Maybe I’ll bleed to death and get out of this. Easy dough, Strane’s kind, you can’t take it along. Wouldn’t it be nice to die, just to die?
A new noise cut over the P.K.’s growl. It was Nosy. “Got a guy passed out, sir. He’s breaking my arm.”
“Fine,” the P.K. said, “fine. So talk, and get outta the daisy chain.”
“How can I talk?” Nosy asked. “My arm’s breaking.”
“Let it break,” the P.K. said. “Talk with your mouth.”
“Go to hell,” said Nosy.
Through the fog of his pain, he heard the P.K.’s feet tramping towards him. Grit on the boiler room floor ground under those big feet, and they did it on a note high enough to cut piercingly through Macalay’s head and add one more pain to a system that was nearly all pain now.
The P.K. had kicked Nosy up against the boiler.
Nosy screamed, and jerked back, and Hanning on the other side screamed, and then Hanning’s scream turned into words. “Macalay,” he yelled. “Macalay an’ Jock was the last two in the boiler with him. They did it, Jock and Macalay.”
“All right,” the Principal Keeper said. “Open the chain, boys. Take Hanning and Fitz and Nosy to the hospital. Lay the other two out on the floor here and throw a bucket of water on ’em.”
Macalay felt hands on him, but he couldn’t be sure what they were doing. But he did feel cooler, and there was some sensation left in his back, because he could feel the filth of the floor biting into his skin.
“G’wan,” the P.K. said. “Throw some water on ’em.”
Another voice said: “Sir, those burns’ll blister if you hit them with cold water.”
“So? Let ’em blister.”
“I thought the Principal Keeper wanted them for trial. Any jury’d let them off if they get blistered.”
“Who’s going to try them?” The Principal Keeper was laughing now. “There wasn’t any fingerprints on that shiv except Russ’; we’d never get a conviction. But if these crumbs had told me about Russ when it happened, the papers never would have printed that I’d let a guy escape. I want to teach these bums that they better keep clean with me. Throw some water on ’em and put ’em in the Hole. They gotta learn.”
Macalay, for all his pain, laughed inside when he heard he was going to the Hole again. It was cool in the Hole, and this was summer. He could take it; he’d taken it before...
And once he’d been sorry for himself, just because he was in a detention cell in the city. Sorry for himself because he was lonely. That was why he had been so glad when Inspector Strane showed up.
Inspector Strane, William Martin Strane, was something in the Department; a man four years beyond the retirement age, the city council had had to pass a special law exempting him from retirement. Theoretically, Inspector Strane couldn’t live forever; but the city, and the city’s police, had no idea of what they would do when and if he died.
He didn’t look like dying as he sat down on Macalay’s bunk and stared at him from ice-colored eyes. He didn’t seem to have much time to waste on words. “Macalay, you had no business being on duty that night.”
Macalay knew the Inspector, from hearsay and personal knowledge. You didn’t kid around with him. He said: “No, sir.”
Strane said: “I want to brief you on your physical condition. Seems you’re not aware of it. Your right arm’s gone out four times in the last two months. You dislocated it wrestling at the Y, and the civilian doctor you went to hasn’t been able to fix it.”
“No, sir. No, he hasn’t.”
“You got a physical exam coming up next month. You wouldn’t be able to pass it, even if you had the chance to take it.” The Inspector reached his leg out and squashed a cockroach under the sole of his high-laced kangaroo shoe.
Macalay said nothing.
“Hmph.” Even the Inspector’s grunt had an old-fashioned quality about it. “Some day you’ll have to learn a trade. Clerk in an office or something.”
Macalay shifted from one foot to the other. He didn’t dare sit down until the Inspector asked him to.
“Listen, Macalay,” the Inspector said. “Those jewels in your shoe weren’t worth a million, but they were still worth a hell of a lot. Even if they were glass, you’d still be on a spot. You know that.”
All Macalay said was: “Yes, sir.”
“The Jewelers Association has posted a hundred thousand dollars reward for that gang, arrest and conviction. It’s their sixth job.”
He stopped, and Macalay waited. The Inspector pulled a narrow cigar out of his pocket and lit it. He half-closed his ice-cube eyes against the smoke. For a man with a reputation for bluntness, he was being surprisingly circuitous.
“That’s a lot of money,” Macalay said, to break the silence, wondering when Strane would get to the point.
“Yeah. Jewelers pay a lot of insurance. A gang like this raises the premium — y’know? These bums have heisted several million bucks’ worth.”
“You’d think they’d retire,” Macalay said.
Inspector Strane stared at him, as though trying to figure out if this cop in a cell was trying to be funny. Finally, he concluded Macalay wasn’t. He said: “Bums never got enough money. Their friends blackmail ’em; their dames cost money; the fences rook them. I never knew one to die rich.”
Macalay had no observations to make on bums and their money problems.
Inspector Strane let the silence build; then he nodded, as though pleased with the young man. “Okay,” he said. “You got the picture. Signify anything to you?”
Macalay shook his head slightly.
“You’ve not got too much to choose from,” Inspector Strane said. “So. Why not take on this case? The Jewelers’ Association’s been talking to me. They want a man.”
“Me?” Macalay laughed a non-funny laugh. “I’m sure as hell not going to be around.
Inspector Strane crossed his legs and the bunk creaked. He took the thin cigar from his mouth. “Why’d you take those diamonds? No crap now, Macalay.”
“Like you said, Inspector: the doc told me I’d never pass another physical. They were right there for me to take. I’d just come to after being slugged and there they were. If I hadn’t passed out trying to get to Gresham, I’d have got away with those stones.”
Strane came as close to smiling as he ever got. “We want the bums who have been getting away with too damn much.”
Macalay said: “And don’t forget Gresham.”
“You’d like to square things for him, wouldn’t you?”
A silence hung between them. Strane wasn’t getting to his point. Macalay figured he’d help him.
“You said something about a hundred thousand reward. That dough interests me.”
“All right,” Strane said, and then laid it on the line. He had given it to him like an itemized account. His offer and the alternatives, numbering them one to three, for definiteness as well as clarity: In return for information, Macalay would be sprung, his sentence whatever it might be, nullified. That plus the reward. If he failed, tough — Strane had no bargaining tools; he served his time. In either case, he ran the risk of a shiv in his gut by a con. There was only one thing worse, to a con’s way of thinking, than a cop... and that was a double-crossing cop.
“Why go into the pen to crack this case?” Macalay wanted to know.
“We got no leads on the outside, that’s why.” Strane sounded annoyed. “Well?”
“A guy can live forever on a hundred grand. Live real well. His shoulder’ll never bother him.”
“You sound like I’m giving you a guarantee.” Inspector Strane shook his head dolefully. “Bums don’t talk, remember that.” It was his standard word for crooks. “Especially to cops.”