"I'll be there. What's up?"
"Tell you then. Ten minutes." Someone called to him and he hung up. Ten minutes to the second I reached the Roundtown and threaded my way to the back and found Pat sitting in the last booth. There were lines of worry across his forehead that hadn't been there before, giving him an older look. He forced a grin when he saw me, and waved me to sit down.
Beside him he had a copy of the evening paper and he spread it out on the table. He tapped the headline. "Did you have anything to do with this?"
I shoved a butt in my mouth and fired it. "You know better than that, Pat."
He rolled the paper up into a ball and threw it aside, his mouth twisting into a snarl. "I didn't think so. I had to be sure. It got out some way and loused things up nice."
"How?"
A waiter set two beers down in front of us and Pat polished his off before the guy left and ordered another, quick. "I'm getting squeezed, pal. I'm getting squeezed nice. Do you know how many rotten little jerks there are in this world? There must be millions. Nine-tenths of them live in the city with us. Each rotten little jerk controls a block of votes. Each rotten little jerk wants something done or not done. They make a phone call to somebody who's pretty important and tell him what they want. Pretty soon that person gets a lot of the same kind of phone calls and decides that maybe he'd better do something about it, and the squeeze starts. Word starts drifting up the line to lay off or go slow, and it's the kind of a word that's blocked up with a threat that can be made good.
"Pretty, isn't it? You get hold of something that should be done and you have to lay off." The second beer followed the first and another was on its way. I had never seen Pat so mad before.
"I tried to be a decent cop," he ranted. "I try to stick to the letter of the law and do my duty. I figure the taxpayers have a say in things, but now I begin to wonder. It's coming from all directions--phone calls, hints that travelled too far to trace back, sly reminders that I'm just a cop and nothing but a captain, which doesn't carry too much weight if certain parties feel like doing something about it."
"Get down to cases, Pat."
"The D.A. called Ann Minor's death murder. He's above a fix and well in the public eye, so there's no pressure on him. The murder can be investigated if necessary, but get off the angles. That's the story. Word got out about the book, but not the fact that it's in code."
I tapped the ashes in the tray and squinted at him. "You mean there are a lot of boys mixed up with call-girls and the prostitution racket who don't want their names to get out, don't you?"
"Yes."
"And what are you going to do about it?"
No, Pat wasn't a bit happy. He said, "Either I go ahead with it, dig up the stuff and then get nicely pushed into a resignation, or I lay off and keep my job, sacrificing this case to give the public their money's worth in future cases."
I shook my head pathetically. "That's what you get for being honest. What'll it be?"
"I don't know, Mike."
"You'll have to make up your mind soon.
"I know. For the first time I wish I were wearing your badge instead of mine. You aren't so dumb."
"Neither are you, kid. The answer's plain, isn't it?" I was sneering myself now. He looked up and met my eyes and nodded. A nasty grin split his lips apart and his teeth were together, tight.
"Call it, Mike."
"You take care of your end. I'll brace the boys who give you trouble. If I have to I'll ram their teeth down their throats and I hope I have to. There's more to it than that. I don't have to tell you how big this racket is. The girls in the flashy clothes and the high-price tags are only one side of it. The same group with its hand on them reaches down to the smaller places, too. It's all tied in together. The only trouble is that when you untie one knot the whole thing can come apart.
"They're scared now. They're acting fast. We have that book, but you can bet it isn't much. There other books, too, nicely ducked out of sight where it'll take a lot of looking to dig up. They'll come. We'll get hold of somebody who will sing, and to save their own necks the others will sing, too. Then the proof will pop up."
I slammed my hand against the table and curled my fingers into a tight knot until the flesh was white around the knuckles. "We don't need proof, Pat. All we have to do is look for proof. The kind of boys behind the curtain won't take that. They'll make a move and we'll be ready for them."
"Yeah, but when?"
"Tomorrow night. The big boys are hiring their work done. One of their stoolies is on the list because he sounded off to me. Tomorrow night at exactly nine-thirty, a pimp called Cobbie Bennett is going to walk out of his rooming house and down the street. Some time that night he's going to be spotted and a play will be made. That's all we need. Beat them to the jump and we'll make the first score. It will scare the hell out of them again. Let them know that politics are going to pot. We can get the politicians later if we have to."
"Does this Bennett know about this?"
"He knows he's going to be a clay pigeon of some sort. It's his only chance of staying alive. Maybe he will and maybe he won't. He has to take it. You have your men spotted around ready to wade in when the trouble starts. After it's finished, let Cobbie beat it. He's no good any more. He won't be back."
I wrote the address of the rooming house on the back of an envelope, diagramming the route Cobbie would take, and passed it over. Pat glanced at it and stuck it in his pocket. "This can mean my job, kid."
"It might mean your neck, too," I reminded him. "If it works you won't have any more sly hints and phone calls, and those rotten little jerks with the bloc of votes will be taking the next train out of town. We're not going to stop anything because the game is as old as Eve. What we will do is slow it up long enough to keep a few people alive who wouldn't be alive, and maybe knock off some who would be better off dead."
"And all because of one redheaded girl," Pat said slowly.
"That's right. All because of Nancy. All because she was murdered."
"We don't know that."
"I'm supposing it. I've uncovered a few other things. If it was an accident, she wasn't expected to die that way. Nancy was slated to be killed. Here's something else, Pat. This looks like one thing, the part you can't see is tied in with that same redhead. I can't understand it, but I'm kicking a few ideas around that look pretty good."
"The insurance company is satisfied it was an accident. They're ready to pay off if her inheritors can be found."
"Ah, that's the rub, as the bard once said. That, my chum, is the big step."
My watch was creeping up on itself. I stood up and finished the beer that had turned flat while we talked. "I'll call you early tomorrow, Pat. I want to be in on the show. Let me know what comes out of the little black book."
He still wore his sneer. Back of his eyes a fire was burning bright enough to put somebody in hell.
"Something came out of it already. We paid a call on Murray Candid. Among his belongings we found a few doodles and some notes. The symbols compare with some of those in his book. He's going to have to do some tall explaining when we find him."
My mouth fell open at that. "What do you mean... find him?"
"Murray Candid has disappeared. He wasn't seen by anybody after he left us," he said.
Chapter Twelve
As I got into my car I thought over what Pat had said. Murray was gone. Why? That damned, ever-present why! Did he duck out to escape what would follow, or was he taken away because he knew too much? A guy like Murray was a slicker. If he knew too much he knew he knew it, and knew what it could cost him, so he'd have to play it smart and have insurance. Murray would let it be known that anybody who tried to plow him under would be cutting their own throats. He'd have a fat, juicy report in a lawyer's hands, ready to be mailed to the police as soon as he was dead. That's double indemnity... the bigger boys would have to keep him alive to keep their own noses clean.