“O’Dare taking over, corner of Lincoln and Rogers.”
Keefer, the man he was relieving, had a drunk on his hands. A drunk and a taxi-driver and an accusing meter. One of the pesty kind of drunks that persecute cops. It’s that way more often than not, public belief to the contrary. A cop loathes running in a drunk, will lean over backward if he can possibly avoid it. For one thing, they’re rarely held the next day, unless they’ve done something particularly overt. For another, it takes up the cop’s time, he’s got to appear to press the charge. It’s a nuisance.
Keefer had a disgusted air, as though this had been going on a good ten minutes or more. “C’mon now,” he said weariedly, “which pocket did you put it in? It must be in there somewhere! Give the man his money.”
The drunk, legs splayed, hat teetering on the back of his head, was digging a thumb into a vest-pocket with somnambulistic slowness. Three or four others had their linings turned inside out. The taxi-driver sat by at his wheel, mum as a clam, aware that the gentry in dark-blue have no great love for his kind.
The drunk pulled the exploring thumb out, smote himself a devastating blow on the chest, bellowed indignantly: “I been robbed!” The dramatic emphasis was too great, he went off balance, sat down abruptly from the effect of his own Tarzan-wallop.
“I got a better idea,” said O’Dare quietly. He picked him up by the feet instead of the collar, held his legs straight up in the air. “Catch his head so it don’t bump,” he warned his brother-officer. “Now, shake!” The drunk began to vibrate like someone with the palsy. Something chinked musically to the sidewalk under him, something else followed; there was a succession of pleasant tinkling metallic sounds.
“Holding out, huh?” Keefer said with feigned ferocity as they stood him up. “I oughta run you in!”
The drunk heaved with exaggerated dignity. “Never wash so insulted in my life!” he glowered.
“Now pay the man and get outa here, before I haul you in!” Keefer took a threatening step forward. The drunk scurried around the corner as though he were worked on pulleys. When Keefer turned to the cab-driver, however, his truculence was no longer assumed, it was the real thing. “Now y’ got paid, get out o’ here, gyp-artist! Y’oughta know better than take on a drunk for a fare in the first place! Don’t lemme see y’ around here no more, chiseler!”
The driver, meek as a lamb, took off his brake, glided away without a word.
“What’s new?” O’Dare asked when they were alone.
Keefer jerked his head despondently after the disappearing taillight. “That’s all I ever get. And I hadda get somebody’s pet cat out of a flue for them around at 40 Spring awhile ago. I’d almost be willing to trade places with either of those guys.” Which wasn’t exactly true, and wasn’t meant to be taken as such. O’Dare understood. Blowing off steam, they called it.
“Well, be good, Danny — see you t’morra.”
“Yep.” The footfalls died away. The night-silence descended, unbroken blocks of it, an occasional machine in the distance, a trolley taking a curve in High-C, only adding emphasis to it. The quiet of a sleeping city, that for complete suspension beats any country-quiet hollow.
Danny O’Dare was on duty.
He started down Lincoln, in and out of the store-entryways, testing the locks, peering through the glass fronts. He got to the other end of his beat, turned right, followed that street. A window was thrown up high above him, a window that showed black directly over one that showed orange. A lady of uncertain years thrust her head out, exclaimed with shattering audibility: “There’s one now! Officer, officer — will you come up here please?”
He knew right away it wasn’t going to be important; a cop can tell about those things — sometimes. She wasn’t frightened, just sore. “What’s the trouble, lady?”
“I want those people under me arrested! They keep playing their radio until all hours of the night. It’s an outrage!”
“Sh, quiet, lady!” O’Dare reminded her. “You’re making more noise than any radio yourself right this minute.”
He sighed, went into the building, climbed two flights of stairs, knocked on a door. You could hardly hear it, she probably had a grudge. He liked the people at a glance, screwed up the side of his face good-naturedly. “Just tone it down a little,” he advised. They offered him a drink. “I’ll hold you to that when I’m off duty,” he grinned, went down to the street again. A clock chimed the half-hour and he rang in from the call-box at the next intersection. “O’Dare, 25th and Main, nothing to report.”
And then right away, as though just to give him the lie, there was.
It didn’t seem like anything at first glance, anything at all. Just a car parked half-way down one of the side-streets, lights out. For all the life it showed, it might have been there all night. No violation in that. It wasn’t on the main thoroughfare, wasn’t near a hydrant or anything. If its owner lived in that building, he had a perfect right to leave it out all night instead of bedding it at a garage.
But, somehow, it didn’t blend with its surroundings, with the building it was standing in front of, with the neighborhood as a whole. Even in the dimness, it was too high-class, too expensive a job, to look right hanging around here any length of time. It would have been more in keeping with Heinie Muller’s beat, over around Rivercrest Heights.
I’m not trying to make a swami out of Danny O’Dare, but it’s a fact that a cop has a definite instinct about that sort of thing, maybe even without realizing it. Just as he had known that that lady-crank had had nothing worth hearing to say to him out of the window just now, something about this car struck him as not being quite as guileless as it let on to be.
He had been in full sight of it when he rang the House just now from the corner. Had only spotted it as he finished closing the callbox. Some sort of a tension got to him from it, as he looked down toward it from where he was. As though somebody, either in it or nearby, were holding their breath, metaphorically speaking, waiting to see what his next move would be.
He continued on the way he’d been heading, crossed the mouth of the side-street and passed from view behind the opposite corner. Then he stopped, got up close to it, and stuck about half of one eye out beyond the building-line. He could have been dead wrong. It could have belonged to a swell who had a wren tucked away in this part of town. Its presence could have been explained by any one of a half-a-dozen things that were none of Danny O’Dare’s business. Then, while he hinged like that, a portion of a doorway-shadow detached itself and came further out into the open, became the outline of a man who had been watching O’Dare, himself, from there — and now wanted to make sure he had gone! O’Dare drew that tiny sliver of his head back, paying him out a little more rope as it were.
The silhouette went over to the car; a brief, almost unnoticeable blat of its horn sounded. Pip! like that. Not just a signal of impatience, too short and quick for that — a warning signal, for somebody unseen within that building.
It was O’Dare’s meat now. He had been the cause of that warning, and anyone that’s afraid of a cop must have some reason for being afraid of a cop.
The set-up was a particularly bad one; he realized that as he breasted the corner, came into full sight, and headed down on that car and its look-out. An ordinary man would have thought twice about bucking it, and then not bucked it. Which is why cops wear blue uniforms to distinguish them from ordinary men. He and the car and the street-light across the way formed a triangle. As he advanced, the street-light fell behind him. He had half a block to cover as a looming silhouette, silver radiance behind him, a target that a blind-man could hit. They — the car and its watchers — stayed safely shrouded in gloom. They could stop him long before he got there and he couldn’t do a thing about it, wasn’t even entitled to fire first until he was given the provocation. Tension had switched over to him now, had hold of every nerve. He thought of Molly, waiting at home, alone, helpless, going to present him with a Danny O’Dare Junior one of these fine days real soon now. Thought, but that was all. He didn’t even try to protect himself by feigning casualness as he bore down. He wasn’t using his beat-gait, was coming on at the quick pace of aroused suspicions.