Detective-Sergeant John Odell and three of his shift were playing poker, while a reporter, Mark Brewster, lounged in the doorway, smoking and watching the game without any particular interest. Sergeant Odell slapped cards down on the desk with a steady voluble comment on the caprices of fortune. He was thickly built with rimless glasses, thinning brown hair, and a complexion the shade of top round steak.
“Ten a possible straight, nine, possible nothing, K-boy, nothing yet, and I get a miserable damn deuce. K-boy bets.”
The king was owned by George Lindfors, a thin man of about forty with gray skin and tired eyes. He seemed irritable.
“A nickel. And I wish to hell you’d stop announcing cards like you was dealing in a home for the blind. We can see.”
“The dealer’s got to call the cards,” Odell said cheerfully. “If I didn’t, you’d be crying about that.”
Mark Brewster yawned and glanced at his watch. One-fifteen. The beat had been quiet since eight. He dropped his cigarette on the floor and put it out with the toe of his shoe.
From the center room of the Division the police radio blared monotonously. Mark listened to it automatically, unconsciously.
“Car 393... report. Car 75... Disturbance highway, Lancaster Avenue at Forty-third. Car 64... Hospital case, Olney at Sedgemore. Car 71... Hold-up, Sixth and Edgeton. Car 72, car 73, car 74, Hold-up. Car 548, Smithton and Banks, Local fire...”
“Where was that hold-up?” Odell said, frowning at his hand.
“Sixth and Edgeton,” Mark said. “It’s not ours.”
“That’s in the Northeast,” Lindfors said. “There’s a bakery on that corner.”
“Yeah, Peterson’s bakery,” a detective named Smith said. He was young, stockily built, with curly black hair and an aggressive confident manner. “We used to go by there on the way home from school.”
“Well, let’s play cards,” Odell said. “It’s up to you, Smitty. What’d you say?”
“Nickel.”
Mark Brewster yawned again and walked into the middle room where there were several desks, filing cabinets, a bulletin board with a number of flyers tacked onto it, and a small-scale map of the city. The floor was littered with cigarette stubs, and dusty. Green shades were pulled down over the two windows that faced Gray Street. Two detectives were dozing in chairs, and another reporter sat at the sergeant’s desk, glancing through a late paper. His name was Richardson Cabot, a man of about sixty, who dressed neatly and used a cigarette holder.
“Everything seems pretty quiet,” Mark said.
“Thank God,” Cabot said. “Let’s hope it stays this way. I remember though it was a night just like this when Slick Willie Sutton broke out of Holmesburg.”
“How about coffee?” Mark said. He knew from Cabot’s tone that he was about to retell the story of Sutton’s break from start to finish, with considerable emphasis placed on the part one Richardson Cabot had played in reporting that news to the people of Philadelphia.
“Oh, very well,” Cabot said with only a trace of disappointment in his voice. “I’d better check the morgue and a few districts first.”
“Okay,” Mark said. He sat on the edge of a desk and lit another cigarette. He was thirty, with pale narrow features, dark brown hair and alert eyes. His air of casual good humor had made him dozens of friends through the police department, and he was regarded as an efficient and trustworthy reporter, one who wouldn’t betray confidential information or jeopardize a case by breaking a story too soon.
He walked back to the card game while Cabot was making his calls. Odell was raking in a mound of silver. “Get this,” he said to Mark. “I’ve got sixes showing, mind you, showing, and Lindy bets into me with only a queen.”
“I didn’t see the sixes,” Lindfors said. “Let’s play cards.”
Mark blew smoke at the ceiling.
“...Car 45 report... Car 197, meet complainant, Ridge and Somerset.” A fire box came in with ten loud rings. Then the announcer. “Box 654 Allegheny and Broad. Car 22... Box 654. Car 610... Assist officer... Car 611, report to Ellens Lane and Crab Street. Assist officer. Car 84... Men loitering at Bainbridge and Gray Streets.”
Sergeant Odell held up his hand. “That assist officer. It was ours, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Mark said. “610 is the wagon, 611 is the street, Sergeant.”
“Probably a cop with a drunk he can’t handle,” Lindfors said.
“They wouldn’t send the street sergeant on that,” Odell said. “Mark, call downstairs and see what it was, will you?”
Mark walked into the next room and picked up the police phone on Odell’s desk. He asked the operator to connect him with the house sergeant at Sixty-five.
“This is Mark Brewster,” he said, when Sergeant Brennan answered. “Did you send out the call for 610 and 611?”
“Right, Mark. Nolan’s got a dead one at Crab Street and Ellens Lane. Somebody he shot.”
“Thanks.”
Mark walked back to the card game and said, “Brennan says Nolan shot some fellow at Crab Street and Ellens Lane.”
“Yeah?” Odell tossed his cards down. “A dead one?”
Mark nodded and Odell said, “Lindy, you and Smitty go over and see if Nolan needs any help.”
“Look, don’t touch these cards,” Lindfors said, getting to his feet. “I just hooked the case ace.”
Sergeant Odell laughed at his sulky expression.
“You want to ride along?” Smitty said to Mark.
“Sure.”
“Okay, wait till I get my coat.”
Mark lit another cigarette and said casually to Odelclass="underline" “What sort of guy is Nolan?” He knew Nolan’s reputation of course, and had come across him a few times on routine police assignments; but he wanted a slant on him from another cop.
Odell glanced up at him, his big face impassive. “Why?”
Mark shrugged and flipped his match away. “I was just curious. He hasn’t been here long, and I haven’t got to know him.”
“He’s okay, Mark,” Odell said. “Kind of grouchy at times, and not very sociable, but he’s all right. He’s been working out in Germantown for the last six years or so, and before that he was with Foot Traffic. He must damn near have his time in.” Odell glanced at the last man at the table, a dumpy, balding detective in his early sixties. “How about it, Joe? Hasn’t Nolan just about got his twenty years in?”
“Now, lemme see,” Joe Gianfaldo said. He ran a hand over the rough granular skin of his forehead, and twisted his lips so that the two gold teeth in the front of his mouth gleamed in the overhead light. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “He’s about four years short.” Gianfaldo had been a detective for twenty-eight years and his one pride was a memory that was little short of miraculous. He knew every street in the city, and could name the stores or houses at most intersections, and he never forgot a name, a face or a date.
“He was appointed in ’thirty five,” Gianfaldo said, nodding. “That gives him sixteen years in the business. He’s a mean bastard.”
“In what way?” Mark said.
“He’s too damn quick to use his gun,” Gianfaldo said, turning to Mark. “He shot up two colored kids in Germantown a few years back, and then when he was in Foot Traffic he killed a sixteen-year-old boy breaking into a market out near City Line.”
Sergeant Odell leaned forward and put his big elbows on the table. “Joe, you’re getting all twisted up,” he said. “You’re forgetting things in your old age.”
Gianfaldo returned Odell’s gaze uncomfortably. “Well, I could be wrong, of course,” he said.
Mark knew better than to ask any more questions. Odell was boiling mad now because Gianfaldo had violated the first rule of the Bureau’s strict but unstated censoring code. That first rule, Mark reflected, if written down might read: bad cops are nobody’s business but the police department’s.