Authors: Mickey Spillane

Tags: #Hard/Boiled/Crime

The Last Cop Out (18 page)

“The facts don’t .. :”

“Frank Verdun is in New York too.”

“Burke, I think ...”

“Mark Shelby is in New York too.”

Irritation drew Lederer’s face into a flushed scowl. “This is not a personal affair, Burke. Damn it all, so far you haven’t ...”

Gill didn’t let him finish. “How about the belly-button man, Mr. Lederer?”

Captain Long had been waiting for that and smiled. He opened the folder on his lap and said, “Denver gave us the lead and the F.B.I. confirmed it. They had three other mutilations with the navels torn out and we have an APB out for a white male caucasian, age forty-five, medium build, slightly balding, with a slightly crossed left eye. The only name we have is a probable alias of Shatzi. A definite identifying mark is a large scar where his navel formerly was. That last bit of information came from a woman he cohabited with.”

“I suppose you’ll have spotters in the turkish baths to look for the scar,” Lederer said sourly.

“Sure,” Long told him. “We’re checking all the whores, too.”

“When you find him, there’ll be an easy way to make him talk,” Burke said.

“Oh? And how is that?”

“Tell him you’re going to sew his belly button back on.”

The laugh that went around the room broke the tension, except for the boiling anger inside the assistant district attorney. He let it ride with a grim smile and went back to the briefing. They finished an hour later and when it was over everybody agreed they were still up in the air.

Everybody except Gill Burke, and when he had Bill Long across the table in the coffee shop he said, “One, there’s a leak in the department. Two, we have a lead with this Shatzi character. Why not concentrate on those angles?”

“Why not swing at the wind? Hell, Gill, we’re doing all we can, you know that.”

“The lab get anything from Bray’s office?”

“Plenty. Two truckloads of junk. The explosion and the fire destroyed everything. What was left of the tapes didn’t make sense because they were all coded, nothing we could tie together at all.”

“Well, you got something there, haven’t you?”

“Like what?”

“Supposing another mob was moving in. They’d rather have all that information than destroy it. Bray was a key man in the organization and what he knew would give them access to practically every phase of their businesses. The syndicate is big business, pal. They don’t do things in their heads any more. It’s all down on punchcards and tape like the records of any other cartel.”

“You got something there, kid. Got any answers to go with it?”

“Just plenty to speculate about,” he said. “You ought to try it.”

Long stared past his head at the faded yellow wall. “Yeah, I think I will.”

The other girls in the office had been sent out on business matters and Helen Scanlon was alone when the Frenchman called her in. “Helen ... can you take dictation?”

“Yes, certainly, Mr. Verdun.”

“Good. Then get your hat and coat and we’ll do it at lunch. That is, if you don’t mind?”

“Not at all.” She closed the door behind her and went to the coat hanger. She thought about it a minute and shrugged. It seemed a reasonable enough request, and if there was anything behind it, she’d know soon enough.

Verdun had his driver take them to a chic cosmopolitan restaurant in the mid-fifties where an accented maitre d’ led them to a walnut-paneled booth, took their orders for drinks and disappeared silently across the plush carpeting. Concealed speakers radiated soft semi-classical music and the conversational hum of the other patrons was almost inaudible.

Before the drinks were even served, a messenger came in, delivered an envelope to Verdun, and less than ten seconds later a waiter brought a phone to the table and told him he had an incoming call. He spoke rapidly about a Boyer-Reston venture in a new plastics industry, gave instructions to complete the merger and hung up. He told the waiter to hold all calls and lifted his drink to Helen.

“Now you see why I must combine lunch with business,” he said.

Helen tasted her drink. “Yes, I certainly do.”

When they ordered their meal he dictated several letters in answer to those she had put on his desk that morning, then finished when the waiter arrived with their food.

“Good?” he asked her.

“Lovely, Mr. Verdun. I’ve never been here before.”

“One of my favorite spots when I’m in town,” he said. “Tell me, how are you making out with your policeman friend?”

This was the reason, she thought. Now she could really find out.

“He’s still curious, but I guess all cops are.”

“Is he charming?”

She had to smile at that. “It isn’t easy for a cop to be ... charming. I’ve never known one who didn’t have rough edges.”

Verdun let out a chuckle. “They can be pretty devious, my dear.”

They can be pretty direct too, she thought again. She looked at the Frenchman, busily engaged in buttering his bread, wondering what he knew. There was only one way to find out.

“I tried being a little charming myself.”

He lifted his eyes quizzically. “Oh?”

“As far as I know, he’s all wrapped up in this syndicate thing. All those killings.”

“There isn’t supposed to be a syndicate,” Verdun said casually.

“Not according to him. But he didn’t say much about it. We had supper, then his idea of fun was to visit a hock shop before he took me home.”

“Policemen are notoriously underpaid,” Verdun said.

But his mind was telling him something else. Burke had to be hit fast. He’d sure as hell like to make it a two-for-one and get that stupid Shelby at the same time, but that part was out.

