I cut him short. “I can’t wait, Jack. Every second counts for me now. I’ve got to hang up.”
He yelled through the phone. “Don’t hang up, Bill. It’s an emergency. Inspector O’Leary called a couple of minutes ago and the air is still blue around here. He’s down in his office in Police Headquarters and he said if he didn’t hear from you in fifteen minutes he’d send out a general alarm for you on a murder charge. He was so mad he could hardly get the words out. You better call him right away, Bill, he’s not fooling. And you know what the brass in this company would do if a thing like that hit the papers about one of their men.”
“Okay, okay, Jack, I’ll call him.” I hung up and frowned.
I hadn’t expected that strong a reaction from O’Leary — pinning me down to fifteen minutes ruined any chance I had of getting to Leon Schell. But Jack Finch was right. If a general alarm went out for me it would queer me but permanently with the brass in my company and every other company in the business. It wouldn’t matter one bit whether I handed them Leon Schell wrapped in cellophane or a big red bow. I’d be out of work a long, long time.
I tried to think of something that would quiet O’Leary down, something that would keep him pacified for the little bit more time I needed. I knew I’d have to call him in the next ten minutes — that I couldn’t avoid. The first thing he’d want to know was where I was so he could have a radio car pick me up — that I had to avoid. I got a very small idea.
I walked around Coster and stood in front of him so that he could see me by lifting his head a little.
“Coster, I want you to tell me where Leon Schell is now,” I said. “You can help me a lot if you tell me where he is so I can pick him up. If you do maybe I can make things easier for you with the District Attorney or the Judge at your trial. How about it?”
If I knew anything at all about criminal psychology this was the worst possible way in the world to get information out of a guy like Larry Coster. There was only one answer I could get and I got it and it was just what I wanted.
“Don’t make me laugh. You insurance dicks are the creepiest cops in the world. I wouldn’t spit at you if you was in the middle of the ocean. You’re so smart, go find him.”
He glared at me, his shark teeth showing in a wicked grin.
“Okay, shove your face back in the floor,” I said.
The doorbell sounded and I backed over to the entrance door. It was Harry Sloan and he had two of our men with him. He came in first with a big 38 Police Positive revolver in his hand.
“Spare I keep in the cab,” he said when he saw me looking at it.
I took Larry Coster’s automatic out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“The Safe and Loft guys will be up in five or ten minutes,” I said. “Coster had this on him — they can add that to the charge. Hold him here and whatever you do don’t let him near a phone and don’t let him talk to anyone, anyone at all. Tomorrow he can get fifty lawyers if he wants to, but I don’t want a peep out of him tonight. That’s important, Harry.”
“No talk. Okay, Bill,” Harry said.
“You better put handcuffs on him,” I said. “Oh, and one more thing, Bill. Give me the keys of the cab.”
He handed them to me without saying anything, but gave me an odd look. Minutes were valuable to me now, and I needed the cab to get out of the neighborhood. I put the gun I had borrowed from Harry Slaon back under my belt and watched as one of the other men bent over Larry Coster and snapped the cuffs on him. My hand felt in my jacket pocket for the recorder switch and I turned it off. Coster had really tied up the case against himself by everything he had said — all he could possibly do now would be to plead guilty. I went out the door and downstairs.
Across the street from the entrance to the building there were two men standing under the street light. They stared hard at me as I came out and headed for the cab. Both of them had on gray hats and coats and so help me they looked like real grayhounds to me and for a crazy moment I thought I was a rabbit and when someone pressed a button I’d have to start running around a track until one of them caught me. Well, O’Leary had the button in his hand and it was up to me to stop him from pressing it.
I drove the cab up a few blocks and turned west to Broadway and when I saw a big drugstore I parked it and went in to a phone booth. Now I had to get the information I needed. I got a lucky break. The Night Wire Chief at the telephone company office was a guy I knew — he didn’t hesitate when I told him what I wanted. I gave him the number Larry Coster had dialed from his apartment.
“Call me back in about five minutes, Bill, and I should have the dope for you then,” he said.
That only left Inspector O’Leary. I took a deep breath and called Police Headquarters and asked for his office. When I told the cop who answered who was calling I didn’t have to wait for O’Leary. He almost came through the phone at me.
He had no trouble getting the words out now. He was icily sarcastic, his words hit me and stung me like a high-pressure needle shower. He went on for over a minute until I started to wonder if he were trying to trace the call, then I remembered it was practically impossible to trace a call over a dial system in a city.
“...and now the Commissioner knows about it and if you think I’m going to cover you five minutes more you’re out of your mind. I wouldn’t care if you got back ten million dollars worth of jewelry today you had no right to leave that room when that man died. It’s a felony and I personally will throw the book at you if you don’t get right down here...”
When he slowed down a little I tried to tell him about Coster. That made it worse.
“Ah, yes. I just learned how truly heroic you were. You went right up there alone and placed him under arrest. I’m going to call the Mayor right away and have him proclaim a whole week’s celebration for everyone in the city for such a great thing. But we have over twenty thousand men in the Police Department in New York and the dumbest cluck on the force could have done the same thing and probably better.”
“Look, Inspector,” I said. “You know why I went up there. I had to try to find out where Leon Schell is so we could get to him before he finds out about Monk. If he takes off we’ll never find him. I thought...”
“Did you find out?”
“I asked him where Schell was,” I told him truthfully. “He laughed at me, told me to find him myself.”
“Do you know where Schell is?”
“No, Inspector, I honestly don’t.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about it. After your fine day’s work you should rest up a little. I’ll put a couple of hundred of those twenty thousand men on the case and maybe they can do almost as good a job as you could do. Mind you, I only said maybe.”
He was getting under my skin but I tried to reason with him.
“Inspector, you know that even if you do grab Schell it won’t do any good. We only have a circumstantial case against him and he’d have a high-powered lawyer get it thrown out before we even went to trial. We have to get something on him to tie him directly to this job, and you know I’m the only one who can possibly get close enough to him to do it. You’ve got to let me try.”
“No! Absolutely not, Young. Murder is still a more serious crime than robbing a safe. I don’t care if we ever convict Leon Schell. I want you in so we can clear up this Saunders death.”
“He tried to gun-whip me,” I said. “When I fought back and hit him with an ash tray I cut his face open and he fell back and cracked his skull. It was self defense. I certainly didn’t murder him.”
His voice became even more sarcastic. “I know that, Young. Believe it or not I did get a report from the men up there. But I’m only a dumb cop, remember? To me any death by violence is murder, until a Grand Jury decides otherwise. So all you have to do is make a sworn statement to a District Attorney and then tell your story to a Grand Jury — if they believe it then it’s self defense. But you’re not supposed to tell me about it over a telephone. That’s why I want you in — now!”