want a 590 on this for the superintendent,” Ramussen said. “Get it on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

“Okay,” Nolan said, frowning. A 590 was a file customarily prepared on cases that were not officially closed, and where there was some evidence of incompetence or dereliction on the part of the detective handling the job. It was a police officer’s apologia for his judgment and conduct, and in it he could introduce material that would be considered too detailed or too extraneous for the more usual report.

“Okay,” Nolan said again. His face was impassive, but, despite the 590, he felt like grinning. He’d write up a 590 every day in the week for thirty thousand dollars. It was a nice trade.

“That’s all,” Ramussen said.

Nolan nodded to him and walked to the door.

“Oh, there’s one other thing.”

“Yeah?”

The Lieutenant was glancing at another report and fumbling in his vest pocket for his glasses. “Mike Espizito called here a while back. He wants you to get in touch with him.”

“Mike Espizito?”

“That’s right.” Ramussen put on his glasses. “I told him I’d give you the message.”

“Thanks,” Nolan said. He wanted to ask if Mike had said anything else; but he knew that wouldn’t be wise. “Thanks,” he said again, and walked out of the office.

7

Mark Brewster glanced up when Nolan came out of Ramussen’s office. He hoped to learn something from the expression, but Nolan’s face told him nothing.

The other detectives continued talking as Nolan crossed the room and took a chair at an empty desk. He picked up a paper and turned to tire sports section, pointedly ignoring everyone in the room.

Mark saw now that there was an angry flush of color in Nolan’s face, and he wondered if Lieutenant Ramussen had caused that reaction. Suddenly Nolan turned and met his eyes directly; and Mark saw naked hatred in the detective’s face. The two men stared at each other for an instant without speaking, and then Nolan went back to his paper and Mark let out his breath slowly. He was aware that his heart was pumping harder than usual.

Over their heads the endless talk went on. Smitty was making a point with gestures to Lindfors and Gianfaldo.

“You guys hate the FBI because you’re snobs,” he said, shaking a finger at them emphatically. “That’s all, snobs. You think no detective is any good until he’s bald-headed and got arthritis. That’s why you moan about the G boys. They’re not as old as you, so naturally they can’t be any good.”

“You don’t learn this business in no college,” Gianfaldo said, rolling out the sentiment with the pontifical authority of a Papal spokesman; and Lindfors nodded in agreement. “I worked with them kids during the war,” Gianfaldo went on, “and all their ‘yes, sirs’ and ‘no, sirs’ and ‘empty your pockets, please’ got ’em absolutely nowhere.”

“Ah, you don’t have to shout at people to be a good detective,” Smitty said disgustedly.

“That’s all a hood understands,” Sergeant Odell said, looking up from his paper. “You got to scare hell out of ’em.” Nodding approval of his comment, he returned to his newspaper, and after that, the talk drifted easily and with no sense of digression or irrelevance onto the subject of how best to water-proof basements.

Mark lit a cigarette and dropped the match on the floor. He noticed that Nolan had been staring at one page of the paper for the past few moments, and wasn’t even making a pretense of reading. Finally he put the paper aside and turned to Mark with curious deliberation.

“I understand you called Linda Wade,” he said grimly.

Mark was instantly wary. She’d told him, of course. “That’s right,” he said, and blew smoke at the ceiling. “She a friend of yours?”

“Yeah. What’s on your mind?”

“About her?”

“Yeah, about her,” Nolan said irritably.

Mark deliberately ignored the challenge in his manner. He said easily, “I thought she might make a nice feature for the Sunday paper. She’s damn good, you know.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Nolan said. “Whose idea was this feature?”

“Mine, of course,” Mark said, and tried to appear surprised by the question. “I thought she’d be fine for the profile we do every week on entertainers, actors and so forth.”

“I thought you were a police reporter,” Nolan said, with heavy sarcasm. “Isn’t this a little out of your line?”

Mark smiled, but his hands were trembling slightly as he lit a fresh cigarette. He saw that Nolan was watching his hands, and that didn’t help any.

“I’m just trying to get ahead,” he said, still smiling. “You know, impress the boss with my selfless devotion to the cause of the Call-Bulletin. Eager Beaver stuff.”

Smitty walked over grinning and slapped Mark on the back. “Get this,” he said. “Lindfors had just announced that Harry Greb could have beat Joe Louis. I told him—”

“We were talking,” Nolan said, glaring up at Smitty. “Why don’t you give that mouth of yours a rest, anyway?”

There was suddenly silence in the room. Smitty turned from Mark and stared hard at Nolan. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry as all hell, Detective Nolan. I didn’t realize I was breaking up your important conference.” There was an angry white line about his mouth.

“It wasn’t that important,” Mark said, relieved at the interruption.

Nolan stood up and brushed past Smitty. He walked to the window and stared into the street for a moment and then wandered to another desk and sat down. Smitty watched him for a few seconds, then shrugged his shoulders, and turned to Mark.

“As I was saying,” he said meaningfully, “I told Lindfors...”

When he finished the story Mark laughed dutifully and got to his feet. It was five-thirty, time to be leaving for his appointment with Linda. He said a general goodbye and sauntered out of the room, aware that Nolan was watching him with smouldering resentment.

Downstairs, he made a few calls about the beat. There was an accident in another district, but it didn’t seem very serious. He met Cabot as he was leaving and told him that nothing was stirring.

“Fine,” Cabot said, screwing a cigarette into his holder. He was two hours late, which was about standard for him. “I was out to see my boy this afternoon,” he said. “They’re trying a new gadget on him this week. Some kind of electrical stimulation. Sounds very hopeful.”

Cabot’s son was in a home for incurables with paralysis of the spine. It wasn’t likely anything could ever be done for him. “Well, that’s fine,” Mark said. “Hope you get good news on it.”

He told Cabot he was going to be gone for an hour or so, and left the District.

Upstairs, Nolan watched the clock. He knew that Brewster was on his way to see Linda. Irritable and moody, he sucked on his dead cigar and brooded about that meeting. Also, he did some thinking about Espizito. He’d have to call the wop tonight. Nolan ran a hand through his hair. One minute things were beautiful, the next it was all a mess.

Smitty strolled over to him and put a smile on his face. “Nolan, I’m sorry I yapped off. Let’s forget it, eh?”

“Sure, sure,” Nolan said.

“And, while it’s none of my business, I think you’ve got a wrong slant on Brewster. He’s a good guy. You’ll find.”

Nolan hurled his cigar onto the floor and came to his feet with amazing speed. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” he said in a trembling voice.

Smitty had plenty of guts, but something in Nolan’s eyes made him uncertain. He shrugged, and said, “Okay, if that’s the way you want it,” in a careful voice, and walked over to the windows and looked into the street.

Nolan glared at his stiff back for a moment before picking up his hat and striding out of the room.

Sergeant Odell looked at Lindfors and Gianfaldo. They shrugged: Lindfors turned his palms up, and Gianfaldo stared at the ceiling.

Odell frowned at his hands for a few seconds, and then, sighing, lifted his considerable bulk from his chair and went over to the lieutenant’s office. He knocked, then went in and closed the door after him.

“Boss, we got a little personal problem outside,” he said. “Nolan just blew his top at Smitty. Things like that can get out of hand pretty fast, you know.”

Ramussen leaned back in his chair and his eyes were very bright and hard.

“What’s bothering Nolan, Sergeant?”

Odell shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s just touchy, I guess.”

“Would you imagine he’s worrying about that shooting last night?”

“Why should he?” Odell said.

“I’m asking the questions,” Ramussen said, and smiled.

“No, I don’t think he is,” Odell said, relaxing slightly. “It’s no novelty for him to shoot somebody.”

Ramussen stood and paced the floor behind his desk. There was a thoughtful expression on his face. “You know, Sergeant, the loyalty police officers have for each other is a very uncritical emotion. It’s like love, in that respect.”

“I don’t know that I get you, sir,” Odell said.

“Well, it’s not profound, God knows,” Ramussen said. He sat down again and picked up a report. “Let me know if anything like this happens again.”

“Yes, sir.”

Downstairs Nolan walked into the brightly lighted roll-call room and found it empty. He turned into the House Sergeant’s office, where Sergeant Brennan, a calm elderly man, was typing out his duty sheets.

“That reporter go out?” he said.

“Cabot or Brewster?”

“Brewster.”

“He was using the phone outside in the hall a few minutes ago. If he’s not there I expect he’s gone. Cabot’s outside on the steps with the turnkey.”

Nolan cursed pointlessly and walked back into the roll room. Hearings were held here, and one wall was dominated by the high Magistrate’s bench. On the opposite wall were pictures of smiling men in uniform. Underneath the pictures were brass plaques giving the dates of the men’s line-of-duty deaths.

Nolan rubbed his chin, trying to pin down the frustrating sense of anxiety he was experiencing; but there was no room in his thoughts for anything but the reporter and Linda.

He realized with a touch of apprehension that he was dangerously edgy. There was nothing to get worked up about, he told himself angrily. This was his second chance at a good break from life, and he wasn’t going to muff it. Everything else had always turned sour on him, but now he had the opportunity to begin from a new foundation. He had Linda and the money, and he could make a clean fresh start with those two things.

He sat down on a hard wooden bench that ran along the wall of the roll room, and slowly, deliberately, unwrapped and lighted a cigar. This slight physical activity calmed him down, and, as he savored the rich strong smoke, his nerves and muscles relaxed, his tensions eased. Tonight was going to be fun, he thought, puffing contentedly on the cigar. He was taking Linda to dinner at Mike Lavelli’s home, and Mike was one great guy. They had worked together years ago in Accident Investigation, and Nolan had bumped into him again just a few weeks back on a case. Mike had seemed delighted when Nolan told him he had a girl, so Nolan had suggested they get together for a drink sometime. He had no friends to introduce Linda to, and this had worried him; but Mike had immediately suggested that Nolan bring his girl out to dinner at his home, so that problem was solved. That was like Mike, Nolan thought fondly. A liberal, good-hearted, smiling guy. A real pal. He was sorry they’d never got together in all those years since he’d left Accident Investigation.

Nolan smoked his cigar slowly, not worrying about Mark Brewster any more. He knew now that he had let his imagination prod him into a rage. Thinking back on it, he felt embarrassed about the scene he’d had with Smitty. Smitty was a good kid, Nolan thought, in a generous mood now. Smiling almost shyly at the way his thoughts were running, Nolan decided to go up and apologize to the kid. That would show the whole shift that he was no sorehead, that he was big enough to admit when he was in the wrong.

He stood and strode down the corridor toward the stairs that led up to the Detective Division. The front door of the station house banged open, and a detective named Senesky from Germantown came in and waved to him. Senesky was a frail, white-haired man in his middle sixties, and Nolan had always found him to be a rambling bore.

“What y’say, boy?” Senesky said, coming toward him with his crooked old man’s walk.

They met at the foot of the stairs and shook hands. Overhead, a green-shaded light cast a sick unhealthy glow on the old man’s face.

“Speak of the devil,” Senesky said, laughing at Nolan. “We were just talking about you yesterday out at the Forty-first.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“You know, the boys out there and that reporter, Mark Brewster.”

Nolan studied him carefully. “What were the boys saying?”

“We were talking about that fellow you killed, that Dave Fiest.”

“How did Brewster happen to be out there?”

Senesky scratched his head. “Damned if I know,” he said at last. “He just dropped in, around noon it was.” He laughed and patted Nolan’s arm. “You don’t take any chances with these bums, do you Barny? Why the hell should you? That’s what I kept telling ’em yesterday.”

“And what were they telling you?” Nolan said dryly.

Senesky looked embarrassed. “You know how the talk goes,” he said. “Doesn’t mean a damn thing, I always say.” He moved toward the steps. “Nice seeing you again, Barny. I got some papers to give Ramussen. He’s upstairs?”

“Yeah, he’s upstairs,” Nolan said, and took hold of the older man’s arm. “But let’s finish our talk. The boys think I shouldn’t have shot Fiest, eh?”

“No, not by a damn sight,” Senesky said hurriedly.

“Who was doing all the talking?”

“Well, you know how Spiegel is,” Senesky said. “He’s mad at something all the time. Hell, nothing anybody does is ever right according to him. You know how he is, Barny.”

“Yeah, I know how he is,” Barny said. Spiegel, Nolan thought. The tough and lippy Yid. “What did Brewster have to say?”

“Nothing at all that I remember,” Senesky said. “He just listened.”

And now he’s listening to Linda, Nolan thought. He’d have to put a stop to that habit of Brewster’s.

He released Senesky’s arm. “Take it easy, Pal.”

“Yeah, see you around, boy,” Senesky said, and went clattering up the stairs gratefully.

Nolan wandered back to the roll room, frowning and unwrapping a fresh cigar. He stood still for a moment, staring at the pictures of the dead policemen, who smiled across eternally at the bench of Justice. Why in the name of God did cops always get their pictures taken smiling? What the hell was so funny? Every station Nolan had ever worked in had its complement of dead smiling heroes on the wall. They should smile, he thought.

His good humor was gone. Again he was sullen, nervous, irritable. Everything was following the old bleak pattern, he thought wearily. Just when things seemed bright and rosy, the roof fell in.

He took a nickel from his pocket and tossed it up and down in his palm a few times. Then, sighing, he walked to the phone and dialed Espizito’s club.

The man who answered said Espizito was busy. Nolan gave him his name, and a moment later Mike Espizito’s soft, pleasing voice was in his ear.

“Hello there, Barny. How’s the boy?”

“Fine. You called, I understand. What’s up?”

“I’d like to talk to you tonight, if you’re not busy.”

“I’m working four to twelve, you know.”

Espizito laughed good-humoredly. “I keep late hours, too. Supposing you stop by for a drink when you finish. Okay?”

“Sure, Mike.” Nolan studied the receiver, a grim little smile on his lips. “I’ll be seeing you.”

“Good.” The phone clicked in his ear.

8

Her name was printed on a white card in a brass frame: Linda Wade. Mark pressed the button beside it and the inner door lock clicked immediately. He stepped into a large, paneled foyer that was decorated with pots of ivy and several old-fashioned hunting prints.

A door on his left opened. Linda Wade, in black slacks and a white silk blouse, smiled at him and said, “Come in, please. I’ve always heard that reporters were erratic, but you’re right on time.”

His first impression was that she was smaller than he’d remembered her; but then, as he followed her into the apartment, he noticed that she was wearing flat-heeled moccasins.

The living room was high-ceilinged, spacious, and bright with colorful print drapes and white string rugs. There was a record player in one corner, and beside it, a bookcase full of albums. Music was playing now, a medley of show tunes.

She took his hat into another room and came back a moment later with a coffee tray and a plate of cookies. “Please sit down,” she said. “This is all I have before my first show, so I thought we might share it. Or would you rather have a drink?”

“No thanks, the coffee will be fine.”

She poured their coffee, then smiled at him directly. “I’ve been trying to remember where I’ve seen your name, Mr. Brewster. And I think I’ve got it now. Didn’t you do a feature on Max Leonard when he was at the Simba?”

Mark was surprised and pleased. “Where did you run into that?”

“My agent sent me a file of clips on the Simba before I took the job. I read your story on Max and loved it. I’ve met him a few times and think he’s wonderful, of course. You do, too, obviously.”

“Just about the best, if you like folk music. I do, so I asked the boss to let me take a crack at a feature on him. I’m glad you liked it.”

“I really thought it was fine,” she said, and sounded as if she meant it.

They talked for the next fifteen minutes about folk music, and some of the old and wonderful songs Alan Lomax had found in his trips through the South. By that time they had finished their coffee and were on a first name basis.

Finally she smiled and glanced at her watch. “This is a lot more fun than interviewing me, I’ll bet.”

“Well, we’ll see,” Mark said. He found himself liking Linda Wade, liking her good-humor, alertness, and poise. Also, he decided, she was very lovely. Her skin was soft and fresh, and her face, even in repose, had a quality of vitality and friendliness. He regretted that he had to put their relationship on a dishonest basis.

“By the way, we’ve got another mutual friend, I think,” he said. “Barny Nolan.”

“Oh, certainly. I’ve known him four or five months now.”

“He works at the Division I usually cover, but he hasn’t been there long. I don’t know him too well.”

Linda sipped her coffee, then smiled. “I like him. He’s the diamond-in-the-rough type. His bark is worse than his bite, if you’ll let me exhaust all my clichés in one burst.”

“I get the general idea,” Mark said. “One of the boys was telling me he’s having a rough time financially. That’s too bad, if it’s true.”

“I think it might be,” Linda said. “But he told me last night that he won’t be paying alimony any more, and he seemed sure that would make a big difference.”

“Things have improved for him, then?”

“I suppose you might put it that way.” She regarded him curiously. “I’m not sure I understand this. Did you come here to talk about me or about Barny?”

“You, of course. We just got off on a tangent. Supposing we talk about you now.”

She seemed uncertain, but began talking, telling him the sort of things she had undoubtedly told interviewers on dozens of occasions.

She’d been born and raised in Davenport, Iowa, had gone to the State University where she had sung in the glee club and with several small bands. Her father had taught music in a high school in Rock Island, which was just across the river from Davenport, and had helped train her voice. He hadn’t liked her style very much, but eventually became resigned to the fact that she simply wouldn’t ever be a coloratura soprano. When he had died she’d gone to Chicago where she got her first break in radio. That had been two years ago and she was still delighted and slightly amazed by her good luck.

“Can you remember all of this?” she said. “You’re not taking notes.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Where did my father teach school?” she said.

“What?”

She put her cup down. “I’m not so naive as you apparently think,” she said. “You’re not a bit interested in me. You’re interested in Barny, for some reason, aren’t you?”

Mark started to protest but suddenly he found himself sick of the deception. “Yes, I’m interested in Nolan.”

His abrupt candor put her off balance. She looked puzzled. “I don’t understand at all. Why would you come to me to find out about Barny? Why not talk to him?”

“That’s just not a very practical idea,” Mark said. “And you’re his girl, aren’t you? I thought you might be a good lead.”

“I think you’d better leave,” she said. She stood up, and there was an eloquent finality in every line of her slim body.

“Aren’t you curious about my interest in him?” Mark said.

“Not in the least.”

“Barny Nolan is a murderer,” Mark said.

The words were brutal and harsh in the cheerful room. Linda moved one hand slowly to her throat.

“You’re not serious,” she said.

“That’s not my idea of a funny line,” he said. He leaned forward and met her eyes directly. “I’m sorry if I shocked you. I didn’t mean to. But the facts are these: last night Nolan shot and killed a gambler named Dave Fiest. He shot Fiest in the back, without any credible provocation.”

“He... he tried to escape,” Linda said.

“Sure, sure, that’s Nolan’s story. But Fiest had money on him when he was shot, a lot of it. And that was gone when the other cops got to the scene.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” She picked up a cigarette and lighter from the coffee table. Her voice was strained. “Why... why don’t you go to the police?”

“Nolan is the police,” Mark said. “That complicates things, you see. If he weren’t a cop, I’d take my story to the Lieutenant at the division and he’d carry oh from there. But I can’t go to him with the same story about Nolan.”

“Why not?”

“You probably won’t understand. But cops are very sensitive about having other cops called murderers and thieves.”

She sat down and tucked her feet beneath her in an oddly little-girl pose. He felt slightly sorry for her as she stared at the smoke curling from her cigarette.

“Well, why are you making it your business?”

“That’s a good question,” he said. “Maybe I want to be a hero, like the reporters in movies. I don’t know, but it’s something I’ve got to do. I can’t sit still and let Nolan get away with this. I’d like to skip it, let it go merrily to the devil, but I just can’t. Did you ever have that experience?”

“No,” she said shortly. She had recovered her poise now, and was defiant. “How do I know there’s any truth in what you’re telling me? I don’t think Barny would commit a coldblooded murder, and if you knew him you’d understand why. He’s sullen at times, easily hurt and moody, but that doesn’t make him a criminal. He’s lonely and he feels, oh, I don’t know, that he doesn’t belong anywhere.”

“He belongs in jail.”

“This is preposterous,” Linda said, angrily. “Did you think I’d have the stolen money tucked away in the bosom of my dress? Or that I’d help you lay some sort of trap for Barny?”

Mark shrugged. “I hardly know what I hoped to find out. At any rate, I loused things up neatly.” He glanced at her, frowning. “I can’t make up my mind about you.”

“No one asked you to.”

“I know, but it’s intriguing, anyway. I can’t figure out which one of you is real: The mid-Western kid with the nice father or Nolan’s girl.”

She stood again, more decisively this time if that were possible, and walked to the door. “Will you go now, or shall I call Barny and tell him you’re here and won’t leave?”

“I’ll go,” he said, sighing.

“I’m delighted,” she said, and hurried out and returned with his hat.

“There’s just one thing,” Mark said. “Has Nolan given you anything to keep for him? Any kind of a package?”

“I wouldn’t tell you if he had.”

“Meaning, I take it, that he hasn’t. Very well.” Mark took his hat and she opened the door. “There’s still one more thing though.”

She looked up into his eyes, a faint smile on her lips. “I can guess what that is. You’re going to ask me not to tell Nolan you were here.”

“That’s right. You must be psychic.”

“I just knew you’d be afraid of him.”

“Of course, I’m afraid of him,” Mark said, shortly. “That’s logical, isn’t it? I think he’s a murderer. And I’m afraid of murderers. It’s something Freudian, I suppose.”

He walked out and she closed the door and stood with her back to it a moment, listening to the quick beat of her heart...

Her first number went badly that night. She sat at her dressing table afterward, smoking a cigarette and hating Mark Brewster thoroughly and completely. Why had he done this to her? Irritably she freshened her make-up, and decided as she studied her pale cheeks that she’d tell Barny about it, and ask him to make Brewster leave her alone. This was a situation he could handle perfectly.

Feeling slightly better, then, she changed her evening gown for a severely simple black dress and stepped into black suede sling pumps. She was somewhat annoyed with herself for making this dinner date with Barny’s friends. They might be wonderful people, but she didn’t like the compromising aspects of such an evening, nor did she like dashing in and out between shows. She put on a single strand of pearls, checked her stocking seams, and then, feeling harried and upset, left to meet Barny.

He was waiting for her at the small oval bar in the front of the club. They said hello but very little else until they were in his car driving out Walnut Street to West Philadelphia.

Then Nolan glanced at her and said: “Well, how did the interview go?”

“Not very well.” She hesitated a moment, remembering what Mark Brewster had told her about Barny. Then she decided it was just preposterous. “Does he have anything against you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s hardly a member of the Nolan Marching and Chowder Club,” she said, glancing at his strong heavy profile. “That’s why he came to see me, I discovered. To talk about you. It wasn’t very flattering.”

“He talked about me, eh?” Nolan said quietly.

“Yes. Does he have any grudge against you?”

“You might put it that way. I want you to tell me what he said. Everything, understand?”

“Well, he seems very curious about you.”

“You’ve made that clear by now,” Nolan said. “Let’s have the details.”

“I’m not sure I can remember everything,” Linda said; and suddenly she was sorry that she had brought up the subject.

