Nolan walked over to Ramussen’s closed door and knocked sharply. When the lieutenant answered he opened the door and stepped into the big bare office.
“Close the door and come over here,” Ramussen said.
Nolan did as he was told.
Lieutenant Ramussen was a tall rangy man with scanty brown hair and bright blue eyes. His features were lean, composed and unrevealing. But his disturbingly bright eyes gave his face an expression of bold deliberate challenge. Prisoners had difficulty meeting his steady gaze, and even his detectives complained occasionally among themselves that it got on their nerves.
When he smiled, however, the wrinkles about his eyes changed his expression completely; but he wasn’t smiling now.
He flicked Nolan’s typed report with his middle finger. “This stinks like hell,” he said. “You had no excuse for killing Dave Fiest, Nolan.”
Nolan shrugged. “I tried to bring him down. The shot went high.”
“I know, that’s in the report. Now get this, Nolan. You’re new in my Division. You’ve got a reputation in the department for being pretty quick to use your gun. Well, I’m not letting that influence me. I don’t care what you did anywhere else, but here, by God, you’re going to use some judgment. Do you understand?”
Nolan hesitated long enough to verge on insolence. Then he said, “Sure, Lieutenant.”
Ramussen’s eyes grew brighter. He studied Nolan for a few seconds, and then he said, rather unexpectedly: “I’m a cop first of all, remember that, Nolan. I’ll stick with any man of mine who gets into trouble doing police work. But I won’t stand for another instance like last night. Got that?”
“Okay,” Nolan said.
“I want a 590 on this for the superintendent,” Ramussen said. “Get it on my desk by tomorrow morning.”
“Okay,” Nolan said, frowning. A 590 was a file customarily prepared on cases that were not officially closed, and where there was some evidence of incompetence or dereliction on the part of the detective handling the job. It was a police officer’s apologia for his judgment and conduct, and in it he could introduce material that would be considered too detailed or too extraneous for the more usual report.
“Okay,” Nolan said again. His face was impassive, but, despite the 590, he felt like grinning. He’d write up a 590 every day in the week for thirty thousand dollars. It was a nice trade.
“That’s all,” Ramussen said.
Nolan nodded to him and walked to the door.
“Oh, there’s one other thing.”
“Yeah?”
The Lieutenant was glancing at another report and fumbling in his vest pocket for his glasses. “Mike Espizito called here a while back. He wants you to get in touch with him.”
“Mike Espizito?”
“That’s right.” Ramussen put on his glasses. “I told him I’d give you the message.”
“Thanks,” Nolan said. He wanted to ask if Mike had said anything else; but he knew that wouldn’t be wise. “Thanks,” he said again, and walked out of the office.
7
Mark Brewster glanced up when Nolan came out of Ramussen’s office. He hoped to learn something from the expression, but Nolan’s face told him nothing.
The other detectives continued talking as Nolan crossed the room and took a chair at an empty desk. He picked up a paper and turned to tire sports section, pointedly ignoring everyone in the room.
Mark saw now that there was an angry flush of color in Nolan’s face, and he wondered if Lieutenant Ramussen had caused that reaction. Suddenly Nolan turned and met his eyes directly; and Mark saw naked hatred in the detective’s face. The two men stared at each other for an instant without speaking, and then Nolan went back to his paper and Mark let out his breath slowly. He was aware that his heart was pumping harder than usual.
Over their heads the endless talk went on. Smitty was making a point with gestures to Lindfors and Gianfaldo.
“You guys hate the FBI because you’re snobs,” he said, shaking a finger at them emphatically. “That’s all, snobs. You think no detective is any good until he’s bald-headed and got arthritis. That’s why you moan about the G boys. They’re not as old as you, so naturally they can’t be any good.”
“You don’t learn this business in no college,” Gianfaldo said, rolling out the sentiment with the pontifical authority of a Papal spokesman; and Lindfors nodded in agreement. “I worked with them kids during the war,” Gianfaldo went on, “and all their ‘yes, sirs’ and ‘no, sirs’ and ‘empty your pockets, please’ got ’em absolutely nowhere.”
“Ah, you don’t have to shout at people to be a good detective,” Smitty said disgustedly.
“That’s all a hood understands,” Sergeant Odell said, looking up from his paper. “You got to scare hell out of ’em.” Nodding approval of his comment, he returned to his newspaper, and after that, the talk drifted easily and with no sense of digression or irrelevance onto the subject of how best to water-proof basements.
Mark lit a cigarette and dropped the match on the floor. He noticed that Nolan had been staring at one page of the paper for the past few moments, and wasn’t even making a pretense of reading. Finally he put the paper aside and turned to Mark with curious deliberation.
“I understand you called Linda Wade,” he said grimly.
Mark was instantly wary. She’d told him, of course. “That’s right,” he said, and blew smoke at the ceiling. “She a friend of yours?”
“Yeah. What’s on your mind?”
“About her?”
“Yeah, about her,” Nolan said irritably.
Mark deliberately ignored the challenge in his manner. He said easily, “I thought she might make a nice feature for the Sunday paper. She’s damn good, you know.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Nolan said. “Whose idea was this feature?”
“Mine, of course,” Mark said, and tried to appear surprised by the question. “I thought she’d be fine for the profile we do every week on entertainers, actors and so forth.”
“I thought you were a police reporter,” Nolan said, with heavy sarcasm. “Isn’t this a little out of your line?”
Mark smiled, but his hands were trembling slightly as he lit a fresh cigarette. He saw that Nolan was watching his hands, and that didn’t help any.
“I’m just trying to get ahead,” he said, still smiling. “You know, impress the boss with my selfless devotion to the cause of the Call-Bulletin. Eager Beaver stuff.”
Smitty walked over grinning and slapped Mark on the back. “Get this,” he said. “Lindfors had just announced that Harry Greb could have beat Joe Louis. I told him—”
“We were talking,” Nolan said, glaring up at Smitty. “Why don’t you give that mouth of yours a rest, anyway?”
There was suddenly silence in the room. Smitty turned from Mark and stared hard at Nolan. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry as all hell, Detective Nolan. I didn’t realize I was breaking up your important conference.” There was an angry white line about his mouth.
“It wasn’t that important,” Mark said, relieved at the interruption.
Nolan stood up and brushed past Smitty. He walked to the window and stared into the street for a moment and then wandered to another desk and sat down. Smitty watched him for a few seconds, then shrugged his shoulders, and turned to Mark.