Street of No Return (5 page)

"I gotta give it to him," Pertnoy said. "I gotta tell him what the Hellhole did to him tonight. How it hit back at him. How it hit him where it hurts most. One of his own men."

Whitey swallowed again and there was more sawdust going down. His voice was scarcely audible as he said, "Do I hafta be there when you tell him?"

"It's up to you," Pertnoy said. The seriousness went away and he was smiling again. "Can we do business?"

Whitey opened his mouth to reply. But there was too much sawdust and it choked him and he couldn't say anything.

"Come on," Pertnoy said. He touched the pencil point to the pad of paper. "Gimme some dictation."

"Can't," Whitey said. "Can't tell you I did something I didn't do."

Pertnoy glanced at the wrist watch. "Not much time," he said.

Whitey shut his eyes and kept them shut for a long moment. Then he looked at the Lieutenant and inclined his head just a little. He frowned slightly and worked a very dim smile along the edge of it. "Lemme ask you something," he said. "You conning me?"

Pertnoy gestured toward the noise coming from the big room. "Does that sound like I'm conning you?"

Whitey listened. He heard it thumping and thudding and sort of galloping toward him. He sat there wishing the chair had wheels and a motor and a reverse gearshift.

Again the Lieutenant glanced at the wrist watch. "I'm looking at the second hand," he said. "Twenty seconds."

"That's close," Whitey said.

"Damn close," the Lieutenant said. He kept his eyes focused on the dial of the wrist watch. "Fifteen seconds."

Whitey grinned. He wondered why he was able to grin. He heard himself saying, "The hell of it is, I got no hospital insurance."

"Maybe you'll need a hearse," the Lieutenant said. His lips smiled as he said it but his eyes weren't smiling and there was no smile in his voice.

Whitey stopped grinning. "You think he'd go that far?"

"He might. Come on, buddy. It's ten seconds. Nine seconds."

Then it was very quiet in the room. There was only the tiny noise of the ticking of the watch.

"Five seconds," the Lieutenant said. He looked up. He kept the pencil on the paper, ready to write. The pencil was steady in his fingers, the point lightly touching the surface of the blank sheet.

"No?" the Lieutenant said.

"No." Whitey said it with a sigh.

"All right," the Lieutenant said. "No seconds. All gone." He stood up, motioning for Whitey to rise. "Come on, you're gonna meet the Captain."

4

They were in the corridor walking slowly and going toward the noisy action in the big room. The Lieutenant was lighting a cigarette and holding it between his thumb and little finger, his eyes intent on the cigarette as though it were an oboe reed that must be handled delicately. He didn't exhale the smoke, it simply drifted from his lips of its own accord. It drifted sideways and floated past Whitey's eyes to form a wispy curtain. Whitey gazed through the curtain and saw the big room coming closer and it was blurry and he had the feeling it was unreal.

The feeling grew in him and he told himself all this was strictly on the fantastic side. The chaotic sounds of the big room were sounds he'd never heard in any station house, or even in the alcoholic wards of municipal hospitals. At least in the alcoholic wards there were white-garbed people in control of the situation, and despite all the hollering in the beds, there was an atmosphere of order and system. He'd been in more than one alcoholic ward, and certainly he'd been in many station houses, and he'd never seen anything that compared with this.

As the Lieutenant led him into the big room and he got a full front view of what was going on, he winced in wonder and disbelief. He stared at four men who were unconscious on the floor, and a few sitting there on the floor with bloody faces, and several sprawled on the benches along the walls, their heads down and the gore dripping from their chins. One man, a Puerto Rican, had his hands pressed to his throat and was making strangled groans. Another man, with Slavic features, stood holding his groin and shaking his head as though refusing to believe how hard he'd been hit there. A policeman stood beside him, showing him the night stick and letting him know it was ready for another smash. The policeman was breathing very hard and his mouth was wide open and he seemed to be having more distress than the man he'd hit. It was the same way with all the other policemen. Their faces were paler than the faces of the prisoners, their eyes showed more agony, more fear. They were staring at the Captain, who was talking to one of the men sitting on the floor.

"Get up," the Captain said.

The man sat there grinning at the Captain.

"You gonna get up?"

"No," the man said.

The Captain leaned down and took hold of the man's ankle, lifting the leg and twisting the ankle. The man grimaced but managed to hold some of the grin and showed his teeth to the Captain.

"You're gonna need crutches," the Captain said. He tightened his hold on the man's ankle and twisted harder.

"That's right," the man said. "Break it off."