Nolan drove along in silence for a few blocks, watching the right side of the street; and when he saw a parking place pulled in and cut the motor. It was very dark and quiet along that stretch of the city. Linda started slightly as Nolan turned to her with a twist of his big shoulders.

“Now, Linda,” he said, speaking very slowly and carefully, “I want you to understand that this is important. You’re right, Brewster don’t like me. And he’d like to get something on me. That’s why it’s important you tell me everything he said.”

She had never felt him so close to her before and the sensation wasn’t pleasant. He was staring at her intently, and she could see the tiny purplish veins in his eyes, and his big square teeth glinting in the dashboard light. She felt that he was closing in on her, smothering her with his power and strength; and suddenly she was afraid.

“Go on, kid.”

“He said... he said you weren’t anyone for a girl like me to be seeing,” she said. She didn’t know why she was lying nor why her heart was beating so rapidly.

“What else?”

It wasn’t easy with his eyes on hers, hard and suspicious.

“He said you were... were just a cop, and that you drank too much and chased a lot of cheap women.”

Nolan leaned back and rubbed his jaw. He was silent a moment, studying her delicate profile. “And then he tried to date you up, I suppose?” he said.

“Yes, that’s right. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

She glanced at him and saw that he was grinning. He pushed his hat back and she noticed the shining band of perspiration across his forehead.

“I told you he was a bum, kid,” he said. “So what did you tell him? Did you give him the brush?”

“Yes.”

Nolan slapped the rim of the steering wheel with a big hand and laughed out loud; and then he patted her shoulder.

“Let’s forget about Mark Brewster, kid. I’ll take care of him tomorrow. Tonight we’ll have fun. You’ll like the Lavellis, I know.”

The Lavellis lived in a small, conventionally furnished apartment in West Philadelphia. Mike was a tall rangy man in his late thirties, with black hair and a lively bouncing manner. His wife, Carolyn, was blonde and plain, a little stouter than was becoming to her, but with gentle eyes and a warm honest smile.

The living room seemed even smaller with four people in it, but the smallness wasn’t oppressive. It was durably and unimaginatively furnished, Linda thought, but Mike’s heartiness, and his wife’s obvious pleasure in him and her home, made the physical framework unimportant.

Linda and Carolyn had one cocktail, Barny and Mike two; then they went into the dining room. There was a centerpiece of artificial violets on the table, and mats adorned with fat cabbage roses under each plate, and paper napkins in sterling-plated napkin rings. Everything was obviously as festive as Carolyn could make it, and the main course was spaghetti with a pungent meat and cheese sauce that had probably taken her all day to prepare. She promised to give Linda the recipe for the sauce, which she said was a specialty of her grandmother’s, who had learned to make it in Palermo.

After coffee and Spumoni, there was some good-natured kidding about who should do the dishes. Mike flatly refused to help, on the grounds that once a husband started something like that he was stuck with it for the rest of his life. Carolyn protested when Linda began clearing the table, but she seemed grateful for the help. Mike and Nolan went back to the living room with their cigars.

Nolan sat down where he could watch Linda moving about in the dining room and kitchen. He thought she had never looked prettier, as she tidied things up with efficient speed, and chatted smilingly with Mike’s wife. She was a hell of a lot prettier than Mike’s wife, he thought. Nolan had wanted to help with the dishes, but he hadn’t quite known how to suggest it; and now the chance was gone. It would have been fine to work with Linda, kidding her maybe about how she could make him do anything, even dishes, and just talking about things in general.

Mike passed more drinks around later and switched on the television set. He turned to the channel that presented the fights from Saint Nicholas Arena in New York, and for fifteen or twenty minutes they watched a pair of inept heavyweights maul each other with little effect.

“Ah, you could take both those bums,” Mike said to Nolan. “If you’re still in shape, that is.”

“I’m in pretty good shape,” Nolan said, grinning, pleased that Linda had heard his comment.

Nolan was sitting behind her and slightly to the right, and he could watch her profile in the faint fight from the television screen. She seemed to be enjoying herself, he decided. Well, why shouldn’t she? Mike and Carolyn were a great pair, and his friends.

This was what he wanted, he realized almost solemnly. Just to sit around peacefully and normally with Linda. It could work out, he told himself fiercely. It was working out. All he needed to do was look around to see that. Here were his friends and Linda, all enjoying themselves after a good dinner, and all liking each other and getting along fine. There was no reason it shouldn’t work out for him, like it did for most people. After all, he was no freak. He was just like everybody else, wasn’t he? He could get a place of his own, and have friends in for dinner, and have Linda there with him. It was all possible.

They left after the fight because Linda had to get back for her next show. Mike stood in the doorway with his arm about his wife’s waist as they went down the stairs, and everyone called out something about getting together soon. The words mingled together pleasantly, warmly, indistinctly.

“I knew you’d like them,” Nolan said happily, as they headed for town. “Mike’s a great guy. We were buddies for a long time.”

He drove in a relaxed and contented silence for another few blocks, and, then, slowing for a stop light, he saw a small ring of people clustered at the front of a candy store; and inside this human ring two youngsters were battling wildly with each other.

“That looks like a better fight than the one we saw on television,” he said jokingly to Linda.

“Why don’t some of those men stop it?” Linda said.

“Well, sometimes it’s better to let them get it out of their systems.”

“That’s nonsense. Why don’t you stop them, Barny?”

He glanced at her, surprised at the anger in her voice. “You want me to stop them fighting?”

“Yes, of course. They’re just babies.”

Nolan scratched his head. Then he shrugged and turned off the ignition. “Maybe you’re right at that. No point letting the little monkeys kill each other.”

He climbed from the car and walked up to the circle of men surrounding the fighting boys. Pushing his way through the crowd, he caught the kids by the shoulders and pulled them apart. They were about fourteen, as sturdily built as fire plugs, and both of them were bleeding from the mouth.

“Relax, you tough guys,” he said. “You’re going to hurt each other if you keep this up.”

The two boys glared at each other, panting hard, but Nolan saw they weren’t eager to continue fighting. That was the way with a lot of kids’ battles, he thought irrelevantly.

One of the men in the crowd tapped Nolan on the shoulder and said, “Look, Mac, why don’t you take a try at minding your own business? The kids were settling their argument by a fair clean fight, and they got a right to finish it.”

Nolan turned, keeping his body between the two boys. The man who had spoken to him had a cigar in the corner of his mouth, and was strongly and solidly built. He was about twenty-five, needed a shave and was wearing a sweat shirt and denim trousers. Nolan felt the stirrings of explosive anger. He knew this type; they were always ready to insure kids, “a clean fair fight.” Instead of stopping the bickering, they would hustle the kids into a street or alley, form a circle around them, and make them fight until one had to quit. Nolan remembered a dozen street-fights he’d been in just because some older men had wanted a little diversion or excitement.

“The fight’s over, friend,” he said to the big young man in the sweat shirt. “So go find something else to do for the evening.”

“Yeah, who says so?”

Nolan’s anger was deep and savage now, but, oddly, it was directed at everything that created situations like this, instead of at the young punk. Ordinarily, Nolan would have been delighted to crowd the punk into some overt action, and then work off his rage by knocking him senseless. But now he felt strangely sorry for the young man, as he felt strangely sorry for the kids. “You’d better drift along,” he said, in a milder voice. “I don’t want any trouble with you.”

Two men on the edge of the crowd moved away. One of them muttered, “I told you he was a cop. I told you so right off.”

The young man in the sweat shirt heard this and looked uncertainly over his shoulder, then back at Nolan. He wet his lips, shrugged. “Well, if you’re a cop I guess you can stop the fight.”

“I didn’t say I was a cop,” Nolan said. “I said the fight was over, and I told you to run along. So beat it.”

The young man wet his lips again, and then, seeing that Nolan’s feet were spread and his right fist in a position to come up fast, he muttered something under his breath and pushed out of the crowd. He walked quickly away without looking back.

Nolan squatted down between the two youngsters, who were staring at him with awkward respect.

“I want you two boys to shake hands,” he said. “Fighting’s a dumb way to settle anything. What the hell were you arguing about, anyway?”

“He said I went to a lousy school,” one of the boys said.

“He said the same thing to me first.”

“I did not!”

“The hell you didn’t.”

“Now take it easy,” Nolan said, shaking their hard young shoulders. “Get this, and get it straight. Everybody’s school is a pretty sacred thing. You shouldn’t kid a guy about that.” For the moment Nolan believed what he said, and his voice was solemn with conviction. “A guy’s school is like his country and his mother. Everybody should respect his feeling about it, just like you respect his feeling about his mother.” Nolan remembered his own school as he talked, remembered it as it had never been; fine and warm and glorious. “You wouldn’t ever kid a guy about his mother, would you?” he asked the boys.

They shook their heads and stared at the sidewalk.

Nolan stood, took a bill from his pocket and handed it to one of the boys. “I want you to have a soda on me,” he said. “And cut out the fighting, hear?”

The boy fingered the dollar and Nolan suddenly realized that it was Dave Fiest’s money he had given away. He shook his head irritably, nervously, to dislodge that thought; and then he walked back to the car.

They drove on toward the city and Linda said, smiling: “You handled that just fine, Barny. I was proud of you.”

“I’m glad I did, you know. Kids shouldn’t have to bat each other around in street fights.”

Linda smiled faintly, thinking of Mark Brewster. She’d like to tell him about this incident. Barny was hardly a Chesterfieldian type, but his instincts were warm and human.

“Look, I want you to do me a favor,” Nolan said, as they pulled in front of the Simba. “Okay?”

“Yes, if I can, Barny.”

“Good girl.” He opened the glove compartment and removed a thick, newspaper-wrapped bundle that was tied tightly with thin cord. “I want you to hang onto this for a few weeks, kid. It’s evidence I’ll need in a case in a little while, and I want to make sure that no one else gets hold of it. Do you understand?”

She was certain her voice would give her away; but to her amazement it was quite steady as she asked casually, “What kind of evidence, Barny? Or wouldn’t I understand?”

He grinned. “You wouldn’t understand, kid. And you wouldn’t be interested anyway. How about it? Will you stick it away in your apartment for a few weeks?”

He dropped the bundle in her lap, and her hands took hold of it unconsciously. She said nothing for a moment, but she knew that he was watching her closely.

“Yes, I’ll keep it for you, Barny,” she said, and again her voice was miraculously steady.

Suddenly he said: “You like me, don’t you, Linda?”

“Please, Barny—”

“You like me, I know you do,” he said, stubbornly.

“Yes — I like you, Barny. We’re good friends.”

“I’m crazy about you,” he said, and there was an undercurrent of need in his voice. “Remember that, will you?”

He laughed again, strongly and cheerfully.

Linda sat beside him, her hands tensely holding the bundle in her lap; and, oddly, all she could think about was Mark Brewster.

“One thing,” Nolan said, casually, as he helped her from the car. “Don’t tell anybody about that evidence I gave you. It’s too complicated to explain, but it’ll be better if you keep it quiet.”

“Of course,” Linda said, and her voice was still steady.

9

Nolan watched her hurry across the sidewalk, holding his bundle of money in both hands. He grinned to himself and drove back to the Sixty-fifth feeling that a load had been lifted from his shoulders.

The idea of giving the money to Linda had occurred to him after he’d called Espizito; and he knew it had been an inspiration. Espizito would never tumble to that pitch. He’d be watching banks and safety lockers and Nolan himself; and a lot of good it would do him.

At the Sixty-fifth the time dragged. At twelve o’clock he muttered good night to Sergeant Odell and went downstairs to his car.

He drove South on Seventh Street toward Espizito’s club, passing the shuttered-up shops and markets that transformed the section by day into a rich noisy bedlam. This was an area Nolan knew well. He had fought with street gangs in these alleys, had stolen food and clothing from bearded Jewish tradesmen, and during his days with Petey Felickson, had prowled the neighborhood watching for the rival candidate’s canvassers.

That was when he’d met Espizito. Mike Espizito was an anomaly of that pinched and bitter time. A son of wealthy parents, a graduate of Temple University where he’d made his mark as the campus bookmaker, Mike had taken over a small section of South Philadelphia when he left school, and had serviced it with care and affection. Eventually he got in with Tommy Malone; and inevitably he got on top of Tommy Malone. After those days in the early Thirties, Mike Espizito had handled everything south of Market Street in Philadelphia. He was known as a mild amiable person as long as things were going his way. His only neurosis was a drastic aversion to bad news. He couldn’t tolerate failures or losses.

Nolan parked his car and walked up to the big double doors of Mike’s club, the Neapolitan, a flamboyant joint that featured name bands and the best of food and drink, and catered to the upper-crust of the city’s shadier elements. Tourists dropped in occasionally, and were treated like celebrities at Mike’s standing order. He liked to give simple people a run for their money.

Nolan went in, nodded to a captain of waiters, and walked up a winding stairway to the second floor, where there was a circular bar and a large dining room. He sat down and ordered a bottle of beer and a shot of rye.

Two of Espizito’s men, Hymie Solstein and Laddy O’Neill, joined him in a few minutes. They were both big men, sharply dressed, and they greeted Nolan with a casual confidence that he found irritating.

Hymie was short but weighed nearly three hundred pounds, and his round blunt features had been scrambled in every conceivable fashion. His nose had been broken and rebroken, and his babyishly rounded forehead was studded with a collection of ridges, lumps, and contusions. He had dark thinning hair and the smile of an evil-minded angel.

Laddy O’Neill was taller than Nolan, with huge rangy shoulders and arms as long as a professional basketball player’s. He had been a wrestler for years, and was known to be a bad man with a gun, knife, ice-pick, or anything else that came to hand.

They sat down on either side of him and Hymie thumped his back while Laddy shook his hand.

“The boss is waiting,” Hymie said. “Let’s go.”

“I got a drink to finish.”

“You know how he is about being kept waiting.”

Nolan looked directly into Hymie’s battered face. He didn’t like him or his out-sized shadow, Laddy O’Neill. They were punks with tough-guy mannerisms picked up from the movies. “I know all about how he is about waiting,” he said. “But I still got a drink to finish.”

He tossed off the shot and drank the beer slowly, deliberately. The bartender brushed away his attempt to pay, so he climbed off the stool and followed Laddy’s wide shoulders through the dining room and down a short corridor that ended against a heavy, reinforced door.

Laddy knocked and the door swung inward. A thin, sallow-cheeked man in a dinner jacket glanced at them, then stepped aside and said, “Come in, boys. Hello, Barny.”

The man in the dinner jacket was Slicker Robinson, one of Mike’s top men. Barny nodded to him, and saw that Espizito was at his desk, talking on the phone. Mike smiled a greeting at him. “Won’t be a second,” he said, cupping a hand over the receiver. “Sit down and have a drink.”

Nolan sat down in a deep leather chair before Espizito’s desk, and glanced around, noting the rich green drapes, the custom furniture and the single door that led to the complete apartment Mike used when he stayed in town overnight. Nolan had been here before, but years ago, and Mike hadn’t achieved quite so luxurious a frame for himself at that time.

Slicker Robinson went to the bar, held up a bottle of Bourbon and raised his eyes questioningly at Nolan. Nolan nodded and Slicker poured a drink and brought it over to him.

Espizito wasn’t doing much talking. There was a contented expression on his face, and occasionally he murmured something into the phone in an amused voice and smiled good-naturedly. He was a short man, neatly built, with pudgy hands and glossy black hair. There was nothing of the racketeer in his appearance; he looked like a slightly overdressed bank teller.

Finally he said goodbye and put down the phone. He smiled at Nolan, displaying small even teeth.

“Possibly you know why I asked you to stop by, Barny,” he said.

This was it, Nolan knew. This was his last chance to square things with Espizito. But he didn’t hesitate. He said, “No, Mike, I don’t.”

“I see.” Espizito pursed his lips thoughtfully. He glanced over Nolan’s head, and said, “Boys, step outside for a few minutes, please.”

Nolan heard the door slam as Hymie and Laddy left. Slicker Robinson walked over behind Mike’s desk and leaned against the wall with his arms folded.

“Barny, you shot Dave Fiest the other night, and I thought you might be holding something of his for me,” Espizito said. “I thought maybe you found some money on him and were just waiting to find out to whom it belonged. Well, it belonged to me, Nolan. And I’d like to have it, please.”

Nolan met Espizito’s eyes evenly. “You kind of thought wrong, Mike. I’m not holding anything of Dave Fiest’s for you.”

Slicker Robinson ran his tongue over his lips, and Espizito looked pained. He stared petulantly at Nolan, and the tension became oppressive.

“Let’s go over the facts,” Espizito said, at last. His cheeks were faintly flushed, and Nolan knew he was angry. “Dave Fiest took a bet of mine last week, five thousand on Blue Angel at Sportsman’s Park. Blue Angel won, and paid four to one, which meant that Dave owed me twenty thousand, plus my five. That made twenty-five thousand dollars. He was going to bring that money over here last night. He left a taproom at Broad and Crab Streets at one-thirty, and before he did he showed two friends of mine the bank roll. Outside he met you and got pinched. You walked over to Crab Street and Ellens Lane, where you were forced to shoot him when he made a bold dash for freedom.”

Slicker Robinson smiled as if Mike had said something funny.

Espizito said quietly, “Now what happened to the money, Nolan?”

“How should I know?”

“You know, all right,” Espizito said in the same calm voice. “Now, Barny, I don’t care about Fiest getting killed, understand. I don’t care about any other money he was carrying on him at the time. All I’m concerned about is the twenty-five thousand dollars that belonged to me. I want it, Barny.”

They were both silent, watching each other steadily. Then Espizito stood abruptly and began pacing the floor. He lit a cigarette and drew on it with short nervous puffs.

“I want that cash, you hear?” he said, his voice strong and harsh. “I’m not in business to make punks like you rich.”

“Watch your language,” Nolan said. He slammed his open hand down on Espizito’s desk, and the noise was like a pistol shot. “No thieving spic calls me a punk, by God.”

“Shut up, Nolan,” Slicker Robinson said and put a hand into his coat pocket.

Nolan came to his feet fast, jerking the .38 from the holster at his shoulder. “Get your hand out of your pocket,” he snapped at Robinson.

Robinson obeyed slowly.

Nolan knew he was behaving recklessly, but he didn’t care. He was mad enough to do anything.

“You yapped off quite a bit,” he said to Espizito. “Now, do some listening.” He talked carefully, slowly trying to calm himself down. He didn’t want to shoot, even though he was ready to. “A dozen things might have happened to that money before I arrested Fiest. Think about that for a while. And one more thing: If I see any of your punks too close to me after tonight, I’ll take ’em off your payroll for good.”

Espizito stood perfectly straight and still. “All right, Barny,” he said.

“That’s fine,” Barny said, and put his gun away. “Now, you got anything else on your mind?”

“Nothing at all, Barny,” Espizito said.

“Good.” Nolan turned on his heel and strode across the office. He jerked open the door and went out without looking back. Laddy and Hymie were standing in the corridor. They grinned at him.

“Everything copesetic?” Hymie said.

Nolan went past them and down the stairs without answering.

Espizito was standing quietly at his desk when Laddy and Hymie sauntered back into the office. They glanced from him to Slicker, who was staring worriedly at the floor.

“Hey, what’s up?” Hymie said.

Robinson shook his head in a warning gesture.

Espizito remained standing for a few seconds and then sat down slowly and ran a plump hand through his hair. He was breathing slowly, and there were spots of pink in his cheeks.

Finally he said, in a puzzled voice: “He’s going to try to get away with it, all right. I can’t quite believe it.”

“Don’t worry, Mike, we’ll get it back,” Slicker Robinson said gently, watching him with a concerned expression.

“Oh, yes, we’ll get it back,” Espizito said. “It’s just that the whole thing is puzzling.”

“Me and Hymie will go get it right now, Boss,” Laddy said.

“You and Hymie keep away from him,” Espizito said. “You don’t know Barny Nolan. Right now he’s a dangerous man.”

Laddy smiled and stretched his long powerful arms. “He don’t look no different from lots of guys I seen lying on the floor.”

Espizito glanced at him sharply. “I’m not submitting proposals for your consideration. I’m telling you to keep away from Barny Nolan. Is that clear?”

“Well, sure,” Laddy said, uncomfortably.

Espizito leaned back in his chair and put his finger tips together. “Most people don’t know what makes a man dangerous,” he said, reflectively. “I do, however. A dangerous man is one who will do anything to get what he wants. Lots of men will go pretty far, but at a certain point they stop. Somewhere in their character are brakes which prevent them from going all the way. Nolan has no brakes. He’s going downhill at full speed and he couldn’t stop himself if he wanted to. We’re not going to get in his way.”

“We just sit tight?” Slicker Robinson said.

“Well, not entirely. I’ve already sent Dippy out to his room to look around, and his car was checked while he was up here. But we won’t find my money that easily.” He glanced at Laddy and Hymie. “Here’s something you might look into. Find out if he’s spending any extra money, and on whom. I heard somewhere he’s chasing some girl at the Simba. A singer, I believe. Look into that angle.” He smiled and shook his head. “I don’t want him buying mink with my money.”

“Okay,” Hymie said.

“And keep out of his way. You’ll regret it like hell if you tangle with him. And so will I, which is more to the point.”

“Okay,” Laddy said, with a deep sigh. “But I think you’re overrating him.”

Slicker Robinson shook his head slowly. “You heard Mike. Keep away from Nolan.”

10

Mark Brewster called the desk the next afternoon at four-thirty. He had spent the day trying to work on his book, and trying to keep his mind off Nolan and his girl, Linda Wade. Neither attempt had been very successful. He knew that she would probably tell Nolan about their conversation; and he didn’t like to think what that might mean.

The desk had nothing for him but a message to call Linda Wade at Pennypacker 2964.

“When did that come in?” he said.

“It must have been early this morning. Thompson took it and he starts at three.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Mark dialed the Pennypacker number and she answered almost immediately.

“Hello, this is Mark Brewster,” he said. “I just got your message.”

“It’s good of you to call,” she said, rather hesitantly. “I asked the man at the paper for your home telephone, but he told me that was against some regulation or other.”

“Yes, they don’t want Hollywood producers luring us away from the newspaper business,” Mark said. He was trying to be casual because her voice was tight and strained. “What’s up?”

“I’d like to talk to you this afternoon, if I may. I believe it’s important.”

“Certainly, I’ll come right over.”

“Please hurry, Mark.”

She met him at the door of her apartment fifteen minutes later. They sat down and he saw that she seemed tired and nervous.

“Well?” he said.

She met his eyes for a moment, then glanced at the floor. “After the way I acted yesterday, this isn’t too easy for me,” she said.

“Let’s don’t worry about that,” he said. “Obviously, something’s happened to change your mind. What was it?”

“Last night Barny gave me a package to keep for him. He said it was evidence in one of his cases.”

“Oh? What was in it?” Mark said, with only a trace of excitement in his voice.

“I haven’t looked yet. I... I wanted to believe he was telling me the truth, Mark.”

“Well, supposing you get the package and we’ll see if he’s telling the truth or not.”

She hesitated, then said: “It doesn’t seem fair, somehow.”

