“The man in 103 — is he up there now?”
“Yes, nice, quiet fellow. Has his food sent up. Is anything wrong?”
“Nothing serious. But don’t bother to announce me.”
Terrell took the elevator to the third floor and walked down a wide gray hallway to Coglan’s room. A breakfast tray was beside the door, the napkin crumpled, the stub of a cigarette pressed into a mound of rubbery-looking scrambled eggs. Terrell studied the tray for a few seconds, then sighed and rapped lightly on the door.
Someone had been moving about inside the room, but now those small shuffling sounds faded into silence.
“Open up, Paddy,” he said. “This is Sam Terrell. I want to talk to you.”
The knob turned slowly, and the door swung back a few inches. Coglan stared up at him, his eyes shifting and his lips trying to work themselves into a smile. “Well, Sam boy,” he said, laughing a bit. “You could knock me over with a feather. I needed a rest, and I ducked over here all by myself.” He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s all I wanted, some place where I could have a drink in private without scandalizing the neighbors.” He smelled of whiskey, and he needed a shave.
“Can I come in?”
“Why sure, Sam.” Coglan moved away from the door and Terrell walked inside and took off his hat. The room was meanly furnished; a faded carpet, thin as paper, a bureau with half the drawer knobs missing, beige curtains shadowed in streaks with dust. It was a still life of small losses, of meagre defeats; a bitterly appropriate place for Coglan to run to ground, Terrell thought.
“You want a drink, Sam?”
“No, thanks.”
“Well, I’ll have just a touch.” Coglan moved over to the bureau where there was a half-full bottle of whiskey and. a blue plastic tooth-brush glass, its sides faintly streaked with a pink dentifrice. He poured himself a long drink and then sat down on the edge of the bed. “You take the chair,” he said. “I save it for guests.” He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the skin of his shoulders was blotchy with freckles. He finished his drink in one swallow, and it reddened his cheeks and brought a film of moisture over his eyes. “Boy, that does it. I seem to need a drink today. Must be coming down with something.” He smiled at Terrell. “Well, how come you’re over this way?”
“You know why I’m here, Paddy. Me or somebody else — what difference does it make?”
“Yeah,” Coglan said, in a gentle, whispering voice. “Yeah.” He smiled again, blinking his eyes rapidly, and the liquor on his lower lip gleamed in the harsh light of the room. “Somebody had to come, I guess.”
“Because you lied, and an innocent man may die for it.” Terrell sat down and took out his cigarettes. “You can’t live with a thing like that. There’s not enough booze in the world to give you a night’s sleep.”
“They had too much on me,” Coglan said. He nodded wearily at the empty glass in his hands. “Too many times playing around with this stuff instead of minding my work. They’ve got reports, suspended verdicts — stacks of them. They could toss me out in less time than it would take to fill in the forms. And Stanko said he would if I didn’t—” Coglan sighed and looked into the bottom of his glass. “Unless I lied. Unless I said I didn’t see the man who ran out of Caldwell’s. He said it was hush-hush business — that I’d understand later and that sort of thing. I didn’t believe him. But I pretended I did. Even to myself.” Coglan wet his lips and walked over to the bureau. “Sure you won’t have a nip?”
“No thanks, Paddy. You go ahead.”
“So I lied to you, to everybody, including the judge,” Coglan said, measuring out his drink slowly and carefully. “I finish my twenty-five years in two months. Then my pension comes through. I want it, Sam, not for me, but for my wife. We never had kids, you know, but with the pension we could go out to California where her youngest sister is living. They’ve got a big family, lots of young ones. And that’s what my wife’s been thinking about all these years. You know how women are. It changes them not to have babies. It hurts them. And she wanted to be near those youngsters.” Coglan looked up at Terrell, his eyes pleading for understanding. “I owe a lot on the house still, and we’ve got doctor bills going back to when she had that heart trouble. Without the pension I’d be. on the streets, Sam, a guy fifty-seven years old who’d been thrown off the force for drinking. Great recommendation for another job, eh? I was scared. Not of being slugged or shot. But of being out on my can, without a dime. Do you understand, Sam?”
“I think so,” Terrell said.
“I was never a bad cop,” Coglan said slowly. “I was just no good. There’s a difference. I never shook people down at accidents, or went looking for married guys necking in cars with their girl friends. I just was a nothing. Pulling boxes, telling people to keep their dogs locked up, stopping fights between kids.” Coglan turned the glass around in his hands, staring at the darkly shining liquor. “But I always thought I’d get a chance to prove myself. Going up a flight of stairs with a gun after a killer — that kind of thing. But the chance never did come along. You got to be lucky to prove you’re any good. Did you ever think of that?”
“Sure,” Terrell said. “But you’re getting your chance. What happened the night Eden Myles was murdered?”
“I heard her scream,” Coglan said in a weary, hopeless voice. “I had just turned the corner from Regent Square into Manor Lane. I started running. I was only two or three doors from Caldwell’s house. Otherwise I wouldn’t have heard her yell. It was cut off in a hurry, you see. Well, I went up to Caldwell’s door. You don’t bust in on an important man like that without some good reason, so I just sort of waited there, wondering whether I’d imagined the noise. Then the door was jerked open, and out came this big guy. I got a good look at him, Sam. He was surprised and he just stood there for a second. He was big, with thick black hair and a wide, tough face. A gorilla, Sam. Wearing a trenchcoat. No hat, so I could see a deep scar on his forehead. Then he pushed past me and ran across the street, angling toward those shadows from the wall around the church. You see how it was?”
“I see. So you lost him. Then you came back to Caldwell’s?”
“That’s right. The door was open. Caldwell was lying in a chair out cold, and she was dead on the floor. Her face was all swollen and blue. I called the district and Stanko answered the phone. He just told me to sit tight, and hung up.” Coglan finished the drink and ran his tongue around his lips. “Then you called, and I gave you a line on what happened. When Stanko showed up he told me to forget all about the big man I saw running out of the house. So I lied. But sitting over here in this crummy joint I realized I couldn’t stick it out.”
Watching Coglan pour himself another drink, Terrell was touched by a deep, inarticulate pity; this sad little man had been smashed by the morality that admired compromise more than any other virtue. Put up with it, that’s the way the world is, only suckers try to change it. The seeds of destruction might have been with him from birth, but this particular city had provided lush soil for them to thrive on.
“So what do I do?” Coglan said.
“Good question,” Terrell said drily. “You’re on record with one story. Stanko will deny your second version. And you’re going to be in the middle.”
“Can’t I do anything?”
“You can give me the true story, and well run it,” Terrell said. “That will take the heat off Caldwell, and put it where it belongs. But the cops who take orders from the Hall will be gunning for you. They’ll boot you off the force as a liar and a drunk. And they’ll hound you off any other job you try to get in the city. And they’ll stop your pension.”