“Well,” said the old Inspector. He looked down at the pretty, white face and the ridiculous folds of stained crêpe-de-chine which swathed the slim figure. “How’d this happen?”
Sergeant Dave Glennan’s jowls trembled slightly. “I don’t know. I’m afraid it was me.”
“Had a gun, eh?” Bourse’s foot touched the little automatic. “I don’t think we’ll be blaming you for this, Dave me boy.”
The sergeant said, “That wasn’t it. She did take a crack at Horn and me, but her gun jammed or something. Just one shot, and no more. She started in here — Scummy was shooting at the whole world, and I ups with my shotgun—”
Bourse looked at him. “And kills the girl with a .45 caliber bullet?” he asked calmly.
Glennan blinked. “Thank Heaven for that! I never realized, sir. Yes, that hole does look like a .45. I... thought—”
“Never mind what you thought. Let’s find the bullet.”
“Here it is, sir,” said Horn.
The bullet had driven through Miss Lily Denardo’s heart, with the sad artistry of which that caliber is capable at close range, and had lodged in the wall. They dug it out.
“Who was shooting .45’s?” barked the Inspector.
Kerry scratched his torn sleeve. “Nobody except the Tom-gun — Ricardi. We all had regulation guns. And Ricardi’s bullets would have had to ricky-shay to hit her where she was a-standing. No, sir — take a look at Scummy’s guns. There one on the floor, and I guess he took the other with him when he went through the window.”
The ballistics expert established it later in the day; Scummy Heras had shot Lily, by design or accident. They never knew just how or why. It didn’t matter. All the detectives were glad that none of them had killed her. She was too pretty.
“And so,” Inspector Bourse grunted, at three o’clock that afternoon, “you let him get away. The meanest devil this side of hell, and you let him slide through your fingers.”
Every man who had taken part in the Dorchester Avenue raid — except Flynn, who lay in the hospital — was in Inspector Bourse’s office.
“Mind,” he said, “I’m blaming not a mother’s son of you — individually. You all worked hard and had your nerve with you. Young Nick Glennan especial. I’ll say that. When he went kiting through that hole in the ceiling, he took a mighty chance.”
Nick sat there and looked at his shoes. He felt his cheeks burning.
“But nevertheless, there you are. We had the best shots of the Bureau up there this morning, and we had the edge on that gang. And we let Hemingway get away. Sure, we didn’t know about that apartment upstairs. Nobody did. The stool pigeon didn’t. But our job was to get Chet Hemingway, more than any of the rest. We didn’t get him. Your job was to get Chet Hemingway. You didn’t get him. There it is. Eat it up; may it make you sick at the stomach.”
His desk telephone jangled. Slowly, Bourse reached down and lifted the bracket. “I told you not to bother me,” he growled at the operator. “I— What?... All right,” he said, “connect me.”
He looked at the rows of faces across his desk. “A man,” he said. “Claims he has something important about this morning.”
A new voice came on the wire. The eyes of Inspector Bourse froze bitterly as he listened.
“This,” said the voice, “is Chet Hemingway—”
“Yes,” said Bourse. His voice crackled. His hand slid across the transmitter as he snapped at Ricardi, who sat directly in front of him, “get on a phone. Trace this call!...”
“You didn’t get me this morning,” came Hemingway’s voice, “and I’m still in town. Listen, you dirty flat-foot — you had to kill that little frail — she was a peach of a kid — she—”
Bourse said, “We didn’t kill her, Hemingway. Scummy did it.”
“Yeah?” snarled Chet. “Listen — I’m not going to stay here long enough for you to trace this call. But I read the papers. Every damn sheet in town was shouting the praises of the noble detectives you had up there — and by name — get that? By name. I’m going to stay in town until I get every last guy who was in on that job. And you, too! I’ll get you all.”
There was a click.
Bourse leaped to his feet. “Did you get it?” he roared through the open door where Ricardi had gone.
No, no. There hadn’t been enough time...
Briefly and pointedly, Bourse told the men what Hemingway had said. They weren’t much impressed; most of them had heard that story before. “Go out and get Hemingway,” said the old man in dismissal. And they went, hopefully.
But it wasn’t so funny an hour later. Chief of Detectives Moore came in, with no ceremony. “Ricardi’s dead,” he cried. “He was crossing the street at Comanche and Main, and a car came past and hit him. Head on. Dragged him three hundred feet.”
Bourse kneaded the cigar-stub in his fingers. “Must have been an accident,” he muttered. But in his heart he knew that it wasn’t any accident. He turned around and looked at the window.
“Hit-and-run?” he asked, over his shoulder.
“Yes,” said Moore. “Hit-and-run. They got the car ten minutes later. It was a hot car. But the driver was gone.”
The Inspector sat in silence for a time, drumming on the desk with his fingers, “We traced Hemingway how far?”
“Well, he took the taxi driver’s coat and cap, and made him get out of the cab at Fourth and Mississippi. They found the cab about eleven o’clock on Mulberry Street, ft had only been run nine miles in all, according to a check. We can’t say definitely that we traced him to Mulberry Street, as we don’t know what happened in between—”
Bourse nodded. “I’m thinking I’d better talk to my stool pigeon.”
“It may mean his life, now,” said the chief of detectives.
“So it may. His name is Adamic. Know him?”
“No. Who is he?”
“A pawnbroker and loan-shark down in the Delta. On Sage Street.”
Moore wagged his head. “I remember, now. George Adamic. A small, gray fellow with black eyes.”
“Yes. It seems that he knew Two-faced Tomsk from ’way back, and had disposed of some bonds for him after that Western Savings stick-up. Adamic is as close as the tomb. We could never have sweat nothing out of him; he came to me voluntarily, and made me swear—” Bourse made a wry face. “We both belong to the same lodge, and it’s one to which you belong as well. He made me swear I wouldn’t turn him in.”
Moore asked, “Why was he singing about Hemingway?”
“He knew they was in apartment 327 at 1441 Dorchester Avenue, and that was all he knew, except that they had a young arsenal and wore vests. Moore, it seems that Hemingway pushed over a man named Kolchak in Chicago last month. And Kolchak was George Adamic’s brother-in-law. Family ties — nothing less. That’s the only reason he talked.”
“You’d best talk to Adamic now,” nodded Moore.
Bourse took up his phone.
“If he’s still alive,” added Moore, softly.
And when George Adamic didn’t answer the telephone which rang so long and stridently in his narrow little shop, Inspector Bourse sent Squad Sixteen whistling in that direction. Sergeant Dave Glennan and Detectives Horn and Kerry found the store unlocked, and it was a wonder that folks in that scrubby neighborhood hadn’t looted the place of every last thing. Only their inherited terror of George Adamic and the power he wielded over their sad little lives, had kept them from raiding his shop, unguarded and defenseless as it was.
Detective Horn it was who found George Adamic in a dark washroom behind the rows of second-hand overcoats. Adamic was shot through the heart and the medical examiner estimated that he had been dead since about nine o’clock that morning.