Dead Sure Page 17

  It was out. She was the first person he had ever said it to. He had a wild sense of relief.

  “I knew you did.” She reached to a box and took out a cigarette. “I could tell it last night.” She flicked a lighter at the cigarette.

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” said Ryan. “Your brother’s a no-good bastard.” He liked using the word to her. “And if he died it wouldn’t hurt anyone in the world.” He stopped and looked at the smoke spiraling up evenly from his cigarette. That was how it was—justice, evenness, balance. Things had to go straight up and down, and no other way. He went on.

  “He’s a rat. But that doesn’t mean he should suffer for something he didn’t do.”

  She looked at the baseboard across the room. Then she talked through thick smoke.

  “And taking care of his sister and getting her another job will fix everything? Make everything even?”

  That did something to Ryan and he had to knock the ashes off again, this time impatiently.

  “That’s not the idea. I said that he shouldn’t suffer for something he didn’t do. I don’t think he should. And he won’t.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’ve already done one thing. I’ve written a letter that will be found immediately in case anything happens to me. It will free Harry.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  “You’ll have to leave that to me.” He got up. “I’m not going to let him get the chair, I promise you that. I hope to vindicate him. By bringing in the guy who really committed the murder.” He laughed, masochistically. “Probably the chances of that are not good. But that’s what I’m going to try to do. Anyway—” he spun the light fedora in his hand—“there’s one thing I can guarantee, Miss Derby. Your brother won’t burn. I’ll see to that, no matter what else happens. But there are other people involved here, and other people’s rights. I’m going to protect those too. So for the present Harry stays in Sing Sing. He belongs there, you know.”

  She was looking at him steadily and, the sun outside being temporarily darkened by a cloud, her cigarette made a firefly glow in the twilit room.

  “In the meantime,” Ryan said, “well, you’ve suffered on account of this, losing your job. There was something I thought I could do that might help and so I mentioned it.” He pulled on his hat. “But forget it. If you have something else to do, fine.” He had said what he had come to say. The heck with her.

  He turned and remembered something. “One other thing. What I’ve been saying is between ourselves. I really didn’t have to say it. I thought you might feel better if you knew. But if you tell anyone else what I said just now, I’ll swear you’re a liar and I never said it. You couldn’t get anyone to believe it anyway. Take it or leave it, Miss Derby. That goes for the job offer, too.”

  He started down the hall, and she said, “Oh now, please!” but so quietly he could not believe it had reached him. Yet when he opened the door she was beside him. “Please don’t go like that.” The size of her eyes and the solemnity of her mouth surprised him.

  “I’ve got to get to work.”

  “But you—please take a moment. I want to ask you—” A shrill whistle came from somewhere. “Oh! I was making tea. Every day at the library we had tea. Please—”

  He allowed himself to be led back and when the tea had properly steeped during a few minutes of strained politeness he found himself sitting with a cup and a little cookie, undergoing thoughtful inspection. He sipped and readied himself.

  “You’re an honest man,” she said with crashing frankness, and Ryan flushed.

  “An honest cop,” she reflected.

  That graveled him. But he remembered the principles that the department had ingrained in him: you could not do your job effectively if you treated the public as enemies. You had to make friends of them, even those who regarded you as an enemy. This level-eyed girl was a part of the public.

  “I think you’re too well educated to believe that policemen are generally dishonest, Miss Derby.”

  “I don’t say that. I’m sure some—most are—are honest. You are, certainly.”

  But her skepticism was an acid eating into his mind, filling it with cynicism. This was the public for which you worked late hours for small pay, and took chances, this dark-blond, small-breasted dame with the tight lips and critical air. He owed her something of course, but he was paying it off—suddenly it burst out.

  “Where the hell do people like you get off? You and your lousy brother? And your old man! You’re a great family to be squealing about cops! The Derbys! The lousy, crooked, mugging Derbys!”

