It was a clear night and Osborne, gazing through the casement window on the tenth floor, saw the Night Express cross the bridge. He checked his watch with it. Ten-ten. Right. His butler, who had left him a moment before, returned now ushering in Kennedy of the Free Press, and then departed.
Osborne said, “Hello, Kennedy,” without removing his eyes from the moving lights of the Night Express.
Kennedy, rubbing his chilled hands together, came over to stand beside Osborne. The reporter looked pale and faded in his rumpled suit. The Special Prosecutor was a big man, with amiable shaggy brows, hard padded cheeks, big hands with square-ended fingers. He was in slippers and velvet housecoat and pulled on a triangular cigar. He was fifty, but his eyes were youthful and blue and shrewd.
“Help yourself to a drink, Kennedy.”
Kennedy watched the Night Express vanish back of the packing houses, then crossed to a table and poured out some rye. He said, “Flannery’d like a statement before he puts the edition to bed,” and downed the drink.
“On what?” Osborne said casually, turning and going to a wing-chair, where he sat down and propped his heels on a footstool.
Kennedy shrugged. “You know as well as I do, Dan. The Carioca Club.”
“H’m,” mused Osborne.
“The bad news has reached a climax. We’re running a statement by Howard Gilcrist, Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce. He wonders why you closed down sixteen night spots in the past two weeks and omitted to close down the Carioca Club. He doesn’t think it’s an oversight, because you’ve been prodded on this twice before. He found out that you and Marty Sullivan, the owner of the Carioca, went to school together out in Detroit. He claims you’re not closing the Carioca because Marty Sullivan knows things about you that you wouldn’t want publicly known. Would you like to read his statement?”
“Yeah.”
Kennedy handed him a typewritten sheet of foolscap. Osborne read it from beginning to end in silence, without a move, without any change of expression. When he had finished he folded the sheet of paper neatly and returned it.
“Thanks,” he said. He rose and went to the window and put one hand against the wall and leaned there straight-armed. He nibbled on his lip, his eyelids widening and narrowing. “You’re going to print that, of course,” he said.
“Have to,” said Kennedy.
“Of course,” nodded Osborne.
Kennedy said reasonably, “Gilcrist’s right. And he’s a damned sight more polite about it than a lot of other people. Down in Jockey Street they’re saying it’s just plain lack of insides — you’re afraid of Marty Sullivan.”
“Yeah?” said Osborne, squinting at the harbor lights. He turned to Kennedy and smiled and said again, “Yeah?” There was a certain glitter in his smile that was puzzling. “Let’s see; tonight’s Friday. Isn’t it some kind of ‘big night’ there?”
Kennedy nodded. “Visiting Salesmen’s Night. Every Friday night it’s something else.”
Osborne went to the phone, picked it up. “Yes, Kennedy; I went to school with Marty Sullivan, in a little town outside of Detroit. I used to be a kind of big brother to Marty. Used to fight his fights... well, he was a little guy. I used to lend him pennies, then nickels; and as I grew older, dollars. I saved his life twice as a boy. When I was admitted to the bar, I hung out my shingle in Detroit. He was my first case. I won it. He’d been driving a milk route then and had got tight and blown in all the money he collected on his route. I got him out of that... Operator, give me Police Headquarters... Yes, Kennedy, I’ve known Marty a long, long time. There was always something about the little runt you couldn’t help liking... Headquarters? This is Dan Osborne. Give me Mac-Bride... Steve, this is Dan Osborne. Run around and close up the Carioca... Tonight. Make it at about eleven, when his show’s on, just for fun.”
He hung up, sighed bitterly. “There’s your statement, Kennedy.”
“Which picture would you like us to use?”
“Better use Marty’s. He was always nuts about publicity.” Osborne knocked the ash from his cigar. He looked morose, preoccupied. He kept flicking the cigar long after the ash had fallen.
The police sedan was hiking down Center Avenue at a lively clip. It passed a trolley car on the wrong side, ran through a safety zone, jumped a red light, and cut the inside of the corner going into North Jockey Street.
MacBride, sitting in the back with Moriarity and Cohen, said, “Gahagan, if you got to bust every traffic law that was ever made, why don’t you at least use the siren? I haven’t heard a peep out of it.”
“Ah,” yawned Cohen, “he don’t like to wake people up.”
Moriarity said, “No, Ike; he’s just bashful. He don’t want everybody to know it’s a police car.”
“Youse is all wrong,” laughed Gahagan coarsely. “I ain’t blowing the siren because there ain’t no siren.”
“There ain’t no siren?” echoed Mac-Bride.
Gahagan said, “Didn’t Sergeant Bettdecken tell youse? Ha,” chortled Gahagan, “somebody stole the siren this evening while the car was parked in front of Headquarters. Ha, ha!”
MacBride growled, “If you weren’t at the wheel of this car, you jackass, I’d kick you in the ear. Last week no lights. The week before no spare tire. This week no siren—”
“Next week, maybe,” said Cohen, “no Gahagan.”
Gahagan sulked and gunned the car hard down Jockey Street. The animated lights of the Carioca bloomed at the bottom of the hill. Cars were parked for blocks around and there were a couple of cops on duty out front. The captain’s sedan stopped. The skipper got out and watched the squad car draw up behind. Sergeant Holtzmann climbed out with a flock of uniformed policemen.
The big Negro doorman of the Carioca craned his neck and began to look worried. The taxicab drivers hanging around began talking among themselves.
The skipper said to Sergeant Holtzmann, “Okey, Rudy. Send a man up to Lark Street and another down to Vickers. Cut traffic out of Jockey between those streets, so we can clean these cars out in a hurry. Detail three men to move these cars quick. You run things outside, and don’t let anybody go in the Carioca.” He looked up. “Here come the two wagons. If anybody gets nasty, pile ’em in and we’ll dump ’em later.”
“Right, Cap’n.”
MacBride raised his voice: “Ike... Mory!”
“Yowssuh.”
“Come with me,” he said, and picked six more cops.
He picked up the two cops who were standing in front of the entrance. “We’re clamping down, boys. You come in with us.”
Plain-clothed Sergeant Doake, from the local precinct, touched MacBride on the arm and said, “What kind of a runaround is this?”
“What’s eating you, Bennie?”
“Slamming down on Sullivan, I mean. What’s the idea? I mean, on a Friday night. Marty’ll be sore as a boil.”
“I told that little Mick a week ago to go slow. I told him to yank off this fan dancer, or put some clothes on her. I warned him. I warned him that Dan Osborne might put the finger on him any minute.”
“But, hell, Cap’n, why didn’t you phone him?”
“Bennie, I warned him that when I came around it’d be with bells on.”
The skipper opened his overcoat, looked at his watch. It was exactly eleven. “Let’s go,” he said. He was the first through the door.
The Carioca was jammed. There must have been five hundred persons there. The lights were dimmed in the vast room and there was a milky blue spotlight trained on the small, semicircular stage. This fan dancer had taken the town by storm, not only because of her ability as a dancer and a shocker but also because she had succeeded in keeping her identity hidden. Her slender body was covered with a kind of platinum grease paint. Her face was like a Benda mask — unsmiling, immobile. The traps were rolling, the knocking sound of the gourds was electrifying. The dance was pagan, voluptuous. It was spellbinding. There was not a sound among the five hundred persons seated at the hundred-odd tables.