“You can’t prosecute on suspicions, friend.”
“Maybe I’ll frame him,” I said.
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”
I grinned at his tight expression and said, “Maybe I won’t have to. My nose tells me he’s not a square cop. One day he’ll fall. Just don’t sweat me, Georgie. I won’t louse it up. Now let’s get with the business.”
I took an hour to give him the details of what I had lined up on Marcus’ operation and the probable way they could set it up again. I had lived with it so long I was thinking like them and could almost see the rearrangement. George let me finish, taking it all down and stored his notes in his pocket.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll get on it. Your loot ought to buy enough help to make it easier. Call me every once in a while.”
“Don’t worry.” He laid a bill on the table to cover the check and walked out.
When he was gone I dialed Jerry Nolan at his office, and when he was on I said, “Regan, Jerry.”
“I heard the results of the trial.”
“Not over yet. They’ll have to kick the negligence bit out What I did was S.O.P. and you know it.”
“I hope the commission does. What’s up?”
“Get me copies of the body shots of Marcus. I’m at Vinnie’s.”
“Hell, man, you saw them,” he said.
“So I want to do it again. I’m thinking straighter now.”
Jerry let out a resigned breath over the phone. “Okay, stay there. Give me a half hour.”
Twenty minutes later he was sitting where George had been and I had the eight-by-ten glossies spread out in front of me. They weren’t very pretty. Four different angles were covered, the details clear in every one. All six shots had taken Leo Marcus in his face, the first one blowing off the pinkey of his left hand as he tried to protect himself from his killer in that last second. Blood, brain, bone and hair were splattered against the fieldstone of the fireplace and the rest of him was lying in the remains of the fire that had cooked the top part of his torso to charred remains.
“Nice job,” I commented drily.
Jerry looked at me, his face tight “We would have bought the mistaken identity bit if it weren’t for the finger. It was stuck under the mantle. Two teeth from his plate were smashed into the log and three others with part of the plastic work intact were on the floor. In this case it was a special job and identifiable. The oral surgeon who did the work gave us an absolute position and our lab confirmed it”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Nothing else he could be identified by?”
“Hell, who needed it? No... nothing. No surgery, no broken bones, but if you don’t think we didn’t go all the way, get this. We brought in two of his broads. They took a damn close look at his privates and confirmed. You like that bit?”
“No.”
Jerry gave an exasperated snort. “Why not?”
“When they saw him before he was in a highly emotional state.”
“Oh, balls.”
“That’s what I mean.”
I sat there looking at the mess that had been Leo Marcus, the mess that I had made. There was no remorse, just the antagonizing feeling that I hadn’t been alive enough to know what I had done because if it had been me I would have wanted to see every damn slug splash into his fat face, the same goddamn face that had broken others with a single look and had winked more into sudden death because they had displeased him. That one face had hooked kids into the big H, steered the unknowing into the bright eyed things that knew all the answers and died early by their own hands, squeezed too many into shapeless forms whose minds were his... people, but not by the standards I knew.
“Jerry...”
“What?”
“I wish it had been me.”
“You sure it wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“It wouldn’t have happened so fast. I would have destroyed him slowly then let the law take care of him in that terrible, tantalizing way it has until he sat there crowded up against the arms of the big chair in Sing with the hood over his head and the electrodes on with all the witnesses watching and hoped he could hear them puke when the top of his head started to smoke from the juice going through him. No, it wasn’t me.”
“I know,” Jerry said. “Now I know.”
“You do? Why?”
“Because you aren’t capable of simple murder. I’ve seen you smoke out killers before. You lived with this one too damn long, Regan.”
“I’m still living with it.”
“Then give me the answers.”
I shuffled the photos like cards and stacked them and handed them back to him. “Somebody’s on top of Marcus. His time was up. They wanted him out and they got him out. I was the sucker to take the heat off them. It didn’t work.”
“Who, Regan?” Jerry asked me. His face was a blank mask, a professional mask no different from the one the punks saw in the interrogation rooms.
“Find out. That’s your business. I don’t carry a badge any more.”
“Or a gun?”
“I might do that. The hoods don’t mind. The punks take pleasure in it. The proper civilians terrified by the stupid Sullivan Act and forgetting they have the protection of the Constitution unrestricted by jerks are too obsessed by legal interpretations to pack one when they should may be like that. But not me, Jerry. I’m not a proper civilian any more.”
“You haven’t been kicked off the force.”
“You’re damn right.”
“Stay cool, buddy.”
“Like hell. You know better. We can’t exist cool, can we? Somebody has to move. It’s my neck on the block.”
“So you processed it. If anybody was in a position to know who was on top of Marcus, it’s Patrick Regan... you. Something had to show. He was hand picked by the rest of the Syndicate... he worked his way up, proved his worth every damn inch of the way and was a power. You don’t blast power out that easily. They have their own machine inside the big one and coups d’état aren’t easy.”
“For someone it was,” I reminded him.
“You’re crazy,” he said.
“That’s what the D.A.’s lad tried as a last resort when the trial was on.”
“Shit.”
“What else is new?”
To keep calm, Jerry grabbed at his butts, lit up a smoke and deliberately sat back looking at the ceiling. “Give me one idea,” he finally mused.
“Did Van Reeves contact you about the Swiss broad?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She was the redhead, buddy.”
His eyes came down from the ceiling and searched my face. “Now you tell me.”
“Last contact was Ray Hilquist. She lived with him.”
“You son of a bitch. Where do you pick it up?”
“I’m fighting for my life,” I said. “Remember?”
Jerry took another pull on the cigarette, his features thoughtful now. “Hilquist and Leo Marcus used to be tied in together. Just little things. Nothing worth pulling them for, but they were close.” He wasn’t looking at me now. He was reviewing the records mentally, pulling out the files in his mind the way cops do, remembering the little things that count. “They had a split once,” he told me. “A broad was involved. Word got out that the wheels in the Syndicate called a meeting and pulled them back together, otherwise it was an ‘or else’ deal. They didn’t like some twist interfering with business. No sweat after that. Too much action was involved. You have posed an interesting thought, Regan.”
“Keep on it.”
“I will.” He leveled his eyes at me. “But you stay cool,” he said as he got up. “When you’re thinking you scare me.”
“I’ll scare a lot of people before it’s through,” I told him.
Chapter Four