A Real Gone Guy, page 3
“You could fool me.”
At Center Street, the cabby swung the hack out of a slow-moving stream of traffic, skidded to a stop at the curb. Liddell pushed a bill through the half-opened window and fled before the amateur analyst could back him onto a mental couch. Inside the building, he headed for the elevator to take him to Homicide.
Inspector Herlehy had a cubbyhole office on the fourth floor with a window overlooking the courtyard. He was standing at the window, staring through the dusty pane at the court below when Liddell walked in.
He turned at the sound of the opened door, nodded to the private detective, walked over to greet him with outstretched hand. “It’s been so long since you’ve gotten in my hair, I’m almost glad to see you.” He was tall, slender. A thick shock of snow white hair gave the effect of having been thoroughly raked by his fingers. His jaws were pounding on the ever present wad of gum. “I hope this is strictly a social call?”
“I need some help, Inspector.” Liddell dug a cigarette from his pocket, hung it from the corner of his mouth where it waggled when he talked. “And in return, I may be able to give you some.”
“Generosity like that always scares hell out of me. Especially when it comes from you,” Herlehy grunted. He walked around his desk, dropped into his desk chair. “Break it down for me, will you?”
Liddell hooked the rung of a wooden chair with his toe, pulled it close to the desk. “It’s kind of a delicate situation.” He sat on the chair, pulled an ash tray to the corner of the desk. “It’s about one of your men.”
A troubled V appeared between the white-haired man’s eyebrows. “About one of my men? Which one?”
“A Central Squad man named Ryan. Mike Ryan.”
“What about him?”
“I’ve been checking through the clips on him at the morgue over at the Dispatch. He’s a pretty handy man with a gun.”
“You didn’t have to bother to come all the way down here to tell me that. I’ve recommended him for six citations in the past ten years because he is handy with a gun.” He squinted at Liddell, some of the friendliness seemed to drain from his eyes. “You’ve got something on your mind. Get to the point.”
Liddell took a deep drag on the cigarette, blew a stream of smoke ceilingward. “I’ve got something on my mind,” he conceded. He held the cigarette in front of him, studied the glowing end. “Going through the clips I counted eight kills for Ryan and a dozen more times he pulled his gun and started shooting.” He rolled his eyes upward from the cigarette to the inspector’s face. “That’s a lot of shooting for one cop.”
“In the Central Squad, a man’s in a spot where he goes up against more guns in a week than the average cop does in a year. Too many hopped-up would-be big shots think they’d rate a rep if they went up against a cop like Ryan and walked away from it. They very rarely do.”
“It could be,” Liddell admitted. “It could also be that Ryan likes the feel of squeezing triggers and seeing guys go down.”
Herlehy got to his feet, pounded the flat of his hand on the desk. “You’ve either got something to back up a crack like that, or you’re going to wish you had.” He waved off an interruption by Liddell. “I’m getting pretty sick of crackpots sounding off against my men. Day in and day out those boys are on the firing line. And for what? For the kind of dough you pay a stenographer. What are they supposed to do? Just stand and let some gun-happy hood shoot them up?”
“What about Larry Hollister?”
“What about him? A mad dog. He killed a cop, did you know that? A good cop—Barney Rosen. What did you want Mike to do, give him a medal?” He glowered at Liddell. “What about Larry Hollister, Liddell?”
Liddell took a last drag on the cigarette, crushed it out in the ash tray. “Hollister was a killer, I know that. But how come Ryan went busting into his room shooting? How come the precinct cops didn’t take him?”
“Because it was Ryan’s job. The Central Office Squad doesn’t work out of any precinct—it works the whole city. Hollister was an out-of-town hood, that made him the Central Squad’s responsibility. He was fingered for the Lorenzo crew and Ryan drew the job of bringing him in.”
“You’re sure Hollister did kill Lorenzo?”
“Of course we’re sure,” Herlehy turned his back on the private detective, stamped over to where the water cooler stood humming to itself. He drew himself a drink, took his time about sipping it. “When they shook down Hollister’s room, they found Lorenzo’s wallet under the mattress.” He crushed the paper cup, threw it at the wastebasket. He walked back to the desk, scowled at Liddell. “What kind of a dirty picture are you trying to draw?”