Mark leaned back in the chair, and lit a cigarette. “What was the idea of calling me? If you’re loyal to him, I’m not the one to talk to.”

“I do feel loyal to him, but, that isn’t it, Mark. I don’t want to be involved in this at all. He may be everything you say he is, but he’s treated me decently, and I don’t want to be the one to sell him out. Can’t you understand that?”

“Frankly, no. You can’t remain loyal to him unless you’ve got a pretty undiscriminating set of loyalties.”

“That’s not fair,” she said, and her eyes met his angrily. “I’m scared and I’m mixed-up, and everything doesn’t fall into neat black-and-white patterns the way it seems to for you.”

“That’s an interesting comment on your personality type, but pretty irrelevant,” Mark said dryly. “Nolan is a murderer, and that’s a fact you can’t reassess by talking about black-and-white patterns.”

“You don’t have the slightest sympathy for him, do you?”

“I’m afraid not, Linda.”

“You’re lucky to be so sure of yourself,” she said. She seemed very vulnerable then, and he felt a tiny, annoying pang of jealousy for Nolan. “This thing might not be totally his fault,” she said. “He hadn’t had the sort of background that develops very strong moral values.”

Mark held up a hand. “Please spare me the sad songs about environmental moulding. The society we live in holds people responsible for what they do, whether they come from South Philadelphia or the Main Line. That may or may not be a just and equitable set-up, but it’s the one we have to work with. So let’s leave determinism to the professors, shall we?”

“You don’t know him at all.”

“Well, I don’t know him as well as you, obviously. I haven’t had your opportunity or, should I say, endowments?”

“That’s a sophomoric comment,” she said angrily.

Mark sighed. “I suggest we stop quibbling about it. Supposing you get the package. That will settle it pretty much one way or the other.”

She left the room and returned a few moments later with the newspaper-wrapped bundle. Mark took it from her and held it in his hands. Then he untied the knots at one end of the package and turned back the paper carefully. He could see the ends of a sheaf of banknotes.

“That’s the money, isn’t it?” Linda said in a low voice; and the words seemed loud in the stillness of the room.

“I imagine so.” Mark pulled one bill out far enough to see its denomination. Then he nodded. “Yes, this looks like the twenty-five thousand dollars that belongs to Mike Espizito. It’s the money Dave Fiest was carrying when Nolan shot him.”

“What are you going to do now?” Linda said, turning away from him and sitting on the sofa. Her face was white, and he saw a tiny pulse beating in her throat. Oddly moved, he sat beside her and took one of her hands; but she pulled it away quickly.

“I don’t want to be comforted,” she said, half-angrily.

“Okay, okay,” he said. He re-wrapped the bundle of money, tied it securely and dropped it into her lap. “You’d better put it away,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to take it to the police?”

“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted. “This money is conclusive evidence as far as I’m concerned, but it wouldn’t be enough for a murder indictment. You see, Nolan could deny having given you the money, for one thing. Secondly, even if we could establish his possession of the money, that wouldn’t establish the fact of murder. He could conceivably wriggle out of it by saying he had taken the money but hadn’t had a chance to report it. That would stink to high heaven, and the Civil Service Commission would grab him, but it still wouldn’t prove he murdered Dave Fiest.”

Linda lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. “I can’t see him again, Mark.”

“You’ll have to, I’m afraid. You can’t let him suspect that anything has happened to change your relationship.”

“I wish you’d stop implying that we’ve been sharing a love nest,” she said irritably.

“Any way you want it,” he said, and shrugged.

They were silent a moment. Then she smiled faintly at him and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Forget it,” he said, but wished she’d stop jolting him off-balance with her reactions. “What did you tell Nolan about my visit here?”

“I lied to him about it, Mark. Something about him frightened me last night. I started to tell him the truth, and then, almost without realizing it, I told him that you had run him down and then asked me for a date.” She colored slightly. “That was all I could think of.”

“Well, that will probably satisfy him,” Mark said. He glanced at his watch and got to his feet. “I really don’t know what the hell to do next. Just sit tight, I guess.”

She came with him to the door. “Won’t I be able to see you again?” she said. “I suspect you think I’ve acted like a fool. But I’ll need someone to talk to, Mark.”

“That wouldn’t be smart,” he said, and, perversely, found himself enjoying her disappointment. Hell, he thought. “Okay, I’ll call you tonight, here, after your last show. We’ll have to be careful about how we get together.”

“Thanks, Mark.”

He patted her shoulder and left.

The District was quiet, Mark learned at the Sixty-fifth. He checked through the accident reports and chatted with Sergeant Brennan a while before going upstairs to the detectives division.

“Hi, ya, Scoop,” Smitty called to him as he walked around the counter. Sergeant Odell nodded at him over his paper. Lindfors and Gianfaldo were arguing about the details of a shooting that had occurred seven years ago, and Nolan was standing at the window, staring down into the street.

Mark sat on the edge of an empty desk. “Everything quiet?” he asked Odell.

“Yeah, nothing much doing,” Odell said, and went on with his careful, lip-moving perusal of the paper.

The room was hot and smelled of stale cigarette smoke, and the unshaded overhead fights revealed the cracks in the green shades, the scratches on the furniture, and the shine on Gianfaldo’s blue suit. It was, all things considered, Mark thought, a hell of a place for a man to sit around six or eight hours a day in order to make a living. He couldn’t help comparing it with Linda’s apartment.

Nolan turned from the window and walked over to him.

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

“Sure,” Mark said. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “What’s up?” He knew what was coming.

Nolan stared at him, his eyes shining and cold. “What the hell is your interest in me?” he said. “Yesterday you were out at the Forty-first checking behind me, and last night you were with—” he paused, and made an angry, impotent gesture with his hand. “You were up to the same thing with another party. What’s it all about, snoop?”

Silence had settled over the room. Odell was looking at them over his paper, his mouth opened slightly, and an expression of blank amazement on his face. Smitty and Lindfors and Gianfaldo were studiously gazing in other directions.

“I’m not sure I get you,” Mark said, easily. “I was out in Germantown yesterday, all right—”

“Yeah, I know damn well you were. And talking about me and Dave Fiest, weren’t you?”

“So were half the people in the city. It was a page one story,” Mark said.

“You and Spiegel had some ideas about the shooting, I hear,” Nolan said. “Why don’t you come to me with ’em, snoop?”

“Who’d you get this information from?” Mark said.

“I’ll ask the questions. What is it you want to find out, snoop?”

Mark saw that Nolan was setting himself to swing. He had worked himself to a point that demanded physical release; and Mark shifted slightly to get himself into position to roll with the blow.

“Hey, how about both of you guys relaxing?” Sergeant Odell said.

Nolan turned on him angrily. “How about you keeping your big trap shut.”

Sergeant Odell’s beef-red face went one shade darker as he hoisted himself from his chair and strode around in front of his desk. He pointed a finger the size of a banana at Nolan and roared: “You keep your mind on who you’re talking to, Nolan.”

Lieutenant Ramussen came out of his office and took in the scene with his cold bright eyes. “What’s all the noise about?” he asked.

Odell walked back and sat down heavily at his desk. “Nothing much, Lieutenant.” He hesitated a moment, then said: “Mark seems to be bothering Nolan somehow, and Nolan was just straightening him out.”

Ramussen glanced at Mark with a puzzled expression. “We don’t want to be bothered by reporters, Mark,” he said. “You boys are welcome here, and you get good cooperation on the news, I believe. Isn’t that right?”

“Sure,” Mark said. He met Odell’s eyes, and the sergeant reddened slightly and looked away. Mark didn’t blame him for putting him in the dog house. Every man in the room would stick for Nolan, regardless of the circumstances or their personal feelings. That was an ingrained part of their thinking. Mark surmised that most of them knew by now that Dave Fiest had been carrying twenty-five thousand dollars when he was shot; and that the money had disappeared. But blinded by an unhealthy loyalty, they’d look the other way unless forced to do something about it.

“Let’s not have any more of this sort of thing,” Ramussen said to Mark. “Understand?”

Mark glanced at Nolan who was again standing at the window; and then he nodded to Ramussen. “Sure thing, Lieutenant,” he said, and walked out of the room.

Downstairs, the hearings were just starting and the roll-call room was crowded with defendants, complainants, people in all sorts of trouble, and witnesses, lawyers, bondsmen and cops. Mark walked behind the bench and nodded to the Magistrate. He glanced down the complaint sheets but saw nothing that looked like a story. There were a few family rows, and a non-support case, an accident, and one assault and battery by milk bottle, in addition to the vags and drunks.

A Negro in incredibly tattered clothes and a uniformed patrolman stood before the bench, and the cop, tired and bored, was testifying.

“I observed this man at five o’clock this morning, Your Honor, walking east on Eleanor Street with this object in his hand.” He held up a brick.

Mark turned over the scene with Nolan in his mind, realizing with some satisfaction that the detective was edgy and nervous. One or two more bits of pressure and he might blow wide open.

The magistrate silenced the Negro by slapping the desk with his hand. “You’ll get a chance later. Officer, did he give you any trouble?”

“No, he was all right. Drunk.”

Glancing at the hearing sheets, the magistrate said: “Jeremiah Green, no address. What were you doing out at five in the morning?”

“I was mix up, Jedge. I look for my friend, Jimmy, mos’ the night, and I lucked up on him kind of late and he gimme a drink.”

“What was the brick for?”

“Fo de rat.”

There was a murmur of laughter, and the Negro bobbed his head and smiled tentatively.

“What rat?” The magistrate, who had a reputation for wit, leaned back in his chair and regarded the Negro with raised eyebrows.

“De rat is where I sleep, Jedge.”

“I thought you told the House Sergeant you had no address?”

“It ain’t got any address, Jedge. It’s a box and I move it ’roun. The rat comes in a hole, and I’se chockin’ it wit de brick.”

There was laughter from the crowd which the magistrate indulgently allowed to continue. He was laughing himself. Mark put his copy paper in his pocket, stepped down from the bench and walked into the empty corridor. He felt tired and depressed, partly because of the brush with Nolan, and partly because people like the old Negro always made him wonder what in hell was wrong with this best of all possible worlds.

Richardson Cabot came in the front door of the station, his cigarette holder cocked at a jaunty angle. He was wearing a blue suit with a blue polka dot tie, and a dark Homburg. Every inch the gentleman of the Fourth Estate, Mark thought.

“How’re things, Mark?” he said. “All quiet?”

“Looks that way. There’s nothing at the Hearings.”

“Fine, let’s go upstairs and see what the brains have cooking?”

“You go ahead, Cabot. I’m persona non grata at the moment. I had a little row with Nolan.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Cabot said. He flipped ashes on the floor and scowled. “You know what we used to do in the old days when one of those jug-heads got down on a reporter?”

“No,” Mark said. “What did you used to do?”

“Why we’d boycott the Division, every one of us,” Cabot said. “They’d come around after a while, begging us to put their two-bit stories in the papers, and then you know what we did?”

“No, what did you do then?”

Cabot laughed cheerfully. “We’d mix up all the detectives’ names. You see, if it was Nolan, say, who had a case, we’d have the newspaper credit it to Lindfors. We’d claim the rewrite men got things fouled up, but that brought ’em into line pretty fast.”

Mark felt sorry for Cabot, re-living this manufactured past.

“You’d better go on up there and cover for both of us,” he said.

“To hell with ’em,” Cabot said stoutly. “If they don’t want you around, I’ll stay down here.”

“No, you go on up there,” Mark said.

Cabot looked longingly at the stairs leading to the Division. He wanted with all his soul to be there with the phones, the radio, and detectives who could keep him informed. Mark knew that so he patted him on the arm and said: “You can cover for both of us, Rich. Go ahead.”

“Well, all right then,” Cabot said. He looked up the stairs and straightened his hat with a defiant gesture. “I won’t stay up there though, damn it.”

Lieutenant Ramussen came down the stairs as Cabot was going up. He nodded to Mark. “I’d like to talk to you. Got a few minutes?”

“Sure.”

Ramussen looked into the street sergeant’s office and saw that it was empty. “Let’s step in here; okay?”

Mark went in and the lieutenant closed the door. They both lit cigarettes and Ramussen put his foot on a chair and glanced at Mark with his strange pale eyes. “Now, if it’s not something personal, I’d like to know about the trouble between you and Nolan. I didn’t ask you upstairs, Mark, because, as you’ll understand, I had to presume that Nolan was in the right. But I’d like to have your version of the story.”

Mark wondered how much he could tell the lieutenant and decided not very much. “Nolan’s quick-tempered, and I seem to rub him the wrong way. That seems to be it.”

“I see.” Ramussen drew on his cigarette for a few seconds, his expression thoughtful. Then he said: “You and I have been friends for quite some time, Mark. Why aren’t you leveling with me now?”

“You wouldn’t like it if I did, Lieutenant.”

“Supposing you let me decide that.”

Mark hesitated a moment and then, with the feeling that he was making a mistake, said: “Okay, I’ll tell you the truth. I think Nolan’s a murderer. I think he murdered Dave Fiest. Nolan’s guessed that, I believe.”

Ramussen looked at Mark, and his eyes were cold and angry. “Has it occurred to you it’s none of your business?” he said.

“Unfortunately, I don’t see it that way.”

“Since you’re taking over our work, Mark, suppose you tell me why you think Nolan’s a murderer?”

“He didn’t need to shoot Dave Fiest.”

“That’s the department’s decision,” Ramussen said, and now there was no mistaking the anger in his eyes. “Every time a cop uses his gun there’s a certain element that yells for his scalp and calls him a blood-thirsty fascist. If that group had their way, the police would have to catch criminals with a butterfly net.”

“You know that isn’t my attitude.”

“I’ll be damned if I know what your attitude is.”

Mark shrugged. “I said you weren’t going to like this. I’m going ahead at your insistence, remember. There’s talk about money, Lieutenant. Twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of it that was on Dave Fiest when he got shot.”

“That’s just talk so far. Have you seen the money?”

Mark had known from the start that he’d be on his own attempting to prove anything against Nolan. The police would act on evidence, all right, concrete evidence, without a loop-hole in it, but because they were drilled to work as a unit and think of themselves as a tight-knit pack against the world, they weren’t likely to dig up the evidence against one of their own men. That was the flaw in most cops’ minds; and that was what protected a bad cop.

And so he stared at Ramussen and said: “No, I haven’t seen any money, Lieutenant.”

Ramussen put a hand on his shoulder and shook him gently. “We shouldn’t be yapping at each other, Mark. We’ve been together too long for that. But I’ve got to say this much more: Leave the police work to us. Nolan won’t get away with anything because he’s a cop. But neither is he, or any other man of mine, going to be crucified because he is a cop. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Fine. So lay off him, understand? Let him go his own way and you go yours. Do you want me to have a talk with him, and tell him the same thing? I’ll do that if you like.”

“No, I think it would be better to let it ride.”

“All right.” Ramussen smiled at him and opened the door and went back upstairs.

Mark stared at his cigarette for a moment or so and then dropped it on the dusty floor and ground it out slowly with the heel of his shoe.

11

Nolan left the District after a seemingly interminable night. He had only two jobs, both larcenies in South Philly, but despite the inaction and the flare-up with the reporter and Odell, he was in a pretty fair mood.

Outside on the sidewalk he met Danny Shuster, a bondsman who also peddled jewelry around the districts.

“You’re the guy I want to see,” he said, and was surprised at his own words. But seeing Danny had made him think of Linda.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“You got a good lady’s watch, something a little extra?”

“Sure, sure,” Danny said. “Come on over to my car.”

They walked down the block to Shuster’s car and climbed into the rear seat. Danny picked up a leather brief case and unzipped it. He lifted out a suede watch case and glanced at Nolan.

“How much do you want to spend?”

“That don’t matter too much.”

Danny looked pleased. “Okay then, my friend, I’m going to show you a bargain you won’t ever see again. It retails for four bills, not a penny less. But you look at it before I tell you what I’ve got to let it go for.”

Nolan opened the case and examined the watch. It was gracefully delicate; tiny stones gleamed about the face. He thought of watching Linda put it on, imagined her smile of excitement.

“How much?” he said.

“Two hundred and thirty-five bucks,” Danny said, watching Nolan’s face carefully. “Honest to God, it’s practically larceny for you to take it at the price.”

“Okay, okay,” Nolan said. He had three hundred dollars of Dave Fiest’s money with him, so he paid off Danny and put the sixty-five dollars change back in his pocket.

“Maybe you’ll be needing a ring one of these days,” Danny said, smiling at him cheerfully.

“Hell, I’m not looking for trouble,” Nolan said, but the idea made him expansive. “When I do I’ll check with you.”

“Okay, kid.”

Nolan walked two blocks to a drugstore and called Linda.

“How about a little celebration tonight?” he said. He was remembering their drive the night before and how right everything had seemed.

“Barny, I’ve got a terrific headache. I’m going right home after the next show.” She spoke quickly, almost, he thought, as if she were reading the words from a script.

His good humor faded. “Well, that’s too bad. How about a drive? That might help your headache?”

“No, I’m just not up to it, Barny.” Again the words tumbled out in an automatic manner.

He got a little angry. “Well, how about letting me drive you home,” he said. “I won’t make the headache worse, I guess.”

She paused for a moment, then said more cheerfully: “That’s nice of you, Barny. I’ll meet you after the next show. All right?”

“Sure, that’s fine.” He was smiling again. “And by the way, I fixed our snooping friend tonight. I don’t think he’ll bother you any more.”

“Mark Brewster? What did you do to him?” Her voice sounded high, breathless.

“Well, what do you care?” he said. “I told him off, but good. Look, kid, don’t worry about it any more. Here’s something to make you happy: I got a surprise for you.”

“For me?”

“Yeah, and you can just stew about it till I get there.” He laughed. “I’ve been told women love surprises.”

“Barny, I’ve got to go now. I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah. Goodbye.”

He sat in the booth for a moment, frowning at his cigar. For some reason the conversation hadn’t been satisfactory, but he was at a loss to understand why. Shrugging, he left the drugstore and walked over to a bar on Locust Street to kill the next two hours.

He ordered a beer and a shot of whisky, his mood tranquil once more. There just wasn’t anything to worry about, he thought. The money was safe with Linda, and there was more under the hub plate of his car. Espizito wasn’t the problem he’d figured he would be, and the newspaper snoop wasn’t going to cause any trouble.

Nolan wondered if Dave Fiest’s body had been claimed, and that thought brought a frown to his face. Why the hell should he care?

For several moments he stared at the collar on his beer, and then, with the curious feeling that he was borrowing trouble, he walked to the telephone booth in the rear of the bar and called the morgue.

“This is Nolan from Sixty-five,” he told the attendant who answered. “I’m winding up a report on Dave Fiest. Who claimed the body?”

“Just a minute.” The attendant was back in less than that time. “His mother claimed it last night. He’s on his way back to Idaho with her now, I guess.”

“Idaho,” Nolan said. “That’s a hell of a place for Fiest to come from.”

“Well, that’s where his mother lives. She flew in after we notified the cops out there.”

“She flew in all the way from Idaho, eh?” Nolan didn’t understand why this struck him as amazing. “What sort of woman was his mother?”

“Just a woman, I guess. Oldish, about sixty, I’d say.”

“Did she know he was a gambler?”

“How the hell would I know that? Look, Nolan, I got a lot of work here tonight. We got two unidentified from the river and they’re a mess.”

“You answer my questions,” Nolan said, suddenly furious. “You should have found out if his old lady knew he was a gambler.” He was perspiring in the close booth, and all his instincts told him he was behaving ridiculously.

The attendant’s voice was aggrieved. “Well, lemme think. Yeah, I remember she said something about it, now. She said that was his trouble, that he was always trying to outsmart people. Even at home.”

“She did, eh? She said he was always trying to outsmart people, eh?” Nolan repeated the phrase with satisfaction.

“Yeah, something like that. Say, what the hell do you care one way or the other, Nolan?”

“I don’t,” Nolan said. “You understand, I don’t.”

“Well, anything else?”

“No, that’s all.” He hung up and returned to the bar. He didn’t know why he was thinking about Dave Fiest. He had never thought about any of the other people he had killed. Why should Dave Fiest be different? It was odd.

Nolan drank his cold beer gratefully and thought of Dave Fiest with his smart clothes and suede shoes, riding in a cold and lonely box across the plains of the Middle West. He could imagine the insides of the baggage car, the bored and sleepy guards, and the wail of the whistle as the train passed through tiny towns in the night. Smiling, he finished his beer. That’s what happened to smart guys, he thought, and nodded to the bartender for another drink.

Linda came into the circular bar at the Simba promptly at three. She seemed tired and nervous. They didn’t say very much to each other until they were in the car.

Then he said: “Head still bothering you?”

“Yes, it’s like nothing human.”

“Maybe some food would help. How about it? A good steak, a couple of drinks? That might do the trick.”

“No, I’m sorry, Barny. I’d like to go right home.”

“Okay,” he said, disappointed.

They drove the short distance to her apartment in silence and when he pulled up to a stop she opened the door on her side almost before the car stopped moving.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “You forgot about the surprise.”

“Barny, couldn’t it wait until I feel better?”

“Hell, kid, it won’t take a minute,” he said. He took her slim arm and she slid back onto the seat. “You’re shaking like a leaf,” he said, concerned. “You’re coming down with a bad cold, I’ll bet.”

“Maybe that’s it.”

He took the watch case from his pocket and dropped it into her lap. “That won’t help a cold, but it won’t hurt it either,” he said, smiling. “Go ahead, open it. It’s for you.”

She opened the case and removed the watch with gentle fingers. “It’s very lovely,” she said, after a moment.

“Put it on. Here, let me help you.”

“No, Barny, I couldn’t accept it,” she said quickly. “Please understand. It... it’s just too lovely.”

“I thought you’d like it,” Nolan said tiredly. He couldn’t understand her, and he was baffled and annoyed. “I thought you’d like a pretty watch.”

“It was nice of you to think of me, Barny, but I can’t take it.”

She put it back in the case and placed the case between them on the seat. “I have to go in now.” She smiled faintly. “I’ve spoiled your surprise, haven’t I?”

That made him feel better. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “If you can’t take it, you can’t take it. How about tomorrow afternoon? It’s my day off, and we could take a drive.”

She smiled at him and slipped out of the car. “Call me and we’ll see how I feel,” she said. “Good night, Barny.”

“Good night.”

Nolan picked up the watch from the seat, frowned at it for an instant and then dropped it into his outside pocket. He started the car and drove slowly down the street, vaguely worried and anxious. Turning right at the first intersection, he made two more rights which brought him back onto Linda’s street. There was a parking space about twenty yards from her apartment and he nosed into it and cut off the lights and motor.

He wasn’t sure why he had come back; but Linda had behaved oddly and he was upset and bewildered. Anyway, he had nowhere else to go and it was less lonely here than it would be at a bar.

Lighting a cigar he settled down behind the wheel and thought about his telephone conversation with her earlier tonight, and then this brief meeting. Something was bothering her, he knew. He wasn’t angry; he was puzzled. And he sat smoking in the dark and watching the lights in her front windows...

