“That’ll be the day,” he said in automatic retaliation, but I could see the relief in his eyes.
I’d known Ed Brighton for fourteen years, ever since I walked out of St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum to conquer the world armed with nothing but a high school diploma and the blessings of tough old Father Eugene. Ed had been foreman of a dock-walloper gang I worked for down on the river front, and also a part-time fight trainer.
It was he who introduced me to the fight game and acted as my trainer for my three pro fights. When that career blew up in my face because the boxing commission discovered the manager I’d picked was crooked before either Ed or I discovered it, and I went to work as a private cop, the two of us still remained friends.
After his wife Maggie was killed in an auto accident, he started drinking heavily, drifting towards his new barroom pals. I lost contact with him after that but I still regarded Ed as a close friend. Ed never visited me, so the only place we could get together was in his own social environment.
And I didn’t feel impelled to take up heavy drinking just to prove he was still my friend.
As he was leaving I told him I’d drop down to Police Headquarters that afternoon to see what I could find out, and let him know what I learned either that night or the next day. I added that there was no sense going to the expense of a lawyer until we were sure we needed one.
2
The relationship between me and Inspector Warren Day is a little hard to define. I suppose you could call it a competitive friendship. There’s little either of us wouldn’t do for the other, but a casual observer who didn’t understand our peculiar relationship would probably think we hate each other’s guts.
In the eight years I’ve known the chief of Homicide, I doubt that we’ve spoken a dozen courteous words to each other. But beneath the surface wrangling is a solid liking based on mutual respect, which neither of us would admit under oath.
When I walked into my irascible friend’s office shortly after one p.m., he raised his skinny bald head to peer at me over his glasses, looked pained and automatically moved his cigar humidor out of reaching distance.
I said, “I brought my own today, Inspector,” took a seat, produced a couple of cigars and offered him one.
He accepted it dubiously, sniffed it before sticking it in his mouth, then shook his head when I offered a light, preferring to chew. I don’t know why Day is so particular about cigar brands, since he rarely lights any of the half dozen a day he consumes, usually just chewing them down until they disappear.
As I lit my own cigar, he said, “If this is a bribe, Moon, it’ll take more than a cigar to fix any murder raps.”
“I didn’t happen to kill anybody this week,” I told him. “I’m just after information. Understand you’ve got a kid named Joe Brighton down here on some trumped-up charge.”
The inspector’s eyebrows raised. “Trumped-up? The young punk’s a killer.”
“Mind telling me what you’ve got on him?”
“Mind telling me why you want to know?”
“His father’s an old friend,” I said. “And I’ve known the kid since he was three. I’m sort of a foster uncle to him. His dad asked me to look into it and do what I could for the boy.”
“Oh.” The inspector was silent for a few moments while he adjusted his mental attitude. He’d been prepared to resist any request I made just to keep in practice, but my personal interest changed things. He isn’t exactly unreasonable, even though he is approximately unreasonable.
Finally he said, “You can’t do anything for him, Moon. His old man should have done something for him years ago. With a razor strop. It’s a little too late to start now. Sorry the kid means something to you, because he’s as tough a nut as I’ve seen in a long time. He’s a cinch for life at least.”
“How about giving me the details,” I suggested.
Usually I have to dig out bit by bit any information I get from Warren Day, even when it’s something he intends to release to the newspapers as soon as I leave. This isn’t because he likes me less than newsmen, but solely because he seems to derive some kind of fiendish satisfaction from making me work. But today he recognized I wasn’t much in the mood for games and gave it to me straight.
“The switchboard got an anonymous call from some female about a quarter of ten last night,” he said. “Claimed she was the girl friend of one of the Purple Pelicans, which probably makes her a teen-ager. The switchboard operator says she sounded young. She also sounded mad, as though she were getting even with her boy friend for something. She reported the gang was holding a reefer party in their basement club room. The place is at 620 Vernon, just south of Sixth. Fifteen minutes later the narcotics boys raided the joint and nabbed young Brighton just as he was running up the steps. When they shook him down, they found a switchblade knife over the maximum legal length in his pocket. Then they went on down to the club room and found the dead boy. Another seventeen-year-old named Bart Meyers. He was still warm and the cops figured he hadn’t been dead more than a few minutes when they walked in. There was no sign of a struggle and no evidence that anyone at all aside from the dead kid and Joe Brighton had been in the place that evening. The theory is that young Brighton stuck the knife in him unexpectedly before the Meyers kid could start to defend himself, because the dead boy had both a clasp knife and a zip gun in his pockets.”
“What’s Joe say?” I asked.
The inspector shrugged. “That he didn’t kill the kid. Nothing more. Wouldn’t give a reason for being at the club room, except that he was supposed to meet Bart Meyers there. Wouldn’t say for what purpose. For that matter, he wouldn’t even admit belonging to the Purple Pelicans, though the police know all about the gang and Joe was wearing the uniform. That’s a purple jacket and purple hat band. Besides, his father let it out and gave us the added information that Joe was vice-president. He killed the kid all right. We traced the knife to his old man, who admitted he hadn’t seen it around for some time.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean Joe swiped it,” I commented.
Day snorted. “He’s the only person aside from his dad living in their flat. And his dad didn’t kill Meyers because a dozen witnesses testified he was leaning against the bar in a tavern near his place from the time he got off work at five until we located him there at eleven.”
“Any fingerprints on the knife?” I asked.
“It had been wiped clean. By young Brighton, we think.”
I puffed my cigar silently for a time. Finally I asked, “The police find any evidence of the reefer party?”
“Not exactly. They found a few home-made reefers in the dead boy’s pocket. Also a heroin kit hidden behind a picture in a hole made by removing a brick from the basement wall. The whole works: syringe, needles, spoon and alcohol lamp, all in a little tin box. But no dope.”
The heroin kit depressed me. Youngsters Joe Brighton’s age fooling with dynamite for kicks. Flirting with a habit which ninety-nine times out of a hundred eventually leads users to one of three places: a penitentiary, a mental hospital or a morgue.
“Joe have any needle marks on him?” I asked.
Warren Day shook his head. “Or the dead boy either. But some of the club members must ride the stuff, or they wouldn’t keep a rig right in the club room.”
I said, “Did it occur to you this anonymous call may have been timed deliberately?”
“It occurred to us,” he admitted.
“Yet presumably it came about the time of the murder.”
“We’re aware of it, Moon. We’re not exactly dunces down here.”
“Doesn’t that smell faintly like a possible frame?” I suggested.