“You know me better than that, Inspector,” Liddell retorted. “You know I wouldn’t have any part of a gimmick to smear a cop. But you also know that I wouldn’t stand by while a cop was using his badge as a shield.” He ignored the lobster red color of the inspector’s face. “There’s something about the Hollister kill that doesn’t ring true.”
“I warned you that nobody comes in here smearing my men unless he can back up what he says, Liddell.” Herlehy’s voice was tight with repressed fury. “Now you’ve said it, you’re going to make it stick or I’m going to make you eat that license of yours before you get out of this building.” He walked around the desk, dropped into his chair, turned cold, unfriendly eyes on the private detective. “I’m waiting.”
“Did you know this Larry Hollister, Inspector?”
“I don’t have the benefit of your social contacts. Killers are a little out of my line.”
“I never met the guy. He was an out-of-towner. From Detroit.”
Herlehy leaned forward. “With a record as long as your arm. Six homicides.”
“I read his record in the files. He was a killer, all right. A killer with connections. Six homicides and none proven.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? That Ryan decided to take matters into his own hands? He didn’t have to. We had Hollister dead to rights on the Lorenzo job.”
Liddell shook his head. “I’m not saying he didn’t have it coming to him. I’m just questioning how he got it. Or why.”
Herlehy was giving the wad of gum an unmerciful beating, his thick fingers began to drum on the edge of the desk. “What do you mean why? He ignores an order to open up, starts shooting and kills one of our best men and you ask why Ryan shot back?” He pounded the edge of the desk with his fist. “What did you want him to do?”
“Look, will you get off the defensive? You act as if you think all I’m trying to do is stir up a stink. If I were, this would be the last place I’d take what I’ve got. I’d take it down to one of the anti-administration sheets and let them tear your pants off.” He jerked a fresh cigarette from his pocket, jammed it between his lips. “Pull the package on Hollister. Check the M.O. file and see if you don’t start getting a whiff of what I smell.”
Herlehy stared at him for a moment, then lifted the receiver off its hook. “Get me Lieutenant Michaels in Identification.” His eyes were fixed on Liddell unblinkingly. “Mike? Herlehy. Pull the package on Larry Hollister. He’s in the deceased file. Yeah, that’s the guy. How soon can I have it? Good.” He tossed the receiver back on its hook, jabbed a button on the base of the phone.
A uniformed cop stuck his head in the door. “Get up to Identification, Ray. Michaels has a package for you. Bring it right down.”
The cop nodded, his head was withdrawn from the door. Herlehy scowled at Liddell, got up from his chair and walked over to the window. He was still staring down at the courtyard below when the young patrolman returned with the Hollister file.
“Thanks, Ray,” the inspector nodded for him to drop it on the desk. When the patrolman had closed the door behind him, Herlehy walked to the desk, dumped the contents of the Manila envelope out. His voice was cold. “All right. Here’s the full file R. and I. got on Hollister from Detroit. When do I begin to get a whiff of this odor you’re talking about?”
“Right now.” Liddell got up, crushed his cigarette out. “That is, if you really want to.” He cut off an argument from the inspector with a raised palm. “First we’ve got to agree on a few basic things. Like for instance that even a cop is human and can make mistakes. And that the M.O. file isn’t human and rarely makes mistakes.” He looked up at Herlehy and waited. “Agreed?”
The inspector nodded irritably. “It’s as infallible as any method that depends on the fallibility of the cops classifying the information,” he hedged.
“Let’s agree on something before we go ahead or there’s no use of my trying to convince you. Will you agree that ever since Vollmar introduced the system into the country, most leading departments have accepted it as practically infallible?”
Herlehy chafed with impatience. “What’s all that got to do with accusing one of my men of being gun happy?”
“It’s important for us to agree that one of the basic concepts of the M.O. system is that a criminal commits an offense in a way that is as individual to him as the way a painter uses a brush or a bookkeeper keeps his books or—”
“I don’t need any instruction in the purposes of the M.O. file. Unless you’re sparring for time, get to whatever you’re trying to get to.”