They finished the rest of the meal with just a little small talk and while they had coffee he remembered one more letter and she took down a reminder to the main office to update the billing machines and install two more phone lines. The driver took them back and he disappeared behind his door where she could hear him in occasional conversations. One of the other girls transcribed her dictation while she filed the invoices, delivered envelopes from the messenger service and admitted the clients who had appointments.

At four-thirty Frank Verdun came out with a client, talking about a promotion in Arizona, walked over to her desk. “Did Mr. Clough’s airline tickets come in, Helen?”

She picked up an envelope delivered by one of the messengers and handed it to him. “Ten minutes ago. The eight-ten out of LaGuardia.”

The heavyset man checked his flight and stuck them in his pocket. “Thanks. Saved me a lot of trouble. Sure hate to leave this soon.” He looked at Verdun, fished around in his coat and brought out a pair of theater tickets. “Maybe you can use these, Frank. Took me a month to get them and Sadie is gonna be mad as hell about missing it, but the trip is more important.”

Verdun took the tickets and shook his head. “Tomorrow I’ll be with the auditors.” He tossed the tickets down on Helen’s desk. “Here, see if anybody can use them.”

When they walked out she looked at the tickets. They were good seats for the top show in town. She asked the other two girls if they wanted them, but one had seen the show and the other had a heavy date, so she stuck them in her pocketbook.

Maybe she could charm Gill Burke into taking her.

A clammy sweat beaded Mark Shelby’s face. It was bad enough having to try to put back all the information that had been destroyed and the job would have been impossible if the orders hadn’t been so explicit and direct. Between the old Moustache Petes and the new breed bucking their way in, there were no exceptions, no excuses, and if you couldn’t cut it, they’d cut you. The more he thought about it the more fierce his anger grew, the only satisfying aspect being that the pressure wasn’t going to last forever and one day they were all going to fold like deflated balloons and be swept into the fucking ash can where they belonged and he’d be the one with the pan and the broom. Damn their hides ... they with no class, no education, no natural ability except enjoying a total lack of conscience that enabled them to let death do the ruling. Pricks. That’s all they were. Fucking pig pricks. They held onto Old Country ties when they couldn’t even locate Rome or Naples or Sicily on the map. They sure were going to make some funny faces when they went down. Maybe they’d even do that crazy breast-beating routine.

The thought made him feel better, but only for a second. Oh, he could put everything back together again because he had his mind and more notes than they thought he had. He’d even get bigger when they learned how it had all been accomplished and it was even conceivable that he could accomplish his goal without using his original plan.

What was screwing everything up was that damned Gill Burke, that bastard cop they should have hit and been done with instead of just shuffling off into nobody-land. Now he was back at the pawnbroker’s asking questions and that lousy slob might not be able to take the pressure any more and say more than he was supposed to.

Maybe he already had!

The thought made him sweat again. He never underestimated Gill Burke, not even once, and he wasn’t about to now. He had kept a check on him all the time he had been off the force and there had been no repercussions, but there was always the chance that Burke had figured it that way too and had been a little more artful than he had been. There had been time for him to puzzle it out, too, and he could have reached the right answer. The whole Big Board had investigated too, and they even had access to the police probe, but they had been satisfied with his story.

Nevertheless, he,
the Primus Gladatori,
wasn’t completely satisfied and until he was he couldn’t concentrate on what he was doing. Shelby picked up the phone and dialed Helga. He knew she had a beauty shop appointment and she was just getting ready to leave. All he did was confirm the fact, exchange a few pleasantries and tell her he’d call tomorrow. He looked at his watch, waited fifteen minutes and took his own special way out of the building.

The little old man who just seemed to be shuffling along picked him up at exactly the last point he had lost him and this time everything was working in his favor. It was no trouble at all to tail Mark Shelby to the building where he kept Helga in her luxurious apartment and when he was satisfied he found the nearest phone and made a call. A tape recorder answered and he left his final message innocuously disguised and felt a little sad that his assignment had come to an end. It had been a lot of fun, had used up his idle hours and made him a lot of friends in odd places. It was now going to bring him a sizable bonus that would finish the payment on the orange grove in the middle of Florida where he would sit in the sun until he mummified.

Mark Shelby made sure the apartment was empty and while he was checking the rooms, automatically looked through Helga’s personal effects too. Whatever she had, he had given her. Except one thing. A new packet of three rubber condoms was in the back of the drawer in the nightstand table. For a second his fist clenched because if she tried fooling around with some punk on him ... then he grinned because it was a new pack, discarded in the back, just in case her coil fell out or something like that and it was for him, not some punk.

He went out to the living room behind the bar and lifted the candle from the holder, not paying a bit of attention to the religious statue at all, took it in front of a strong light and tried to peer through it. It was too opaque to see anything, so he inspected it carefully. After five minutes he was sure that nobody had ever touched it since he had put it there.

A great weight was lifted from his mind.

He looked at the statue guarding his treasure and wondered why he didn’t feel the need to genuflect or something. Maybe make the sign of the cross.

Screw that stuff he thought. His faith was in the candle, not the statue.

He went back downstairs to retrace his route.

At that moment the message on the tape recorder was being decoded.