“State 7? No, not unless there’s a crash out there.” He wrote a line on the log. “Did you have a wreck?”
She hesitated. “In a way.”
He turned back to the desk and pulled a pad to him. “Name?”
“Judith Barrows.”
“Address?”
When she did not answer he twisted his head to look at her. He looked into a snub-nosed .38. For one fractured moment the bore was big enough to shoot a golf ball. Crestone sucked in his breath.
“Give me the log sheet,” she said. “Don’t even brush your arm near the mike or you’ll get it in the liver.”
He stripped the log sheet from the machine and put it up on the counter. She drew it to her with long, thin fingers that bent into carmine-tipped hooks. “Now, a copy of the code sheet, and not the old one with blanks behind some of the numbers.”
Crestone took a code sheet from a folder. When he put it on the counter he saw that she had shrugged out of her fur jacket. He heard the power hum and then Bud Moore said in his bored after-midnight voice, “Seven fifty.” Crestone started to reach toward the microphone and then he stopped.
“Acknowledge it,” she said softly.
He stared at the .38. She was resting her hand on the counter. The gun looked down at his midsection. He gripped the long bar of the mike switch on the stem of the instrument. Under Transmit on the face of the radio a purple button lit up like an evil eye glaring at him. “Seven fifty,” he said, then automatically released his grip on the switch.
“Going 10–10 at Circle 7365,” Moore said, which meant that he and Jerry Windoff were going out of service temporarily to get a cup of coffee at the Mowhawk Diner out on Sterling Pike.
Crestone’s mind froze on 10–10: report back to this office. But then she would read it on the code sheet and— His head rocked sidewise. His left elbow jammed against the typewriter. There was a thin crack of tension in her voice when she said, “Answer the car, Buster.”
He was still half stunned from the crack on his head when he said, “Seven fifty, 10-4.” Okay, 750.
“Give me the local code sheet now, Crestone.”
He gave that to her. It held sixteen messages for local use, and then there were four blanks. She said, “Don’t get any ideas about using Code 17 or any other blank.”
Code 17 was unlisted, strictly a private deal between Bill Walters and all cruiser cops: bring me a hamburger and a jug of coffee. She had found out plenty from old Bill, a friendly, trusting guy who liked to talk about his work.
“Face the radio, Crestone. Don’t worry about me.”
He turned around, staring at a transmitter which controlled all law enforcement in the area. It was worthless unless he had the brains and guts to figure out something.
“Where’s state patrol 54?” she asked.
“After a 10–47 on State 219.” It was on the log; there was no use to lie. He heard papers rustle.
“That’s right,” she said. “Chasing a possible drunk. Keep everything you say right, Crestone, especially when you talk into that microphone.”
The right-hand reel of the clock put up three more minutes. Now it was 2:25. She made no sound behind him. After another minute he could not stand it any longer. He had to look around. She was still there. The gun was still there too, slanted over the edge of the counter.
“Face the radio.”
He hesitated, and then while he was turning, the gun bounced off his head again. He sucked air between his teeth and cursed. For a tick of time his anger was almost enough to make him try to lunge up and reach her; but his sanity was greater. She struck him again, sweeping the barrel of the gun on the slope of his skull.
“Don’t curse me!” she said.
After a foggy interval Crestone was aware of the messages coming from both channels. Two stolen cars from Bristol. He added them to a list of twenty others stolen that day. Steel City sent a car to investigate a prowler complaint. Seventy miles away state patrol car 86 stopped to pull a dead pig off the highway. The dispatcher in Shannon sent a car to a disturbance at Puddler’s Casino. York asked Webster for a weather report on Highway 27.
Then there was just the hum of the radio and the silence at his back. Where was it, one of the banks? No, blowing vaults was a worn-out racket. A payroll at one of the mills or at the automobile assembling plant? Wrong time of week. Besides, that stuff went from the banks by armored cars in daytime.
At the other end of the narrow slot where he was trapped there was a desk, a big steel filing cabinet, and a rack with four sawed-off shotguns. The shells were in a drawer in the bottom of the rack. In another steel cabinet that he could almost reach with his right hand were five pistols and enough ammunition to last a year.
The whole works was as useless now as the radio.
Car 54 asked Shannon for an ambulance at the cloverleaf on State 219. “Two dead, two injured. Didn’t catch up with the dk soon enough.”
“What’s dk?” Judith Barrows asked quickly.
“Drunk.” Crestone’s head was aching. “Car 54 will be back here in about an hour. He’ll come in to write a report.” That was not so, but Crestone wanted to judge her reaction to the time. He leaned toward the radio and twisted his neck to look at her. The one-hour statement had not bothered her.
When he straightened up, he ducked quickly. She laughed. When he raised his head again the gun banged against it. He rolled his head, grinding curses under his breath.
Car 751 came in. Sam Kurowski said, “Any traffic? We’ve been out of the car a few minutes.”
“Where are they?” the woman asked.
Crestone pressed the mike switch.
“10–20, 751?”
“Alley between Franklin and Madison on Tenth Avenue.”
When the transmitting light was off she said, “Code 6 them to the corner — the southeast corner — of River and Pitt.”
Code 6 was boy trouble, kids yelling, throwing rocks — any of a hundred things. They could spot a cruiser a mile away. When Kurowski and Corky Gunselman got way out north on River and Pitt and found nothing, they would think nothing of it. Crestone followed the woman’s orders.
Car 752 came alive. Dewey Purcell said, “Going east on Washington at Sixth Street after dk. Give me a 10–28 on K6532.”
That does it, Crestone thought. Purcell was hell on drunken drivers. He and Old McGlone would be coming in with a prisoner in about five minutes.
“Give him the registration he asked for, Crestone.”
He pulled the vehicle registration book to him. K6532, 1953 Cadillac cpe., maroon, J. J. Britton, 60 Parkway. Jimmy Britton, the Hill itself. Damnation! You didn’t dump guys like him in the tank overnight; but he took hope from knowing that Purcell was in 752 tonight.
“Give him the 10–28, Buster.”
“When they stop. Old McGlone can hardly write, let alone in a car doing eighty after a stinking dk.”
Purcell called again from Washington and Trinity. “We got him.” A woman’s shrill voice came from the background before the car mike was closed. Crestone gave Purcell the registration information.
Crestone stared at the radio. Jimmy Britton would be drunk, affable, mildly surprised at being picked up. Among other things, when he fumbled out his driver’s license, he would show his honorary membership in the Midway Police Department. Old McGlone would say, “Ah now, Dewey, let’s take the lad home, shall we? No harm’s been done, has it?”
But Purcell was tough and he did not give a damn for the social register and he hated drunken drivers. Crestone had been the same way too, and now he was working for a year as a dispatcher.