“Just one more point. Aside from establishing that each criminal commits his offense in an individual manner, by the same token the bookkeeper I just mentioned almost never turns to painting any more than the painter turns to bookkeeping.”
Herlehy stared thoughtfully at him for a moment. “Go on.”
“That’s all I’ve got to say. The rest of the facts speak for themselves. There’s your M.O. file on Hollister. One homicide after another and all paid killings. But no matter how closely you study the file you won’t find a single case of a mugging or a stick-up in his record.” He watched indecision drain the anger from the inspector’s face. “How about it, Inspector? Is the M.O. system out of whack or is this killing a little off center?”
Herlehy dropped his eyes to the cards on his desk. He picked them up, riffled through them. A frown ridged his forehead. After a moment, he flipped the cards back on the desk. “I think I see what you mean.”
Liddell forced a smile, he wiped a thin film of perspiration from his upper lip with the side of his hand. “I’m glad you do, Inspector.”
Herlehy massaged the deep lines out of his forehead with the tips of his fingers. “What’s your angle in this, Liddell?”
“A client. A client I don’t know who insists that Hollister was murdered in cold blood.”
“I won’t buy that,” Herlehy flared. “Lorenzo was murdered in a stick-up, his wallet was found in Hollister’s room. You can’t get around that.”
“A wallet could be planted. I know what you’re going to say. Even if it was a stakeout and Ryan intended to cut Hollister down, he never would have taken the chance of something happening to his partner.” He shrugged. “It could have been an accident. Maybe Ryan didn’t shoot fast enough and Hollister got in an unexpected one.” He raised his hands placatingly. “I’m not saying all this happened. I’m just saying it could have happened.”
“Sure, that’s all you’re doing. You’re just saying it could have happened,” Herlehy snarled at him. “But just so you don’t start getting any ideas, I’m going to find out just exactly what did happen.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The Central Squad bull pen was a long, brightly lighted room in the rear of the fourth floor. A railing separated the small waiting room space from the main room. A profusion of desks, back to back and lit by common lamps, were scattered around the room in organized confusion. Rows of filing cabinets lined the walls. At some of the desks, men sat in shirtsleeves, their shoulder holsters strapped into place, laboring away at reports with one-fingered typing.
At the railing as Liddell and the inspector entered, a plainclothesman, his fedora pushed to the back of his head, was conversing in low tones with a dark-skinned man who had “informer” written all over him.
Herlehy headed for the gate set in the railing, nodded to a clerk at a nearby desk. There was the stutter of a latch, he pushed through, and led the way into the bull pen.
Mike Ryan sat at a desk toward the rear of the room. His fedora was pulled down low over his forehead in the Dick Tracy style he affected, his tie was loosened, his collar open. He looked up from a report he was correcting when the inspector stopped at his desk. His face didn’t change expression as his eyes rolled from the inspector to Liddell and back.
“The lieutenant in, Ryan?” Herlehy wanted to know.
Ryan nodded, indicated a partitioned corner space. “In his office, Inspector.”
“Pull your personal package and meet us in there,” Herlehy snapped at him. He nodded for Liddell to follow, led the way to the lieutenant’s cubicle.
Lieutenant Jack Doyle was a tired-looking redhead who managed to look mild in the face of a reputation for toughness. He was sitting behind an unpainted desk, poring through a mass of reports. A half-filled tray of inch long butts was on the desk at his elbow, a container of cold coffee was forgotten on the other side. He looked up with a scowl at being disturbed, the scowl faded when he recognized Herlehy. “Evening, skipper.” He looked Liddell over curiously.
“I told Ryan to pull his package and bring it in,” Herlehy told him without preliminaries. “I wanted you in on this instead of bringing it down to my office.”
“Anything special?” Doyle leaned back, laced his fingers at the back of his head. “Mike’s been pretty quiet lately.”
