Street of No Return (4 page)

"But this." Woodling spoke through his teeth, his thumb flicking to indicate the prisoner. "Who tells the Captain about this?"

"I'll tell him," the Lieutenant said. "I'll figure a way to break it to him." He bit his lip thoughtfully. "Tell you what. I'll take this man in through the side door. I wanna ask him some questions. Meantime, you go outside and wait."

The policemen released their holds on Whitey and entered the station house. The Lieutenant looked at Whitey and said, "All right, come with me."

They walked down the steps and around the side of the station house. The Lieutenant had his hands in his overcoat pockets and moved along with his head down, his lips slightly pursed to whistle a tune in a minor key. It was a song from many years ago and he couldn't remember past the first few bars. He tried it a few times and couldn't get it. Whitey picked it up and hummed the rest of it. The Lieutenant glanced at Whitey and said, "Yeah, that's it. Pretty number."

"Yeah," Whitey said.

"What?"

"I said yeah."

"Can't you talk louder?" Whitey shook his head.

"Why not?" the Lieutenant asked. "What's wrong with your voice?"

Whitey didn't answer.

They were approaching the side entrance of the station house. The Lieutenant stopped and looked fully at Whitey and said, "You got bronchitis or something?"

"No," Whitey said. "I talk like this all the time."

"It sounds weird," the Lieutenant said. "As if you're whispering secrets."

Whitey shrugged. He didn't say anything.

The Lieutenant leaned in slightly to get a closer look at Whitey's face. A vague frown drifted across the Lieutenant's brow and he murmured, "I bet you're full of secrets."

Whitey shrugged again. "Who ain't?"

The Lieutenant mixed the frown with a smile. "You got a point there."

Then the Lieutenant was quiet and they went along the side of the station house. They came to the side door and the Lieutenant opened it and they went in. There was a narrow corridor and a door with a sign over it with the word "Captain" and then another door with the sign "House Sergeant" and finally a door with the sign "Detectives." The door was partially open and the Lieutenant shoved it with his foot to open it all the way.

It was a medium-sized room with a floor that needed wax and walls that needed paint. There were some chairs and a few small tables and a roll-top desk. A tall man with a very closely waved and nicely cut pompadour of light-brown hair sat working at the desk. He glanced up at them, gave Whitey a quick once-over, and went back to work.

"Have a seat," the Lieutenant said to Whitey. He pointed toward a table that had a chair on either side. Then he took off his overcoat and put it on a hanger. On the wall next to the hanger there was a small mirror and the Lieutenant moved in close to it as though looking to see if he needed a shave. He stood there for some moments inspecting his face and adjusting his tie. He tightened the knot, loosened it, tightened it again to get the crease under the knot exactly in the middle. When he'd finished with that, he moved his head from side to side to see if he could use a haircut. Whitey began to have a feeling that it was sort of a gag and the Lieutenant was making fun of the neatly groomed man who sat at the roll-top desk.

Finally the man at the desk looked at the Lieutenant and said, "All right, cut it out."

The Lieutenant leaned in very close to the mirror and pretended to squeeze a blackhead from his chin.

"Very funny," the other man muttered. He bent lower over his work at the desk, his shoulders very broad and expanded past the sides of the chair. He wore an Oxfordgray suit of conservative but expensively tailored lines and his shoes were black Scotch grain and had the semiglossy British look. The Lieutenant had moved away from the mirror and was standing near the roll-top desk, looking down at the Scotch grain shoes.

"Where'd you get them?" the Lieutenant asked.

"Had them made," the other detective said.

"That's what I figured," the Lieutenant said.

The other detective sat up very straight and took a deep breath. "All right, Pertnoy. Lay off."

Lieutenant Pertnoy laughed lightly and patted the other detective's shoulder. "You're a fine man, Taggert. Really a fine man, and you always make a very nice appearance. We're all proud of you."

"Oh, drop it," the other said wearily. And then louder, almost hoarsely, "For Christ's sake, why don't you drop it? There's times you actually get on my nerves."

Lieutenant Pertnoy laughed again. "Don't get angry."

"I'm not," Lieutenant Taggert said. "But sometimes you go too far."

"I know," Pertnoy admitted. He said it with mock solemnity. "After all, there's a time and a place for everything."

Taggert swung around in the chair. He pointed to the mirror on the wall. "Let's understand something," he said very slowly and distinctly. "I put that mirror there. And I want it to stay there. And I don't want to be kidded about it. Is that absolutely clear?"

"Absolutely." It was an exaggerated imitation of the other's crisp official tone.

Taggert took another deep breath. He started to say something and then he noticed the ragged little whitehaired man who sat at the table showing handcuffed wrists.

"What's that?" Taggert asked, gesturing toward Whitey.

"Nothing important," Pertnoy said.

"Why the cuffs? What's he done?"

Pertnoy smiled at Whitey. "Tell him what you did."

"I didn't do anything," Whitey said.

Pertnoy went on smiling. "You hear?" he said to Taggert. "The man says he didn't do anything. So it stands to reason he didn't do anything. It figures he don't need handcuffs." And then, to Whitey, "Want them off?"

Whitey nodded.

"All right," Pertnoy said. "You can talk better if you're comfortable. I'll take them off."

Pertnoy moved toward the table and took a key ring from his pocket. He selected a key and unlocked the handcuffs. Then the handcuffs were off and Pertnoy slid them toward the center of the table and said, "That better?"

"Yeah," Whitey said. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Pertnoy said. He walked across the room and stood near the roll-top desk. For some moments he stood there looking down at Taggert, who had resumed working with pencil and paper. Finally he tapped Taggert's shoulder and said, "Were you here when the report came in?"