Twenty minutes later a cab pulled up before her doorway. Nolan straightened up as a tall young man got out, paid off the driver, and went quickly up the steps of her apartment.

Nolan rolled the cigar around his lips and one of his big hands tightened on the steering wheel until the knuckles whitened.

It was Mark Brewster who had gone into her apartment. Nolan settled back again, sighed heavily and watched the fight in her windows with cold shining eyes.

12

They had a drink in the softly lighted living room and didn’t talk about Nolan for a moment. Outside, a soft misting rain had begun to fall and the street and neighborhood were silent.

Finally Mark said: “When did he leave?”

“About half an hour ago. I watched him drive off, just a few minutes before you called.” Linda sat in a corner of the couch, and her face was lovely in the shadows of a lamp behind her head.

Mark told her about his conversation with Lieutenant Ramussen and of Nolan’s attack on him at the Division.

“He said he’d fix you,” Linda said. “I didn’t know what he meant at first.” She glanced at her glass. “I’m so scared, Mark. I just can’t help it.”

“Well, let’s forget him for a while, shall we?” he said, attempting a cheerful smile. “We can’t let him monopolize our entire lives.”

“I suppose not. May I fix your drink?”

“That’s an excellent idea.”

Mark noticed the easy grace of her movements as she left the room, and then he glanced around at the magazines, records and fresh flowers that all added in some way to a reflection of the girl.

When she returned with his drink, they chatted generally for a while and then, somewhat to his surprise, he found himself talking about the novel he was writing. It wasn’t one of his normal topics, since he had rather an exaggerated dread of turning into a talking writer, long on conversation and short on production. He knew what he was trying to do in his book, and he wanted to get it done and let it stand by itself. But he had been upset and off-balance the last two days, and there was a release now in talking about something that was, in a sense, personal and impersonal at the same time.

“Writing about war is difficult, I find, because all the clichés about it are true,” he said. “It’s a dull flat business for everyone involved ninety-nine percent of the time, and if you show that side of it faithfully you run the same risk as when you do a take-off on a bore. You make the point, all right, but are equally boring in the process.” He smiled at her over his drink. “Or am I being sufficiently boring?”

“No, you’re doing just fine,” she said. “May I ask the one question you’re never supposed to ask? What’s your book about?”

He told her something about the book, and he found somewhat to his amusement that he was working very hard to make it sound honest and significant. Hail, the talking writer, he thought, taking a sip of his drink.

When he was leaving he realized that he was in a fine mood. Two drinks couldn’t have done that, he knew.

“I’m glad I stopped by,” he said. “This book is good therapy for our troubles, I guess.”

“I think it’s more than that,” she said. “I think it’s going to be fine, Mark.”

They stood together at the door a moment, an odd awkwardness between them, and then she smiled at him and patted his arm in a curiously intimate gesture.

“I’m glad you stopped by, too, Mark,” she said.

She opened the door then and let him out, and he went down the steps with a smile on his lips. It was raining harder, he saw, so he turned up his coat collar and walked rapidly toward the nearest intersection. From the middle of the block a car pulled away from the curb and came slowly toward him along the street. It was a black sedan traveling without lights.

Mark stopped at the corner and saw that he had plenty of time to cross the street ahead of the approaching car; and, glancing in the other direction, he stepped off the curb.

He heard the sudden swelling roar of the motor and the hissing noise of wet tires on the pavement, before the headlights caught him in their blinding brilliance. Mark wheeled, instinctively aware of danger, and saw the car hurtling at him, its motor whining in second gear.

The impact of the fender against his thigh knocked him sprawling into the gutter. His forward dive, automatic, unthinking, had barely got him clear of the front of the car.

Mark lay still, his cheek pressed flat against the wet cement, and he could feel the water in the gutter damming up slightly in back of his left foot. The car had stopped ten or fifteen yards down the street; and the instinct that had first warned him of danger now forced him to lie still with his eyes closed.

He heard footsteps coming toward him, heavy squishing footsteps that stopped near his head. For a moment the only sound in the silence of the night was the gentle fall of the rain and the thudding of his own heart; and then he heard a low laugh and again the footsteps sounded, retreating now. An instant later the motor speeded up and he heard the car roar off down the street.

Mark crawled painfully to his knees and watched its fading stoplight, hoping to catch the license number when the car went past a street lamp; but the rain was too heavy and all he saw was the bright orange flash of a Pennsylvania plate. That was a lot to go on, he thought, as he got slowly to his feet.

He felt along his left thigh and winced. Nothing seemed to be broken, but a king-sized bruise was in the making. He thought of returning to Linda’s to call the police, but decided it would be pretty pointless to call the police anyway.

Mark knew it had been Nolan behind the wheel of that car. He couldn’t prove it, of course; but he would bet his life on it. And he might have to, he thought bitterly, as he turned and limped slowly toward Chestnut Street where he knew he would find a cab.

Nolan drove back to his rooming house in a bitter mood. He was at a loss to understand what he’d done; and that added a frustrating confusion to his anger. Something had caught hold of him when he’d seen Brewster leave Linda’s apartment...

In his room he undressed to the waist, carried a glass in from the bathroom and poured himself a drink of rye from the bottle on his dresser. He drank it off in one gulp and sat down, breathing heavily and beginning to perspire in the muggy closeness of the room. For several moments he stared at the floor, consciously thinking of nothing at all, and letting the whisky work on him; and then he had another drink and lit a cigar. He was trying to keep his thoughts away from her, trying to exclude everything from his mind but the quietness, the whisky, the cigar.

Rubbing his forehead tiredly, he poured another drink, and then, sure that he could sleep, he rolled onto the bed without removing his shoes or trousers. But instantly he was wide awake, alert; in the stillness his thoughts seemed to be revolving with painful slowness and clarity.

She wasn’t for him, he knew. He was attempting to use her as counter-balance against his gray and empty life, as a substitute for the cheapness and meanness of his background, his job, his friends. And in a clear quiet area beyond drunkenness he knew that it couldn’t work out that way.

Nothing had ever worked out for him, he realized. He remembered one summer when he had tried desperately to go to a boys’ camp that was sponsored by the parish. Everything was free, but you had to bring your own clothes. He could still see the scrawled list he had brought home to his mother: four pairs of khaki shorts, four khaki shirts, sneakers, socks, a sweater and raincoat. The total came to sixteen dollars. His mother said she’d see about it. Barny felt it was all set, and bragged with the other kids at school about what he was going to do at camp. Then the dream burst. His father shouted that he was no millionaire, and to get those camp ideas out of his head. Even the parish priest, Father Tim Monahone, hadn’t been able to help. Father Tim said he’d lend him the money, but both his father and mother were affronted at that. “We can do without his charity,” his mother had sniffed. And his father had claimed that he needed no help in caring for his family, and that he wished the priests would stop putting these fancy ideas in his son’s head.

That was when he was eleven, Nolan thought, counting the years carefully. Even at that age he hadn’t been surprised by his father’s and mother’s attitude. Even then things hadn’t worked out in his favor...

Finally he fell asleep.

The next morning he woke at eleven, nervous and irritable, his mouth sour, his head aching intolerably. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor and looked about the drab room with distaste. The one window faced an iron fire-escape, and the occasional air that came in smelled of heat and rust.

Nolan showered, shaved and dressed, careful not to notice the things hovering on the edge of his mind. He looked indecisively at the almost empty bottle of whisky but finally turned away from it and went downstairs. He drove to the nearest drugstore and went into the telephone booth.

He wanted to call Linda but the thought of her brought a surge of anger and confusion; and so he sat unmoving in the heat of the booth, conscious of his body and the hard starched rim of his collar and the dull pain that spread across his forehead and down to the base of his skull.

Then after a while it occurred to him that he could have been wrong about her. Mark Brewster might have called on her, unwanted, unexpected; and she had probably been too polite to tell him to clear out. That could have been it, he thought. Cheered by this rationalization he dropped his nickel and dialed her number.

Her voice when she answered was tired.

“This is Barny,” he said. “How’s the head?”

“Oh, hello. It’s better, I think.”

“Fine. How about making a day of it? I’m off until tomorrow night, you know.”

“Barny, I’m sorry, but I can’t.” She spoke rapidly. “I— We’ve got a rehearsal this afternoon. Something’s wrong with the timing on the show and Bill wants to run through it to see where it’s off.”

“I get it,” Barny said.

“It... it’s quite a nuisance.”

“Yeah, I know. Came up pretty sudden, didn’t it?”

“Yes, yes, it did.”

He wanted to ask her if she’d gone straight to bed after he’d dropped her off the night before; or if she’d seen Mark Brewster again. But he couldn’t have stood it if she bed to him, and so he didn’t ask.

“Well, all right, kid, I’ll see you,” he said, and rang off without saying goodbye.

Outside the sun was shining and wind sang clearly in the trees. Kids from the nearby school ran along the streets shouting to each other and to the policeman at the intersection.

Nolan climbed in behind the wheel of his car, and drove slowly along the block with no destination in mind. He drove for half an hour through the middle-class residential streets of the city. There was nowhere he wanted to go, nothing he wanted to do, except to see Linda, and that was impossible.

He drove aimlessly for a few more minutes and then headed for a taproom far out in the west section of the city. The man who owned the place was named Al Newman, a patrolman at the Ninety-second District. His brother was a city fireman, who helped out when Al was on duty. Nolan had spent a lot of time there in the past. It was a homey, relaxed joint, with dark wooden booths, bowling machines, and a juke box.

Nolan went in and said hello to Al. He ordered whisky with a beer and they talked for a while of men they knew in the department, and the heat; then Al went down the bar to serve another customer.

Nolan finished his drink, feeling slightly relaxed, and walked to a telephone booth. He called a woman he knew, a waitress who worked a nightshift, and after enduring her good-natured complaints at being waked in the middle of the day, asked her to meet him at Al’s that afternoon.

She laughed and said all right.

Nolan had another drink. There were two other men in one of the booths, and a customer at the bar. The waitress was sitting at a table, laboriously writing out a sandwich menu. The air, while hot, smelled cleanly of cigarettes and beer.

He was on his fourth drink when Nora Winters arrived. He waved to her and she walked over to him with a grin on her face. Nora was in her late thirties, a solidly built woman with coarse but good-natured features and streaky blond hair. She was wearing heavy make-up, high-heeled strap-sandals and a gaudy print dress.

“Barny, you’re looking fine,” she said, taking the stool next to his, and grinning at Al. “What’re we celebratin’?”

“Any damn thing you want,” Nolan said. Nora was wearing a sweet perfume that smelled like after-shave lotion. “How about starting to catch up?”

“Oh, oh, here we go again,” she said, putting both hands to the sides of her head.

“Well, let’s go then.”

Barny had known Nora for several years. She was a good sport, he was thinking, a woman who took things as they came and was always ready for a laugh, a gag or a drink. He watched her with some fondness as she followed her whisky with a sip of beer.

“Let’s make this a big one,” he said.

“I’m a working girl, remember?” she said, laughing. “What’ll my customers think if I give ’em oyster stews instead of steaks tonight? I’ll just take it nice and slow.”

The whisky had made Nolan feel somewhat better. This was his life, he thought, ordering another round. Real people, real fun, and to hell with everything else. He bought Al a drink and sent beers back to the men in the booth.

Nora said, “That’s right, Barny, you only live once, I always say.”

“That’s right, kid. I’m making this one count, don’t worry.”

His mood gradually became belligerent. Splintered thoughts shot through his mind, worrying him, destroying his sudden good humor. Linda would have lied to him, he knew. She would have told him Mark Brewster hadn’t been in her apartment. Brewster was in the hospital now, the smart bastard. He was smart like Dave Fiest. All the smart, wise boys, the screw-artists, the good-English kids, were all going to wind up like Dave Fiest.

Nora was singing a lewd version of Barnacle Bill, and Nolan slapped the top of the bar and shouted with laughter.

“That’s the stuff,” he said. “Let’s show ’em who’s smart.”

He ordered drinks for everyone but Al shook his head. “Barny, for your own good, you and the girl friend should get something to eat. That yocky-dock is getting to you.”

“Well, get us some food then. What do you want, Nora?”

“That’s better. Go over to a booth and the girl will bring you some sandwiches.”

“Supposing you go to hell,” Nolan said, anger flowing through him hotly. He caught Al’s tie and jerked him forward. “You think I’m some damn toad, eh? I’ll eat and drink when I want to, understand?”

Al’s hands were underneath the bar, and Nolan knew he was feeling for a club or an ice pick.

“Don’t bring your hands up,” he said. He jerked the tie and brought Al’s chin down onto the bar. “I’ll shoot hell out of you, you hear? I’ll haul you in.”

“Barny, cut it out, for God’s sake!” Nora said.

“Aw, shut up.” He turned to the men who had come out of the booth. They avoided his eyes. “I’ll arrest you punks, too, damn it,” he shouted.

Nora slipped off the stool and ran for the door. Nolan released Al’s tie and hurried after her, his anger subsiding.

“Wait a minute,” he yelled, as she tottered down the sidewalk in her high-heeled sandals.

People stopped and stared as he ran heavily after her and finally pulled her up short with a hand on her arm.

“Take it easy, Barny,” she said, panting and scared.

“Look, are you nuts? I pull a little gag and everybody gets a fit.”

She regarded him for a moment with a doubtful expression; and then she shook her head. “What a gag!”

“Come on, let’s finish our celebration.”

“Not back there.”

“All right, let’s go get some food. How about that? Steaks, the works.”

“Suits me.”

They drove into the center of the city and ate enormous dinners at an excellent restaurant. Nolan had several shots of whisky afterward, while Nora sipped a frappé crème de menthe. The food settled heavily on his stomach, and he was tired and depressed. What the hell had he blown his top for at Al’s? That had been a meat-headed thing to do, he knew. He felt like crawling into bed and staying there for a week, and not thinking about anything else for the rest of his fife.

He suggested the first proposal to Nora and she thought it was a good idea, so they checked into a nearby hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Barny Fiest.

“Where’d you get that name?” Nora asked him, when the bellhop had gone away after opening a window and snapping on the fights.

“What name?”

“Fiest. I get the Barny part, but where’s the Fiest from? Your mother’s name?”

“My mother was Irish,” Barny said, staring at her angrily. He sat on the bed and loosened his tie, wondering what had prompted him to use Dave Fiest’s name. He hadn’t thought about it at all, actually. The name had simply flowed out of the end of the fountain pen. Dave Fiest, the smart guy who was riding home in a box after a life-time of trying to outsmart everybody else.

“I don’t know,” he said heavily.

“Well, let’s get a drink. You look like you could stand one.”

“Sure. Call Room Service. I’m going to stretch out a minute.”

“Sissy.”

He removed his coat and lay down on the double bed. The food and liquor had made him hot and his buoyancy was gone. For a few minutes he stared at the overhead light, thinking of the past few days. Then he fell asleep.

When he woke the room was dark except for a floor lamp. There was a tray of glasses and bottles on the table near the bed. He heard water running in the bathroom.

Sitting up, he rubbed his forehead.

“Nora?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right out.”

He glanced at his watch. It was eleven-thirty. She must have skipped work, he thought. He poured himself a drink and drank it down quickly, steeped in self-revulsion. His shirt was damp with perspiration and his head throbbed with pain. This was the perfect picture of his life, he thought. A hangover in a cheap hotel with a cheap woman. The web of his existence was threadbare, dirty, gray.

Nora opened the bathroom door and came out wearing only a brassiere above her skirt and walking awkwardly in her unstrapped high-heeled shoes. She was sturdily built, but the bones of her shoulders and elbows were angular and graceless. Her skin was very white.

She sat beside him and put an arm about his waist.

“Feel better?”

There was a large bruise on her left arm, he saw, just above her elbow. In the dim light it looked like the sooty imprint of a man’s hand.

“Who did that?” he asked.

She looked down at the spot. “Gosh, I don’t know. I didn’t notice it until one afternoon. Some Superman, I guess. It couldn’t have hurt much.”

“You might have been too drunk to feel it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, and yawned.

Nolan pushed her away from him and stood up, trembling with confused and bewildered fury. “You should know who did it to you,” he said. “That’s the least you should know.”

“Barny, it don’t matter.”

“You’re a tramp, a bum,” he said in a low and bitter voice. “You’d let a man do anything to you as long as he filled you up with booze first. You think you’re the best I can get, don’t you? Everybody thinks that, I know. But they’re wrong. I’ve got a girl who wouldn’t breathe the same air you do.”

“Barny, you can’t talk to me like that,” Nora said in an uncertain voice. “I ain’t never done anything to you.”

Nolan put both hands to his head. He felt as if his skull might split open.

“Barny, you’re acting crazy.”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” he said, dropping his hands wearily to his sides. He stared at her thin scared face, his thoughts spinning riotously. What was the matter with him anyway? Nora was a good sport. He picked his coat from the back of a chair and fumbled through the pockets until he found the watch he had bought for Linda. “Here, kid, take this,” he said, holding it out to her on the palm of his hand. “Go ahead, take it. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“Barny, lie down and rest a while.”

“No, I got to run along,” he said, tossing the watch on the bed. “Bye, kid.”

“Barny, please don’t go.”

He shook his head, picked up his hat and left the room...

Nolan went to a Turkish bath on Camac Street and, after checking his wallet, undressed and went down a flight of stairs to the noisy, moisture-laden steam rooms. He sat on a stone bench and sipped ice water from a plastic glass, and the perspiration broke out on his thick chest and shoulders and ran down his body in tiny rivulets. There was a comfort in the anonymity of his nakedness, and in the opaque atmosphere of the room. Other men moved back and forth before him, their faces blurred by the swirling steam, and their identities hidden from him by their nakedness. They might be bankers, gamblers, cops, anything, Nolan thought. In his liquor-raddled state the idea seemed very significant.

After baking out for twenty minutes, he left the room, swaying weakly but feeling cleansed and refreshed. He took a hot and cold shower, and that helped too. An attendant toweled him vigorously and led him to the dormitory where Nolan stretched out gratefully on an army cot. He lay with his arms above his head, listening to the insistent hammering of his heart. It was banging away all right, he thought. It was a damn good heart.

There were two rows of cots in the long dark room and about two-thirds of them were occupied. At one end of the dormitory, above the doorway, a large clock with neon hands and numbers cast a faint sickly glow on the sleepers. Some of the sprawled figures twisted and jerked spasmodically, as if they were being prodded with sharpened sticks as they slept. Occasionally they muttered incoherently, or laughed out loud, or gushed out streams of putrescent obscenity. Most of them were sleeping off too much liquor, and their splintered reactions were nightmarishly revealing.

The man on Nolan’s left was particularly noisy. He was a young man, in his early thirties, with a deep, sharply ribbed chest, and the long powerful legs of a runner. He was tossing his head from side to side, as if in pain, and muttering about his father. His father was strong and wonderful, but the young man cursed as he sobbed out paeans to his memory. There was a girl whom he talked about uneasily, and something about a sales quota that hadn’t been met, and a great deal about drinking. The girl, Nolan learned without wanting to, was the young man’s wife. She was in Detroit.

Nolan sighed and stared at the ceiling. The young punk was hiding from his wife behind a bottle. Probably he was a creep. Praising his old man but hating him in his heart. Well, maybe he couldn’t help it, he thought wearily. His old man might have been a bum.

A man across the aisle hoisted himself on one elbow, and said, “Hey, knock it off, for God’s sake.”

This did very little good, so he climbed from his bed and stepped over to the young man’s cot. He looked down at the young man with disgust. “Hey, shut up!” he said. “I’m going to call an attendant to toss you out if you can’t keep quiet. I got to get some sleep.”

“Why not let him alone?” Nolan said.

“You mean you like this noise he’s making?”

“He can’t help it,” Nolan said. He got slowly to his feet and stared at the man, who was heavily built, with a hairy chest and strong confident features. “He’s going to confession, that’s all,” Nolan said.

“This is a hell of a place for that.”

“Well, it may be the only place he’s got. Let him alone. He’ll go to sleep after a while.”

“He’d better,” the big man said, with an uncertain glance at Nolan’s shoulders. Then he returned to his cot.

Nolan sat down on the edge of his bunk and studied the young man’s troubled face. He talked to him in a low voice, saying nothing very interesting or important, but gradually the tone of his voice got through to the young man, and, after a few more imprecations against his father, he fell into an exhausted sleep.

Nolan stood and walked slowly out of the dormitory. He dressed slowly, listlessly. There was nowhere he wanted to go, nothing he wanted to do, except see Linda. And, instinctively, he knew that if he did he would only be hurt again.

13

It was ten minutes until Linda’s next show when the door of her dressing room opened and two large men sauntered in casually. One of them closed the door and leaned his great bulk against it; the other put both hands on his hips and regarded her with a cheerful smile.

“Miss Linda Wade, I guess,” he said.

She had turned from her dressing table, still holding a lipstick in one hand. “Yes, what do you want?”

The taller man, the one with the incredible shoulders and thick black hair, continued to grin at her. His companion, a huge squat man with badly battered features, nodded his head at her approvingly.

“You got a nice direct personality, Miss Wade,” he said.

She looked from one man to the other, aware that her hands were trembling. “Who are you?” she said.

“We’re friends of a friend,” the bigger man said, his grin widening. “That makes us all friends, so to speak.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“We don’t want to mystify you, Miss Wade. Do we, Hymie?”

The man at the door shook his round head solemnly. “Not a bit. With a direct personality we should be direct, I say.”

“Right, Miss Wade; we’re friends, in a manner of speaking, with Barny Nolan. You know the name, I guess?”

“Yes, I know him,” she said, and stood and walked to the door. “Please get out of my way. I’ve got a show to do. I have nothing to say to you about Barny Nolan or anything else.”

“Sure, sure,” Hymie said, in the soothing voice one might use with a child. “First, though, we got a few questions to ask you about our mutual friend.”

“Let me out of here,” she said angrily.

The bigger man lifted her gently back to a chair with the same ease that he would have handled a child’s doll. “Nolan is spending a lot of money on you?” he said, gazing down at her and smiling.

“He give you anything to keep for him?” Hymie asked. “Some stuff in a delicate shade of green maybe, with historical-type pictures on it?”

“I... I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Hymie said with great earnestness. “We want to fill in everybody so there won’t be any mystery any more. Everybody should have all the facts, I figure. That way everybody can do what’s best to keep out of trouble. You think I got a good point?”

“If you don’t let me out of here I’ll start screaming.” Linda stood up defiantly. “I’m awfully good at screaming.”

Hymie looked disappointed. “We were hoping this would be a friendly visit, Miss Wade. We don’t want anybody to get hurt. Hurt feelings, I mean. But that creep you hang around with is going to get lots of people hurt, Miss Wade. Maybe even you.”

There was a knock on the door and Hymie stepped aside. Jim Evans stuck his head in and said, “You’re on, Linda.” Then he saw Hymie and Laddy, and his eyes became wary. “What’s up, boys?”

Both men smiled at him. “Nothing much,” Hymie said. “We just came by to tell Miss Wade we liked her act.”

“That’s right,” Laddy said. “We’re stage door Johnnies in a manner of speaking.”