“The Hollister kill.” Herlehy pulled a straight-backed wooden chair from against the wall, set it down at the end of the desk and sat down. “Liddell here brought up a couple of interesting points. I think we ought to get the answers,” he sighed, “before the papers do.”
“Liddell?” Doyle’s voice was deceptively mild. “A private dick, aren’t you?” He managed to say the last few words as though they tasted bad. “And what are these points you’d like us to clear up?”
“He doesn’t want you to clear them up. I do,” Herlehy snapped.
The lieutenant nodded. “Sorry. What are the points?”
“The M.O. file shows Hollister was always a hired gun and never went in for muggings and stick-ups. That being the case, it’s his contention that Hollister didn’t kill Lorenzo and the Lorenzo kill was just used as an excuse for burning him down. He has a client that’s hired him to prove it.”
Doyle’s nostrils flared, hard lines appeared between the ends of his nostrils and his mouth. Two lumps formed on the sides of his jaw. Slowly, almost deliberately, he unlaced his hands from the back of his neck, laid them flat on the desk and leaned forward. “If this peeper says that, I say he’s a goddam liar.”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Herlehy snapped. He motioned Liddell to a chair. “Nobody gains anything by calling names. Liddell came to us with what he’s got instead of dumping it into the laps of the newspapers. All I want is for some answers to the questions he’s raised.”
The lieutenant didn’t take his eyes off Liddell’s face, made no attempt to mask his dislike. “You’ll get them, skipper. But what good will it do? There’ll always be a bunch of crumbs running loose who try to spit every time they see an honest cop. Mostly crumbs who ain’t fit to shine that cop’s shoes.”
“Maybe if the cops themselves didn’t bend over so far trying to cover up for the few rats just because they wear the same uniform, the honest cop wouldn’t have to take it,” Liddell snapped. “All I’ve gotten since I walked into this place is chewed out. What’s the matter, are you all afraid that maybe there is something smelly about this kill?”
The lieutenant started to his feet, permitted himself to be waved back down by the inspector.
“Liddell’s got a point, Doyle.” He looked at the private detective, wrinkled his forehead. “You’ve got to see our side of it, too, Liddell. It makes a decent cop’s blood boil to hear punk raps tossed at a guy who was only doing his duty.”
There was a rap on the door. Doyle looked to the inspector, drew a nod. “Come on in, Mike,” he called.
The door opened, Mike Ryan walked in. He tossed a Manila folder on the lieutenant’s desk, let his eyes swing around the room. “Any reason why I can’t know what’s the beef?”
“We’ve got some questions on the Hollister kill, Mike,” Doyle told him. He leaned back, stared glumly at the plainclothesman. “The inspector wants a complete fill-in on what happened that night.”
Ryan nodded, flipped open the folder on the desk, selected a typewritten flimsy. He held it out to the inspector wordlessly. Herlehy took it from between his fingers, glanced through the single space typing and flicked it back on the desk.
“I’d rather we talked this out, Ryan. You can refer to your report any time you want to refresh your memory.” He studied the man in front of him. “Ever hear of Larry Hollister before that night, Ryan?”
Ryan wrinkled his brow, shook his head.
“Then you didn’t know his record?” Herlehy wanted to know.
The plainclothesman shook his head again.
Herlehy tilted his chair back, touched the tips of his fingers across his stomach. “Hollister had a record as long as your arm. Mostly homicides, all paid jobs. Mean anything to you?”
Ryan considered, shrugged. “Explains why he started throwing the minute we identified ourselves as police.”
“You did that?” Liddell put in.
“I just said I did, mister.” He looked inquiringly at the lieutenant, drew a shrug.
“That’s all it means to you. He was a killer, so the minute he heard you were the police, he started shooting. Nothing else?”
“No. Should it?”
Herlehy nodded. “It means the holdup he committed was out of character. Like a second story man suddenly going in for car socking.” He squinted at the detective. “You never heard of the guy, what made you go to his room?”
“A squeal. Some joker called in, said if we wanted the mugger who killed Lorenzo, we could pick him up in 416 at the Seymour.” He shrugged. “The papers were full of the Lorenzo kill and we figured it would be a good pinch.”
