It occurs to me that maybe Bobo will be at his own place, so I try his apartment and sure enough there is the voice I’m looking for.
“What’s up, Tim?”
“Well, it’s about tonight, Bobo. There’s a little hitch.”
And I tell him all about the accident to my hand, doing a little more swearing than I thought I would when it comes to mentioning that no-good Ed Clancy’s name.
Finally, Bobo says, “Tim, you disappoint me. I been counting on this job.”
“Yeah, Bobo, sure. There’s a chance I can get it done for you tomorrow night. I finish my penance with this Clancy character tonight and Vincente and me are working together for the next couple days. Vince is one of the old-timers, one of my boys. If I cut him in for a bunch of iron men, he’ll be glad to play punching bag with Larry Melody.”
“Well, Tim, I don’t know—”
“Results guaranteed, Bobo,” I say, talking fast. I don’t want that five hundred going into some cheap hood’s pocket. “This Vincente does a job I’d be proud of myself. And, remember, all official — with the police car and everything, no trouble for anybody.” I laugh. “Except maybe Larry.”
“Well,” Bobo says again. Then: “Oh-oh. Got to hang up, Tim. That’s probably Susie at the door.”
“What about our deal?”
“Okay, okay. But no later than tomorrow night.”
I tell him check, and I am feeling a little better when I go out to the patrol car and Ed Clancy. But not so much better that I am looking forward to the rest of the shift with this baboon, especially when I begin to realize that with an automobile in his hands this Clancy character is armed with a dangerous weapon. I’m running a sweat by the time we go no more than three, four blocks, the way he lead-foots it along, cutting in and out of traffic like these trucks and trolley cars are made out of cardboard.
I kill the big contented smile on his kisser by telling him to turn down a side street and park it by the curb.
“Wassamatter, Sarge?”
“Wassamatter? When you bring me down to the Doc’s, I am so blind with pain I don’t see how bad you drive. Now I got my senses back, it comes to me you don’t know what for about handlin’ this buggy, or any other buggy! You ever drive before?”
“Well, a little, back in the Army.”
“Cars?”
“Er — tanks. And some half-tracks.”
“You got a license?”
“No, but I like to drive.”
“Well, ain’t that dandy! Just dandy!”
He shrugs and starts to let out the clutch but I reach down and turn off the ignition. “Hold it, Junior. We can listen to the radio just as well without risking my neck with your drivin’. We got to midnight — so let’s just park.”
“But—”
“That’s an order!”
It is possible that Monaghan just might give me a qualified driver, if I report in with the bust hand and a partner who can’t drive legal. For a few minutes I get hot with the prospects of getting Vincente or maybe Callahan to finish out the shift with me, and being able to do the job for Big Bobo tonight after all. But on second thought I realize that Monaghan is probably gonna get nosey about the busted flipper and maybe suspicious if I don’t synchronize the thing right with Doc Spensil, who’s liable to get all mixed up about the deal if the Chief checks with him.
There’s nothing much I can do but sweat the shift out here with Clancy, and hope that I can duck the Chief long enough for assignments tomorrow. Clancy is as fidgety, sitting there beside me, as a hen on a hot griddle. Finally, about an hour later, when our call letters come in over the set, he almost leaves the seat.
“Sarge — that’s us!”
“Two four Fagan,” comes the voice from Headquarters, “Fourteenth and Sammis... an all-night parking garage... a rumpus... PB there...”
I listen for the repeat while Clancy puts the address down in his book, then I take the mike:
“Two four Fagan... check and out.”
“I know the place they mean,” Clancy says, putting some life under the hood of the police buggy. “That’s Delaney’s beat.”
The PB is code for “check with the patrolman on beat,” and this we got to do, no two ways about it, now that the call is on the records official. Well, I have been in worse trouble than I am in tonight, but I cannot recall same off hand.
“Take it away, G-Man,” I tell Clancy and we bang away from the curb like we been hitched to a rocket. Somehow I do not mind this jerk’s driving so much any more. In fact, I am hoping that maybe we will run into something nice and solid on the way, like a brick fence, say, that will give me a good solid explanation for this hand of mine. Because, sure as my name is Tim Fagan, if this is a legitimate beef and I got to make a report of same, I am going to be in one hell of a fix for not reporting this busted handle of mine earlier. And I do not see any way I can learn to write right-handed in the next twenty minutes or so, to sign the report. So there is just the hope that Clancy runs this bus into something or that we draw a blank at the garage. Way I see it, it is much better if there is not enough wrong at the garage for us to have to write up a report.
But it doesn’t look like I’m going to have any luck at all, first look I get at the crowd around the Acme Garage when we pull up. Clancy puts his foot on the siren and takes us right through the mob into the building before he pulls up.
“Where’s the policeman?” I ask one of the faces there, and some gee jerks a thumb toward the ramp that winds around and leads upstairs.
I guess Clancy figures he is back in that there tank warfare of his — the way he almost knocks over the guy and goes lickety-split up that ramp like it was a cross-country highway.
Zoom! Zoom!
We’re just missing the walls, going around the narrow corners, and Clancy gets the siren going again, blowing it for all it’s worth, and we are the horse marines coming to the rescue, that’s for sure.
Finally, up on the sixth-floor level, there is Delaney standing in the middle of the ramp, waving us to a stop. He is almost getting his uniform pressed right on him, as Clancy has a little trouble with the brake.
When the boat stops rocking, I get out and Delaney hauls himself up out of the puddle of oil and dirt that he’s thrown himself into.
He gives Clancy a dirty look and says like this: “What the hell are you trying to do — kill me?”
“We heard you had trouble,” Clancy says, hopping out with his gun in one hand and his notebook in the other, brave and ready as they come.
Well, it would be nice to see Ed Clancy get a good bust in the mouth that cannot be traced directly back to myself, but I don’t do nothing to promote a fight, as much as I would like to. I just tell Delaney that we got the tingle from Headquarters and what the hell is up?
He brushes off his cap and points with it down toward the back of the garage. “Dame’s screaming her head off downstairs, little while ago. Says these jerkimers here won’t give her the car that her husband parked in the joint a little earlier.”
We are walking down toward the back of the place with him and he gives us some more:
“She says her hubby put the car in here — a brand new convertible — and she’s got the parking receipt for it, but the attendant claims the car ain’t in the place. So they get into quite a hassle and pretty soon it is a very noisy bit of business, yakety-yak, when I am walking by outside.”
“Okay, okay. D’you find the car?”
“Sure,” Delaney says. “They got it up here all the time. Me and the dame come up and find it. This joker got the car all jacked up and he’s pulling the guts out of the new motor and putting back a lot of spare nuts and bolts he’s got hanging around since Henry Ford is a small boy.”