"You think I won't?" the Captain said. His features were expressionless. He had his coat off and his shirt was torn, one sleeve ripped from wrist to shoulder with the blue fabric dangling in shreds. His face was shiny with sweat and his hair was mussed. He had pitch-black hair with some narrow ribbons of white in it and the white was like foam on a storm-tossed black sea. The Captain had blue eyes and his complexion was the color of medium-rare beef. He was built along the lines of Jeffries, about five-eleven and well over two hundred. There was no paunch and hardly any fat and most of his weight was above his navel. He looked to be around forty-five and it was altogether evident that he took very good care of himself and was in excellent physical condition. Yet somehow he gave the impression of a helpless creature going to pieces and slowly dying.

He went on twisting the man's ankle. Now the man's leg was bent at a weird angle, and the man let out an animal cry. And then one of the younger policemen said loudly, "Captain. For God's sake."

The Captain didn't hear. He was concentrating on the man's ankle.

"Captain," the young policeman said very loudly. "Captain Kinnard--"

It reached the Captain and he looked up. He blinked several times and shook his head like someone emerging from water. He let go of the man's ankle and looked up at the ceiling and there was a straining yearning in his eyes as though he wished fervently he could fly up there and go on through the roof and sail away.

Gradually the room became quiet. Whitey stood in the doorway with Lieutenant Pertnoy. He saw some of the policemen going to the aid of the men on the floor. He estimated there were some fifty people in the room. He counted eleven policemen and around twenty Puerto Ricans and the rest were Americans who looked to be of Slavic and Irish and Scandinavian descent. The policemen were moving in between the Puerto Ricans and the Americans, making sure there was plenty of space between the two groups of arrested rioters, then shoving them back toward the benches along the walls. Finally the floor was cleared and all the benches were taken. The Captain had walked to the big high desk and now he sat there with his head turning very slowly, looking at the Puerto Ricans on one side of the room, the Americans on the other side, and back to the Puerto Ricans, then back to the Americans.

"Now then," the Captain said, but that was all he could say. He went on looking from one side to the other. He opened his mouth again and no sound came out. His mouth stayed open and then very slowly he lowered his head and looked down at the surface of the desk.

It was very quiet in the room.

Lieutenant Pertnoy turned to Whitey and said quietly, "You wanna tell him?"

"Tell him what?"

"What you did. What you did to one of his men."

Whitey didn't get it. He looked blankly at Pertnoy. He said, "Ain't it your job to tell him?"

"That's the point," Pertnoy said. "I wish it wasn't."

Whitey shrugged. He knew there was nothing more for him to say, nothing to think about, nothing to do to stop what was coming. He knew it was coming, he told himself it was coming sure as hell, and again he could feel the sawdust in his throat as he gazed toward the desk and saw the wide shoulders and thick-muscled arms and heavy hands of Captain Kinnard.

He heard Pertnoy saying, "Wanna sit down?"

"I'd rather lay down."

"You'll lay down," Pertnoy said.

Whitey sighed softly. He tried to shrug again, but now his shoulders felt too heavy. He told himself it was going to be a very long night for Whitey. Then, thinking deeply and seriously, he took it further than that. He reasoned it was quite possible that he'd never get out of here alive. He'd heard stories about it, the way it had happened in certain station houses when they brought in a cop-killer and maybe an hour later they'd take the man out through the back door with a sheet over his face. With no mention of it in the newspapers. Or maybe they'd tell the reporters that the man tried to get away. Then again, they might simply state the facts and admit that they'd hit the man just a little too hard. Whichever way they handled it, they never got blamed too much. Not when it came to cop-killers. The papers and the public were never sorry for cop-killers.

He stood there waiting for Pertnoy to walk him toward the big high desk. Then he was conscious of voices at his side. He turned and looked and it was Pertnoy talking to the tall and well-built and impeccably attired Detective Lieutenant Taggert.

"Who told you?" Pertnoy was saying.

"I got it from the house sergeant," Taggert said. He gave Pertnoy a narrow look and his mouth tightened just a little. "Why didn't you tell me? What's all this cover-up?"

Pertnoy made an offhand gesture. "No cover-up. I just figured it could wait."

"Wait? I don't get that." Taggert's eyes were narrower. "It isn't a snatched purse, it isn't a drunk-and-disorderly. It's a homicide. And the victim's a policeman from this district." His head jerked sideways and for a moment he stared at Whitey. "Well," he said. "Well, now." Then he aimed the narrow look at Pertnoy and his voice was a needle jabbing gently. "You sure you know what you're doing?"

"I'm never sure," Pertnoy said. He smiled sort of wistfully. "I never give myself guarantees."

"Guess not," Taggert agreed. But his tone sent the needle in deeper. Then, still deeper, "The way you operate, there's no guarantee on anything. Or maybe you like it better that way. Sometimes I think you do it on purpose.

Pertnoy widened the smile. "Meaning what?"

"That it's more fun when it's thin ice. You're always out for fun, aren't you?"

Lieutenant Pertnoy shrugged and said, "It's a short life."

