Читать книгу Glad to See You—Dead! - Frank Ward - Страница 4

It had been raining all night, a soft, sighing dribble of wetness that slanted gently into the trees and dripped monotonously on the rubber mat on the floor of the squad car, from the triangular-shaped split in the windshield. Now, at four in the morning, the rain had stopped, and only an occasional gust of late November wind whipped the water from the trees along the road against the car.

Ackerman sat stolidly behind the wheel, his huge hands lax on the rim, driving slowly. There was only the sodden hiss of tires on the road, and Ackerman’s hoarse, uneven breathing.

After a while, after we had gone perhaps another two miles, he said, in a flat voice, “I’m cooked, Nickie. They’ll say I knocked him off, no, matter what I tell them. They’ll figure I rigged it up so he got his, like I always said I would. You know what I told the captain, Nickie? I said, ‘Captain, you put me on with that slob and I won’t be responsible what happens.’ I said, ‘Captain, you put me in the same car with that guy and I quit.’” He stopped talking and took one hand off the wheel and lit a cigarette. The hand with the match shook a little.

“I should have quit,” Ackerman went on dismally. “I shouldn’t ever have let them put me on with Hanrahan, Nick. You know what kind of a guy Hanrahan was, kid.”

I knew what kind of a guy Hanrahan had been. Hanrahan with the big square hands. Hanrahan with the slap on the back. Hanrahan with your best girl. I knew Hanrahan. The saliva in my mouth tasted acid and bitter.

Ackerman sighed again and swung the spotlight mounted on the side of the squad car so its beam fluttered out along the rim of the ditch on the nearside of the car. He took his foot off the gas, letting the car drift, and shortly he touched the brake and the car stopped.

“Here,” he said. I looked down the beam of the light; I could see a pair of feet, neatly shod feet with bright new soles and rubber heels that were hardly scuffed or dirtied at all. Hanrahan’s shoes. They projected at an absurd angle from the lip of the ditch, as if perhaps Hanrahan were lying on his belly trying to pick up an apple floating in the muddy water with his teeth. I didn’t think that was what Hanrahan was doing. I didn’t think Hanrahan was interested in being the life of the party any more.

I got out of the car and stood looking at the dry soles of Hanrahan’s shoes sticking up out of the ditch. My hands felt cold and remote, as if the blood circulated only as far as my wrists. I shoved them into the pockets of my topcoat and started walking over toward where Hanrahan lay. I took a pocket flash out and held it on him, the light jumping a little, and moved it until it touched the back of his neatly cropped head.

He had been neatly cropped, all right. Whoever had trimmed him had used something short, heavy and blunt. The back of his head lay pulpy and red on the back of his neat dark-blue topcoat. He was wearing a shirt with a red collar, the red turning brown, the material stiff and hard under the glazed coating. I took the flash off him.

* * * *

Ackerman came over, moving slowly. He said, “You see how it looks, Nick. You see what I mean, kid? I’m cooked.”

“All right,” I said. I took out my lighter and touched k to a cigarette, the wind fanning the bright little core of flame, and chewed on the bitter smoke. “All right,” I said. “Stop fanning your mouth like that. You get on my nerves, saying I’m cooked, I’m cooked. Shut up.” I walked away from him a few yards and turned the light on Hanrahan again, on everybody’s pal, Hanrahan, the cop with his hand on everybody’s shoulder and his hand in everybody’s pocket, the cop with one eye on the captain’s door and the other eye on the captain’s wife, or on anybody’s wife. I looked at him and remembered what he had told me about women, on the nights I had ridden with him along the night patrol. The cop who made every decent cop wish he were out collecting garbage or pushing a broom around after the milk carts. I spat on the wet road. I said to Ackerman, “Tell me again. Give it to me once more, Connie.”

He looked at me, just a big, dumb guy with his feet too big and his belly pushing out against his coat and his sad wet eyes scared now. “I didn’t do it, Nick. Not even to him, not from behind. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

“All right,” I said wearily, believing him. “Get back in the car.”

We got back in the car and Ackerman sat staring straight ahead down the road. I didn’t look at him. I said softly, “I don’t have to tell you how bad this is, Connie. He was supposed to be riding with you; he had the twelve-to-eight shift. If he got out on you, they’re going to ask why you didn’t report him for it. You know that.”

“He wasn’t with me,” Ackerman said, for the tenth time that early morning. “I told you that, Nick. I dropped him off on the corner of Hutchison and Squires. I couldn’t say no to him; he said I could pick him up again at five, on my way back.”

“Hutchison and Squires,” I said. I sat there wondering what was at Hutchison and Squires for a man with Hanrahan’s tastes, and decided there was nothing there at all for him. It would be just a drop-off point. There was a drugstore on one corner, but it would be closed at that hour. There was a row of telephone booths beside the store. Apart from that, nothing but suburban homes. I said, “The first time, Connie? Was this the first time?”

He shook his head. “Once a week,” he mumbled. “For maybe five, six months now. He told me if I opened my yap about it, he’d make it up to me with the captain, one way or the other. The captain would go for his word, Nick. He could put me back in a harness out in the hills somewhere. I didn’t tell even my wife, Nick. Nobody knew.”

I blew my breath out against the windshield and watched the fogged pattern fade. “At three in the morning,” I said. “What then?”

“I went out through the Grosvenor district. No calls. I went out as far as Ridley street, and then I came back. I went up along the viaduct road, as far as the limits, and turned around and came back. About four-fifteen, Nick. I remember that, because one of those semi-trailer jobs went by and the gravel off his wheels put that hole in the glass. Then I came down here. I was going to pick him up, Nick, like he said. The lights caught the feet.” He shivered, “Just the feet, sticking up like that. I didn’t know who he was until I pulled up and went and had a look. Then I got scared. I didn’t know what to do, I came back like a bat out of hell and I got you.”

“That was five, on the nose,” I said. “That was a little more than half an hour ago, the time you were supposed to pick him up at Hutchison and Squires?”

He nodded.

“All right,” I said. “That sounds straight enough.”