Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane
So Long, Chief
The old man was dying, but there was nobody to see him off. In a few more days he’d get the royal farewell, a eulogy by the police chaplain, a cavalcade of motorcycle troops, and a final salute from the fresh young faces to whom he was nothing but a fading legend. He was the last of the old breed who had outlived his friends and his usefulness and he was all alone on his final assignment.
The nurse said, “Not too long, please.”
She was a cute brunette in her twenties, well worth flirting with, but I wasn’t in the mood.
I asked, “Pretty bad?”
Her answer was only slightly evasive: “He’s almost ninety, tires easily. Are you family?”
“No,” I said. “He doesn’t have any family.”
She gave me a little smile and nodded. “I see. Just don’t excite him.”
I could have told her that there wasn’t much that could ever excite him after the life he’d lived.
But I just said my thanks and went into the sterile little hospital room with the green walls and the automated bed that seemed to hold him like a waiter balancing a tray. Hard to believe that once he would have dominated a room of any size like the Colossus of Rhodes. Now he was just a textured form under the sheet.
But the unmistakable quality was there, a strange force as alive as ever, hovering like a protective screen around his withered face.
I walked to the bed, looked down at him, and said, “Hello, Chief.”
He didn’t open his eyes. He simply let the tone of my voice go through a mental computer check and when it didn’t register, he said, “You one of the new ones?”
“Not really.”
When he turned his head he let his eyes slide open and the old tiger was still in there. For a good five seconds he was riffling through the cerebral filing cabinet before he was satisfied that I was clean... at least up to a point.
“I don’t know you,” he stated in a curiously noncommittal voice.
“No reason why you should. It’s been a long time, Chief. Forty-some years.”
The voice still had strength, shrouded though it was in a growly rasp. “You’d have been a little kid then.”
“Uh-huh. About eleven. A wise-ass young punk in a lousy neighborhood who was prepping himself for all that beautiful mob action he saw around him... the rolls of dough, the fancy cars, a string of lovely broads, just the way Gino Madoni had it.”
The tiger stirred behind the eyes. It crouched, the lips curling back over huge shiny white fangs.
“I shot Madoni myself,” the Chief said.
“Yeah you did. You were a fresh-faced boyo who just made detective, wading into something way the hell over his head.”
“And you were...?”
“I was the little kid you rapped the living shit out of, the twerp who carried policy slips around in his school bag.”
He was remembering now, and letting the pieces fall into a knowable pattern. The tiger’s tail twitched. “The little kid never forgot, did he?”
I grinned at him. “Nope. It was a lesson that stuck with him.”
Maybe it was my grin that did it, but the tiger suddenly hesitated, poised to pounce but curious.
I said, “That punk kid never forgot a lot of things. Like how Gino tore that girl up in that cellar and then broke old man Kravitch’s arm for him. Or how Gino was always talking about how some day he was gonna kill himself a cop, only when one finally came in after him, for shooting a guard in a holdup, Gino went all to pieces. Grabbed that kid and held him in front of him, thinking the cop wouldn’t shoot with the kid as a shield, but forgetting the cop was a damn good shot who could take him out, kid or no kid. That cop, that young detective, put a slug in Gino’s head and that kid got splashed with the kind of memory you don’t forget.”
“Is that what you came here to say?”
“In part, Chief. There’s something else, too.”
“Say it then.”
“I just came to say so long.”
The tiger, as wary as age and experience could make it, was not quite sure what it was looking at. The fangs should have been yellowed and broken, but they weren’t. They were still shiny white.
For some reason, this old stick of a man felt he could still handle me, if need be.
His voice was like rough steel scraping rougher steel. “Why the visit, after half a lifetime?”
“Because that kid remembered his lesson and what the detective said.”
“What did the detective say?”
“Oh, nothing flowery. Just, ‘Don’t wind up like that dead dago, laddie-buck.’ He could’ve grabbed that kid and shook him till his teeth rattled, shoving fear up the kid’s ass just for the fun of it.”
“But he didn’t.”
I shook my head.
“So. Did the kid get the point?”
I shrugged. “Well, he didn’t turn out to be another Gino Madoni.”
“Good to hear. How did he turn out?”
“He went to the other side, and now he’s here to say thanks and so long to the guy who put him there.”
“And... that’s all?”
I shrugged again. “Why else? I’m glad I made it up here in time. We were two eras, Chief, that didn’t overlap that much. But I owe you. Funny, considering you retired before I even got on the job.”
“You were on the PD, son?”
“Briefly. Private now. For a long time. An old friend told me your situation, and where you were.”
“What old friend?”
“Captain Pat Chambers.”
Gently, the tiger withdrew, no longer hungry.
“You’re pretty big,” the Chief said. “You tough?”
“I manage.”
“Married?”
“No.”
With the tiger out of them, the eyes were those of an old fighter in his last round, still circling an adversary he knew he couldn’t beat, but wanting to get in one last lick anyway, before the bell rang.
“You appreciate that favor I did you?” He spoke the words as though he were tasting them.
“I’m here,” I reminded him.
His left hand came out from under the sheet and he pointed toward the closet across the room. “There’s a box in there. Get it.”
I could feel something funny happening, some odd charge flickering from the finger to the closet and back to me again. It was something I didn’t particularly like because it wasn’t new to me at all. It made my belly go tight and the skin crawl across my shoulders, but the finger was pointing and I went and got the old metal box and put it on the bed beside him. His fingers shook with age and fatigue as he turned the small combination dial to its three digits, then lifted the lid.
In the dim light, I could see the papers and knew what they were: select items from a thirty-five-year span of active duty, including the citation ribbons and the worn leather wallet that held the badge of the highest rank in the department.
He was watching my face and I saw a faint smile move his lips. Then he reached in the box, felt in a corner, and brought out a key. He looked at it a few seconds, then handed it to me. “This is for you.”
“What’s it open?”
“That’s for you to find out,” he said. He wasn’t smiling now. “A lot of people are going to be looking for that key. I thought that was what you came here for.”
“I only came to say so long, Chief.”
“Yeah. I know. That’s why I gave it to you. Now get the hell out of here. I’m tired.”
“Sure, Chief.” But I stood there for a moment, key in my fist, watching with the pride of knowing him, and was almost about to ask the question when he answered me first.
“They couldn’t have taken it from me,” he said.
Then he took his right hand out from under the covers, let me look at his old.38 Police Positive before he handed it to me and wrapped his fingers around mine as they held the weapon. “A good piece, son. Take care of it.”