At Center Street, the cabby swung the hack out of a slow-moving stream of traffic, skidded to a stop at the curb. Liddell pushed a bill through the half-opened window and fled before the amateur analyst could back him onto a mental couch. Inside the building, he headed for the elevator to take him to Homicide.
Inspector Herlehy had a cubbyhole office on the fourth floor with a window overlooking the courtyard. He was standing at the window, staring through the dusty pane at the court below when Liddell walked in.
He turned at the sound of the opened door, nodded to the private detective, walked over to greet him with outstretched hand. “It’s been so long since you’ve gotten in my hair, I’m almost glad to see you.” He was tall, slender. A thick shock of snow white hair gave the effect of having been thoroughly raked by his fingers. His jaws were pounding on the ever present wad of gum. “I hope this is strictly a social call?”
“I need some help, Inspector.” Liddell dug a cigarette from his pocket, hung it from the corner of his mouth where it waggled when he talked. “And in return, I may be able to give you some.”
“Generosity like that always scares hell out of me. Especially when it comes from you,” Herlehy grunted. He walked around his desk, dropped into his desk chair. “Break it down for me, will you?”
Liddell hooked the rung of a wooden chair with his toe, pulled it close to the desk. “It’s kind of a delicate situation.” He sat on the chair, pulled an ash tray to the corner of the desk. “It’s about one of your men.”
A troubled V appeared between the white-haired man’s eyebrows. “About one of my men? Which one?”
“A Central Squad man named Ryan. Mike Ryan.”
“What about him?”
“I’ve been checking through the clips on him at the morgue over at the Dispatch. He’s a pretty handy man with a gun.”
“You didn’t have to bother to come all the way down here to tell me that. I’ve recommended him for six citations in the past ten years because he is handy with a gun.” He squinted at Liddell, some of the friendliness seemed to drain from his eyes. “You’ve got something on your mind. Get to the point.”
Liddell took a deep drag on the cigarette, blew a stream of smoke ceilingward. “I’ve got something on my mind,” he conceded. He held the cigarette in front of him, studied the glowing end. “Going through the clips I counted eight kills for Ryan and a dozen more times he pulled his gun and started shooting.” He rolled his eyes upward from the cigarette to the inspector’s face. “That’s a lot of shooting for one cop.”
“In the Central Squad, a man’s in a spot where he goes up against more guns in a week than the average cop does in a year. Too many hopped-up would-be big shots think they’d rate a rep if they went up against a cop like Ryan and walked away from it. They very rarely do.”
“It could be,” Liddell admitted. “It could also be that Ryan likes the feel of squeezing triggers and seeing guys go down.”
Herlehy got to his feet, pounded the flat of his hand on the desk. “You’ve either got something to back up a crack like that, or you’re going to wish you had.” He waved off an interruption by Liddell. “I’m getting pretty sick of crackpots sounding off against my men. Day in and day out those boys are on the firing line. And for what? For the kind of dough you pay a stenographer. What are they supposed to do? Just stand and let some gun-happy hood shoot them up?”
“What about Larry Hollister?”
“What about him? A mad dog. He killed a cop, did you know that? A good cop—Barney Rosen. What did you want Mike to do, give him a medal?” He glowered at Liddell. “What about Larry Hollister, Liddell?”
Liddell took a last drag on the cigarette, crushed it out in the ash tray. “Hollister was a killer, I know that. But how come Ryan went busting into his room shooting? How come the precinct cops didn’t take him?”
“Because it was Ryan’s job. The Central Office Squad doesn’t work out of any precinct—it works the whole city. Hollister was an out-of-town hood, that made him the Central Squad’s responsibility. He was fingered for the Lorenzo crew and Ryan drew the job of bringing him in.”
“You’re sure Hollister did kill Lorenzo?”
“Of course we’re sure,” Herlehy turned his back on the private detective, stamped over to where the water cooler stood humming to itself. He drew himself a drink, took his time about sipping it. “When they shook down Hollister’s room, they found Lorenzo’s wallet under the mattress.” He crushed the paper cup, threw it at the wastebasket. He walked back to the desk, scowled at Liddell. “What kind of a dirty picture are you trying to draw?”
