William P. McGivern
Rogue Cop
1
They had been playing poker for several hours now, not with any particular enthusiasm but simply to kill this quiet stretch of Saturday evening. Later, as the night wore on, the city’s tempo would rise to a harder, sharper beat; then murders, knifings and shootings would bring the game to an end. But now the police speaker was silent and the detectives played cards on a cigarette-scarred table in a smoky, unventilated office. Outside, in the large, brightly lighted file room, a clerk was typing up reports, working with severe concentration, stopping only to sip cold black coffee from a cardboard container at his elbow. The glazed-glass door that led to Lieutenant Wilson’s office was dark; the lieutenant was out in the districts now, but would be back at Headquarters by ten or eleven. There would be work then for him and his men.
Standing at the brown wooden counter that ran the length of the room was a reporter named Murphy, a bulky, untidily dressed man with a round florid face and thoughtful gray eyes. He was applying himself to the evening paper’s crossword puzzle, frowning intently, apparently immune to everything but this immediate preoccupation.
At the card table Sergeant Mike Carmody was dealing now, his big clean hands spraying the cards about with expert speed. He was an arrestingly handsome man in his middle thirties, with a silvering of gray in his thick blond hair. Everything about him looked hard and expensive; his gray flannel suit had cost two hundred dollars and was superbly fitted to his tall, wide-shouldered frame; the planes of his lean tanned face were flat and sharply defined, and his eyes were the cold gray color of winter seas. Even when he smiled there was no softness in it; his smile was a small, direct challenge, a projection of his sure confidence in his own strength and brains.
“Okay, make up your mind,” he said to the man on his right. “The spots won’t change, Myers.”
Myers, a small man with thinning brown hair and a cautious mouth, studied his cards and shook his head slowly. “It’s by me, Mike,” he said.
The other two players — Abrams, a solemn grandfather and Dirksen, a bean-pole with a thin freckled face — both passed.
Carmody held two queens. He flipped in a half-a-dollar and said, “It’s off then.” He was bored with the game and made no attempt to conceal it.
Myers and Abrams called the half-dollar bet, but Dirksen threw his cards in. “I haven’t seen anything higher than a ten for the last hour,” he said, yawning. Then he glanced at Mike Carmody and said conversationally, “Say, Mike, that was a nice pinch your kid brother made the other day. How about that, eh?”
There was a sudden small silence around the table.
Carmody studied his cards, ignoring it. “He didn’t make the pinch,” he said, glancing at Abrams. “How many, Abe?”
“Sure, but he made the identification,” Dirksen said. “He caught Delaney with the gun in his hand, but Delaney got away.” Dirksen’s voice was patient and explicit, as if this were a difficult matter to explain. “Then Delaney got picked up later and your brother made the identification. That’s what I meant by saying—”
“I read the story in the paper,” Carmody said, catching Dirksen directly with his hard cold eyes. He smiled then, the bright quick smile in which there was no warmth or humor. “But we’re playing cards now, remember?”
“Well, I’m not stopping you,” Dirksen said, shrugging and looking away from Carmody’s eyes.
“That’s fine,” Carmody said, still smiling. He wondered fleetingly if Dirksen had been needling him; Dirksen was dumb enough to try it, after all.
Myers took one card, Abrams three. Carmody drew three to his pair of queens and without looking at them pushed in a dollar. He wasn’t interested in Myers’ one-card draw. If Myers caught a flush or straight he’d raise, but the amount involved wasn’t enough to buy a decent steak. Myers caught. Carmody guessed that from the way his eyes flicked from his cards to his little heap of money.
“I’ll bump it five,” Myers said.
“You can’t,” Abrams said. “The limit is two.”
“Who said anything about a limit?” Myers demanded.
“Well, it’s always been a limit,” Abrams said, shrugging his big shoulders. “But it don’t make any difference to me. I’m out.”
“We didn’t establish a limit tonight,” Myers said, wetting his lips and glancing at Carmody.
“Make it five if you want,” Carmody said, only slightly irritated. Myers had hooked and now he wanted to get rich on one hand. Let him, he thought. Glancing at his cards he found that he had drawn another queen to go with his openers, and a pair of tens. He grinned at the fantastic luck and tossed in ten dollars. “Once again, my friend,” he said.
“You’re bluffing,” Myers said. He stared into Carmody’s hard quick smile, trying to keep a weary premonition of defeat from showing in his face.
“Raise then,” Carmody said.
“I’ll just call,” Myers said, pushing in his last five dollars. He had to use silver to make up the amount, and then he put down a king-high straight and looked hopefully at Carmody.
Carmody stared at his cinch hand. He knew all about Myers, as he knew about all the detectives on his shift. The damn fool had two young daughters, and a wife in a sanitarium, but here he was throwing away fifteen dollars in one hand of poker.
Carmody hesitated, annoyed with himself, and Myers watched him with mounting confidence.
“Come on,” Myers said. “What’ve you got?”
“It’s your money,” Carmody said shortly, and tossed his cards in, face down. The gesture would be wasted, he thought, as he leaned back and lit a cigarette. Myers, pulling in his money triumphantly now, was like most cops, brave, honest and dumb. Carmody felt no sympathy for him. only a blend of exasperation and anger. He’d never have a cent more than his salary and not even that unless he learned to stop drawing to inside straights. That’s what bothered him, Carmody thought, his face expressionless. Myers was a fool and he didn’t like fools.
“Caught you bluffing, didn’t I?” Myers said, arranging his money happily. “Thought you could run me out with a five-dollar bet, eh? Well, my luck’s changing. I’m starting back now, remember that.”
“You’d better start by remembering the limit,” Carmody said, his irritation sharpened by Myers’ yapping. “You won’t get rich by changing the rules in the middle of a deal.”
“Is that how you got rich?” Myers said, stung by Carmody’s tone. “By following the rules?”
There was tense silence then, as if everyone at the table had suddenly held his breath. Myers had skated onto thin ice; he was on an area that had mile-high danger signs posted on it. The unnatural silence lasted until Carmody said very quietly, “Let’s play cards, Myers. It’s your deal, I think.”
“Sure, that’s right,” Myers said, and began quickly to shuffle the cards. There was a white line showing around his small cautious mouth.
Murphy, the reporter, drifted and leaned against the doorway, hat pushed back on his head, a little smile on his big florid face. “I should have been a cop,” he said sighing. “Nothing to worry about but filling straights.”
No one answered him.
“Say, when’s Delaney’s trial?” he asked of no one in particular.
Dirksen looked up at him, his freckled face blank and innocent. “Next month sometime, I guess. That right, Mike?”
Carmody nodded slowly, studying his cards. “That’s right. The thirteenth.”
“The unlucky thirteenth for Delaney,” Murphy said, watching Carmody’s sharp handsome profile. “That should be a big day for your brother, Mike. Any cop would be happy to finger a hoodlum like Delaney.”
“I’d be glad of the chance,” Myers said, risking a quick glance at Carmody.