  He paused, surprised at himself. But he went on in a vibrant tone that was even more emotional.

  “Let me tell you something, Miss Derby. One of the greatest things that could be done to make this country more—more law abiding, and a better place for decent people, would be to make a rule that everyone—everyone—at some point in his life should put on a police uniform and walk the streets for eight hours.”

  “And what would that accomplish, aside from giving him a little taste of power?”

  “I’ll tell you. It would make people realize what it is to be a cop. Because the instant you step out in that uniform you realize that whatever happens that’s rough or unpleasant or dangerous along your beat in the next eight hours, you have to settle it. You’re the one everyone will turn to. If some donkey comes home drunk and starts beating up his wife, you’re the guy who has to walk up and cool him off. If some hoodlum tries to stick up the corner liquor store, that blue uniform of yours is the first thing he’s looking for when he comes running out. If some teen-age kids get goofed on tea and go hunting trouble, you’re their best target, because you’re a cop. They won’t go up against you openly. The first thing you know is a scuffle behind and then a baseball bat across the skull. That’s how hoodlums begin. Later of course they graduate to be big shots—like your brother Harry.” He looked bold hatred at her.

  “Try directing traffic, Miss Derby, and discover how some truck drivers like to see how close they can come to you. Or there’s the so-called honest citizen, who parks overtime and flies into a rage if you give him a summons, and threatens to get your job. Cops are human beings, Miss Derby, and sometimes we wish the people we serve would at least give us a minimum of cooperation, instead of thinking we’re all bribe-takers or sadists or boneheads.”

  She had watched him throughout what he said and Ryan stared back, bitter and angry and waiting. He was not prepared for what she did say.

  “I guess I had that coming. I’m sorry, Mr… Mr. Ryan. Sometimes when…well, when a girl has two brothers like Harry and Ken…what I want to say is this. If you mean what you said, and I know you did, I’d like to help you. And I know Ken will, when I tell him what you told me. Not all Derbys are—well, antisocial.”

  “I told you that if you mentioned this—”

  “I understand. I completely understand, and you needn’t worry. You can trust me, and you can trust Ken. He’ll want to help, because he is fond of Harry. Do you know, on the morning of the day Harry was arrested they quarreled? It was about that jacket of Harry’s that Ken wanted to borrow because his uniform was at the cleaner’s. Harry wouldn’t let him. Ken called him cheap or tight—you know. Then, when Harry was arrested and charged with that murder Kenny sat where you are and cried like a baby because of the quarrel. But tell me this. How did you—why did you come to frame Harry?”

  How far should he go? How much dare he trust her? But if he did not trust anyone, how would he ever get at what he had to get at?

  “It wasn’t exactly my idea. Not that I’m not as much to blame as anyone.” He looked at his wrist watch. “I’d like to tell you about it, Miss Derby—”

  “My name’s Rosemary.”

  “Okay, Rosemary. I’d like to tell you about it.” It was true. He suddenly realized h
ow much he wanted to tell every detail of how and why it happened. “But I’m due at work. Maybe I could come back sometime.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon?”

  “I’ll try to.”

  “And—Mr. Ryan?”

  “People call me Neill.”

  She smiled shyly. “Neill. I think it’s wonderful, what you’re doing. Not because it’s my brother. Because you have honesty and decency, and it’s nice to know there are people like you around. I’m sorry about what I said about the police.”

  “Forget it,” said Ryan. But he couldn’t help adding, “We hear it all the time.”

  * * * *

  When he and Lee Lambert came in that night, a Manila envelope was in his mail slot near the stairs. It contained copies of the police records of four men, all of whom from their description resembled Harry Derby, were at liberty and were known to have robbed women in the past. Two usually operated in and around Brooklyn and one far up in the Bronx. But one, a man named James Mackie and known as “Big Mackie,” ran a small Turkish bath and athletic club in the east fifties and lived over it. He was a former prize fighter, he had been arrested a half dozen times in the past decade although not recently and he had twice been convicted of crimes against women.