“Oh, I see.” Jim Evans smiled quickly. “Well, I’ll bet Linda’s glad you like the show. How about having a drink with me, boys?”

“No, we’ve got to run along,” Laddy said. “We’re just simple-hearted fellas, and this night-life is pretty tiring.”

Jim Evans laughed. “Well, say hello to Mike for me. Tell him to drop by some night.”

“Sure, we’ll do that,” Hymie said, and smiled at Linda. “You’re a fine singer, Miss Wade. You just stick to it, the singing I mean, and you’ll get along fine.”

The two big men edged out of the room and strolled down the corridor to the dance floor. Jim Evans frowned at their wide backs and then stepped into Linda’s dressing room and closed the door.

“What the hell did they want?”

“Who are they, Jim?”

“Laddy O’Neill and Hymie Solstein, a couple of Mike Espizito’s walking nightmares. They’re nobody for you to know, or even think about, baby.”

“Jim, give me a nickel, please. I’ve got to make a phone call.”

He caught her shoulders. “Are you in some kind of trouble, baby?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Jim. Please don’t ask me about it now.”

“Okay,” Jim Evans said gloomily. “But I’d rather see snakes crawling around the dance floor than those characters in your dressing room. I’ll tell Sam to play another chorus, but rush it up.” He dug a coin from his pocket.

Linda hurried down to the pay phone at the end of the corridor and dialed the Call-Bulletin. A man on the City desk told her that Mark Brewster could probably be reached at the Sixty-fifth District.

Linda stepped out of the phone booth and borrowed a nickel from a passing waitress. Then she called the police board, and asked for the Sixty-fifth...

Nolan walked into the Simba about midnight. The band was playing one of Linda’s songs but she wasn’t on the stage. Despite the steam bath he was still flushed with liquor, and he knew he shouldn’t have come here. Yet he had to see Linda. That was the only thing that mattered.

He walked across the dance floor and down the corridor that led to the dressing rooms. Jim Evans was standing in front of Linda’s, looking worriedly at his watch.

“Where’s Linda?” Nolan asked.

“She’s phoning somebody. Say, Barny, you’re just the man I want to see. I think I need a cop.”

“What’s up?”

Evans shrugged, and glanced back to the booth where Linda was on the phone. “I’m damned if I know, Barny. But Hymie Solstein and Laddy O’Neill were here to see Linda. She won’t tell me why, but I don’t like the idea of those characters being in the same county with her.”

“They were here, eh?”

“Sure, right in her dressing room. What’s the matter, Barny?”

Nolan shoved past him and walked down the corridor to the telephone booth. He reached the open door in time to hear Linda say, “All right, I’ll see you then. And thanks.”

When she stepped from the booth, he saw that she was pale and nervous.

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

“Barny, not now. I’m on.”

He took her arm. “Let’s go back to your dressing room.”

Jim Evans came toward them, looking desperate. “Linda, Sam can’t keep playing your introduction all night.”

“She isn’t going on yet,” Nolan told him, and his hand tightened on Linda’s arm. “Come on, kid. We got a little talking to do.”

Inside her dressing room he kicked the door shut. “Okay now. What did Espizito’s punks want?”

She sat down, her hands locked tightly together in her lap. “I don’t really know, Barny.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“All right. They wanted to know if you were spending money on me. That was about as far as they got before Jim came in.”

“All right, what else?”

“Nothing, Barny.” She looked up at him, and saw that he looked desperately ill. “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve been drinking. What the hell difference does that make to you?”

She turned away from him and put both hands to her face, and then she began to weep.

Nolan stared down at her shining hair, at her slim bare shoulders; and suddenly his anger melted away and he was left with nothing but confusion and sadness.

Clumsily he knelt beside her and patted her arm. “I never meant to do this to you, kid,” he said. “I loved you, that’s all. I wanted to do things that would make you happy. You’ve got to believe that. Don’t cry, kid. I’ll take care of Hymie and Laddy so they’ll never bother anybody again.”

“No, don’t do that, Barny.” She raised her head. “You’ll just get into trouble.” She was drawn almost helplessly to him, as she studied his bitter anguished face. He lowered his head and she stroked his thick curly hair. “Just take everything slowly, Barny,” she said in a gentle voice. “Will you do that?”

“Yeah, sure, kid.”

There was a harried knock on the door. “Linda?” Jim Evans called. “How about it?”

“All right, I’m coming. Barny, I must go.”

“Sure, sure,” he said, getting to his feet awkwardly. “Look, how about picking you up later?”

She didn’t have the heart to make any excuses. “Of course, Barny. After the last show.”

He grinned at her, and suddenly the gray depression was gone. “Great,” he said. “Great. Knock ’em dead, kid. See you later.”

Outside the Simba, Nolan paused indecisively for a moment, watching the crowds strolling by; and then he walked west, glancing into shooting galleries, book stores, movie lobbies. He stopped at a busy newsstand and nodded to the proprietor, a corpulent cheerful man who took horse bets.

“Seen Laddy O’Neill or Hymie around here lately?” he asked.

The vendor looked blank. Nolan said, “It’s just a personal matter.”

“Oh, sure, Barny, they came out of the Simba about half an hour ago. They were walking west.”

Nolan drifted into a few bars, moving slowly, deliberately, savoring a pleasant feeling of release. For the first time in what seemed an eternity he had a definite, physical object for his anger.

When he reached Twentieth Street he stopped and lit a cigar. The traffic of the night, couples hand-in-hand, derelicts, young men in sports jackets, on the make, flowed past him as he thought about Hymie and Laddy. Automatically, with cop-bred skill he began plotting their probable course for the rest of the night. He had checked a few bars with the thought that they might have stopped for a drink after leaving the Simba. Obviously they hadn’t. They’d probably returned to Espizito’s club to report. After that they might try Mama Ragoni’s for food, Ace MaGuire’s for bowling or billiards, or half a dozen other spots for craps or poker. Nolan knew where their women lived, too; that would be his last stop.

He returned to his car and drove down to South Philly where he found a parking place about a block from Mama Ragoni’s. The neighborhood was a rich and yeasty one, redolent of pepperoni, capacoli and Chianti; and on warm nights the steps of the row of houses were occupied by elderly men playing checkers, and women who held sleeping babies in their arms and talked to one another in soft voices. Under the street lamp at the corner, teen-aged boys and girls formed noisy groups; and from the open doors of cafés the jingling melodies of Puccini, Donizetti and Verdi soared into the night.

Nolan had grown up in a neighborhood like this one, but in times when there had been very little pepperoni and Chianti, and when the men weren’t working; and the kids who hung around the street corners were afraid they’d never get a job, and would never have any money for girls or dates or clothes. Everyone was afraid in those days, and Nolan had done a lot of street fighting to prove he wasn’t.

Mama Ragoni’s wasn’t crowded. Two or three men stood at the bar, and in the rear dining room only two tables were occupied. At one table sat two young men with dates; and at the other sat Laddy and Hymie, attacking steaming plates of veal scallopini. Wicker-wrapped flasks of Chianti were at their elbows.

Nolan paused in the doorway for an instant, and then walked slowly into the dining room.

Laddy O’Neill glanced up and saw him coming. He put his fork down and nudged Hymie with his knee. Hymie looked up smiling, but then his eyes narrowed slightly. He lifted a glass of Chianti to the detective, and said, blandly: “Hi ya, keed. Got time for a drink?”

Nolan didn’t hear him. He was conscious of nothing but the two faces before him, the smiling faces of the men who had bothered Linda. His gun came out so swiftly that neither of them had a chance to move. He slapped the barrel across Laddy’s face with every ounce of strength in his arm, and the big man toppled backward and hit the floor with a crash. Hymie came to his feet, swearing loudly, but Nolan had already started his back-handed swing and the gun barrel struck his temple as he grabbed for a wine bottle.

Hymie sat back down drunkenly, cursing in a confused, mumbling voice, and holding his bleeding head in both hands. Laddy came up to his feet and Nolan kicked him squarely in the mouth. O’Neill went backward, knocked over a table and landed on his back.

A girl at the other table was screaming wildly. The two young men were trying to pull her toward the bar but she fought them off and continued to scream in a demented fashion.

Nolan leaped on top of Laddy and slapped the gun barrel across his face four times, viciously, deliberately. Then he stood and turned to Hymie who was still holding his head and moaning softly.

“Punks,” he said, shouting the word. “Don’t come near me again, hear? You hear that?”

He put his gun away and strode past the screaming girl into the barroom. Mama Ragoni was behind the bar, pale and tearful. “You crazy man,” she yelled. “You crazy man. I’ll call the police.”

Nolan’s anger was already gone. The physical release had drained him and he felt calm and empty. He turned to Mama Ragoni and flipped out his wallet and showed her his shield.

“What do you want a cop for?”

“You crazy man!” she said in a hoarse, incredulous voice.

“Yeah?” Nolan walked out smiling.

Mark Brewster knocked on Linda’s dressing room door at twelve-thirty, half an hour after he’d got her call. She let him in and he saw that she was pale beneath her make-up.

“Thanks for coming over.” She twisted her hands together nervously. “I can’t offer you a drink, but maybe you’d like a cigarette.”

Mark saw that she was on edge. “Nothing at all, thanks,” he said. “Why don’t we sit down?”

“I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m all mixed up, Mark.”

“Supposing you tell me what Laddy and Hymie wanted.”

“They were curious about Barny.” She sat down, looked at her hands. “Specifically they wanted to know if he’d given me any money.”

“Well, Espizito isn’t wasting any time, obviously. Then what?”

“That’s about all. Jim came by then, and they left. After that Barny was here.”

“Oh? Did you call him, too?”

“No, he just came by to see me. He’d been drinking — he acted as if he might explode any minute.”

Mark lit a cigarette. “I can control my sympathy for him with practically no effort at all,” he said dryly. “Did you tell him about Laddy’s and Hymie’s visit?”

“Yes.”

“They’ll probably regret that they stopped by without invitations. Did Nolan have anything else to say?”

Linda stood and walked to her dressing table. She picked up a cigarette but didn’t put it in her mouth. “He wanted to see me later tonight,” she said. “He seemed, oh, I don’t know, as if he couldn’t go on much longer.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I told him I’d see him, of course. He’s meeting me here after my last show.”

They were silent a moment; and then Mark struck a match and nodded to her cigarette. “You might as well light that thing,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“You had to see him, of course,” he said, and dropped the match deliberately onto the floor.

“Yes, I had to, Mark. Not because I was afraid of arousing his suspicions or anything like that. But simply because he seems to have got into more trouble than he can stand.”

“He chose his trouble pretty deliberately,” Mark said, meeting her eyes. “Are you forgetting that?”

“I’m not forgetting anything. But, Mark, there’s something about him — oh, I just can’t put it in words. He’s like a baby at times. He’s turbulent, rebellious and yet so damn simple and helpless.”

“You love the guy, don’t you?” Mark said, standing. “Why don’t you say that, instead of giving me this social-service worker routine?”

“You’re utterly ridiculous. I don’t love him, but I can’t hate him. I pity him.”

Their eyes met angrily. Mark said, “This helpless little baby of yours tried to kill me last night. Did he happen to lisp that boyish prank of his into your ear?”

“Oh no, Mark.”

“Oh yes, Linda,” he said, repeating her inflection deliberately. “Early this morning, when I left your apartment, he tried to run me down in his car. That, I suppose, is the sort of activity you’d call willful and rebellious.”

“Oh, stop it, Mark,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t stand there mocking me. Why are you doing it? Can’t you see I have to help him? Can’t you understand that?”

He shrugged his shoulders tiredly. “I’m sorry, Linda. I didn’t mean to be sarcastic about it. But I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.”

Linda put her hand on his arm impulsively. “Mark, I want you to understand it. It’s important to me that you do. Barny’s made a symbol of me. He’s put me on a ridiculous pedestal. He’s got me confused with success and security and love, and all the things he’s missed in life. I represent a cure-all for his mistakes, shortcomings, tough breaks. I didn’t see that until tonight. Now I simply can’t throw him back on his resources. Not right away, not brutally, Mark.”

Mark paused a moment, then looked down at the floor. “That’s up to you, Linda,” he said in an even voice.

“But I don’t want it that way, Mark. I want you to understand.”

“Why?”

She shrugged and sat down slowly at her dressing table. Studying herself in the mirror, she said: “Why? I don’t quite know, Mark. Perhaps I’ve got a lost-kitten complex and wanted to share it with you.”

“Nolan is no lost kitten, believe me, baby.”

She met his eyes in the mirror. “I suppose you’re right, Mark. I’m sure that when you say a thing it’s bound to be a dead-sure fact, cold, accurate and final.”

“How the hell did we get onto this?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice tired. “Would you excuse me now, please? I have to freshen up for my next show.”

“Sure,” he said. He stared at her bare shoulders and the clean line of her throat, for an instant; and then he turned and walked out of the room.

When the door slammed, Linda picked up a lipstick from the table and started to do her lips; but her hands were trembling and it was no use. She put her head down on her arms and began to cry.

14

August Sternmueller was in an unusually reflective mood as he prepared his simple but hearty breakfast. Normally August was a cheerful person, not given to moods, and for that reason his present concern was additionally disturbing.

The thing that was bothering August was this: Three days before he had seen a murder committed, and he didn’t know quite what to do about it. Oh, he knew he should go directly to the police, but the fear of getting involved in the matter was strong enough to suspend him in a state of guilty inaction.

August was sixty-three, a native-born German, who, after thirty years in the U.S. Postal Department, had been retired on a pension that was more than ample for his needs. He lived in a two-room flat whose front windows overlooked the intersection of Crab Street and Ellens Lane. Three nights ago August had been sitting at those windows, smoking a goodnight pipe and idly watching the dark and shining street. He had been thinking of an interesting addition to his timetable collection that had arrived that morning from Johannesburg, Africa. It was from the chap he’d sent the early Reading schedule to; and the prize that had come by return mail practically was a perfectly preserved timetable of a spur line that Kimberly interests had operated fifty years ago.

August’s entire day had been brightened by the gift, which he had immediately and with maternal care added to his collection of more than four thousand railway schedules he had gathered from all over the world.

But while he had been sitting there at the windows, smoking his pipe and thinking of that prize from Africa, he had noticed two men walking along the darkened street.

They had stopped at Ellens Lane and, after a bit of conversation, one of the men had walked into the Lane, slowly and to judge from his backward glances, reluctantly. The other man, the larger of the two, had drawn a gun from beneath his armpit, and when the walking man stopped, he had fired two shots into his body.

August had leaped to his feet in the darkened room, an involuntary “No!” bursting from his lips. People had rushed into the street, and a bit later police cars arrived with their sirens screaming.

August had watched breathlessly, waiting for the police to arrest the man who had done the shooting. But nothing of the sort happened. The dead man was taken away in a wagon, and the police went off, leaving only a few of the curious on the scene.

The next morning he had scanned the papers eagerly to find out what happened. And that was when he learned that something was very decidedly wrong. The papers said a detective had shot an escaping prisoner. August knew that was a lie. The man hadn’t been trying to escape. It was ridiculous.

August was not a particularly clever man but he was able to perceive that he might get in trouble by volunteering information to the police. They were apparently satisfied to do nothing about this murder; and they might resent a lowly civilian interfering with their affairs. On the other hand, August thought, it was his plain duty to bring this matter to their attention. This was one of the obligations implicit in his allegiance to the United States: to do his duty, to report the truth to the authorities.

But it was a hard decision. August led a full and contented life. He ate well, he slept well, he enjoyed simple pleasures. His time-tables were his one mild passion. He might jeopardize all this by getting involved with Officialdom and Authority, which, to August’s Teutonic soul, were the twin horns of a dangerous, unpredictable monster.

August took his customary walk to Rittenhouse Square that morning. He fed peanuts to the squirrels and played grave games with the children who were brought there by nurses. The children all knew him and ran to him with accounts of what had happened since their last meeting, which had been on the previous morning. At noon he left the park and strolled to the Suburban station of the Pennsylvania Railroad where he glanced with a connoisseur’s eye at the timetables. There was a new Philadelphia-Paoli schedule, he saw, so he pocketed it with a small feeling of triumph. It wasn’t an important one, like the Kimberly, for instance, but it was a pleasant little catch.

August had a late lunch at the Farmer’s Market in Reading Terminal, surrounded by the aromas of sausages, cheeses and briny soaked fish. A bowl of snapper soup, a plate of vegetables with sour cream, a few jokes with the old counter man, and he was off for home, comfortably tired and ready for his afternoon nap.

When he stretched out on his couch with a cup of tea beside him and a well-drawing pipe in his hands, he reflected that he must not evade his responsibility. This country had given him everything, friends, security, comforts for his old age. And so, he decided, as he put his pipe aside, he would do his duty. He would go to the police this afternoon. Right after his nap when he would be rested and alert.

Mark Brewster called Linda that same afternoon at three o’clock. He asked if he could see her and she said, of course.

She was wearing a beige sports dress with brown-and-white spectator pumps when she met him at the door. Her hair was brushed and shining, and her make-up was fresh, but she seemed tired.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked him, as they sat down.

“No, nothing, thanks.”

They were silent a moment. Mark looked down at the latticed pattern of the sun on the carpet and felt the stillness of the room. Finally, he said: “I felt like hell after leaving you last night. That’s about all I came here to say. I want to understand how you feel about Nolan and I guess I do.”

“I didn’t feel very good either last night,” Linda said.

They were both speaking very carefully.

“Well,” Mark said, standing and glancing at his watch, “I’ve got to run along.”

“Please don’t go yet, Mark. We’re still friends, aren’t we?”

“Why, of course.”

“Then don’t run off like this. I want you to stay, Mark.”

“Well, fine,” he said. He grinned at her and she smiled back at him; and the curious tension between them dissolved.

“He was here last night, you know,” she said.

“What shape was he in?”

“He was very calm for a change. He talked about himself, about the fights he’d been in, about the breaks he’d had, and so forth.” Linda nodded to an over-stuffed chair. “He sat there with his head back and just talked for two solid hours.”

“He nearly killed Laddy O’Neill earlier last night,” Mark said. “Did he mention that?”

Linda shook her head slowly. “No, he didn’t, Mark.” She rubbed her temples with the tips of her fingers. “When is it going to stop, Mark? How long can he go on?”

He shrugged. “Nolan’s the law. He committed murder and stole twenty-five thousand dollars. Nothing’s happened about that, you’ll notice.”

She leaned back on the couch and put the back of her hand against her forehead. “It’s all so ghastly.”

Mark went over and sat beside her. He took one of her hands and patted it gently. “You always get a stricken look when we talk about Nolan. So let’s skip him for a while. Okay?”

“All right. But we can’t blame my stricken look altogether on Barny. I’ve got a foul sore throat.”

“That’s a shame. Have you done all the usual things that don’t help?”

“Yes, so maybe it’s just nerves. I’m not sure I can sing tonight.”

“That bad, eh?”

She smiled at him. “Now you’re getting a stricken look. So let’s skip my sore throat, okay?”

“Okay.”

She looked down at their interlocked hands for a moment, and then looked at him smiling. “Okay, what shall we talk about now?”

Nolan walked into the Division at four o’clock. Sergeant Odell nodded to him and said hello. He sat down at an empty desk and lit a cigar, enjoying a rare sense of well-being. Despite his gluttonous drinking the day before, his head was clear and his lunch was settling comfortably on his stomach.

The time he had spent with Linda last night was a memory that he had been examining ever since with a feeling of glowing pleasure. It was the first time he’d ever felt close to her, really close. They had sat in her apartment, the first time he’d ever been there, and he’d talked to her about the important things in his life. They were big moments to him, and it did him good to tell Linda about them. That was how people got close together, he knew now.

Gianfaldo said: “Sarge, I hear Laddy O’Neill and Hymie Solstein got a working over last night.”

Odell grunted. “Where’d you hear that?”

“A porter at Espizito’s lives in my building. He told me about it. O’Neill is over at St. Agnes’s in real bad shape. Hymie just got a busted head.”

“That right? Where’d it happen?”

“At Mama Ragoni’s. Some guy walked in and gave it to ’em good.”

“One guy?”

“Yeah, that’s the story.”

“Well, he must have been a damn good man,” Odell said, going back to his paper.

Nolan smiled behind his paper. That might slow Espizito down a bit. He’d know now that Barny Nolan wasn’t playing for fish cakes.

Smitty and Lindfors sauntered in, five minutes late. Odell glanced pointedly at the clock but said nothing.

“Let’s get the cards out,” Smitty said, skimming his hat onto a desk. He ignored Nolan. “I got a date tonight and I hate to spend my own money on women.”

He walked into the adjoining room with Lindfors and Gianfaldo at his heels. Odell heaved himself to his feet and said to Nolan, “Watch this phone, will you? I want to make sure Smitty doesn’t have too much cash to waste on that dame.”

“Sure,” Nolan said.

Sergeant Odell hesitated a second. “You don’t play cards anyway, do you, Nolan?”

Nolan glanced up and said: “No, I guess I don’t.”

Odell walked in and joined the game and Nolan heard his booming laugh as he won the deal. To hell with them, he thought, knocking a length of cigar ash onto the floor. Nothing could dampen his good spirits, least of all the coolness of a bunch of slobs whose opinion didn’t mean anything to him anyway. Everything in his life was beginning to make sense, he thought, drawing contentedly on his cigar.

The outer door opened a few moments later and an elderly man with white hair and plump rosy cheeks approached the counter. There was an air of diffidence and uncertainty in his manner as he removed his hat and smiled at Nolan.

Nolan hoisted himself from his chair and walked to the counter.

“What can I do for you?” The man wore a neat dark suit, a precisely tied tie, and seemed very nervous. Lost his dog, Nolan thought.

“You are a detective?”

“That’s right.” Nolan pulled a pad toward him and took a pencil from his pocket. “What’s your trouble?”

“I have information about a murder,” the man said.

Nolan looked at him sharply, but saw only a rather ludicrous determination in the little man’s round face.

“What’s your name?”

“August Sternmueller.”

“Where do you live, August?”

“I live at 216 Crab Street. That is just at the intersection of Crab Street and Ellens Lane.”

“Yeah, I know,” Nolan said. Something stirred in him warningly. He glanced at the little man, studying him with alert eyes. “Let’s hear about this murder, now.”

“Very well. Three nights ago, as you may perhaps remember, a man was killed in Ellens Lane.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Nolan said. “Go on.”

“I saw this murder from my window,” August said. “The papers said the man was a prisoner who was trying to escape. That was a lie. That man was shot and killed deliberately.” August nodded for emphasis.

“I see,” Nolan said. He was perspiring, the sweat trickling down his ribs. “How is it that you’re just coming around now with this story?”

August leaned closer to Nolan and locked his hands together nervously. “I didn’t wish to get mixed up in any trouble, sir. I was selfish, I admit it. I delayed doing my duty because I was afraid that my life would be upset. But I know I did wrong. Now I am ready to do my duty.”

Nolan scratched his head with the point of the pencil. “You’d go to court and swear to all this, I suppose.”

“Absolutely,” August said firmly. “That man was shot in the back, deliberately. He was standing still when he was shot. It was a terrible thing.”

