“A very nice set-up,” he said, taking the cigar from his mouth.
August faced him smilingly, pleased by the detective’s unexpected interest in his home. “Yes, I’ve worked hard all my life, and now I enjoy myself, eh? That is the way it should be. The old people should have their little comforts. It keeps them out of the way of the young,” he said, and laughed at his own humor.
“And that’s where you keep the pots and pans, eh?” Nolan said, looking over the old man’s shoulder.
August turned around, nodding. “Yes, I built that cupboard myself.”
“Well, you’re damn smart,” Nolan said, and raised his arm.
Those were the last words August Sternmueller ever heard.
Nolan was back at the Division by seven-thirty. He walked around the counter and stopped at Odell’s desk. “This fellow Dawes hangs out at a place at Eleventh and Maple. My guess is he got drunk there and talked about his money and where it was stashed away. Supposing I check around over there and see what I can find out.”
Odell grunted without much interest. “Think it’ll do any good?”
“Hell, no,” Lindfors said, from across the room. He was sitting with his feet propped up on a desk. “In a case like that, it could have been fifty guys.”
Odell answered the phone, switched the call into the Lieutenant’s office. “You might take a look over there anyway,” he said to Nolan. “Although it probably won’t do any good. I know the guy who runs the place. His name is Joe Empiro. Tell him I don’t want his joint getting a bad name. He’s all right. He’ll work with you.”
“Okay,” Nolan said.
He sat down and took off his hat, feeling hot and sticky, but otherwise just fine. He was calm and relaxed. Now, he thought idly, almost lazily, I’m running the show. He wasn’t standing around on the outside waiting for a nod from someone, waiting for the break, waiting for something to fall into his lap. Irrelevantly, he thought of Petey Felickson, his old ward boss. Petey had yapped at him in those old days, treated him like a dog, a hungry dog. That was Dave Fiest’s pitch, too. Have a drink, Barny? Come on, have a shot. Go ahead, take a bone, you slob. They were all so damn smart.
Nolan leaned back in his chair. A wind was coming in through the windows now and the room was cooler. He lit a cigar and smiled slightly.
The door opened a while later and Mark Brewster walked in. He rested his elbows on the counter and nodded to Odell and Lindfors. “Anything doing?” he asked.
This was about the time for his regular check of the Division, Nolan knew, but nevertheless his presence struck him as suspicious.
“No, Mark, not a thing,” Odell said. He hesitated uncomfortably, glanced at Nolan, then at the reporter. “Come on in and sit down, Mark,” he said.
“Thanks, Sarge.”
Brewster sauntered around the counter and leaned against it, with his arms folded.
“Did you hear about Hymie Solstein and Laddy?” he asked.
Odell grinned. “Yeah, Gianfaldo told me about it.”
Nolan glanced up at the reporter. This was the first time he’d seen Brewster since the time he’d come out of Linda’s apartment, and he’d run him down with his car. Brewster was limping slightly, Nolan noticed; but other than that he seemed in good shape.
Something about the reporter made Nolan uneasy. He watched Brewster’s lean face as he chatted with Odell, wondering if he’d meant anything in particular with the crack about Hymie and Laddy. That was what he didn’t like about the reporter. He kept dropping comments that sounded significant at first, but when you pinned them down you found they didn’t mean anything after all. Or they didn’t seem to.
The phone on Odell’s desk buzzed. He picked it up, said, “Yeah, yeah,” and reached for a pencil. He listened a moment, writing occasionally. Then he said: “Okay, lady, we’ll send someone right over.”
“Lindy, take this one,” he said, putting the phone down. “Some guy stuck his head in the oven and turned on the gas. That was his landlady.”
“What’s the address?” Lindfors said.
“216 Crab Street. Fellow by the name of Sternmueller. Old guy, I guess.”
“Is he dead?” Nolan asked.
“The landlady smelled gas and went upstairs and found him in the oven,” Odell said, handing the slip of paper to Lindfors.
Nolan stood up suddenly, glaring at Odell. “I asked you if he was dead,” he said in a hard tight voice.
Odell looked at him with a frown. “Yeah, he’s dead. What the hell do you care?”
Nolan sat down, anger surging through him. “I don’t care,” he said.
Mark Brewster was watching him, he knew. He could feel the reporter’s eyes on him, sense his thoughts. Turning his head swiftly, he stared at Brewster, but the reporter wasn’t looking at him; he was gazing at the ceiling, a faint smile on his lips.
Lindfors walked over to Mark and said: “You want this one?”
“216 Crab Street. That’s at Ellens Lane, isn’t it?” Mark said.
“Yeah, that’s about where it comes in.”
“Well, it’s probably worth a paragraph,” Mark said.
“Come on then. I’ll run you over.”
“Okay.”
When Lindfors and the reporter left, Nolan strolled over to the window and stared into the street. He watched the traffic passing by under him, and the cluster of Negroes who were standing about in front of the cigar store opposite the station. They were waiting to get the day’s winning number from the first edition of the morning paper.
The number was determined by the arrangement of the win, place and show figures of the first race at a nearby track, and everyone at the cigar store was convinced that tonight his lucky number was going to hit.
Nolan thought about them as he puffed slowly on his cigar. They were the suckers who took down numbers from street car transfers, from grocery receipts, from combinations of their wives’ birthdays and their army serial numbers, hoping to find eventually the system to beat the numbers bankers.
They were the slobs, he thought with pleasure.
He had been in that class until this week. Waiting for the breaks, praying for some accidents, some lucky development that would make everything bright and rosy. But that break never came, he knew. All you got for standing around was a push in the face. You had to take life into your hands and make it give you the breaks, the way the big shots did. That was what he’d done. Dave Fiest, Espizito, that little slug, Sternmueller, they’d learned the hard way that Barny Nolan wasn’t a slob.
He wondered about Sternmueller. Pious, sneaky little bastard, collecting time-tables and peeking out his windows in the middle of the night. Probably hoping to catch some young kids necking. Nolan knew his type. Snooping do-gooder. Turning from the window he drew a deep breath, filling his lungs to the utmost. He felt then that he knew all about everybody in the world.
Suddenly he had to see Linda. She had done all this for him, he thought. Together, they were bigger than anything in the world.
“Sarge, I’ll run over and see Joe Empiro now,” he said. “Maybe I’ll grab a bite while I’m out.”
“Okay. Don’t forget to tell Joe I don’t want his place getting a bad name.”
“I’ll tell him.” He put on his hat and walked out.
Miss Elmira Taylor, age fifty-six, had never known such an evening in her fife. Finding poor Mr. Sternmueller like that was enough to make a body doubt the ways of Providence.
She stood in the middle of his living room, trembling with importance and excitement, and related the harrowing details to the two men from the Police Department.
“I had just come from church, you see, and was fixing a bite for my niece, Mary, and I said to her, ‘Well, Mary, summer brings all kinds of smells with it, don’t it?’ because I had noticed this funny smell in the hallway—”