“You know me better than that, Inspector,” Liddell retorted. “You know I wouldn’t have any part of a gimmick to smear a cop. But you also know that I wouldn’t stand by while a cop was using his badge as a shield.” He ignored the lobster red color of the inspector’s face. “There’s something about the Hollister kill that doesn’t ring true.”
“I warned you that nobody comes in here smearing my men unless he can back up what he says, Liddell.” Herlehy’s voice was tight with repressed fury. “Now you’ve said it, you’re going to make it stick or I’m going to make you eat that license of yours before you get out of this building.” He walked around the desk, dropped into his chair, turned cold, unfriendly eyes on the private detective. “I’m waiting.”
“Did you know this Larry Hollister, Inspector?”
“I don’t have the benefit of your social contacts. Killers are a little out of my line.”
“I never met the guy. He was an out-of-towner. From Detroit.”
Herlehy leaned forward. “With a record as long as your arm. Six homicides.”
“I read his record in the files. He was a killer, all right. A killer with connections. Six homicides and none proven.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? That Ryan decided to take matters into his own hands? He didn’t have to. We had Hollister dead to rights on the Lorenzo job.”
Liddell shook his head. “I’m not saying he didn’t have it coming to him. I’m just questioning how he got it. Or why.”
Herlehy was giving the wad of gum an unmerciful beating, his thick fingers began to drum on the edge of the desk. “What do you mean why? He ignores an order to open up, starts shooting and kills one of our best men and you ask why Ryan shot back?” He pounded the edge of the desk with his fist. “What did you want him to do?”
“Look, will you get off the defensive? You act as if you think all I’m trying to do is stir up a stink. If I were, this would be the last place I’d take what I’ve got. I’d take it down to one of the anti-administration sheets and let them tear your pants off.” He jerked a fresh cigarette from his pocket, jammed it between his lips. “Pull the package on Hollister. Check the M.O. file and see if you don’t start getting a whiff of what I smell.”
Herlehy stared at him for a moment, then lifted the receiver off its hook. “Get me Lieutenant Michaels in Identification.” His eyes were fixed on Liddell unblinkingly. “Mike? Herlehy. Pull the package on Larry Hollister. He’s in the deceased file. Yeah, that’s the guy. How soon can I have it? Good.” He tossed the receiver back on its hook, jabbed a button on the base of the phone.
A uniformed cop stuck his head in the door. “Get up to Identification, Ray. Michaels has a package for you. Bring it right down.”
The cop nodded, his head was withdrawn from the door. Herlehy scowled at Liddell, got up from his chair and walked over to the window. He was still staring down at the courtyard below when the young patrolman returned with the Hollister file.
“Thanks, Ray,” the inspector nodded for him to drop it on the desk. When the patrolman had closed the door behind him, Herlehy walked to the desk, dumped the contents of the Manila envelope out. His voice was cold. “All right. Here’s the full file R. and I. got on Hollister from Detroit. When do I begin to get a whiff of this odor you’re talking about?”
“Right now.” Liddell got up, crushed his cigarette out. “That is, if you really want to.” He cut off an argument from the inspector with a raised palm. “First we’ve got to agree on a few basic things. Like for instance that even a cop is human and can make mistakes. And that the M.O. file isn’t human and rarely makes mistakes.” He looked up at Herlehy and waited. “Agreed?”
The inspector nodded irritably. “It’s as infallible as any method that depends on the fallibility of the cops classifying the information,” he hedged.
“Let’s agree on something before we go ahead or there’s no use of my trying to convince you. Will you agree that ever since Vollmar introduced the system into the country, most leading departments have accepted it as practically infallible?”
Herlehy chafed with impatience. “What’s all that got to do with accusing one of my men of being gun happy?”
“It’s important for us to agree that one of the basic concepts of the M.O. system is that a criminal commits an offense in a way that is as individual to him as the way a painter uses a brush or a bookkeeper keeps his books or—”
“I don’t need any instruction in the purposes of the M.O. file. Unless you’re sparring for time, get to whatever you’re trying to get to.”