“Sure,” Nolan said. “Did you see anything else?”

“Yes. The man with the gun ran to the side of the man who was shot and he bent over him and took something from his pocket. After that he ran across the street and out of my sight. He came back in a few minutes and waited for the police.”

Nolan heard a laugh from the adjoining room. Then Lindfors’ voice: “To hell with this game. I’m going to save my money.”

Nolan tapped the man’s arm. “Thanks for your trouble, August. We’ll send someone over to your house to get the whole story.”

“But I—”

“Never mind. We’ll come to see you.”

“You are sure you will come? Now that I have started this I must see it through. My conscience won’t let me sleep until this affair is settled.”

“We’ll settle it, all right,” Nolan said.

“Thank you so much.”

August Sternmueller raised his hat in a formal little gesture to Nolan, then clapped it on his head and marched through the door. Nolan stood at the counter staring at the name and address on the pad. August Sternmueller. 216 Crab Street.

“What’d little Fritzie want?” It was Lindfors’ voice.

Nolan turned, saw the detective standing by the windows. His hands were in his pockets, and a cigarette hung from his lips.

“Nothing,” he said. He crumpled the paper and put it casually in his pocket. “Somebody stole a blanket from his car.”

“Car locked?”

“No. Somebody just helped himself.”

“These characters. They never learn.”

Nolan sat down and picked up an evening paper. His heart was pumping harder than usual, and his cigar tasted bitter. What a break! What a lousy, dirty break! Anger brought a red flush to his face. Everything going fine, and then this kick in the face. He knew Sternmueller’s type. A methodical stubborn Kraut who’d stick to his story like a bulldog, and who’d keep pestering people until he found someone who would take him seriously. The talk would spread, the rumors would thicken, and pretty soon everyone would be watching Nolan out of the corners of their eyes, all because a damn Kraut wouldn’t mind his own business. Nolan marveled at the fantastic luck that had permitted him to intercept the man.

Thinking about that angle made him feel slightly better. Things were still breaking his way, apparently still making sense. He tossed his paper aside, thinking that at least he had the chance to take care of August Sternmueller before he talked to the wrong people.

The card game broke up half an hour later.

Darkness came and the business of the Division went on as usual. There was a shooting in South Philly and Smitty took it. Ramussen came in, nodded to Odell and went into his office. Three or four people came in to register various complaints or losses. Finally the phone rang and Sergeant Odell picked it up and began making notes on the pad at his elbow. Occasionally he said, “Yeah, yeah,” and then put the phone down.

“Take this one, Nolan,” he said. “Some guy at 43 °Crab Street had his room busted open and a few hundred bucks lifted. The name is Dawes. Fred Dawes.”

“Okay,” Nolan said. That address was not far from where August Sternmueller lived. There was a musing smile on his lips as he took the slip of paper from Odell and walked out of the Division.

15

The man whose room had been broken into was about twenty-five, with thinning blond hair and a habit of smiling nervously as he talked.

Nolan glanced around the bedroom, then took out his notebook and asked a few questions. Fred Dawes worked as a short-order cook, and his money had been hidden away in the bottom of the bureau drawer.

“Okay, Fred,” Nolan said. “Where do you do your drinking?”

Fred Dawes smiled, rubbed his cheek. “I don’t do much of that, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, somebody knew about the money. This wasn’t a lucky hit. Somebody heard you talking about it, probably. If it wasn’t a taproom, how about at work?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I do stop by a taproom at Maple and Eleventh. A fellow by the name of Joe tends bar there. I play darts and have a few beers there payday.” Fred Dawes smiled as he talked, as if ready to say it was all a joke if anyone questioned his story.

“We’ll check Joe’s place then,” Nolan said.

Fred Dawes rubbed his cheek and smiled at the floor. “Well, I wouldn’t like you to tell the boys there about it, as a matter of fact. They’re a nice bunch, friends of mine, you see, and it’s about the only spot I’ve got to kill time in, if you know what I mean.” The smile widened. “You know how a guy gets attached to the place he hangs at, I suppose.”

“You’re afraid the boys at Joe’s won’t love you any more if you point out one of them as a thief, eh?”

“Well, no. Not exactly.”

“Damn it, do you want your money back or not?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Okay. Next time you get some, put it in a bank.”

Nolan glanced sourly at the ripped wood near the knob of the door, and then walked down the street toward the intersection of Crab Street and Ellens Lane.

August Sternmueller opened the door to his gentle knock.

“Ah, come in,” August said. “I hardly expected you so soon.”

“Well, this is a pretty serious matter.”

He glanced about the neat, comfortably furnished living room and tossed his hat into a chair. “Supposing you tell me all about it, now.”

“Certainly.” August’s manner was solemn. He knew he was doing his duty and that assurance gave him a solid dignity. “Come here, please. To the windows.”

Nolan walked across the room and August pulled aside the curtains and pointed into the street.

“You see? I had a perfect view of what really happened that night.”

“Yeah, a box seat,” Nolan said quietly.

He moved slowly to the windows and stared into Ellens Lane. He could see the spot where Dave Fiest had hit the ground, all right. Frowning, he let the curtain fall back in place. He had wanted to check this one point to make sure the old Kraut wasn’t imagining things. Obviously he wasn’t; and that more or less made up Nolan’s mind.

The other fact that helped him reach a decision was the arrangement of the rooming house. August’s front room opened on an enclosed stairway which led directly to the small foyer. A person could leave this apartment and go down to the street with little chance of being observed.

“I don’t know how the newspapers could have gotten their story so mixed up,” August said, looking solemnly at Nolan. “I saw what really happened so I know. Do you know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think that murderer was no policeman at all. I think he impersonated a policeman to commit the murder.”

“That could be it,” Nolan said thoughtfully. “Tell me this: Could you identify the man who did the shooting?”

“No, I’m afraid I couldn’t,” August said, with an apologetic smile.

“Well, that doesn’t matter too much.”

August’s smile was in a more relaxed manner. He felt better now that he had done his duty and transferred his information to the capable hands of this detective.

“You got a nice place here,” Nolan said, glancing around.

“Thank you.”

“Do your own cooking?”

“Oh, yes, indeed. And my own marketing. I put in enough on Mondays to last me the whole week.” He chuckled. “You might be surprised at some of the things I make. Sauerbraten, Wiener Schnitzel and apple dumplings even. I take good care of my stomach.”

“Yeah?” Nolan smiled. “That’s a smart idea.”

He walked into the adjoining room which was lined with wooden filing cabinets. August was at his heels, a pleased little smile on his lips.

“This is where I keep my time-tables,” he said.

“Time-tables?”

“Yes, I collect them,” August said, somewhat defensively. So few people understood the pleasure he took in his hobby. “I have been collecting them for years. I have the schedules of every major line in the world, and from hundreds of tiny spur fines I dare say you’ve never heard of.”

“Well, well,” Nolan said.

“Would you like to look at some of my very early ones?” August said, eagerly.

“Some other time. The kitchen’s right through here, eh?”

“Yes.” August pushed open a swinging door and preceded Nolan into a small immaculate kitchen. Nolan glanced about, noting the gas stove and its capacious oven.

“A very nice set-up,” he said, taking the cigar from his mouth.

August faced him smilingly, pleased by the detective’s unexpected interest in his home. “Yes, I’ve worked hard all my life, and now I enjoy myself, eh? That is the way it should be. The old people should have their little comforts. It keeps them out of the way of the young,” he said, and laughed at his own humor.

“And that’s where you keep the pots and pans, eh?” Nolan said, looking over the old man’s shoulder.

August turned around, nodding. “Yes, I built that cupboard myself.”

“Well, you’re damn smart,” Nolan said, and raised his arm.

Those were the last words August Sternmueller ever heard.

Nolan was back at the Division by seven-thirty. He walked around the counter and stopped at Odell’s desk. “This fellow Dawes hangs out at a place at Eleventh and Maple. My guess is he got drunk there and talked about his money and where it was stashed away. Supposing I check around over there and see what I can find out.”

Odell grunted without much interest. “Think it’ll do any good?”

“Hell, no,” Lindfors said, from across the room. He was sitting with his feet propped up on a desk. “In a case like that, it could have been fifty guys.”

Odell answered the phone, switched the call into the Lieutenant’s office. “You might take a look over there anyway,” he said to Nolan. “Although it probably won’t do any good. I know the guy who runs the place. His name is Joe Empiro. Tell him I don’t want his joint getting a bad name. He’s all right. He’ll work with you.”

“Okay,” Nolan said.

He sat down and took off his hat, feeling hot and sticky, but otherwise just fine. He was calm and relaxed. Now, he thought idly, almost lazily, I’m running the show. He wasn’t standing around on the outside waiting for a nod from someone, waiting for the break, waiting for something to fall into his lap. Irrelevantly, he thought of Petey Felickson, his old ward boss. Petey had yapped at him in those old days, treated him like a dog, a hungry dog. That was Dave Fiest’s pitch, too. Have a drink, Barny? Come on, have a shot. Go ahead, take a bone, you slob. They were all so damn smart.

Nolan leaned back in his chair. A wind was coming in through the windows now and the room was cooler. He lit a cigar and smiled slightly.

The door opened a while later and Mark Brewster walked in. He rested his elbows on the counter and nodded to Odell and Lindfors. “Anything doing?” he asked.

This was about the time for his regular check of the Division, Nolan knew, but nevertheless his presence struck him as suspicious.

“No, Mark, not a thing,” Odell said. He hesitated uncomfortably, glanced at Nolan, then at the reporter. “Come on in and sit down, Mark,” he said.

“Thanks, Sarge.”

Brewster sauntered around the counter and leaned against it, with his arms folded.

“Did you hear about Hymie Solstein and Laddy?” he asked.

Odell grinned. “Yeah, Gianfaldo told me about it.”

Nolan glanced up at the reporter. This was the first time he’d seen Brewster since the time he’d come out of Linda’s apartment, and he’d run him down with his car. Brewster was limping slightly, Nolan noticed; but other than that he seemed in good shape.

Something about the reporter made Nolan uneasy. He watched Brewster’s lean face as he chatted with Odell, wondering if he’d meant anything in particular with the crack about Hymie and Laddy. That was what he didn’t like about the reporter. He kept dropping comments that sounded significant at first, but when you pinned them down you found they didn’t mean anything after all. Or they didn’t seem to.

The phone on Odell’s desk buzzed. He picked it up, said, “Yeah, yeah,” and reached for a pencil. He listened a moment, writing occasionally. Then he said: “Okay, lady, we’ll send someone right over.”

“Lindy, take this one,” he said, putting the phone down. “Some guy stuck his head in the oven and turned on the gas. That was his landlady.”

“What’s the address?” Lindfors said.

“216 Crab Street. Fellow by the name of Sternmueller. Old guy, I guess.”

“Is he dead?” Nolan asked.

“The landlady smelled gas and went upstairs and found him in the oven,” Odell said, handing the slip of paper to Lindfors.

Nolan stood up suddenly, glaring at Odell. “I asked you if he was dead,” he said in a hard tight voice.

Odell looked at him with a frown. “Yeah, he’s dead. What the hell do you care?”

Nolan sat down, anger surging through him. “I don’t care,” he said.

Mark Brewster was watching him, he knew. He could feel the reporter’s eyes on him, sense his thoughts. Turning his head swiftly, he stared at Brewster, but the reporter wasn’t looking at him; he was gazing at the ceiling, a faint smile on his lips.

Lindfors walked over to Mark and said: “You want this one?”

“216 Crab Street. That’s at Ellens Lane, isn’t it?” Mark said.

“Yeah, that’s about where it comes in.”

“Well, it’s probably worth a paragraph,” Mark said.

“Come on then. I’ll run you over.”

“Okay.”

When Lindfors and the reporter left, Nolan strolled over to the window and stared into the street. He watched the traffic passing by under him, and the cluster of Negroes who were standing about in front of the cigar store opposite the station. They were waiting to get the day’s winning number from the first edition of the morning paper.

The number was determined by the arrangement of the win, place and show figures of the first race at a nearby track, and everyone at the cigar store was convinced that tonight his lucky number was going to hit.

Nolan thought about them as he puffed slowly on his cigar. They were the suckers who took down numbers from street car transfers, from grocery receipts, from combinations of their wives’ birthdays and their army serial numbers, hoping to find eventually the system to beat the numbers bankers.

They were the slobs, he thought with pleasure.

He had been in that class until this week. Waiting for the breaks, praying for some accidents, some lucky development that would make everything bright and rosy. But that break never came, he knew. All you got for standing around was a push in the face. You had to take life into your hands and make it give you the breaks, the way the big shots did. That was what he’d done. Dave Fiest, Espizito, that little slug, Sternmueller, they’d learned the hard way that Barny Nolan wasn’t a slob.

He wondered about Sternmueller. Pious, sneaky little bastard, collecting time-tables and peeking out his windows in the middle of the night. Probably hoping to catch some young kids necking. Nolan knew his type. Snooping do-gooder. Turning from the window he drew a deep breath, filling his lungs to the utmost. He felt then that he knew all about everybody in the world.

Suddenly he had to see Linda. She had done all this for him, he thought. Together, they were bigger than anything in the world.

“Sarge, I’ll run over and see Joe Empiro now,” he said. “Maybe I’ll grab a bite while I’m out.”

“Okay. Don’t forget to tell Joe I don’t want his place getting a bad name.”

“I’ll tell him.” He put on his hat and walked out.

Miss Elmira Taylor, age fifty-six, had never known such an evening in her fife. Finding poor Mr. Sternmueller like that was enough to make a body doubt the ways of Providence.

She stood in the middle of his living room, trembling with importance and excitement, and related the harrowing details to the two men from the Police Department.

“I had just come from church, you see, and was fixing a bite for my niece, Mary, and I said to her, ‘Well, Mary, summer brings all kinds of smells with it, don’t it?’ because I had noticed this funny smell in the hallway—”

“Yeah, then you came upstairs,” Lindfors said, interrupting her with finality. “Was his door open?”

“Yes, it was. I went in and right away I smelled the gas stronger. I tell you I nearly fainted. I ran into the kitchen and there was the poor soul lying there with his head in the oven.”

“Well, people do things like that,” Lindfors said, with a philosophical shake of his head. “Was he sick or anything?”

“No, no. Mr. Sternmueller was the most cheerful man I think I ever knew. He was such a sweet person.” She put a handkerchief to her red eyes. “Full of fun and little jokes all the day long.”

Mark put his notebook away and strolled to the front windows. He pulled the curtains aside, and glanced down into the street; and a tiny frown gathered over his eyes. These windows, he realized, overlooked the spot where Dave Fiest had been killed. That didn’t mean anything necessarily but he found the coincidence thought-provoking.

Lindfors had gone into the kitchen. Mark returned to the dining room and glanced at the cabinets that were built against the walls.

“He collected time-tables,” Miss Elmira said. “From all over the world. He had thousands of them right here in this room. It was all he cared about.”

Mark picked up a few letters from a desk and looked through them. They were from various parts of the world, England, Sweden, Africa, and related to time-tables received, dispatched, discovered or desired. Time-tables were a big thing, he decided.

He stepped into the kitchen where Lindfors was on his knees beside Sternmueller’s huddled body.

“This character was in the Division this afternoon,” Lindfors said. “I remember him now. He lost a blanket from his car.”

“That’s no reason to commit suicide,” Mark said.

The coincidences were piling up in a curious fashion, he was thinking.

“Did you take care of him?” he asked Lindfors.

“No, Nolan did.” Lindfors bent over the body, humming under his breath. “See, he must have rolled over and hit an edge of the stove when he passed out.” He pointed to a faint discoloration along the old man’s jawline.

“He didn’t tell you about the blanket, then,” Mark said. “Nolan told you that the old man had lost a blanket.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Lindfors said. He got to his feet and dusted off the knees of his trousers. “I’ve got enough. The landlady tells me he’s got no relatives that she knows about. You ready to go?”

“No, I’ll stick around and see if I can pick up some background.”

“Okay.” Lindfors walked through the dining room, evaded Miss Elmira’s attempts to repeat the details of what had happened, and went out the front door.

Mark lit a cigarette and strolled into the living room. He sat on the edge of an arm chair and pushed his hat back on his forehead.

“You can’t think of any reason he’d kill himself?” he said to Miss Elmira.

“Oh, no. He was always so happy.”

“I see. Where did he keep his car?”

“Car? He didn’t have a car.”

Somehow Mark wasn’t surprised. He was tired and faintly bitter, but he wasn’t surprised. Everything fell inevitably into place. It was like a Greek tragedy, awesome, powerful but predictable. The plot just wasn’t any good.

“He didn’t have a car, eh?” Mark said. “Do you know if he was a sound sleeper?”

“Well, now that you mention it, he wasn’t. He napped in the afternoon, of course, and he used to say that kept him from sleeping at night. But I always say old folks don’t need so much sleep as the young.”

“That’s probably right,” Mark said. He glanced at the open windows, the curtains bellying slightly in the draft. “I’ll bet he sat over there where he could get a breath of air.”

“That’s right, so he did. He used to sit there and smoke his pipe at nights.”

“Thank you very much.”

“He was such a nice man,” Miss Elmira said, coming with him to the door. She began to weep. “He was such a nice little man.”

Mark patted her shoulder. “Yes, I’m sure he was,” he said quietly.

Sergeant Odell was alone when Mark came in ten minutes later.

“Is the Lieutenant in?” Mark asked.

“Yeah, sure. Did you get the suicide, all right?”

“Yes. Anything else doing?”

“No, everything’s quiet.”

“Fine.” Mark walked over and tapped on Ramussen’s door. Ramussen called out, “Come in.”

He was at his desk, glasses on, reading reports.

“Hello, Mark. What’s on your mind?”

Mark sat on the edge of his desk and said, “I’d like to talk about Nolan, Lieutenant.”

Something changed in Ramussen’s face. He removed his glasses and looked up at Mark with cold eyes. “I don’t want to hear about it, Mark. I was under the impression we understood each other on that subject.”

“Are you telling me you won’t listen?”

“I’m telling you that I’m running this Division and I don’t need your help.”

“Very well. Let me say just this much.” Mark lit a cigarette and tossed the match over his shoulder. “Reporters work pretty close to the Police Department here in Philly, and all over the country, I suppose. That’s okay on routine stuff, where it’s just a matter of taking names and addresses off forms. But occasionally something comes along where the private interests of the police and the reporter’s job of getting a story come into a conflict. Most reporters look the other way and play it the way the police want it played, because they’re liable to find themselves on the outside if they don’t.”

“So?” Ramussen said.

“So, this is to tell you I’m going after the story of Barny Nolan, with or without the Police Department. I’ve got a case against him, and if you don’t want it I’ll take it down to my managing editor. That’s not an attempt to scare you. I know you better than that. But neither is it a bluff. You know me better than that.”

Ramussen stared at him with cold bright eyes. Then, slowly, deliberately he put his glasses on and picked up a report.

“That’s it, eh?” Mark said.

“That’s it.”

“Okay.” Mark put his cigarette out in Ramussen’s ash-tray and walked to the door. He turned the knob and then glanced back at the Lieutenant.

Ramussen was watching him, frowning.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m a cop first. I’ll remember this a long time, but let’s have it. What’s your case against Nolan?”

Mark let the knob go and walked back to Ramussen’s desk. “First Nolan gave a friend of mine twenty-five thousand dollars to keep for him the day after he killed Dave Fiest. I’ve seen the money.”

Ramussen’s mouth was bitter. “Okay, Mark, who’s this friend?”

“A girl named Linda Wade. She’s a singer at the Simba and also a friend of Nolan’s.”

“I see. Nolan figured Espizito wouldn’t guess that he’d given the money to a dame.”

“She’s not a dame.”

“She’s anything I want to call her, get that?”

“Okay,” Mark said. “I don’t know what Nolan figured. I’m not a cop, so crooked angles don’t occur to me instinctively.”

Ramussen looked down at the blotter on his desk for a moment and then he shrugged. “You didn’t need to say that, Mark. Every citizen in town will be saying it when the story on Nolan breaks. They’ll say, ‘There’s a typical cop for you. A lousy thief.’ ”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” Mark said, and he was, genuinely sorry.

“Let’s get on with the case. What else have you got? The twenty-five thousand doesn’t prove anything but larceny.”

“You don’t think Nolan murdered Fiest for the money?”

“I believe evidence,” Ramussen said sharply. “If you’re so damn sure of yourself, why don’t you swear out a warrant and have him arrested.”

Mark lit another cigarette carefully. “You’re not mad at me, you’re mad at yourself, Lieutenant. Why don’t you forget for a second that sacred wall cops build around themselves? Let’s start with the amiable assumption that we’re all human and fallible, and work together from there. I think Nolan has committed two murders, attempted one other, and incidentally, beaten hell out of two of Espizito’s men. I can’t prove all of that yet, but with your help I can.”

Ramussen drummed his fingers on the top of the desk and looked away from Mark. “That sacred wall you talk about is pretty much a defensive measure. We’re considered the scum of the earth by a lot of law-abiding citizens, and we get sensitive about it.” He rubbed his forehead and said in a low bitter voice: “I knew what Nolan was up to. But I was waiting him out, hoping he’d hang himself. That’s my fault, I suppose. Uncritical loyalty. Well, let’s have it all. You said two murders and an attempt.”

“Okay, tonight a man named August Sternmueller apparently committed suicide. He lived at the intersection of Crab Street and Ellens Lane. Does that mean anything to you?”

“That’s where Dave Fiest was shot. Go on.”

“Okay, here’s the story.”

16

Nolan was riding a high wave of contentment. He sat in Linda’s apartment with his legs stretched out before him, holding a beaded glass of whisky and ice in his hand.

“Kid, this is the life,” he said, grinning at her, and debating how much he could safely tell her of tonight’s activities. He knew that he was smart and strong; and it was important that she know it, too.

Linda smiled back at him and glanced casually at her watch. Eight-forty. She was wearing slippers and a robe. She had decided not to do her show tonight because her throat had got worse after Mark had left. Jim Evans had wanted to send a doctor over right away, but she knew it wasn’t that serious. Shortly after that Barny had arrived; and now she was wishing she’d made the effort to get to work.

“Aren’t you on duty tonight?” she asked.

“Sure, I’m working,” Nolan said, and sipped his drink. “But things are quiet. Don’t worry about me. You want to know a little secret, Linda?”

“What is it?”

“I may quit the department. Yeah, that’s right.” He laughed and rubbed the cold glass between his palms. “It’s a lousy racket you know. Lousy hours. Lousy pay. But it’s got its compensations.” He laughed again, new-found confidence coursing through his body. “I’ll say that again. It’s got its compensations. You know, kid, a cop can do lots of things an ordinary citizen can’t. That ever occur to you?”

The bottle was at his side on a table. Clean, bonded Bourbon. He poured another generous shot over his ice and glanced at Linda. “You know, kid, we never talked like this before. We just never sat down and talked. That’s been the trouble.”

Linda was smiling. “We’ve talked quite a bit, Barny.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. But not like this. Not in a quiet room with a couple of drinks. With the world going by outside the windows and not giving a damn about us. That’s what I mean.”

