“Just in time,” Luccarella said happily. “You just made it for the celebration.” He nudged Necessary in the ribs. “The way you got rid of the cops out in Niggertown. That was something, Chief, really something, let me tell you.”
“There could have been a riot,” Necessary said.
Luccarella snuffled. “A riot,” he said. “I thought it was a real riot when I saw old Schoemeister’s face. You should’ve seen it... it was really something.” He turned to Samuels. “Give the chief a glass of champagne. We’re gonna celebrate, by God, because it all worked out so nice. It worked out so nice that I even sent all the boys back home except what you see right here.”
There were six of us in the room now. Necessary, Luccarella, Samuels, the man called Shorty, and another one whom I didn’t know and didn’t particularly want to meet. He leaned against the wall across from me and smiled pleasantly at everything.
“I haven’t got time for champagne, Mr. Luccarella,” Necessary said.
“What do you mean, you haven’t got time? And what’s this mister shit? You don’t have to call me mister. I don’t like it that you should call me that.”
“You’re under arrest for the murder of William Morze, Mr. Luccarella,” Necessary said just as Samuels popped the cork out of the champagne bottle. The lawyer looked up quickly. The man across the room from me stopped smiling. Luccarella’s face colored — a bit purplish, I decided. Necessary raised a small, typed card that he’d palmed and started to read Luccarella all about his rights. Then he looked at Samuels and said, “Does Mr. Luccarella understand these rights?”
Samuels nodded slowly. “He understands them.”
“Let’s go, Mr. Luccarella,” Necessary said, reaching for the man’s arm. Luccarella danced away, his mouth working furiously, but making no sound.
Finally he stopped dancing around and pointed a finger at Necessary. “You crossed me, you sonofabitch!” he yelled. “You swore you wouldn’t and you crossed me. I didn’t have nothing to do with killing any Morse or whatever his name is. You goddamned well know I didn’t. You’re putting the frame on me, Necessary, you and that slick buddy of yours.”
Necessary turned to Samuels again. “Maybe as his lawyer you should inform him of his rights and make sure that he understands them.”
“I don’t think—” Samuels made a helpless gesture with his hands and moved away from the champagne bottle and toward the door to the hall. He looked around once frantically and then darted through it.
“Let’s go, Luccarella,” Necessary said again.
“No, by God! It’s a frame. I got friends — I got friends just like anybody else.” He hurried over to a small desk and yanked open a drawer. He pawed through it and almost got the revolver out, but Necessary moved over quickly and slammed the drawer on his hand. Luccarella screamed and sank to the floor, clutching his injured hand. Necessary reached down, got hold of an arm, and yanked him to his feet. Luccarella squirmed loose again and danced over to the man by the wall, the one that I kept watching.
“Shoot him, goddamn you! Kill him!” Luccarella was screaming now. “You saw what he done to me!” The man looked at Luccarella and then at Shorty who stood near the door. They nodded at each other. The man against the wall came up with his gun and I shot him twice and then turned and shot Shorty once. Then I looked at the gun for what seemed to be a long time and laid it carefully on a table. Necessary had his revolver out now and was looking around, as if for someone to shoot. He aimed it at Luccarella.
The thin man’s face contorted and his mouth worked and he screamed again. No words, just sounds. His analyst wouldn’t have liked those sounds. Luccarella jerked open his coat and held it wide from his chest as he stumbled toward Necessary, still screaming. Necessary slapped him hard across the face and it stopped screaming and lost its distortion. It just looked old and crumpled now. “You shoulda shot me,” he muttered. “You shoulda killed me.”
Necessary turned to me. “You all right?”
“Sure.”
“You didn’t bring any cuffs along, did you? I forgot to bring any.”
“You shoulda shot me, you sonofabitch,” Luccarella said. He was whimpering now and I thought he sounded very much like William Morze.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t bring any cuffs.”
“Christ,” Necessary said, “I wish I’d thought to bring some cuffs.”
The crowd outside the Victorian house had grown by another hundred persons or so when we came out the front door and walked down the steps that led from the screened-in porch. I pushed my way through the crowd and Necessary followed, his left hand clamped on Luccarella’s right arm. Necessary had his gun out and clasped firmly in his right hand. Someone in the crowd wanted to know who the guy in front was and somebody replied that he was with the FBI and then someone else wanted to know why the FBI man didn’t have no gun like the chief of police had.
We were halfway to the Imperial when Necessary yelled: “Look out, Dye!” I turned just in time to see him. He was coming at me fast, the familiar triangular-bladed knife held in the acceptable style and I remember thinking that he knew all the tricks that I knew, and then some, and that there wasn’t one goddamned thing I could do about it but watch. So I did and, fascinated, heard the sound of the two shots and watched the twin holes appear in his vest. Just above the Phi Beta Kappa key. It was Carmingler. The one they sent when they sent their very best.
He stumbled backwards and dropped the knife and looked down curiously at the two holes in his vest. He didn’t touch them. He looked at me and there was surprise and, I suppose, sorrow in his face. I remember thinking that he looked like a sorrowful horse. His mouth worked a little, but no words came out. He lurched toward me then and there was nothing else to do but try to catch him before he fell.
I caught him, but he was dead weight, and I knew I couldn’t hold him up for long. He looked at me again, his face no more than a few inches from mine. The sorrow in his gaze seemed to have been replaced by contempt, but you can never really tell. It may have been just pain. His lips worked and finally he got it out, what he very much wanted to tell me.
“You still aren’t very important to us, Dye,” he said. I nodded, but he didn’t see it because he could no longer see anything. I lowered him to the sidewalk gently, but it didn’t matter anymore how I did it because he was already dead.
Necessary, still clutching Luccarella, yelled at the crowd to move back. He picked out somebody and told them to call an ambulance. “Call three of them,” he added.
He and Luccarella moved up to me as I stood there staring down at Carmingler. “The hard case?” Necessary said.
“As hard as they come,” I said.
“That was a goddamned fool thing of me to do in a crowd like this,” he said. “I could have shot somebody.”
“You did,” I said.
“I mean somebody else.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “You shot him.”
“If it doesn’t matter, then what the hell are you crying for?”
“I didn’t know that I was,” I said.
Chapter 44
Three things happened Saturday, the day after the crime wave. First, as a special favor to the Swankerton Police Department, the First National Bank let me visit my safe-deposit box. They may have felt that it could help them get their stolen $50,000 back. It didn’t.
The second thing happened after I left the bank. I called a private number at Police Headquarters and said: “I’m all done.” Five minutes later Swankerton’s chief of police submitted his resignation.
The third thing was the telegram that I got from New York. It read: “I died by my own hand last night. Just thought you might like to know. Regards. Gorman.” A postscript read: “Mr. Smalldane left instructions insisting on the wording of this telegram.” The postscript was signed by Gorman Smalldane Associates, Inc., and I wondered who they were.