“Just one more point. Aside from establishing that each criminal commits his offense in an individual manner, by the same token the bookkeeper I just mentioned almost never turns to painting any more than the painter turns to bookkeeping.”
Herlehy stared thoughtfully at him for a moment. “Go on.”
“That’s all I’ve got to say. The rest of the facts speak for themselves. There’s your M.O. file on Hollister. One homicide after another and all paid killings. But no matter how closely you study the file you won’t find a single case of a mugging or a stick-up in his record.” He watched indecision drain the anger from the inspector’s face. “How about it, Inspector? Is the M.O. system out of whack or is this killing a little off center?”
Herlehy dropped his eyes to the cards on his desk. He picked them up, riffled through them. A frown ridged his forehead. After a moment, he flipped the cards back on the desk. “I think I see what you mean.”
Liddell forced a smile, he wiped a thin film of perspiration from his upper lip with the side of his hand. “I’m glad you do, Inspector.”
Herlehy massaged the deep lines out of his forehead with the tips of his fingers. “What’s your angle in this, Liddell?”
“A client. A client I don’t know who insists that Hollister was murdered in cold blood.”
“I won’t buy that,” Herlehy flared. “Lorenzo was murdered in a stick-up, his wallet was found in Hollister’s room. You can’t get around that.”
“A wallet could be planted. I know what you’re going to say. Even if it was a stakeout and Ryan intended to cut Hollister down, he never would have taken the chance of something happening to his partner.” He shrugged. “It could have been an accident. Maybe Ryan didn’t shoot fast enough and Hollister got in an unexpected one.” He raised his hands placatingly. “I’m not saying all this happened. I’m just saying it could have happened.”
“Sure, that’s all you’re doing. You’re just saying it could have happened,” Herlehy snarled at him. “But just so you don’t start getting any ideas, I’m going to find out just exactly what did happen.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The Central Squad bull pen was a long, brightly lighted room in the rear of the fourth floor. A railing separated the small waiting room space from the main room. A profusion of desks, back to back and lit by common lamps, were scattered around the room in organized confusion. Rows of filing cabinets lined the walls. At some of the desks, men sat in shirtsleeves, their shoulder holsters strapped into place, laboring away at reports with one-fingered typing.
At the railing as Liddell and the inspector entered, a plainclothesman, his fedora pushed to the back of his head, was conversing in low tones with a dark-skinned man who had “informer” written all over him.
Herlehy headed for the gate set in the railing, nodded to a clerk at a nearby desk. There was the stutter of a latch, he pushed through, and led the way into the bull pen.
Mike Ryan sat at a desk toward the rear of the room. His fedora was pulled down low over his forehead in the Dick Tracy style he affected, his tie was loosened, his collar open. He looked up from a report he was correcting when the inspector stopped at his desk. His face didn’t change expression as his eyes rolled from the inspector to Liddell and back.
“The lieutenant in, Ryan?” Herlehy wanted to know.
Ryan nodded, indicated a partitioned corner space. “In his office, Inspector.”
“Pull your personal package and meet us in there,” Herlehy snapped at him. He nodded for Liddell to follow, led the way to the lieutenant’s cubicle.
Lieutenant Jack Doyle was a tired-looking redhead who managed to look mild in the face of a reputation for toughness. He was sitting behind an unpainted desk, poring through a mass of reports. A half-filled tray of inch long butts was on the desk at his elbow, a container of cold coffee was forgotten on the other side. He looked up with a scowl at being disturbed, the scowl faded when he recognized Herlehy. “Evening, skipper.” He looked Liddell over curiously.
“I told Ryan to pull his package and bring it in,” Herlehy told him without preliminaries. “I wanted you in on this instead of bringing it down to my office.”
“Anything special?” Doyle leaned back, laced his fingers at the back of his head. “Mike’s been pretty quiet lately.”