He was silent a moment, pondering the truth of this, and then he glanced at his watch. The habits of seventeen years were too strong to shake off in one drunken, exultant moment. “I’d better give Odell a call,” he said. “I’ll tell him I’m tied up and won’t be along for a while. Hell, they can get along without me for a few hours.”

“Barny, aren’t you liable to get in trouble?”

“You want me to go?” He smiled at her, confident and amused. “You want me to go, Linda?”

“Well, no.”

“Then let me worry about the trouble. Listen to how I handle this.”

He walked to the phone, swaying slightly, and called the Division. When Odell answered he said, “Sarge, this is Nolan. Look, I’m going to be a little longer than I thought on this job.” He winked broadly at Linda. “I’m at Empiro’s Place. But I should be along in an hour or so.”

“Okay,” Odell said.

“Just thought I’d let you know.”

“Okay.”

Nolan put the phone down and returned to his chair. “Now there’s a real Grade A slob for you,” he said. “Sergeant Odell.” He sat down and replenished his drink. Stretching out comfortably, he smiled at Linda.

“Most cops are rock-headed characters, you know,” he said. “You didn’t know that I’ll bet. But it’s a fact. They’re stupes. The only thing they know about is murder. They’re pros at that, it’s their racket. They could give any amateur a head start in that department and win hands down. They work with it all the time, they see it, they know what it is, and they’re not scared of it.” He sipped his drink, enjoying the thrill of skirting the subject of murder. “Let’s suppose a cop commits a murder,” he said. “Supposing he shoots a guy, just like that!” Nolan pointed his forefinger at Linda and depressed his thumb sharply. “He knows what’s going to happen, he knows the call that goes out for the wagon, he knows what Homicide will do, what they’ll look for, and he knows what the fingerprint men and the ballistics boys will do. You see? There’s no mystery about it, so there’s nothing to be scared of. The amateur doesn’t know anything about murder until he becomes a murderer. Then he’s scared and behaves like a nitwit. That’s a fact; nine out of ten times, the murderer catches himself, while the cops just stand by and make the pinch. It’s so damn simple.”

He finished his drink and then walked across the room and sat down beside Linda.

“I could commit a murder like that,” he said, grinning at her. “Got anybody you want out of the way? Glad to oblige. Hell, any cop could. That’s what they should be having us do instead of chasing down two-bit complaints.” The idea was new to him but he found it appealing. “Yeah, how about that?” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Ever think of all the crumbs that need to be swept up in this world? Just think of it for a minute. Look at the politicians. That’d keep cops busy for weeks just killing off all the politicians.” He stared straight ahead, looking through the windows into the darkness, and suddenly a slow strong anger ran through his body. “There’s guys like Petey Felickson, who you don’t know, and teachers, chemistry teachers, who make kids feel they’re something rotten, and bootleggers, and moochers and tramps and bums, none of them worth a damn, and guys like Dave Fiest, always trying to outsmart somebody, and creeps like Sternmueller with their noses in everybody else’s business.” He was breathing harder, and his big hands clenched and unclenched slowly. “That’s how I should spend my time. Getting rid of people like that.”

“Dave Fiest,” Linda said. The name came to her lips involuntarily. Nolan turned and stared at her, and she felt her hands tremble.

“Yeah, Dave Fiest,” he said. “That’s what I said. Dave Fiest. The guy I shot the other night.”

“He — tried to get away, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Nolan said slowly. “He tried to escape, tried to be a smart guy.” He was silent a moment, frowning; and then he laughed shortly and nodded at his empty glass. “Mind if I make myself another, kid?”

“No, help yourself, Barny.”

At the Thirteenth Division, Ramussen sat with his back to the desk, staring out over the dark street. Mark leaned against a filing cabinet, a cigarette in his mouth.

“We should hear from the police surgeon pretty soon.”

“That’s right.” Ramussen lit a cigarette, and in its flaring fight his face was lined and pale.

“Will you arrest him, then?”

“Yes,” Ramussen said. “We don’t know that he killed Sternmueller, although I’m sure he did. Your guesses are probably all correct. Sternmueller came in to report something about Dave Fiest’s shooting, and had the bad luck to run into Nolan. Nolan lied to Lindfors about what the man really wanted, and then, when Odell gave him that job on Crab Street, he ducked into Sternmueller’s.”

They were silent for a few moments. Then the phone buzzed. The Lieutenant picked it up, and said, “Ramussen, Thirteenth Detectives.” He waited a moment, then said: “Go ahead.”

Mark moved closer to the desk and lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of his old one. Ramussen listened in silence for a few seconds. “That’s definite, then?” He paused again, then said: “Thanks, Doctor.”

He put the phone down and glanced up at Mark. “Sternmueller had no gas in his lungs. He died of a heart attack apparently induced by a blow that struck his jaw just below the right ear. It’s murder, all right.” He pressed a buzzer on his desk.

Sergeant Odell stuck his head in the door. “What is it, Lieutenant?”

“Where’s Nolan?”

“He’s not back yet. I sent him over to a taproom at Eleventh and Maple. He called just a while ago and said he’d be back in an hour or so.”

Odell glanced from Ramussen to Mark, and back to the Lieutenant. “Want me to call him and have him come in?”

“No, never mind. That’s all, Sergeant.”

Odell hesitated momentarily, obviously consumed with curiosity; but finally he turned and lumbered from the room.

“Well, what now?” Mark said.

Ramussen put his finger tips together. “I’m not sure, Mark. Frankly, I’m worried. He’s been gone two hours now. I don’t believe in sixth-sense or intuition, of course, but Nolan is a cop, and he might just smell trouble. He may know his luck is running out. I don’t want to send out an alarm for him, because that might make him bolt. And catching him would be dangerous.” He stood up, frowning. “What’s the number of that singer?”

“Why do you want her?”

“She’s got Nolan’s money, or Espizito’s, depending on how you look at things. Anyway, if Nolan starts on the run, that will be the first thing he’ll head for. I don’t want her to be in his way.”

“She’s at the Simba now, of course.”

“And where’s the money? At her apartment?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s different. But supposing you give her a ring anyway and tell her not to see him tonight.”

Mark called the Simba and, after a considerable delay, got Jim Evans on the phone. He learned then that Linda wasn’t feeling well, that she’d called earlier to say she wouldn’t be in that night.

“Call her apartment, then,” Ramussen said, his voice worried. “Let me talk to her. We’ll send a police car for her if necessary or an ambulance. Damn it, Mark, I’ve got the feeling that all hell is about to break loose.”

Mark realized as he lifted the phone that Nolan was caught now in the steadily intensifying pressure of the situation he had created. He couldn’t deviate from the course he had taken by killing Dave Fiest. It was too late for that. Nolan would know that, of course, if only subconsciously. His time had run out, and there was nothing left for him but to get his money and make his final break. He had to go to Linda’s, and Mark was suddenly certain that he was with her now or on his way to her apartment. He dialed her number quickly, desperately.

Nolan realized that he was getting drunk. He was swaying slightly as he poured the last of Linda’s bottle into his glass.

“Kid, this is living,” he said.

“Barny, you shouldn’t be drinking so much.”

“Why?” Her concern pleased him.

“Well, you’ve got to get back to work, don’t you?”

“Work?” He laughed and put the bottle down on the table. “I may never go back. Work is for slobs.”

His face was uncomfortably warm and his fingers felt thick and clumsy. He decided that some cold water might make him feel better.

“Excuse me a second, will you?” he said, and went into the bathroom. He filled the basin with cold water and unloosed his tie and collar. Bending over he splashed the water onto his face and the back of his neck, and then he ran his damp hands through his hair.

That made him feel better. He dried himself with a woolly blue towel and looked around with a grin on his face.

There were bottles of colognes and perfumes and jars of cold cream and bath salts on a shelf beneath the medicine cabinet. Nolan studied them with interest. The bottles were pretty, and their contents looked gay and colorful. Everything about the immaculate bathroom was like her, he thought; clean, dainty, gracious.

There was a pair of nylons on a hanger behind the door, and he touched them gently with his fingers, excited and pleased by their fineness and quality. It gave him an oddly intimate pleasure to touch her stockings like that, and to look around at her bottles of colognes and perfumes. He turned back to the medicine cabinet and studied his face closely in the mirror. His face was flushed with liquor, but he liked the sight of his big square features and damp healthy-looking hair. He squared his shoulders and sucked in his sagging stomach. Still a first-class man, he thought. A little extra weight around the middle, but the muscles of his shoulders and arms were thick and powerful, and he knew damn well he could handle most punks half his age.

Nolan put up his hands slowly in a fighting stance, and snapped a left hook at his reflection. He followed it with a hard straight right, perfectly thrown. His right shoulder dropped, his right foot twisted sharply inward, snapping his hip and his torso behind the punch. He stopped his fist half an inch from the mirror and then dropped his hands to his side, smiling self-consciously.

The phone was ringing as he walked out of the bathroom. Some instinct made him pause. He heard Linda’s light footsteps, and then her voice, high and rather nervous.

“Oh, hello Mark.”

Nolan stepped quickly into the archway of the living room. Linda stood with her back to him, holding the receiver to her ear with both hands. She listened for a moment, and then she said, in low voice: “Yes, Lieutenant. I’ll do what you say.”

Nolan closed the distance between them with one long stride. He caught her throat in one hand, and ripped the phone away with his other. He put the receiver against his ear and heard Ramussen’s hard precise voice.

“We’re going to pick up Nolan tonight, Miss Wade. Mark has told me you have Nolan’s money, so I want you to leave your apartment immediately. He’s a dangerous man and I don’t intend to give him the opportunity to kill anyone else. Is that clear? Hello! Hello! Can you hear—”

Nolan put the phone slowly down in its cradle, cutting off Ramussen’s sharply pitched voice. He swung Linda about and stared into her face with murderous eyes.

“Double crossing bitch,” he shouted at her, his breath coming in uneven heaving gasps. He could feel the rage in his body, as if it were some tangible, physical thing that might blow him apart with its intensity. “Bitch, bitch,” he yelled, and struck her across the face with the back of his hand.

“No, Barny, no,” she cried, clinging to his arm.

He threw her to the floor and stared about wildly. A lamp caught his eye and he knocked it halfway across the room with a blow of his fist. Then he dropped to one knee beside Linda and caught her shoulders in his big hands.

“Where’s my money?” he said, his voice hoarse and wild. “Where’s my money?” He shook her until her hair loosened and fell in disorder about her face and shoulders.

“In the closet, in the closet,” she cried, and the words sounded as if they were torn and shaken from her body. “On the shelf, behind the shoes.”

Nolan shoved her away from him and she rolled on her side sobbing uncontrollably. He ran into the bedroom and jerked open the closet doors.

Shoes were arranged in neat rows along the top shelf. Ankle-strap sandals, spectators, blue-suede pumps, moccasins, evening slippers.

Nolan pushed them aside and saw the paper-wrapped package of money at the rear of the shelf against the wall. He grabbed it in both hands and walked to the middle of the bedroom, holding it tightly against his body. This was his, all his, and it was the only thing that meant a damn. Tearing off an end of the wrapping, he saw the green bills, and nodded with satisfaction. Then he shoved the package into the pocket of his suit and strode into the living room.

Linda was sitting up, supporting her weight on one arm. She raised her head and he saw the tears in her eyes, and the angry red imprint of his hand on her cheek. “Barny, you can’t keep on like this,” she said, and the words were indistinct and blurred.

He stared at her in silence, watching the rise and fall of her bosom. There was no sound in the room but her ragged breathing.

“You told them, didn’t you?” he said.

“No, no, Barny.”

“You sold me out. I trusted you and you sold me out.”

“No, no! Barny, everyone knew about it. You... you never had a chance. But stop now, Barny, for God’s sake.”

Nolan laughed and drew his gun from its holster. He saw her now as part of the dirt and deceit that had always filled his life. She was in the same class with Petey Felickson and his wife and Dave Fiest and that chemistry teacher. They’d never believed in him, trusted him, given him a break. They were all pieces of filth waiting to lie to him, to cheat him, to betray him; as everybody he’d known had always done.

“Please, Barny, for my sake, sit down and put your gun away,” she said. “Don’t go on this way.”

He saw her clearly, pleading with him, crawling toward him, seeking to get his defenses down.

He laughed suddenly but the sound broke in his throat and he felt stinging tears in his eyes. She had been what he’d always wanted, the cleanness and brightness that would make everything else all right. And she was the worst of all.

Linda screamed as he raised his gun. He fired one shot at her and saw her spin as if struck by a giant fist, and then he waited, staring down at her, his breath coming slowly, until he saw the blood spreading through her robe.

When he saw that, he put his gun away, and walked out of the apartment. He went down the steps to the sidewalk and turned right, not knowing where he was going, but reasoning calmly to himself that he’d better be somewhere else when the police arrived. Ramussen would be coming, of course, and neighbors would be phoning the police board to tell them they’d heard a gunshot. The area would be crawling with red police cars within three minutes.

Nolan walked to the first intersection and glanced back toward Linda’s apartment. A man was standing in the street staring at him, but when Nolan looked back, the man ran up the steps of a building and out of sight.

Nolan hesitated for a few seconds at the intersection, unable to decide what to do, or even to marshal enough energy to keep moving. His inclination was to stand still until the police cars arrived and then draw his gun and shoot anyone who got in his way; but he had been a cop for seventeen years, and his instincts prodded him into defensive action almost automatically. He walked quickly down the block that intersected Linda’s street, and at the next corner turned left and broke into a run. When he reached the next block, a well-traveled street, he stepped off the curb and waited for a cab.

Within a minute or so he stopped an empty one. The driver, a small young man with a blond mustache, glanced at him as he climbed into the rear seat. “Where to, sir?” he said.

“Just drive for a while,” Nolan said. “I got a little time to kill before an appointment.” The phrase, time to kill, brought a faint grin to his face. He suddenly felt unbearably hot, and he knew he needed a drink. “Stop at a State store,” he told the driver.

“Okay.”

The driver swung into the traffic on Chestnut Street and followed it for several blocks before turning off and coming back up Walnut Street to a State liquor store.

“I can’t park here long,” he told Nolan. “The cop at the next corner is murder. If he spots me here he’ll make me move.”

“Well, circle around and pick me up if you have to,” Nolan said. “Cops. They’re all rock-heads, you know.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” the driver said.

Nolan walked into the liquor store and joined the slowly moving line of customers. He felt quite calm and relaxed. Nothing seemed important but getting something to drink and finding a place where he could He down and rest.

Finally it was his turn. He ordered two fifths of blended whisky and watched with mild interest as the clerk rang up the sale, slipped the bottles in a brown paper bag, and made change from his ten-dollar bill. He counted the change carefully, nodded to the clerk, and walked outside to find his cab driver still waiting.

“Well, I guess he didn’t see me,” the driver said.

“They’re all rock-heads,” Nolan said.

He opened one of the bottles and took a long drink of the burning liquor. Somewhere off to his left he heard the whine of a police siren. Or an ambulance maybe. Then he heard another.

“Hey, something’s up!” the driver said.

“You should have been a cop,” Nolan said. “You’re bright. You hear a half dozen sirens so right away you know something’s up.”

The driver said nothing.

Nolan had another drink before thinking about his own problem. He didn’t know what to do, or where to go; but he couldn’t stay in Philly. The cab was safe for a while, but he couldn’t ride around indefinitely.

“Drive me over to Camden,” he told the driver.

Camden, N.J. That was it. The cops over there wouldn’t get the alarm from Philadelphia until a three-state flyer went out. Camden was only ten minutes away, just over the Delaware River Bridge.

They crossed the beautiful span of the bridge and stopped at the toll gate on the Jersey side. The driver paid twenty cents to a Bridge Authority patrolman, and they rolled on into Camden’s Main Street.

“Where to now, sir?” the driver said.

“Can you take me to Atlantic City?”

“No, we’re not allowed to go that far.”

Nolan realized that this cabby would put the finger on him when he returned to Philadelphia. The police would check all the cabs that had been in Linda’s neighborhood when the shot was fired, and they’d find this driver, of course.

“Well, can I get a cab to Atlantic City here in Camden?”

“Sure, they make all the shore points.”

“Well, Atlantic City is good enough for me.”

Nolan wanted the driver to report that his fare had gone on to Atlantic City. That might give him an extra few hours. An extra few hours for drinking, he thought.

The driver stopped at the County Building and pointed to a row of cabs. “Any of those fellows will be glad to take you,” he said.

Nolan paid him and got out. “Thanks, pal,” he said, and watched the cab until it disappeared on the route back to the bridge.

Nolan walked along Main Street for two blocks and then turned down a block that led to a quiet residential area. Couples strolled along hand-in-hand, glancing idly at Nolan, but he passed them without a thought. His mind was calm, undisturbed. The only reality was the money in his pocket and the liquor under his arm.

When he came to a frame house that had a ‘Rooms’ sign in the front window he went up the rickety stairs and rang the bell. The woman who answered the door was a friendly, garrulous person, who showed him a small hot bedroom on the third floor, and collected nine dollars in advance for a week’s rent.

“That’s customary for folks without luggage,” she said. “Just like hotels, you know.”

“Sure. I’m meeting my brother here tomorrow, and he’s got the suitcases in his car. We had some engine trouble so he stopped at Harrisburg, and I came on to do what work I can until he arrives.”

“Oh? What line are you in?”

“Lighting fixtures,” Nolan said, for no reason at all.

“Well, Camden’s a nice lively town.”

She left him alone finally, and Nolan went down a hall to the bath and brought a glass of cold water back to his room. Opening a bottle of whisky, he stretched out on the bed without bothering to remove his coat. The whisky tasted fine with the New Jersey water, he thought.

17

Mark sat in a waiting room at the hospital, chain-smoking, and wondering what he would do if she died. Nothing, probably, he thought. Maybe he’d get drunk occasionally and tell his story to a favorite bartender, but that would be about all. You just didn’t do anything when people died, he knew. You just wished they hadn’t.

Ramussen came in and sat beside him in a wicker chair. “Any news at all yet, Mark?”

“No, the doctor is still with her. He said he’d let me know what’s happening.” He lit another cigarette and glanced at the Lieutenant. “And what’s with Nolan?”

“He got out of the city, it appears. We picked up a cab driver who took him over to Camden. According to his story Nolan was trying to get a ride to Atlantic City.”

“That doesn’t seem very smart.”

“I know. He’ll have his back to a wall there. But he might be trying to get us started in the wrong direction. He might be in Philly now, or holed up somewhere in Camden.”

“You’ll get him, of course.”

“Yes, I suppose so. The eight-state alarm is out, and that will make it tough for him to move around. If he didn’t have money, I’d take a small bet that we’d have him by morning. But that twenty-five thousand could make a difference. He’s liable to buy some help.”

Mark glanced at his watch. Eleven-thirty. She’d been in there an hour and a half now.

“She’ll be all right, Mark,” Ramussen said.

“Thanks,” Mark said.

They were silent a few moments, smoking and staring at the walls without seeing anything. Then Ramussen said: “You were right, Mark. The department does hang onto a bad cop too long. Cops protect each other, right or wrong, and that gives the rogue cop too much of a break.”

Mark nodded, not giving much of a damn whether he’d been right or not; but he could appreciate what the admission meant to Ramussen.

A young man in a white jacket came into the room, glanced at Mark. “You waiting for that girl in Operating?”

Ramussen stood up. “Yes. What’s the story?”

“She’s not in the best of shape, of course. Lost a lot of blood. But it was a clean wound and, barring complications, she should be all right.”

Mark let out his breath slowly. “Any chance of seeing her now?”

“Lord, no. She’s still under the anesthetic. Maybe by tomorrow morning she’ll be strong enough to talk for a while, but that’s no promise, mind you.”

Ramussen grinned and patted Mark on the arm. “I told you she’d be all right.”

“Yes, you did,” Mark said, smiling back at him.

“Well, I’ve got to get back to work. Odell lined up some stoolies to send over to Jersey, and I want to talk to them before they go. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“No, I’ll stick around for a while.”

“Damn it, you can’t see her until morning.”

Mark shrugged. “I’ll wait,” he said.

“Okay.” Ramussen patted his arm and walked out.

Mark settled down and lit another cigarette. Surprisingly it tasted fine.

Nolan sat at the window of his room the next morning, watching the glittering patterns of sunlight in the trees along the street. He held a glass of diluted whisky in his hand and his eyes were red-rimmed and tired. Some kids were playing ball farther down the block and he could hear their shrill intense voices as clearly as if they were in the next room. All his nerves were painfully sensitive this morning. He was aware of the coldness of the glass in his hand, and the tiny spikes of starched cloth around the edge of his collar, and the heat of his clothes and the stuffy smell of the room.

There was a knock on the door and he came to his feet in a half-crouch, his hand moving to his gun.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, Mrs. Bailey. I was wondering if you wanted some breakfast.”

“No, never mind.”

“I could bring you something if you aren’t feeling well.”

Damn her, Nolan thought irritably. Already she was making him an object of speculation. “Thanks, but I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be down shortly.”

“Well, all right.”

Nolan listened to her move away down the corridor, and then he wandered about the room, taking a short drink occasionally, his thoughts inevitably coming to a dead-end. He was red-hot by now, the Camden police would be looking for him, and when they didn’t find him in Atlantic City they’d scour this area from top to bottom. He knew he had to move soon. But where?

He sat on the bed and counted his money. The twenty-five thousand of Espizito’s was intact, of course, and he had about thirty dollars of his own money. The six thousand under the hub cap of his car would make some mechanic happy, he thought.

That was plenty of money, but he didn’t know how to put it to work.

Standing, he paced the room a while, and finally an idea occurred to him; an idea he didn’t like but which was about his only chance. He walked down to the bathroom, washed his hands and face thoroughly and combed his hair. His beard looked coarse and red in the sunlight that streamed in a window, but after searching vainly for a razor in the bathroom he returned to his room and picked up his coat and hat and went downstairs. Mrs. Bailey popped out of her first floor living room as he came down the steps.

“Going out, eh?” she said brightly.

“Yes, that’s right. But first I’d like to use your phone.”

“Certainly. It’s at the end of the corridor and you’ll need a nickel.”

“Thanks.”

“Calling your brother, eh?”

Nolan fought down his anger. “Yeah,” he said and walked back to the telephone, which was on a table under a light. There was a city directory there, also, and he thumbed through it until he found the number he wanted. Dialing, he was conscious that Mrs. Bailey had returned to her living room, but hadn’t closed the door. He could imagine her long-eared interest in his conversation.

The man who answered said, “Hello,” in a pleasant cultivated voice.

“Mr. Reynolds?”

“This is he speaking.”

“We’ve got some mutual friends, Mr. Reynolds. Ramussen over in Philadelphia, for instance. I’d like to talk to you about a little problem I’m facing.”

“Ramussen? Oh, just a moment.” He was gone a few seconds, and Nolan began to get anxious. Then Reynolds was back. “I just wanted to close a door. This is Barny Nolan, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I gather you can’t talk, eh? Well, friend, you can’t talk to me either. You’re about as hot as a man can get, in case you don’t know it.”

