“Who should I turn the Carroway job over to?” Bannion said. “Burke?”
Wilks hesitated for a few seconds. Then he said, in a casual voice, “Write a full report on it, and let me have it, Dave. I’ll give it to someone on Heineman’s shift. Your boys are busy enough, I think.”
Bannion looked at Wilks steadily for a moment. “All right,” he said, and walked out of the office.
Chapter 5
Bannion sat at his desk for an hour writing his report on Lucy Carroway, trying to calm himself with routine. This wasn’t the first time he’d been jerked off a case; but it never happened in so raw and naked a fashion. Lucy Carroway’s death had caused a rumble in the city. The heat was on, the fix was in, call it what you like. Bannion had been nosing around something safe and protected, ignoring the No Trespassing signs, and so to hell with honest police work, to hell with a murdered girl, keep away from it, Bannion. He couldn’t guess why; but he knew who had to clout to stop an investigation cold. Stone, maybe Lagana, himself. They were the big boys, the men with the big fists. But why? Why, in God’s name? Why were they tightening the grip on behalf of Biggie Burrows, a two-bit mug from Detroit?
Bannion finished the report and put it in an envelope marked for Wilks. He knew it was a waste of time. This report was going to get so badly lost it would take bloodhounds to find it. He told Neely he’d be upstairs in Inspector Cranston’s office if anyone wanted him, and started for the door. Carmody and Katz were playing cards, Burke was looking at a paper, and the room was quiet. Their faces were overly casual as they watched Bannion leave, and they said nothing when he had gone. They knew their big sergeant had been butting in where he wasn’t wanted and had got his hand slapped. The news travelled by what might seem like telepathy to an outsider; no one talked about it or discussed it, but the word seeped and spread through the department. Everyone knew Bannion had been looking for Biggie Burrows; and they knew, again telepathically, that at this particular moment there was a mile-high No Trespassing sign around Biggie Burrows. They didn’t talk about these signs, they walked around them, ignored them, saved their energy for other jobs.
Bannion took one of the slow, bird-cage elevators up to the fifth floor, and walked along the wide high corridor past the Press Room, the now-empty Center-City Magistrate’s court, and turned into Cranston’s office.
Cranston was nominally in charge of all police functions in the Hall, responsible for records, filing-systems, radio and communications. It was a do-nothing job, a sunshine detail, a good spot for a drone or a trouble-maker. Cranston was no drone. He was all cop, in the’ best sense of the word, a tough, erect old man with hard, wind-roughened features, thick white hair, and very clear, very direct blue eyes. Cranston was in the Hall, on a sunshine detail, because he caused too much trouble when he was out in the city. As a beat cop he had become a legend by breaking up gambling parties in the Republican and Democratic ward clubs, and on one occasion had hauled in a top political boss and two Magistrates who had told him to go away and mind his own business. At the hearing, a joke of an affair since no Magistrate was going to commit a political leader and two brother Magistrates on a gambling charge, Cranston was treated as if he were on trial. His testimony, his eyewitness evidence was smiled at, and his stupidity frowned on; but he hadn’t been intimidated. Asked why he had arrested the men, a silly question since the charge was on paper at the Magistrate’s elbow, Cranston had snapped: “They were breaking the law!” The papers had liked that reply and played up Cranston as a curiosity, if not as a hero, who rather surprisingly arrested law-breakers regardless of their political connections. Successive administrations hadn’t been able to ignore Cranston. He was too tough, too smart, too respected. He forced his way up, never compromising his own rigid standards. As a Captain he ran a clean district, as an Inspector, in West, he had chased Max Stone back to Center City, and as Acting Superintendent, a job he’d held only two weeks, he closed every gambling joint in the city, prepared indictments against Stone, and Lagana himself, and ran practically every gambler, pool-seller, and numbers writer across the river into Jersey. This was a little strong so Cranston went back to Inspector, and was assigned the sunshine detail in the Hall, where all he could do was ride herd on the paper work of the department.
He was at his clean, uncluttered desk, glancing through a police manual, when Bannion came in. “Hello, Dave,” he said, smiling his brief, warm smile. “Don’t tell me Homicide needs an old man’s advice.”
“Homicide’s okay, but I’m not,” Bannion said.
“What’s the trouble?”
Bannion told him of the leads he had on Burrows, all of it, and that Wilks had jerked him off the case. “So, I’m mad,” he said. “I’d like to turn in my badge and tell them inelegantly what they can do with it.”
“So?” Cranston said. He fired up his pipe carefully. Then he said, “That’s a decision a man must make for himself, Dave. Personally, I’ve stuck it out because a good cop can help the city. If things should change, I might be able to help still more. That’s my choice. You’ve got to make your own. But I’ll tell you one thing; if the situation in this town changes lots of people may have their eye on you.” He smiled slightly. “They’re willing to forget that you went to Notre Dame instead of Penn, Dave. Eventually, in fifty or sixty years, they may even forget that you made All-America there by knocking the daylights out of Eastern teams.” He nodded, not smiling any more, and his old face was tough and hard. “They forget a lot in favor of an honest man, remember that.”
Bannion shrugged. “I don’t like working with the hope that someday things may change,” he said. “That doesn’t help me now. I don’t like compromising, I don’t like—”
“Hold on a minute. I’ve never compromised. I’ve done the job until they made me stop. Then I waited until I could tackle it again. Someday they won’t stop me, they won’t be able to, and that’s the day I’m praying for.”
“That’s the future again,” Bannion said.
“Okay, let’s forget the future. Let’s look at the present. This deal of yours is sour. Deery kills himself. Start there. His wife says he was in bad health, the late Lucy Carroway says the opposite. Now if that’s all there was, I’d be inclined to trust the wife. I’d write Lucy off as mistaken, over-emotional, or a liar. But she got killed after talking to you, and possibly by a mug working for Max Stone. That brings the thieves into it, and the picture changes.” He smiled without humor. “I enjoy calling ‘em thieves, you know. That’s all they are. They’d rather think of themselves as racketmen, gangsters, mobsters, but they’re just thieves to me. Well, anyway. You get a lead on Burrows, and then get taken off the job. Maybe somebody goosed Wilks. Maybe he did it on his own. So why are they worried about Biggie Burrows and Lucy Carroway? Why was she killed? Was it because she came to you with a story about Deery’s health?”
Bannion shrugged. “I’ve got no answers.”
“Well, we’re back to Deery. Was that on the level? No chance he might have been bumped off?”
“No, that was on the level.”
“And that is where things get screwy,” Cranston said, shaking the stem of his pipe at Bannion. “Well, what are you going to do now?”
“I’ll stick along,” Bannion said. “I want to see the end of this business.”
Cranston came to the door with him and patted his shoulder. “Remember this, Dave. Like they say about the British, or used to anyway, the people lose all the battles but the last one. Believe me, it works that way.”