"Yeah," Taggert said. "Especially for cops. The cop who died tonight was forty-four years old."

Pertnoy didn't say anything.

"He was a twenty-year man with a perfect record," Lieutenant Taggert said, standing there tall and stalwart, solidly planted on his custom-made Scotch-grain shoes, his finely tailored Oxford gray correct in every detail, his fingernails immaculate, and his light-brown pompadour with every hair in place glimmering cleanly under the ceiling lights. He stood there exuding cleanliness and neatness and strength of mind and body. He said, "It's a serious loss. It's damn serious and it certainly doesn't call for fooling around."

"Fooling around?" Pertnoy smiled again. "Is that what I've been doing?"

Taggert's mouth was very tight. "All right, Pertnoy. I won't jockey with you. I want a direct answer and I think I'm entitled to it. Why'd you keep this thing quiet? Why haven't you told the Captain?"

Pertnoy looked across the room. Without words he was telling Taggert to look in the same direction. They both saw the Captain sitting at the big high desk on the platform three steps above the floor. The Captain was hunched low over some papers and he was trying to use a pencil. As they watched him, the pencil slipped from his hand, rolled across the desktop and off the edge, and dropped onto the floor. A policeman hurried forward, picked up the pencil, and handed it to the Captain. The Captain thanked him and started to write again, but somehow he couldn't move the pencil across the paper and finally he put it down and sat there staring at the paper.

"You see?" Pertnoy murmured.

Taggert didn't reply. He stood there watching the Captain. Then very slowly his head turned and he gazed along the rows of crowded benches, the Puerto Rican rioters on the other side of the room, the American rioters on this side, and the policemen standing stiff and tense and waiting for more to happen. They stood there lined up in the middle of the bloodstained floor, all of them holding night sticks and gripping them very tightly.

"You see?" Pertnoy said. "You get it now?"

Taggert gazed again at the Captain. For some moments Taggert didn't say anything. Then very quietly he said, "You want meto tell him?"

Pertnoy's smile became dim and dimmer and then faded altogether and he said, "Do you want to?"

"Well, someone's got to tell him."

"All right," Pertnoy said. "You tell him."

Taggert took a deep breath. He turned and walked very slowly toward the big high desk. Whitey watched him as he approached the platform, saw him mounting the steps, heard the distinct clicking of his heels on the first step and the second and the third. There were other sounds in the room but Whitey didn't hear them. He was watching Lieutenant Taggert moving across the platform to the desk and bending over to whisper in the Captain's ear. The Captain's head was low and he was staring at the paper on the desk. Taggert went on whispering and Whitey saw the Captain gradually raising his head and sitting up very straight, rigid in a metallic sort of way, as though he were something activated by a lever. Then the Captain said something that Whitey couldn't hear and Taggert's reply was also inaudible but his arm was stretched out and his finger pointed at Whitey.

The Captain got up from the desk chair. He walked across the platform, moving like a sleepwalker except that his arms were stiff at his sides. He came down off the platform and there was nothing on his face but the flesh and yet it didn't seem like flesh, it was more like something made of ice and rock. He was headed on a diagonal going toward Whitey and it was like watching the slow approach of gaping jaws or a steam roller or anything at all that could manage and finish off whatever it touched.

Whitey stood there not breathing. He saw the Captain coming closer. Then closer. He saw the dead-white face of Captain Kinnard coming in very close, some ten feet away, then seven feet away, and he wondered if it made sense just to stand still and wait for it to happen. He decided it didn't make the least bit of sense and he edged away from Lieutenant Pertnoy, not thinking about Pertnoy or Pertnoy's gun or the guns of the policemen. He was thinking about the big hands of the Captain and telling himself to move and move fast.

He moved. He moved very fast. The only thought in his brain was the idea of fleeing from the big hands of the Captain. He was running, not knowing where he was going, not particularly caring, just so long as it took him away from the Captain. He heard someone shouting, "Get him!" and then another voice, and he saw the policemen coming toward him.

In the same moment he heard a lot of shouting in Spanish from the other side of the room. He caught a flash of the Puerto Ricans leaping up from the benches and hurling themselves toward the opened door that led to the street. The policemen stopped and stared and for a split second they didn't seem to know what to do. In that instant the American rioters got the exit notion and jumped up and started looking for exits. A moment later the room was boiling with men running in all directions, bumping into each other, fighting to break free of each other to reach the doors and windows, the policemen grabbing at them and trying to hold on, or else using the night sticks to break it up that way, but there was no breaking it up, there was no stopping it, not even when Lieutenant Taggert reached for his shoulder holster and drew his revolver and fired a warning shot. He fired another shot at the ceiling and then decided to really use the gun. He fired at one of the Puerto Ricans and the man went down with a bullet in the kneecap.