Taggert didn't look up. "What report?"

"Nothing much," Pertnoy said. "I'll tell you later." Then, offhandedly, "Can you hold that work for a while? I want to talk to this man alone."

Taggert wrote a few more lines on the paper, folded the paper, and clipped it onto several other sheets. He put the papers in a large envelope and placed the envelope in one of the desk drawers. Then he stood up and walked out of the room.

Lieutenant Pertnoy glanced at his wrist watch. His lips moved only slightly as he said, "We got about five minutes." He looked at Whitey. "Let's see what we can do."

Whitey blinked a few times. He saw Lieutenant Pertnoy moving toward him. The Lieutenant moved very slowly and sort of lazily. For some moments he stood behind Whitey's chair, not saying anything. It was as though the Lieutenant had walked out of the room and Whitey was there alone. Then the Lieutenant moved again, circling the table and sitting down in the chair facing Whitey.

The Lieutenant sat almost directly under the ceiling light, and now for the first time Whitey saw him clearly and was able to study him. Lieutenant Pertnoy looked to be in his middle thirties and had a glossy cap of pale blond hair parted far on the side and brushed flat across his head. He had a gray, sort of poolroom complexion, not really unhealthy, just sun-starved. There was something odd about his eyes. His eyes were a very pale gray and had the look of specially ground lenses. They gave the impression that he could see beyond whatever he was looking at. Whitey had the feeling that this man was cute with a cue stick or a deck of cards. The cuteness went along with the Lieutenant's slim and well-balanced physique, around fiveten and 150 pounds. He wore a gray flannel suit that needed pressing but wouldn't look right on him if it were pressed. It seemed to blend with his easy relaxed manner and his soft lazy smile.

The smile seemed to drift across the table, almost like a floating leaf in a gentle breeze. The Lieutenant was saying, "Tell me why you did it."

"I didn't do it," Whitey said.

"All right." The Lieutenant shifted in his chair, facing the wall on the other side of the room. "Let's take it slower. We'll talk about the weapon. What'd you hit him with?"

"I didn't hit him," Whitey said. "I didn't touch him."

Pertnoy smiled at the wall. He waved his hand lazily toward Whitey and said, "Look at your clothes. Look at the blood on you."

"I got that trying to help him. He was sitting there and I was holding him to keep him from falling."

Pertnoy gave a slow nod of assent. "That ain't bad. It might even stand up in court."

"Will it reach court?"

Pertnoy looked at Whitey and said, "What do you think?"

"I think you oughta go look for the man who did it."

"You mean you didn't do it?"

"That's what I been saying."

"Maybe you'll get tired saying it."

"Maybe." Whitey shrugged. "I'm getting tired now."

"Wanna break down?"

"And do what?"

"Cry a little," Pertnoy said. "Make some noise. Confess."

"No," Whitey said. "I'm not that tired."

"Come on." The Lieutenant's voice was very soft and kindly, like a doctor's voice. "Come on," the Lieutenant said, opening the table drawer and taking out a pencil and a pad of paper. "Come on."

"Nothing doing," Whitey said.

The pencil was poised. "Come on. You can spifi it in just a few words. He's chasing you down the alley and you pick up a brick or something. You don't really mean to finish him. All you wanna do is knock him down so you can get away."

Whitey smiled sadly. "You putting words in my mouth?"

"I wanna put some words on this paper," Pertnoy said. He flicked another glance at his wrist watch. "We only got a couple of minutes."

Whitey stopped smiling. "Until what?"

"Until I break it to the Captain."

"Then what?"

"God knows," Pertnoy said. And then his expression changed. His face became serious. It was the same seriousness he'd displayed outside the front entrance of the station house when he'd told the two policemen about the Captain.

Whitey sat there blinking and not saying anything.

"Look," Pertnoy said. "It's like this. You give me a confession and I'll put you in a cell. Then you'll be safe."

"Safe?" Whitey blinked hard. "From what?"

"Don't you see?" The Lieutenant leaned forward sort of pleadingly. "From the Captain."

Whitey gazed past the gray face of Lieutenant Pertnoy. But the wall of the room was also gray and it seemed to be moving toward him. "God," Whitey said to the wall. "Is that the way it is?"

"That's exactly the way it is," the Lieutenant said. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder to indicate something. It was the noise coming from the big room at the end of the corridor. It was the clashing mixture of shouts and curses in Spanish and English. There was a thud and another thud and then more shouting. "You hear that?" the Lieutenant said. "Listen to it. Just listen to it."

Whitey listened. He heard the cracking, squishy sound of someone getting hit very hard in the mouth. And then he heard the voice of the Captain saying, "Want more?" There was a hissing defiance in the voice replying, "Got any sisters?" Then a very cold quiet and then the Captain saying, "Sure. I got three." And there were three separate, precisely timed sounds, the sounds of knuckles smashing a face. After that it was just the vague noise of someone crumbling to the floor.

"You hear it?" Pertnoy said.

Whitey sat very low in the chair. He nodded slowly. He looked at Pertnoy's hand and saw the pencil poised above the pad of paper.

He heard Pertnoy saying, "You see what I mean?"

"Can't you stop him? Can't you do anything?"

"No," Pertnoy said. "We'd be crazy if we tried. There's no telling what he'd do. You heard what I told the blue boys. He's a sick man. He's getting sicker. I feel sorry for him, I swear I do. He's been trying his best to stop these riots, and the more he tries, the worse it gets. He's lost his grip on the neighborhood and he's losing his grip on himself. And now comes the pay-off. I gotta go in there and give him the news."

Whitey swallowed hard. He felt as if sawdust were going down his throat.