  Ryan studied the photograph. Mackie looked darker than Derby and had bushier eyebrows. But his dimensions were the same, and the address made it look good. If it turned out that Mackie had some connection with Harry Derby that would explain Derby’s possession of the bill…

  A note had been clipped to the records. It was from the IB man who had compiled the information. It said, “For your information this same description was given one of the boys here for checking a couple days ago by Jack Sandalwood, the reporter.”

  CHAPTER 21

  There’s a Story in It

  Next morning rain, thick and gray as a twinkling theater curtain, made a steady beat on cars and pavement; it would last all day. Ryan took off his raincoat and sat down to doughnuts and coffee before the restaurant’s lighted windows. He unfurled the Herald Tribune, turned to Red Smith’s column and sipped black, sweetened coffee. It was in between times, late for the crowd that got to work at eight-thirty, but early for the nine o’clockers. You felt those things when you had worked all hours long enough. Ryan bit into crisp doughnuts and savored the wry humor of good sports writing. For a while he forgot where he was and what lay ahead of him, and how little time he had.

  But when the coffee was finished and the sports page read, he paid his check, stood at the restaurant door yanking his raincoat tight against the weather and thought of Gee Gee. She’d be in bed at this hour, sound asleep, her body sweetly scenting the warm bedclothes… Ryan went out into the rain. Forget it. There was work to do.

  Mrs. Daniels was in a faded housecoat when he knocked at her door. She said, “Oh, it’s you?” apprehensively.

  “Anyone in that room where we arrested Derby?”

  “No. It’s empty.”

  “I’d like to look around it, if you don’t mind.”

  “Help yourself. The door’s open.” She was waiting for him to say something else.

  “And I’ll take ten bucks, if it’s convenient.”

  She sighed—of course he wouldn’t forget that.

  “Can I give you five now and send you the rest on Saturday? Honest, most of my roomers have been slow this week. And I never got the other ten back, you know.”

  “Sure,” said Ryan. It was as good as you could expect. She’d never have sent the money voluntarily, of course.

  He mounted the stairs they had crept up so cautiously that night. No need for silence now. Even so he walked quietly. He had a surreptitious feeling about what he was doing. There were a lot of people he would not want to meet here, nor would want to know that he was still concerned with the place where Harry Derby was arrested. Lieutenant Bauer, for example, or anyone from the precinct station.

  He pushed the door open, took off his coat, draped it over a chair and sat down. Rain whispered fitfully at the windows; otherwise the old house was gloomily quiet.

  Nothing had changed since the last time; he almost expected to see Derby’s long back against the wall, arms spread-eagled upward. Ryan tried to remember exactly what Derby had looked like and exactly what he had said. That was the only purpose of this visit, if it had one: to strain for every possible hint he could get. For Derby must have had some guilty knowledge of the murder; otherwise how had he come to possess the hundred dollar bill?

  He got up and walked around the bare and chilly chamber, remembering where he had stood, and Jablonski’s chagrin, and Derby’s taunts… He took his place at the wall where Derby had stood, put his hands up against it like a prisoner. Then he turned and moved forward into the room, imagining for a moment he was confronting two cops…

  “What the devil are you up to? Re-enacting the crime?”

  Even in his first start of guilty fear Ryan recognized the voice.

  A man stood in the doorway. Under his open trenchcoat a gray tweed jacket was visible. His confident, good-looking face wore a mocking smile.

  It was Sandalwood.

  Ryan stared, then tried to pull himself together. Clinch—play for time.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked with intentional naïveté.

  Sandalwood grinned and came in.

  “Supposing I tell you I’ve been following you for a while?” he said. “What are you up to, Ryan? Derby’s up the river—you’re certainly not still building a case against him. Do you just like this place?”

  And when Ryan remained silent, he drawled, “Or are you looking for something—say a hundred dollar bill that got lost one night?”

