“Suicide,” he grinned at me. “I get it. Be a good thing if some of the kids down here see it your way.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
“How’s the ball team?”
That surprised me. But then Grady knew every cop on the force, who was clean and who wasn’t. His question was his way of showing he knew about me, and I liked that, I really liked that.
“We won a few games. There’s always next year.”
“There’s going to be some big changes in this town in the next year.” Grady gave me a light fist on the chest. “Us outs are going to be the ins.” Grady left.
I liked that us, I really liked that.
Whitey had been hanging around, waiting to pump me, I knew. He was only three feet from me, but I acted as if the kid didn’t exist. I had him thinking and I was going to keep him thinking for a while.
“Was it really suicide?” he said to me.
“Well, kid, yes and no.” I had him thinking and I was going to keep him thinking for a while.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, kid, of course there’s going to be an inquest and all that, and they won’t call it suicide. But smart people, when the facts come out, will ask themselves what really killed Erie. And you know the answer smart people will come up with? Himself. And that’s suicide, kid?”
“What are the facts?”
He was reaching now and I was going to keep him thinking. Besides, he’d caused me a couple of sleepness nights over the baseball situation, and I didn’t mind at all the shoe being on the other foot now. If he spent a night or two thinking it might do him a world of good.
“Patience, kid, patience. Everything will be brought out into the light at the proper time and place, which isn’t here and now.”
I walked away from him. I didn’t look back, but I could feel him frowning at my back. He was a shook-up thinking kid. Good.
I walked back to the dirt and glass and wet where Erie’s car had been. I stood there thinking. Sucker? No, Erie had been the sucker after all. Big man, smart man, he’d taught kids of Water Street that laws and lawmen were a joke, and they had learned their lesson well, right down to the littlest kids who didn’t even know all the bad words yet.
I looked across the street at the alleyway between the mission and the Golden Horse Tavern. The little kids were gone now, but they had been there when Erie made his last drive up the street. And one wild shot from a peashooter, and one little hard white bean had zinged into the open window of Erie’s car and caught him square in the eye.
No, Marg, the Reform League couldn’t stop Erie, but now it didn’t have to. When you get right down to it, he stopped himself. I hope Whitey can see it that way.
I began walking my beat, and my old boots felt a lot lighter than they had for many a day. Dirty old Water Street looked beautiful. I felt like singing at the top of my voice.
Like I said at the beginning, it was a day that started bad and got worse, but suddenly it got real good, just fine.
You Can’t Catch Me
by Larry Maddock
One might be accused of ironic indulgence should he recall here, from Nonsense Songs, “They took some honey, and plenty of money, wrapped up in a five-pound note.”
I was finishing my research on the Thompson murder case when the phone rang. Murphy should have answered it, since he was the one on duty, but Chief of Detectives Raglan was closer to the phone Not yet forty, Raglan was almost a stereotype of a top cop; bull-necked and massiveshouldered, with a truck driver face which fronted for a tricky, analytical mind He wrapped his meaty hand around the receiver and put it to his ear. “Homicide,” he said. “Go ahead.”
His expression brightened, then clouded “Where are you, honey?” he asked, grabbing for a pencil. By this time, of course, my eyebrows were up and my ears were at attention. There was only one person in the world whom Raglan would ever call “honey”.
“Sit tight, honey,” he was saying. “I’ll have someone there in five minutes.” He broke the connection and dialed three numbers while I stuffed my notes back into my briefcase. “Prowler at 730 Barron,” he barked. “Get two cars there and seal off the block. I’ll cover the house myself.”
I’d watched him in action for seventeen years, and knew my time for questions would come later.
Raglan hung up and shifted his bulk in the swivel chair. “Get the lead out, Murph!” he bellowed. “My kid just reported a prowler. Let’s move!” He was out of the chair by now and grabbing his coat. He must have seen my expression because he grinned at me. “You want a story, Shaffer? Come on!”
Moments later the three of us were in a squad car heading east, and Raglan was telling me, “I’m not doing this just because it’s my kid. She wouldn’t call unless she was sure she saw somebody. We’ve had prowler reports before in that neighbourhood.”
Murphy started the siren then to clear traffic and, as shouting over it was not my idea of how to get a story, I sat back to enjoy as much of the ride as I could. Even Raglan showed signs of tension at the bigger intersections.
Hard-nosed and determined to do his job, Joe Raglan had first come to my attention when, as a rookie patrolman, he gave the Mayor a citation for speeding. I was a rookie, too, in the middle of my first year on the Bulletin. It was that first Officer Raglan story that gave me a freer hand with the police and City Hall beat than I probably deserved.
I’d kept track of Raglan after that, figuring he’d brought me luck. He was a cautious cop. He never made a move until he was sure he was right, but when he moved it was with a ruthlessness that brooked no opposition. That he should have been promoted to the Detective Bureau was as natural as my own advancement as a reporter. We both, I suppose, went as high as we wanted to.
Despite our similarities, however, in all the seventeen years I had never liked the man. Understood him, yes. Admired him, certainly. But I could never bring myself really to like him. He was too cold, too analytical, too well-honed a blade for my taste. The only warmth I’d ever seen him show was for his daughter.
Murphy killed the siren and the squad car rolled to a gentle stop two doors down from our destination. It was as close to a surburban neighbourhood as you could find while still inside the city limits. The other two cars were already there, one at each end of the block.
“No noise,” Raglan cautioned, and the three of us got out. “You and Shaffer cover the front of the house. I’m going around back.”
Murphy and I found shadows to stand in, while Raglan went heavily but silently to the wooden gate at the side of the house. A moment later he had it open without a sound. Then he was gone and I watched the gate swing slowly closed. There were no sounds for several minutes.
To Murphy, I imagined, it was not the sort of investigation which should legitimately concern an ambitious young detective. But Raglan had seniority, and I guess you don’t complain when the big boys call the shots. At least not in public.
Raglan’s voice came sharp and clear: “Debbie. Debbie!” Heavy footsteps inside the house. The front door burst open. “Murph! Shaffer! She’s not here!”
We sprinted for the door. “The children?” Murphy asked. He’s got two of his own about that age, and he tends to worry.
“Asleep,” Raglan said. He looked at his watch. “I talked to her ten minutes ago and she was okay. But take a look — she didn’t leave willingly, that’s for sure.”
The living-room told its own story A coffee table was upended in front of a sectional couch. A chair lay on its side not far from a television set. Between the couch sections, on a magazine stand, was a pink telephone, perversely undisturbed. A lamp leaned crazily against the near end of the couch. The draperies along the back wall had been partially torn loose from their runners, revealing a sliding glass door behind them. There was a hum and the scritch-rake sound of a phonograph needle grooving monotonously at the end of a record. Loose-leaf paper littered the floor.