The phone clicked in Carmody’s ear. He frowned at it a moment, then broke the connection and dialed Police. The record room would know where Tucker was hanging out. He wasn’t wanted for anything here, as far as Carmody could recall, but some stoolie would have tipped off the police that he was back in town. The clerk at Records answered and Carmody asked for the chief, Sergeant Hogan. After a short wait Hogan came on, and Carmody asked him about Longie Tucker.
“We had a tip when he drifted back to the city,” Hogan said. “The detectives in his district watched him for a few weeks, but he seems to be behaving himself. Wouldn’t swear he’ll keep it up though. He’s a stormy one.”
“Where is he living?”
“Just a minute... here it is... 211 Eighteenth Street. A rotten neighborhood, and just where he belongs. Anything else, Mike?”
“No, that’s all.”
Hogan hesitated, then said, “Tough about the kid brother, Mike.”
“Yes, it was,” Carmody said. “But we’ll get the guy who did it.”
“You’re damn right.”
Carmody hesitated a moment after replacing the phone, debating whether to run this down himself, or to pass it on to Wilson. It was now one-thirty. He wanted to see Nancy as soon as possible; now he knew she’d been lying when she said she had nothing on Ackerman. But Longie Tucker was an even stronger lure. When he got into his car he headed for 211 Eighteenth Street.
10
It was an unpainted wooden building set in the middle of a block of municipal decay. Carmody got hold of the owner, a sullen little Spaniard, and asked him about Longie Tucker.
“There is one man on the third floor,” the Spaniard said, shrugging carelessly. “I don’t care about his name. Maybe you want that one, eh? I go to tell him.”
“You go finish your lunch,” Carmody said.
“You copper?”
“You just finish lunch, understand, amigo?” Carmody said quietly.
“Sure, I don’t care,” the man said and closed his door.
Carmody went up the stairs quietly. The wallpaper was torn and filthy, and he breathed through his mouth to avoid the greasy, stale smell of the building. Two doors stood open on the third floor, revealing the interiors of small, messy rooms. The third and last door was closed. Carmody eased his gun from the holster and tried the knob. It turned under his hand. He pushed the door inward and stepped into the room, his finger curved and hard against the trigger of his gun.
Longie Tucker lay fully dressed on a sagging bed, one hand trailing on the dusty floor. The room was oppressively hot; the single window was closed and the air was heavy and foul. Tucker breathed slowly and deeply, his body shuddering with the effort. There was an empty whiskey bottle near his hand, and two boxes of pills.
Carmody shook his shoulder until his eyelids fluttered, and then pulled him to a sitting position.
Tucker blinked at him, confused and frightened. “What’s the beef?” he muttered.
Carmody’s hopes died as he stared at Tucker’s drawn face, at the gray skin shot here and there with tiny networks of ruptured blood vessels. The man was half his former size, a sick, decaying husk.
Tucker grinned at him suddenly, disclosing rows of bad teeth. “I get you now, friend. Mike Carmody. Is that right?”
“That’s it,” Carmody said, putting his gun away.
“I didn’t do the job on your brother,” Tucker said. “I couldn’t do a job on a fly. I ain’t left the room in two weeks. I got the bug in my lungs. Ain’t that a riot? I go west and get the con.”
“Who killed my brother? Do you know?”
“God’s truth, I don’t. I heard the job was open but I wouldn’t have touched it if I could.”
“You heard about it? Did they advertise in the papers?”
“Word gets around.”
Carmody rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead and turned toward the door.
“Mike, can you spare a buck? I need something to drink.”
“No.”
“Coppers,” Tucker said, making an ugly word of it.
Carmody looked down at him coldly. “Why didn’t you save the money you got for shooting people in the back?” Then, disgusted and angry with himself, he took out a roll of bills and threw a twenty on Tucker’s bed. “Don’t die thinking all coppers are no good,” he said.
“Thanks, Mike,” Tucker said, grinning weakly as he reached for the money.
Carmody drove across the city to the Empire Hotel and went up past the police detail to Karen’s apartment. She opened the door for him and he walked into the cool, dim room. The shades had been drawn against the afternoon sun and Nancy was lying on the studio couch, asleep, an arm thrown over her eyes.
“Must you wake her?” Karen asked him. “She just got to sleep.”
“Yes.”
“You have to, I suppose,” she said dryly.
“Look, I didn’t invent this game,” Carmody said. Then he felt his temper slipping; the pressure inside him had reached the danger point. Wilson, Father Ahearn and now Karen. They couldn’t wait to give him a gratuitous kick in the teeth. “Stop yapping at me,” he said abruptly. “If you think I’m a heel write your congressman about it. But lay off me; understand?”
“I understand,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
The reply confused him; it was simple and straightforward, with no sarcasm running under it. He sat down on the sofa facing the studio couch and lit a cigarette. “I’ll give her a few minutes,” he said. “How has she been?”
“Not too good. She cried a lot and tried to leave several times. I gave her a few drinks and that seemed to help.”
“She had a rough time.”
“Yes, she told me about it,” Karen said. She sat down beside him on the sofa and shook her head slowly. “What kind of men are they, Mike?”
“Big men, tough men,” he said. “With the world in their pockets. They don’t believe in anything but the fix. They never heard of Judgment Day.”
She didn’t answer him. He glanced at her and saw that she was rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers. She was wearing a white linen dress and her hair was brushed back above her ears and held with a black ribbon. The faint light in the room ran along her slim legs as she moved one foot in a restless circle. She looked used up; pale and very tired.
“She told me about your break with Ackerman,” she said quietly. “And the fight. She thinks you’re the greatest guy in the world.” Again her voice was simple and straightforward, with no bitterness or sarcasm in it. “That’s why I told you I was sorry. You tried to save him. I didn’t know that this morning.”
“I was a big help,” he said bitterly.
“I can’t believe he’s dead,” she said, moving her head slowly from side to side. “Just last night he sat here full of health and hope and big plans. And now he’s gone.”
“Well, he lived in a straight line,” Carmody said, “no detours, no short cuts.” He spoke without reflection or deliberation, but the words sounded with a truth he hadn’t understood before; it was something to say of a man that the shape and purpose of his life had remained constant against all pressure and temptation.
“It’s been a ghastly day,” she whispered.
“You ought to get some rest.” Without thinking of what he was doing, he put a hand on her back and began to massage the taut muscles of her shoulders and neck. He felt the malleable quality of her body under his fingers, and the small thin points of her shoulder blades, and he wondered irrelevantly what held her together, what supported all of her poise and strength. There was something inside her that was impervious to attack. She had countered his contempt with a confident anger, as if hating him was a privilege she had earned. Father Ahearn’s words struck him suddenly: Hating sin... belongs to us poor fools who believe in right and wrong. Was that her pitch? That she was on the side of the angels?