I grinned. “Bummy won’t bother you any more. He got tanked on some bad booze with a wood alcohol base two weeks ago and died in Bellevue.”
“So the call still goes.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll get the heat off you, but you get the hell off this street and find a job. There’s enough work in this town without wearing your tail out.”
“And for this you want what?” she challenged.
I said, “You’ve been out there every night, haven’t you?”
Paula nodded.
“Your name didn’t show as a witness to Doug Kitchen’s death.” When she looked down at her feet again I knew I had her. Like everybody else, she had been interviewed by the Homicide team but gave a negative answer. “You saw it, didn’t you?”
She knew what would happen if she tried to lie out of it. She’d sweat it out downtown with a soliciting charge over her head. Silently, she nodded again.
“Let’s hear it, kid.”
For a few seconds she sat there, then glanced up resignedly and said, “I saw him coming down the block, all right. Hell, I didn’t know it was him. He stopped and waved to somebody across the street who was going by under the light, but it was too far for me to see who it was. I saw him start to cross over and so did the other guy, then Doug sort of stopped, talked a little bit and began to back up. All of a sudden he started to run and this other guy, he just shot him right in the back. When Doug didn’t fall he shot twice again, and he fell right on the sidewalk. That other guy... he just walked away up the street.”
“What did you do?”
“Do? I went back inside, that’s what I did. I didn’t come out until the next morning. And I told a John I was going see him that night too.”
“Anything recognizable about the other guy?”
Paula shook her head. “It was too far away.”
“Think some more, Paula. A kill always has something special about it. Once you see it happen you don’t forget it very easily.”
Tight lines appeared at the corners of her eyes and she suddenly looked older than she was. “Honest, Mr. Scanlon...” She paused, bit her lip, then said, “It ain’t nothing, but that other guy... he let out a yell like.”
“What kind of yell?”
“Just a funny yell, then he shot him and walked away. It wasn’t loud, but I heard him. There wasn’t traffic or nothing right then. I heard him yell, that’s all. It didn’t sound right. I was scared. Honest, Mr. Scanlon...”
“Forget it, Paula.” I got up from the chair and slapped on my hat.
“What are you going to... do with me?”
“Not a thing, kid. Vice isn’t my specialty. I’m not here on a case. It’s just that I knew Doug Kitchen when we were all living around here. As far as you’re concerned, I’ll do what I said I’d do. If you’re smart you’ll get your tail off this street too.”
She believed me then and something changed in her eyes. “Gee,” she told me, “it’s hard to believe a cop would... well...” Paula lowered her eyes demurely, then caught mine again. Briefly, she glanced toward the bedroom. “If you’d like... I could show you... like real special things and...”
“Uh-uh,” I said. “I got all I can handle right now,” I lied.
But she didn’t know it and smiled as if she did.
The reports had listed only one other witness who wasn’t sure of what he had seen at all, a drunk coming out of a stupor he had laid on all day, who had seen the kill from the stairway going into the cellar at number 1209. The first shot made him look up and on the next he had seen Doug fall. Then he ducked down below the cement wall and stayed there. He thought he remembered a guy standing in the street but couldn’t be sure and he wasn’t the kind of witness you bothered pressing. If anybody else saw the incident he wasn’t talking. Right now the department had their own stoolies asking around, but in that neighborhood there was a natural, inborn reluctance to even mention anything that would make any more trouble than was already there, so it was doubtful if anything would turn up.
Walking back I reviewed what the sheets had stated. René Mills was found dead behind a building and only one person had mentioned hearing what could have been a gunshot and wasn’t sure of the time. Hymie Shapiro was killed inside his car where it was parked outside his apartment. Noisy Stuccio was shot in the tenement where he lived with the TV turned on full and if the sound hadn’t been up so high that the guy downstairs came up to complain, the body wouldn’t have been found for days.
Somebody was doing it nice and neatly. Very pro.
And there was one thing I was sure of. It wasn’t over yet. Interwoven in the wild hodgepodge of murders there was a peculiar pattern. So far the theme of it hadn’t emerged yet, but it would. It would. It was just too bad that somebody else would have to die before it showed all the way.
When it did I’d be there and a killer would be under the end of my gun with the big choice of dying on the spot or sweating it out in a mahogany and metal chair with electrodes on his legs and one on his head that was the big, permanent nightcap.
There was one more stop I wanted to make before the night was over. I walked one block, turned the corner and went in the vestibule beside Trent’s candy store and struck a match to look at the nameplate over the bells on the wall. A tarnished copper strip read R. CALLAHAN and I nudged the button. A minute later the automatic trip clicked on the door and I pushed it open, went up the stairs to the landing and waited outside the door.
Fifteen years ago Ralph Callahan had been retired from the force, but he had spent his life on the beat in his own neighborhood and you could never take the department out of the man. His eyes would still see, his mind classify events with practiced skill, even though he wasn’t active, but like every other retired police officer, he still had certain privileges extended him by the city including carrying a badge and a gun if he chose to.
When he opened the door he made me with a glance, nodded curtly and said, “Come on in, son.”
“Hello, Ralph.” He was a big guy even yet, filling out his pajamas in a stance that marked thousands of days in a uniform.
He waved me to a kitchen chair after closing the bedroom door softly. “The missus is a light sleeper,” he told me and sat down on the other side of the table. “Now... don’t remember you, but you look familiar.” I started to reach for my badge, but he waved me off. “I know what you are all right, son.”
I grinned at him. “Joe Scanlon. You laid a couple across my behind with that stick of yours when I was a kid.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Now where are you?”
“Homicide. Special detail right now. Marta Borlig’s working it with me.”
“Damn, ain’t the department getting tricky?” He studied me a few seconds, then leaned forward on the table, his hands folded together. “Those four kills?”
“Uh-huh. Smell anything?”
“If I did I would have reported it. Nobody knows a thing.”
His eyes watched me shrewdly, and I said, “There’s another interesting angle.”
“That’s what I was waiting for you to say. Loefert and the others showing up?”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “What does it look like to you?”
“They’re out of place around here, that’s what it looks like. The only rackets going on are small stuff. Numbers, a few books, that sort of thing. A few hustlers work around, but it’s all normal procedure, and not big enough to crack down on. Hell, nobody’s got enough money in this neighborhood to lay on hard.”
“But they’re here, so it must mean something else.”
The elderly cop leaned back and frowned at the ceiling. “I got an idea that could connect”
“Oh?”
He lowered his eyes and steadied them on mine. “Remember that guy... Gus Wilder, the one who jumped bail in Toledo when he was going to testify against the Gordon-Carbito mob?”