“The Hollister kill.” Herlehy pulled a straight-backed wooden chair from against the wall, set it down at the end of the desk and sat down. “Liddell here brought up a couple of interesting points. I think we ought to get the answers,” he sighed, “before the papers do.”
“Liddell?” Doyle’s voice was deceptively mild. “A private dick, aren’t you?” He managed to say the last few words as though they tasted bad. “And what are these points you’d like us to clear up?”
“He doesn’t want you to clear them up. I do,” Herlehy snapped.
The lieutenant nodded. “Sorry. What are the points?”
“The M.O. file shows Hollister was always a hired gun and never went in for muggings and stick-ups. That being the case, it’s his contention that Hollister didn’t kill Lorenzo and the Lorenzo kill was just used as an excuse for burning him down. He has a client that’s hired him to prove it.”
Doyle’s nostrils flared, hard lines appeared between the ends of his nostrils and his mouth. Two lumps formed on the sides of his jaw. Slowly, almost deliberately, he unlaced his hands from the back of his neck, laid them flat on the desk and leaned forward. “If this peeper says that, I say he’s a goddam liar.”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Herlehy snapped. He motioned Liddell to a chair. “Nobody gains anything by calling names. Liddell came to us with what he’s got instead of dumping it into the laps of the newspapers. All I want is for some answers to the questions he’s raised.”
The lieutenant didn’t take his eyes off Liddell’s face, made no attempt to mask his dislike. “You’ll get them, skipper. But what good will it do? There’ll always be a bunch of crumbs running loose who try to spit every time they see an honest cop. Mostly crumbs who ain’t fit to shine that cop’s shoes.”
“Maybe if the cops themselves didn’t bend over so far trying to cover up for the few rats just because they wear the same uniform, the honest cop wouldn’t have to take it,” Liddell snapped. “All I’ve gotten since I walked into this place is chewed out. What’s the matter, are you all afraid that maybe there is something smelly about this kill?”
The lieutenant started to his feet, permitted himself to be waved back down by the inspector.
“Liddell’s got a point, Doyle.” He looked at the private detective, wrinkled his forehead. “You’ve got to see our side of it, too, Liddell. It makes a decent cop’s blood boil to hear punk raps tossed at a guy who was only doing his duty.”
There was a rap on the door. Doyle looked to the inspector, drew a nod. “Come on in, Mike,” he called.
The door opened, Mike Ryan walked in. He tossed a Manila folder on the lieutenant’s desk, let his eyes swing around the room. “Any reason why I can’t know what’s the beef?”
“We’ve got some questions on the Hollister kill, Mike,” Doyle told him. He leaned back, stared glumly at the plainclothesman. “The inspector wants a complete fill-in on what happened that night.”
Ryan nodded, flipped open the folder on the desk, selected a typewritten flimsy. He held it out to the inspector wordlessly. Herlehy took it from between his fingers, glanced through the single space typing and flicked it back on the desk.
“I’d rather we talked this out, Ryan. You can refer to your report any time you want to refresh your memory.” He studied the man in front of him. “Ever hear of Larry Hollister before that night, Ryan?”
Ryan wrinkled his brow, shook his head.
“Then you didn’t know his record?” Herlehy wanted to know.
The plainclothesman shook his head again.
Herlehy tilted his chair back, touched the tips of his fingers across his stomach. “Hollister had a record as long as your arm. Mostly homicides, all paid jobs. Mean anything to you?”
Ryan considered, shrugged. “Explains why he started throwing the minute we identified ourselves as police.”
“You did that?” Liddell put in.
“I just said I did, mister.” He looked inquiringly at the lieutenant, drew a shrug.
“That’s all it means to you. He was a killer, so the minute he heard you were the police, he started shooting. Nothing else?”
“No. Should it?”
Herlehy nodded. “It means the holdup he committed was out of character. Like a second story man suddenly going in for car socking.” He squinted at the detective. “You never heard of the guy, what made you go to his room?”
“A squeal. Some joker called in, said if we wanted the mugger who killed Lorenzo, we could pick him up in 416 at the Seymour.” He shrugged. “The papers were full of the Lorenzo kill and we figured it would be a good pinch.”
