Tom held his gun on Lipe and said, “Patties out front, Lipe. Nice and easy. Don’t move fast. You four-time losers make me nervous.” He said to Brock, “He’ll go up for the rest of his natural life, so what’s he got to lose?”
Lipe licked his lips and put his hands out. The cuffs made two sharp metallic clicks as Blaskell fastened them. “Come on, Lipe,” he said.
Back in the darkness of the apartment a woman began to cry, gutturally, helplessly. Brock felt as though he were pulling the wings off a fly.
Lipe came down the stairs meekly enough. He said, “It’s a no-good rap, Lieutenant, and you know it.”
“Lipe, Mr. Ellison here is going to swear it was you because he saw you. How tight does it have to fit?”
They shoved him into Brock’s car, with Tom at the wheel, Lipe between them. Tom drove steadily, silently toward police headquarters. Lipe took it in silence for half the distance and then began to make small chittering sounds.
“You won’t do it to me, Lieutenant!”
“They always think it can’t happen to them, Mr. Ellison.”
When they parked in front of headquarters Lipe really came apart. He could hardly be understood.
Tom did it well. He turned to Brock and said, “Now, look, Mr. Ellison. I know you got robbed. We’ll try to get your stuff back. But this Lipe, he’s small fry. Would you drop it, Mr. Ellison?”
“Why should I?” Brock demanded. “What kind of law and order—”
“Okay, okay. It was just a thought. We’ve been looking for some information. I thought Lipe could supply it. You know. A trade. He tells us what we want to know, and he gets off.”
“I’m no stool,” Lipe said uncertainly.
“It would be a big help to us, Mr. Ellison.”
“He doesn’t sound as if he’d tell you anything, anyway.”
“Can I give it a try?”
Brock acted grumpy. “All right.”
When Blaskell had dragged Lipe out of the car and hauled him halfway to the front steps of headquarters, the little man decided he would talk.
Tom brought him back to the car.
“Just answer the questions,” Tom said heavily. “Who’s this man?” He held the picture of Roger Talbott where Lipe could see it in the glow of the street lamp.
Lipe licked his lips. “Collection and drop-off for the wholesaler.”
“Know his name?”
“Not till I saw it in the paper when he got it. His picture was in the paper.”
“Did he contact you? How?”
“I’d get the word. I’d meet him on a city bus.”
“Who did he work for, Lipe?”
“He could be working for lots of people. Maybe Sal Lorrio.”
“Was it Sal Lorrio?”
“I didn’t say so. If I said it was, and it got back, I’m dead.”
“This collector, the guy in the picture — he crossed Lorrio?”
“He crossed somebody. The word was out to finger him quick, calling this certain phone number. He made a fast delivery to a lot of the boys, they said. Took money for a lot of powdered sugar. Nobody checked until the junks yelped they weren’t getting no ride out of it. So he crossed somebody, and they got to him.”
“Where did the money go?”
“I hear that’s a problem. Some babe has it, maybe.”
Tom said, “Mr. Ellison, he’s earned a break.”
“Suit yourself,” Brock said angrily. They drove Lipe home. Tom unlocked the cuffs, and Lipe trotted across the sidewalk and dove into the doorway without looking back.
Tom drove away. “A good act, Brock. But — Lorrio! He got the big money. Roger got peanuts. How can you touch a guy like that? Ex-mobster turned respectable. Clubman. Owns garages and restaurants and apartment houses. Heavy money to the Community Chest. Kids in private schools. Plays golf with judges.”
“Tom, he talked as if Roger were killed.”
“No trick to it. Icy roads. Pick the spot and bunt him off the highway.”
“I can see that. Maybe I’m naive, but why should Lorrio try so hard to get the money Roger took? It couldn’t have been much from Lorrio’s point of view.”
“They have a code. A cross is the unforgivable sin. You have to get your own back, so nobody else will try it. Talbott can’t profit, and neither can his widow.”
Tom parked in front of his house, yawned mightily. He said, “Just an angle you might check, Brock. Sal Lorrio’s kid brother, Jimmy. He did some time in Leavenworth. Two Thrace boys might get together.”
“Thanks for that, Tom. And thanks for tonight.”
“Don’t mention it. I got something out of it, too. But trying to do something with it is a horse with another collar. ’Night, son.”
After Brock got back to his small, comfortable apartment, he made himself a drink and sat at the kitchen table, fitting the bits and pieces together. Sal Lorrio wasn’t the sort of windmill you could tip over with a lance. It would be next to impossible to prove any contact between Lorrio and Roger Talbott. Yet there had to be some point at which to insert a wedge and pry more information loose. Nearly everything accumulated so far was hearsay evidence, not admissible in defense of Beth Talbott in court.
Each time he went over the case he found he kept returning to the ride that Beth could not remember. Roger had told her of a stop he had to make. Roger had known he was dealing with quick, ruthless people. Beth had said he seemed nervous that night. With good reason, Brock thought grimly.
Brock phoned at noon, and Beth spent the rest of the afternoon feeling as though she were two women. One felt a welcome glow of warm anticipation. But the other was afraid. There could be little time left. Somehow it would have been easier if Crees had named a definite deadline. He had merely said that time was short. The woman who was afraid had begun to listen for the phone, for a stranger’s knock at the door.
The afternoon was endless and breathlessly hot. The air was thick, and thunder rumbled in the distance. The tension of a coming storm turned Marian bleak and surly. It was very much like those nearly forgotten afternoons of childhood when they were both being punished by being made to stay indoors. She remembered that always, even when Marian had brought down the punishment on their heads, she had contrived to make Beth feel it was all her fault.
Brock picked her up at seven. She borrowed Marian’s raincoat because the storm was closer, lighting the horizon at somber intervals.
As soon as she was with Brock some of the fear went away. He told her of what he had learned. Roger seemed far away, sad, pathetic.
At dinner, he cautioned her to speak softly. She said, “Lorrio! I’ve seen his picture in the papers, Brock. He’s wealthy, isn’t he? Why would he—”
Brock’s mouth had a bitter look. “I think that to call it greed is an oversimplification. It’s more twisted than that. I know a little about him. He was an underprivileged kid. He wormed his way to the top. Lies and deceit and violence. Maybe he couldn’t stop outsmarting society. He had to keep doing it, to make himself feel like a big strong man.”
“He has so much to lose.”
“That makes it a gamble. And if you don’t put stakes on the table, you aren’t gambling. Of course, there is another answer, too. Maybe in the past he put himself in the bag with the syndicate. So he has to follow orders or be turned in for something he did long ago. Leave us stop thinking about Lorrio before it ruins my dinner. How about you? Better topic? Tonight we’re going to see if we can make you remember the accident.”
“Brock, I... I can’t...”
“We’ll see. It might not be pleasant. But I want you to do this for me. We’re going to go back and start where you started that night, start where your memory stops.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried to remember? If you want to lift something, or move something, you have a place to put your hands, and you know how to use your strength. But remembering isn’t like that. I don’t know which way to push, or how to lift.”