“I know all about that,” Nolan said. “But I’ve got the stuff to break a hot spell, if you follow me.”

“Oh, I see. You have money, a lot of it?”

“That’s right.”

Reynolds chuckled into the phone. The sound irritated Nolan.

“Well, how about it?” he said. “Can you help me?”

“My friend, a wiser man than I once said that in every ordered society wealth is a sacred thing, and that in a democracy, it is the only sacred thing. You should thank God we live in a democracy. Where are you now?”

Nolan gave him the address.

“Very well. Get out of there and walk three blocks west to Seventeenth and Cooper. There’s a taproom on the corner. Take a back booth and wait for me. I’ll be along in perhaps ten minutes. Got that?”

“Right,” Nolan said, and hung up the phone.

He walked down the corridor and opened the front door. He was conscious of Mrs. Bailey’s eyes boring into his back from the front windows of the house.

Nolan strode down the tree-lined street, past the ball-playing kids and came to the taproom at Seventeenth and Cooper. He walked in and sat down in a rear booth and ordered a beer with a shot of rye from the bartender. There was nothing pretentious about this place; it looked Eke a neighborhood hang-out, with bowling machines, dart boards and a generally unadorned atmosphere.

Nolan sipped the beer and thought about Reynolds. Dwight J. Reynolds was the full name. He was a lawyer, a bondsman, a politician, a fixer, an operator. There were those who insisted he was honest up to a point; others said he was dishonest up to a point. The distinction struck Nolan as a moot one. Reynolds was not on the opposite side of the law, strictly speaking. His machinations were intertangled and intertwined on both sides of the law, and over the top and under the bottom of it, in a manner that made any clear-cut definition of his activities impossible. He worked with gangsters and school boards, racketmen and stool pigeons, reformers and gamblers, supplying them all with whatever they needed, whether that happened to be fast transportation out of town, a hideout, a judge’s ear, the repeal of a zoning ordinance or a few decks of snow. The only consistent stipulation in any of Reynolds’ deals was that money, and generous amounts of it, wound up in his hands.

Nolan knew him casually, and wasn’t happy about getting mixed up with him. Reynolds would bleed him to death, but there were other and worse ways of bleeding to death.

He came in five minutes later, a dapperly dressed man with graying hair, a tiny mustache, and alert, shifting eyes. He sat down opposite Nolan and dropped a ring of keys on the table. “My car is outside,” he said, and put a slip of paper beside the keys. “There’s an address where you can spend the day. I’ll be along in half an hour.”

“Have you seen the papers this morning?”

“I’m not here to gossip, Nolan.”

“Is the girl dead?”

“Not yet. Now stick to business. After today you’ll be beyond help. Do you understand?”

“Sure, sure,” Nolan said. “Relax, damn it. It’s my neck, right?”

“And mine, too,” Reynolds said. “This will cost you ten thousand, Nolan. Five thousand now, and five when you start on your way.”

“Okay.” Nolan fumbled for his money, counted off five bills and shoved them into Reynolds’ cold eager hands.

“Get moving now,” Reynolds said.

Nolan finished his beer in one gulp and went outside into the hot sunlight. Reynolds’ car, a Buick, was at the curb. He climbed in, started the motor, and drove away slowly, getting the feel of the transmission. The car’s smooth power was a tonic to him; he felt fine with his big hands resting lightly on the wheel and the speedometer needle climbing swiftly as he poured gas into the motor. This was like the old days, he thought, as he made a turn and shifted easily into second gear. Like the old days in Wet Basin when he was running liquor. For an instant he was tempted to let the Reynolds deal go to hell, and get out of town on his own. He could lose any State cop with this buggy. But he knew he wouldn’t get ten miles.

He found the address Reynolds had given him and coasted half a block past it before parking the Buick. Then, pulling his hatbrim down, he walked swiftly back to the weather-beaten, two-story frame house.

The door was opened by a fat untidy woman who wore a house dress and frayed felt slippers. “You wait a minute, I’ll get Morris,” she said, and slammed the door in his face.

The door was opened a moment later by a man who stood a head taller than Nolan, but was lean to the point of emaciation. His skull was narrow and a lock of long dark hair hung over his bony forehead. He stared at Nolan suspiciously.

“Reynolds told me to come here. You Morris?”

“Yeah, I’m Morris. Come in. It’s a hell of a time to be sending a hot guy here though.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Nolan said.

“All right, come on with me.” Morris turned to the woman. “Freda, keep your eye on the street for a while, and see if you notice anybody looking out their windows this way.”

Nolan followed him to a stairway that led down to a sour-smelling basement. There Morris unsnapped a lock from the door of a room behind the furnace. “In here,” he said, leading the way. He snapped on a light and Nolan saw that the room was furnished with a cot, a table and a couple of kitchen chairs. There was no window.

Morris turned to him, an unpleasant smile on his lips. In the strong unshaded light he looked like something from a sick nightmare. “This is five hundred bucks, without maid service,” he said.

“That’s by the day, I’ll bet,” Nolan said.

“That’s right.”

“Okay,” Nolan said. He gave Morris a grand note. “I’m paid up for two days now.”

Morris accepted the bill without comment and walked to the door. He fitted the lock back into the hasp, and was about to close the door, when Nolan said, “Never mind the lock, Morris. We’ll leave the door open just in case I have some women visitors. We don’t want to make the house dick suspicious.”

“I’ve got to lock it,” Morris said, and drew his lips down petulantly. “Supposing someone comes down here?”

“Well now I’ll tell you about that,” Nolan said, and walked over and jerked the lock from Morris’s hand. “If anyone I don’t know comes down here, he’s going to be shot dead, understand? I’m not a pet monkey, Morris. I like open doors. Now how about some food?”

“That will be extra.”

“I knew that. Get me some sandwiches and coffee and a couple of bottles of liquor.”

When Morris disappeared, grumbling under his breath, Nolan removed his coat and stretched out on the cot. He stared at the ceiling, wishing he had a cigar, wishing he had a drink. Linda wasn’t dead, Reynolds had said. She was still alive.

There were two Lindas in his mind now, the one who had liked him, who had trusted him, and had been his friend: and the other one who had sold him out to Ramussen.

He didn’t think about that second Linda. She wasn’t important. They had made her do that, anyway. He thought about the first Linda, the bright and smiling one, who had patted his hand one night in the car, and who had stroked his head when he was drunk and ready to explode.

It was hot and quiet in the basement and there was nothing for him to do but think.

Reynolds arrived within half an hour. He walked into the room briskly and sat down in a straight-backed chair. “Now it’s time for serious work,” he said, as Nolan sat up rubbing his jaw. “I’ll tell you what, Barny. Your best bets are Nova Scotia or Mexico. You can have your pick, an igloo, or a hacienda.”

“What’s the difference?”

Reynolds shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, none. But I’m not going there, you see.”

“How could I get to Nova Scotia?”

“It’s a very simple matter. We’ll hire a private pilot from around this area to fly you there. Don’t look surprised; it’s done all the time for hunting trips. It’s a no-questions-asked deal. The pilot takes you to Burlington, Vermont, first, where he wires ahead to the Canadian customs official at the airfield in Nova Scotia. That’s to let them know when you’re arriving and how many are in the party. The customs man meets the plane. You aren’t allowed to leave it, by the way, until he checks your papers. But all he requires for entry is some proof of identity, such as a driver’s license. I’ll get one for you today. After that, Barny, you’re on your own. You’ll have Canadian travel papers, and you can get a commercial flight from Moncton field to Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, or anywhere in the Dominion for that matter. How does it sound?”

“Sounds nice and simple. How come more people in trouble don’t use that route?”

“A good many of them do, as a matter of fact. But most of them don’t have the money to hire my services.”

“Canada is out,” Nolan said. “I never did like that place.”

Reynolds looked annoyed. “Let’s not become whimsical, Nolan.”

“It’s Mexico for me,” Nolan said. He had never been to Mexico, but he knew of its climate, its tequila, its women. Even after paying off Reynolds he’d have about thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars. That should provide a pleasant few years, he thought.

“Okay, it’s just as simple to get there. Of course, the difficulty in both cases is that you can’t get out quite so easily. Coming back, you’ll have to clear through United States customs and that’s a different matter.”

“Let’s don’t worry about that,” Nolan said, with a humorless smile.

“Very well. I’ll make reservations for you today and get you what identification you’ll need. Meanwhile I suggest you get a bath and a shave. And get a clean shirt from Morris.”

“Okay,” Nolan said.

Morris came in as Reynolds was standing to leave. He carried a tray on which there were two sandwiches and a pint milk bottle full of coffee.

“How about the liquor?” Nolan said.

“All right, all right, I’ve got to go out for that,” Morris said, and stalked out, a sullen expression on his face.

“What a creep,” Nolan said, picking up a fried egg sandwich that was cold and greasy.

“He’s all right. I’ll see you about seven tonight.”

Morris returned in half an hour with two fifths of bonded Bourbon. “This is twenty bucks,” he said.

“You’re a real spender with my money, aren’t you?”

“Why don’t you find somewhere else if you don’t like it here?”

Nolan took a crumpled twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and threw it on the floor. “There it is, you bastard. You’ll look natural crawling for it.”

Morris picked up the bill and put it in his pocket. “I’ve had some tough boys here, Mister. They found it all right. Slick Willie Sutton was here, and the Lanzettis. They had manners. You can always tell a punk by the way he pays off.”

“Damn you,” Nolan said. He put his hand over Morris’s face and shoved him through the door. “Go upstairs and dream about Slick Willie and the Lanzettis, but keep away from me, understand?”

Morris stared at him, trembling and tearful, and then he turned and went up the stairs, taking them three at a time with his long skinny legs.

Nolan opened one of the bottles and took a long drink. He sat down on the cot and thought about Linda. The first Linda, the real one. He drank half the bottle before stretching out and closing his eyes. His gun was beside him, within an inch of his right hand.

The whisky made him feel immensely peaceful. He floated gently in space, his thoughts turning slowly about Linda. Possibly she could meet him in Mexico some day. He could see her in a white dress, her arms and legs browned by the sun, coming across a hotel lobby to him with the bright quick smile on her face. There would be palms everywhere and flag-stoned terraces and strong drinks decorated with mint and ice. Everything would be very clean, and Linda would be smiling.

Nolan raised the bottle.

18

It was late in the afternoon when Mark was allowed to see Linda for the second time. She was much better, he saw at once. There was a touch of color in her cheeks and her eyes were clear. Her arms were outside the covers now but they looked very limp and white. She turned her head toward him as he sat down in a chair beside the bed.

“You’re looking fine,” he said.

“You look just ghastly,” she said, and smiled faintly. “So solemn, Mark. Did they tell you I’m going to die?”

“No, and for Heaven’s sake stop talking that way.”

“I wouldn’t, you know, unless I was sure I was going to be all right. You’ve been here since last night, haven’t you?”

“Yes. I’m a great little vigil-keeper. Do you remember this morning at all?”

“Only vaguely. I was pretty dopey. But I knew you were here and that made me feel better.”

“I talked quite a lot for a normally shy young man,” Mark said, with an attempt at lightness. “Do you remember any of that?”

Linda tried to laugh, but the effort made her wince.

“Are you trying to retract it now?”

“No, not at all.”

“I remember you said some very extravagant things,” Linda said. “They were very pleasant things to hear, Mark.”

“I felt I had an unfair advantage. You were all doped up and susceptible to suggestion.”

“I wasn’t that dopey, Mark,” she said, and moved her hand toward the edge of the bed. “At least I don’t think I was. You did say you loved me, I believe.”

Mark took her hand and patted it gently. “Yes, that’s right.”

They were silent a moment; and then Linda’s faint smile faded from her lips.

“Have they caught him yet, Mark?”

“No, not yet.”

“Why did he do it? Why did he do all of it, Mark?”

Mark sighed. “At the risk of sounding glib, I’d say it had something to do with that ‘Each man kills the thing he loves’ business.”

“But that doesn’t explain all of it, Mark.”

“I suppose not. Nolan was caught in a problem that was complicated by several factors. The big thing was that his capacities were far short of his ambitions. He wanted something that he just couldn’t have, and that’s what drove him to murder and eventually drove him crazy. Lots of people meet that problem, of course, but Nolan had a background of violence and instability, and so he reacted violently to it. He could have gone along indefinitely as a mediocre human being, but when he went on the make, when he got ambitious for something he couldn’t handle, he was through. He couldn’t go up, so he had to go down. And when he realized that, he wanted to take you with him. I think that’s all there is to it. Or maybe I’m completely wrong.”

“Yes, that’s all there is to it,” Linda said. “It’s not even tragic, is it, Mark?”

“Not quite, which is rather tragic, I think. Supposing we talk about it when you’re better. Okay?”

“All right, Mark. Will you hold my hand tighter?”

A moment later she said: “I’m so sleepy, Mark. Is that normal, do you suppose?”

“Absolutely. Girls are always sleepy when I unleash my passionate temperament. The barbiturate people pay me millions to keep myself off the market.”

Mark sat holding her hand until the nurse came in a few minutes later. She put a finger to her Bps and pointed firmly to the door. Mark sighed and disengaged his hand from Linda’s. Bending, he kissed her on the forehead and then tiptoed outside.

Ramussen was waiting for him in the corridor.

“What the hell are you grinning about?” he said.

“Nothing, nothing at all. What about Nolan?”

Ramussen sighed. “We’ve got him pinned down in Camden, anyway. He stayed at a rooming house there last night. The landlady got suspicious and called the police this afternoon. Her description fits, all right, but he’s still loose. I’m afraid he’s made a contact. Now why in the devil don’t you go home and get some sleep?”

Mark stretched comfortably and grinned at Ramussen. “I think I might at that,” he said.

“You can always come back later,” Ramussen said dryly.

“That’s a good idea,” Mark said, and slapped the Lieutenant on the back.

19

Nolan was sitting on the cot with a drink in his hand when Reynolds arrived at seven-thirty that night.

“The shave and clean shirt helped a lot,” Reynolds said, looking at him critically. “Still belting that liquor, eh?”

“I’m all right.”

“Well, that’s up to you, Barny.” Reynolds sat beside him and drew an envelope from his inner breast pocket. “Here’s everything you’ll need. Now listen carefully: You’re Harvey Benson, got that? In this envelope are a driver’s license, some letters and club cards, all in that name. Put them in your wallet and leave your own identification here.”

“All right,” Barny said, taking out his wallet. He flipped it open and stared at his shield. “I’d better leave this, too, I suppose.”

“I guess you’d better,” Reynolds said dryly. “Now, here’s your schedule: Outside is a rented car, a ’47 Dodge, parked four doors down on the opposite side of the street. When you leave here take it and drive out U.S. Route 130 to the Idlewild airport. That’s about twelve miles from here on the right side of the road. You can see it for miles, so you won’t miss it. I’ve made a reservation there in the name of Harvey Benson for an immediate flight to Richmond, Virginia.”

“Richmond? What the hell am I going there for?”

“The police won’t be expecting you there,” Reynolds said. “They’ll watch Chicago and Pittsburgh without a doubt, but not Richmond where the traffic is mostly out instead of in. At Richmond you’ll board Flight 231 to Dallas. I’ve arranged for your tickets to be held for you on the plane. Got that? Don’t go to the waiting room. Get out of the private plane and wait until you hear Flight 231 called. Then go directly to the plane and tell the stewardess who you are. Is that clear?”

Nolan nodded and sipped his drink.

“Okay. When you get to Dallas you’ll find a reservation waiting for you through to Mexico City. When you get to Mexico City the customs officials will give you a tourist card when you show them your identification. After that, Barny my boy, you’re on your own. Enjoy yourself, drink plenty of tequila, and forget you ever heard of me. Okay? Let’s go.”

Nolan stood up and put on his suit coat. He took a last drink from the nearly empty bottle and went upstairs with Reynolds. There was a leather suitcase in the hallway.

“That’s yours,” Reynolds said. “There’s nothing in it but two telephone directories.”

Morris came to the archway of the living room and behind him, peering around his thin body, was the fat woman in the house dress. They both regarded Nolan with active dislike.

“Well, good luck, Barny,” Reynolds said, rubbing his hands together briskly. “Let me have that second five thousand and we’ll be all square.”

Nolan counted out the money and Reynolds took it with a smile. “We’ve done everything we can for you, boy,” he said. “With a little luck you’ll be leading a king’s fife in a few days.”

“Thanks a lot,” Nolan said. He met Morris’s eyes and grinned. “Let’s have the change, friend.”

“Change?”

“Yeah. I gave you a grand for two days. I only stayed one.”

“I don’t have any change,” Morris said and wet his lips. He glanced at Reynolds.

Reynolds smiled. “Supposing he sends it to you, Barny.”

“Supposing he gives me back my grand and I’ll send him the change,” Nolan said. “Come on, come on,” he said, suddenly irritable. “Let’s have the money.”

“It’s a minor item to quibble about,” Reynolds said, shrugging. He drew out his wallet and counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills. “Here you are, Barny. Now you’d better be moving.”

Nolan studied the three of them, feeling cut off and alone. They wanted him out of there and they wouldn’t give a damn if he were shot down on the sidewalk.

He picked up his suitcase, nodded to them and walked out into the night.

There was a cool wind blowing through the tops of the trees, and the street seemed quiet and peaceful. Nolan found the Dodge and drove slowly through the city to Route 130, where he waited for a light and then joined the traffic moving along to the shore. When he came to a cluster of freshly painted hangars he turned off into a lane, and parked beside an office on which there was the sign: Idlewild Flying Field.

They were expecting him all right and, after he signed the name Harvey Benson in the passenger book, he walked out to the plane, a single-wing Navion with a tricycle landing gear.

“We should be in Richmond in about two hours, Mr. Benson,” the pilot said. He was a stocky young man in his early thirties, with a confident bearing. “Ever flown before?”

“No.”

“You’ll probably enjoy this more than you would a bigger ship.”

They taxied down the runway, gaining speed quickly, and when the plane lurched slightly and became airborne Nolan was rather surprised by his calm acceptance of this phenomenon. The pilot banked the ship onto their course, and Nolan looked down and saw the fights of Camden blinking in the darkness. Across the river he could see the greater mass of Philadelphia, and already it seemed far, far away.

He knew, then, that he would get away with it, that he would beat them all, Ramussen, Brewster, Dave Fiest, and that other Linda, the one who had sold him out.

He grinned slightly, thinking triumphantly that he had never made out that 590 for Ramussen. That was fine. Now they’d never know why he had killed Dave Fiest. That information was locked in Nolan’s head, and that’s where it would stay. Why the hell had he killed the gambler? He wasn’t sure, but he felt it made no difference one way or the other.

They landed at the Richmond airport two hours and twenty minutes later. Nolan paid off the pilot at the rate of twenty dollars an hour, and climbed down from the plane. The pilot waved to him and he waved back; and then the little plane taxied off to a hard-standing to await take-off permission.

Nolan put his grip down. He was comfortably hidden in the darkness about a hundred yards from the brightly lighted waiting rooms. There were three big planes at various gates along the edge of the field. Redcaps were trundling baggage along the ramps and overalled mechanics were checking and gassing the planes. There was a row of parked cars along the left of the control tower.

He stood in the darkness, occasionally glancing at his watch, until a loud voice broke the stillness.

“Flight 231 is now loading at gate number three. Flight 231, through flight to Dallas, is now loading at gate number three.”

Nolan picked up his grip and walked slowly through the darkness toward the four-engined ship at gate number three. He watched the passengers streaming out of the waiting room to board the plane. They waved to friends and hurried onto the field, walking with the brisk sense of their own importance.

Nolan waited until the last person had gone up the mobile ladder and into the plane. There was another call for the flight, and finally, two minutes later, a third and final call. Only then did Nolan stride swiftly toward his flight...

In a parked car near the control tower three men were watching Flight 231. Slicker Robinson was at the wheel, a cigarette hanging loosely in his mouth, and beside him sat a paunchy little man who seemed constantly on the verge of smiling. In the rear seat, the bandage about his head gleaming whitely, was Hymie Solstein.

“Now this must be a very definite thing,” Slicker Robinson said. He was obviously speaking to the man at his side but he didn’t take his eyes from the plane. “The boss is really burned up about Nolan. You might say it’s a matter of principle with him, Tommy.”

The man called Tommy nodded thoughtfully. “I understand, Robinson. I know Mr. Espizito wants no mistakes or slip-ups. There won’t be, I can assure you.”

“Mike doesn’t care where it happens, understand? Nolan is booked right through to Mexico City, so you stick with him and take care of the job whenever you think it’s right.”

“Of course.”

“Also, Nolan has quite a piece of Mike’s money on him, and naturally we want that back.”

“Naturally. As a matter of principle.” The little man came close to smiling but didn’t. “I have a good reputation, Robinson, although I am not so well known in the East. I do a good job.”

Hymie Solstein leaned forward and tapped Robinson’s shoulder. “Well, where is he? Reynolds said he’d make this flight for sure.”

“We can rely on Reynolds, I think,” Robinson said.

They were silent, watching the plane. And then Hymie said softly, “There he is, there’s the bastard,” and his voice broke into laughter.

The three men watched Nolan’s big figure emerge from the darkness behind the plane. They saw him glance around and walk swiftly toward the mobile stairway.

“He’s all yours,” Robinson said.

“Good night, gentlemen,” Tommy said, stepping from the car. He carried a brief case under his arm. “You’ll probably hear from me in a week or so.”

With precise mincing steps he walked toward the plane.

Nolan turned at the entrance of the ship, swept his eyes over the waiting rooms and the field. There was nothing to cause him alarm. A late passenger was hurrying to make the flight, he saw, a plump little man who wore glasses.

The stewardess, a pretty brunette, smiled at him. “Are you Mr. Benson?”

“That’s right.”

“Fine. I have your tickets. Would you take a seat, please? We’re ready to take off.”

The little man came hurrying up the steps, glanced at Nolan impersonally, and smiled at the stewardess. “I’m nearly late, aren’t I?” he said, apologetically.

She smiled and took his ticket. “There’s no harm done, as long as you made it.”

The little man smiled gratefully at her and went inside. Nolan stood for a last few seconds, staring at the brightly lighted waiting rooms, and breathing slowly and deeply of the night air. Everything seemed suddenly calm and peaceful, and the pressures of the last few days were gone. He was Barny Nolan, who had taken what he wanted; and that was a sustaining thought.

Unexpectedly, he saw a vision of Linda again, happy and smiling, coming to meet him somewhere, sometime, in Mexico.

“You’ll have to take your seat now,” the stewardess said.

“All right.”

Nolan ducked his head and entered the plane. There was a seat halfway down the aisle and he sank into it, a small smile on his lips. The smile widened as the engines sputtered and thundered to life.

The paunchy little man named Tommy was in the seat behind him, the brief case resting on his knees. He looked at his watch as the plane taxied down the runway. Time for forty winks before they reached Dallas. Settling himself comfortably, he glanced once at the back of Barny Nolan’s head, and then closed his eyes.

The plane climbed into the night.

Content

William P. McGivern
Shield for Murder

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