  Ryan cursed him and Sandalwood laughed. He was trying to overpower Ryan with his confidence and his reputation and his tactical position, and he was doing it.

  “Yesterday you dropped in on the Derbys. What’s the attraction there—the sister?” Sandalwood’s eyes bugged out impudently; he was trying to lure Ryan into rage.

  “And now you’re here. Why don’t you get it off your chest? I can give you a break, you know, if you cooperate. Let me tell you something, Ryan. Give it to me straight and then I’ll tell you whether you are telling the truth or not. Want to know something? I always figured you guys were up to something that night. So before Derby went up the river I talked to him. And he leveled. I’ve known Derby a long time. He told me pretty much what it was all about.”

  Was he lying? Was it a bluff, intended to trap him into admitting something? Or did Sandalwood know? He clearly had been following him.

  Ryan had to make a move. He seized on the first inspiration that came.

  “Okay,” he said steadily. “I’ll tell you the truth. Not many people know this. But Harry Derby is the greatest slide trombone player you’ve ever heard. He really is.” Sandalwood’s jaw sucked turtle-like into his neck.

  “His tone is clear as a bell,” Ryan went on. “What Jablonski and I were trying to do that night was to recruit him into a little jazz band we’re forming.”

  Sandalwood’s face darkened. Ryan knew he had turned the tables. “You know how it is,” he went on. “There’s just never enough good trombone players.”

  Anger was making Sandalwood’s eyes kindle.

  Ryan grinned. “What’s the matter? Aren’t I telling you the truth? Suppose you tell me.”

  Slowly, visibly, Sandalwood swallowed his rage. It took time. But he was too skillful to let himself be twitted into further error. He had attempted a well-timed bluff, but Ryan had called it.

  “Okay,” he said. “You can’t blame me for trying. I played a hunch, that’s all. But on the level, Ryan—what the hell are you doing?”

  “Just call downtown to the deputy commissioner,” said Ryan, “and get permission. Then I’ll be glad to give you an interview.”

  Careles
sly Sandalwood threw a porkpie rain hat over an unruffled brow. “Okay.”

  He went to the door. “I was bluffing and you called it. I haven’t talked to Derby. But I will now. Know why? Because now I know I’m right. Something went on here that night—I can feel it. Maybe it wasn’t a hundred dollar bill. Maybe it was something else. But whatever it was, there’s a story in it, and I’m going to get it.”

  Over his shoulder Sandalwood smiled deliberately. He did not feel like smiling, and he knew that Ryan knew that. Then he paused, going out, and the smile was replaced by calculated malice.

  “By the way, seen Gee Gee Hawes lately?”

  Ryan could not think of an adequate reply that would not involve the swinging of fists.

  When Sandalwood had ambled down the stairs whistling with studied loudness, Ryan lighted a cigarette and noticed his hands were trembly. He inhaled deeply. Sandalwood had been following him! It couldn’t have been for long, and it was probably the result of luck more than intent—maybe Sandalwood had happened to see him on the street yesterday and had tagged along hopefully. Ryan was certain he would have sensed it if anyone had been following him for any length of time.

  Even so, the thought was alarming, and Sandalwood’s threat was more than alarming. He crushed out the cigarette in a rush of desperate helplessness and jogged down the stairs. Twice on the way home he checked to make sure no one was behind him. He had not intended returning home, but in this new uneasiness he wanted to be doubly certain no one could overhear the telephone calls he would make.

  The house was still. Ryan heated coffee, poured a cup, lighted another cigarette and then dialed the number of a stool to whom Lee Lambert had introduced him. “He’s a barber over on Third,” Lambert had explained afterward. “Slip him a fin occasionally but never go in the shop. Though you can call him there.” When the barber whose name was Connie answered, Ryan told him what he wanted to know—everything he could get about Big Mackie, and fast.

  “It won’t be much. That party’s out of town.”

  “What do you mean? When did he go?”