The assistant police commissioner fired the Caddy's power plant and pulled away, avoiding the rearview mirror with his eyes. There was a sour taste in his mouth, as there always was when he was forced, at this stage of his life, to deal with scum. But he knew from grim experience that the human savages and garbage of the earth could have their uses... so long as they were firmly and strictly controlled.
Smalley was glad to be leaving them behind. And, at least temporarily, to be leaving his problems in their hands.
It seemed fitting, somehow. The dregs of the earth helping a basically decent man salvage his life and his career. Keeping him in the position he had clawed and fought for over the past fifteen years.
Not that the struggle had been so great since Jack Fawcett discovered Courtney Gilman, oh, no. But the nagging pain in his gut was the same, if not worse. And the worries were still there, damn right, in abundance.
Now Roger Smalley had a plan for eradicating those problems once and for all, without giving up any of his gains. It would require a modicum of luck, sure, but Smalley was feeling lucky that morning. Batting a thousand in the problems department.
And with luck, he might soon be free of the whole stinking Gilman dilemma.
Roger Smalley smiled to himself as his vehicle rolled onto pavement again and he nosed it back in the direction of his office.
Fran Traynor and her big, loose mouth were in the bag, and they were going to stay there. Damn right.
And the commissioner's problems were already starting to fade like the memory of a half-forgotten nightmare.
16
Lieutenant Jack Fawcett entered his office reluctantly. He had things on his mind, and he wasn't looking forward to writing up the dead-body reports on five cooling stiffs, not with all the other things he had to think about.
Damn Roger Smalley, anyway. And damn himself, for ever hesitating when the Gilman kid started spilling his guts down in interrogation room number four. Why in the hell had he ever thought of calling the commissioner deputy chief then, he reminded himself sourly to ask for advice on the case?
"Advice" my ass, he thought grimly.
He had seen a ticket to the gravy train, sure, and he'd put through the call to Smalley on the off chance that a hint in the right place might put him on board for a nice long ride.
It had turned out to be more like a one-way ticket to hell. At least for Jack Fawcett.
Smalley didn't have any complaints, of course. He was sitting up there next door to the commissioner's office and smoking his fat cigars without a single worry. Smalley had the world in his pocket, while Detective Lieutenant Jack Fawcett spent his days and nights wading in the sewer of man's violence. Smalley went to banquets while Fawcett went to autopsies, staring at rigid corpses under cruel fluorescent lights.
Five corpses in particular.
All of them under thirty, all female, all once attractive but bearing the trademark of an animal who mauled them and mutilated them, casting them aside like so much garbage in the street.
The first one of the five was free, okay. That one had been out of Fawcett's hands, beyond his control. But the other four...
He felt their ephemeral weight on his soul.
He knew, deep down where it mattered, that they were dead because of him, as much as because of the freaked-out psycho who wielded the knife.
The nightmares had started again, around the time of the Blancanales rape. Fawcett had thought, foolishly, that he was rid of them, but now he knew better. They were back to stay.
Each dream was the same or almost. Each time he imagined himself at home, asleep in his own bed, when he was roused by a strange, indescribable sound outside the window. He would rise, picking up his service .38 from the bedside table, and pad softly to the window, peering outside into midnight darkness.
And the girls were always there. Pale and rigid, eyes locked open in death, crusty stains upon their fluttering shrouds. And each one held an arm outstretched, accusing fingers pointed straight at him, for Christ's sake, while they moaned and wailed their wordless accusations through pale, pale lips.
There had been one girl in the first dream.
Now there were four.
Jack Fawcett wondered how many his front yard could hold.
He flopped down in his office chair, and for the first time his eyes caught the note lying on top of his desk. He recognized the spidery handwriting of the dick on the graveyard shift, and he held the note close, reading slowly.
It said, simply: "Jack Call Pinky."
Okay.
"Pinky" was one of several street snitches who served Jack Fawcett on a semiregular basis. As every working detective knew, the majority of cases could never be solved by the old Sherlock Holmes routine. You needed a good, reliable pigeon to finger your suspect and drop the case in your lap when the going got tough. Then a good cop could keep up his record, and the snitch could be happy with whatever crumbs were passed down the chain of command.
This particular snitch was a junkie, one of those burned-out zeroes who used to be called bums and dope fiends but how had been rechristened "street people" sometime during the late sixties. Fawcett had busted him once, long ago, deciding on a hunch to let him slide in return for a larger bust, his supplier. Pinky had come through with a righteous bust, and it had only cost Fawcett a tiny piece of the dealer's stash.
A good deal, yeah, although the details had made a younger Jack Fawcett slightly nervous in retrospect. Since the first time, he had dealt with his snitches strictly on a cash-and-carry basis.
Lately, Pinky had put Fawcett on to a couple of pretty good busts: a mugger who liked to go all the way with his marks, and a pair of Oklahoma cowboys with a penchant for stick-ups and a no-witness policy. Most recently, Fawcett's snitch had been keeping his ear to the street, seeking any rumbles on the possible whereabouts of a young man named Courtney Gilman.
Fawcett dialed a number from memory, and a familiar voice answered on the fourth ring.
"Yeah?"
The snitch sounded sleepy or drugged. Probably some of each at that hour of the morning.
"I got your message, Pink. What's shakin'?"
Fawcett could hear his informer coming alive and alert at the other end of the line.
"Oh, hey, right, man. I knew you'd want to hear it right away. I tried your home number, but..."
Fawcett interrupted him brusquely.
"Hear what, Pinky?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, man, I'm pretty sure I got your pigeon."
Jack Fawcett tensed, craning forward in his chair and gripping the telephone receiver in a stranglehold. His knuckles whitened.
"I'm listening," he snapped.
Pinky gave him the address of a cheap fly-by-night hotel not far from Riverside Park, and the number of the room where his suspect was last registered. Fawcett noted the address and number on a scrap of paper and pocketed it.
"If this pays off, I owe you one, Pinky," he said.
The drugged voice cooed back at him.
"Okay, man. This is the real skinny, no shit. I wouldn't shine you on."
"You'd better not."
The guy's voice took on a new tinge, that of fear.
"No sweat, man, it's straight."
"Okay."
Fawcett hung up and hurried downstairs to his cruiser. The drive to the fleabag hotel took him twenty-five minutes, and he cursed every red and amber traffic light on the way.
The detective parked in a red zone next to a fire hydrant and went inside, unbuttoning his jacket on the way to make his bolstered .38 more readily accessible. Inside the dump, a sallow-faced desk clerk laid his body-builder magazine aside and leaned across the registration desk on scrawny arms.
Fawcett knew at once that the guy had made him as a cop.