Читать книгу I Want Out - Tedd Thomey - Страница 8

I REFUSED the cigarette Winebrenner offered, then I changed my mind and lit one. It tasted rotten, like I expected, and I threw it away. I sat there for about five minutes and then I stood up. I felt wobbly, but I wanted to get the job done.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Winebrenner asked as I hobbled down the steps.

“Didn’t you say Felix is at Clapper’s?”

“Yeah.” He made a pitying clucking sound with his tongue. “You’re in no shape to go over there. You’ll get the heebie jeebies again.”

“I’ll only stay a minute,” I said.

“Why in the blazes are you so interested? What’s in it for you?”

“Filipinos,” I replied.

“Hmmmm,” he said. “Kreena?”

“Maybe.”

He shook his head. “It’s an awful long shot.”

“I’ve got patience.”

“You’ll need it,” he said.

He knew I might also need more propping up, so he volunteered to accompany me on the block-long walk along Third Street to Clapper’s, the mortuary which got a good share of the cop-shop business.

Arriving at Clapper’s, we went in through a side door and down to the basement. At the preparation room entrance, I wedged one of the two swinging doors open with a triangle of wood the attendants use when rolling corpses in and out on wheeled stretchers. I felt all right while we were in the main room, with that open door behind me. When we passed into the icebox section, with its heavy closed door, I could feel things cramping me again.

An attendant led us to the table where they were tieing an identification tag on Felix’s big toe. He lay there on his back. He was a small, brownish man in his mid-thirties. I saw that the Virgil Partch-like sketch the Johns had made on the jail floor was pretty accurate. Felix had a too-large head on a too-small body and his legs and arms were short and stubby.

I wondered again why a doll like Ti-lo would become engaged to such a man.

“Show him the hole,” Winebrenner said to one of the attendants.

They tilted Felix to one side and I was able to see the small dot on his back, directly behind his heart. They had washed the blood off and all that remained was the neat bullet hole, its edges a charred black.

“The slug’s still in him?” I asked.

“Small caliber,” the attendant said. “We’ll find it okay.”

The walls started undulating and closing toward me once more, but it wasn’t as bad as in the jail, because here I could walk out when I chose.

“Okay,” I told Winebrenner. “I’ve seen it.”

We returned to the cop shop. I thanked him for his help and assured him that I was all right. He went back to his desk.

I stayed outside for awhile. When my nerves had calmed sufficiently, I went up the steps to Detectives on the second floor. I asked the desk man to tell Inspector Lowney I wanted to see him.

I had to wait over thirty minutes. The detectives make up the elite of the cop-shop caste system. These boys love their position, savoring their “ascendancy” over the lower forms of life. It’s probably not necessary for me to mention that they place bail bondsmen lowest on their list, a step below such assorted creeps as private investigators, newspapermen and stoolies.

The waiting room was okay, it opened directly onto a staircase. When I entered Inspector Lowney’s den, however, matters were much too cozy. The office was about eight-by-eight and fogged over with thick, blue cigarette smoke.

I left the door open behind me, but Inspector Lowney promptly slammed it shut. He then sat behind his desk and gazed at me as if I were something which had floated up from the sewer. He wore a well-tailored, black Dacron suit and his dark hair was parted with infuriating accuracy. His face was all points—pointed chin, nose and ears! A cigarette was held tightly between his lips and he toyed with an unlighted one, rolling it around between his fingers.

“Make it quick,” he snapped. “We’re interrogating.”

“Pia was a client of mine,” I said. “I’d like to see his personal effects.”

“Oh, you would, would you?” Lowney sucked so hard on the cigarette the ash grew a half-inch.

“I’d also like a look at the four guys who were in the cell where the gun was fired.”

“Oh, you would, would you?” He geysered blue smoke at me. “And what will you trade for such a look?”

“Information,” I said.

He shrugged. “I’m listening.”

“His fiancée’s in my office,” I said. “Her name’s Ti-lo Sullivan. While we were talking, some jokers in a heliotrope-colored Buick roared by and tossed a firecracker practically in the door.”

“So?” he said.

“It happened just about the time Felix Pia was shot. I don’t think it was a coincidence.”

Lowney tilted his head and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. While he made a few notes on a pad, I eased the door open about a foot and immediately the office’s walls went back into their true perspective.

“It isn’t much,” Lowney said, “but we’ll look into it. There can’t be too many heliotrope-colored Buicks in town.”

He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door at the opposite side of his office.

“Take a peek,” he said. “Keep it short.”

He stood beside me while I glanced into the interrogation room. There were six men present—two detectives and the four suspects from the jail cell. I quickly brushed my eyes over three of the suspects. They were run-of-the-jail toughs, with boozy faces, long sideburns and they needed shaves. The fourth man was far more interesting.

He was a Filipino.

He was about thirty-one or thirty-two, with long sleek hair and brown eyes shiny as hard candy. His nose was exceedingly flat, possibly a gift of Mother Nature but more probably the result of constant hammering in a boxing ring. He wore a white shirt, open at the throat, and his yellow necktie was stuffed into the breast pocket of his avocado green suit.

“That’s enough for now,” Lowney said, closing and locking the door.

“What’s his name?” I said. “The Filipino.”

Lowney looked at his note pad. “Harold Pablo. Still uses the name King Harold, the name he fought under as a featherweight. Now works as a cook.”

“Is he your prime suspect?”

Lowney stubbed out his cigarette, lit the one he’d been toying with and got out a third one which he rolled around in his fingers.

“Maybe,” he said, “I haven’t got time to talk. So if you’ll kindly—”

He glanced at the door.

I didn’t take the hint.

“What are the charges?” I said. “What are you holding those four on?”

“An open charge,” he snapped. “If the tests prove out, it’ll be suspicion of murder. Now beat it and let me get some work done.”

“Not yet,” I said. “You’ve forgotten the other half of our deal. I want to see Pia’s personal effects.”

“We had no deal. Beat it.”

“Don’t get nasty,” I said, “or I’ll drop over to the squad room and tell the boys how Inspector Lowney tried to ravish a redhead at the 222 Club.”

His face turned the color of a tomato can label. He was too drunk that night to remember what happened, but actually his conduct had been quite innocent. He had stumbled while rising from his table and his hand struck the back of the scantily-clad girl seated at the next table. She was one of the club strippers and it certainly wasn’t his fault that she had a trick fastener at the back of her strapless bra. The bra popped off like a flapping dove, revealing her in all her rosy-tipped glory. And Inspector Lowney had promptly passed out.

“Damn you,” he said.

He stormed out of the office, slammed the door and locked it.

He didn’t have to do it, but it was his way of getting back at me.

A minute passed. Another.

Then another minute passed. I jumped up and tried both doors. Both were locked. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t think.

I stumbled to the window and tried to open it, but it was stuck.

I picked up the chair, swung it twice and smashed out the upper and lower panes.

I sat down on the chair in front of the window and let the breeze blow on me.

Both doors flew open simultaneously.

Inspector Lowney dashed in through one and the two detectives piled in through the other from the interrogation room.

They stared at the snaggle-toothed fragments of glass remaining in the window and they also stared at me.

“You idiot!” Lowney roared. “What’d you do that for?”

I tilted the chair back. I almost felt fine.

“You ought to know better than lock me up,” I grinned. “I go stir crazy.”

“Why you—!” Lowney was so mad he couldn’t talk. “I’ll—”

“Ah, ah, ah!” I reminded him cheerfully. “Or should I say bra, bra, bra?”

He remembered. He spun on his heel and glowered at the other two Johns.

“Don’t stand there like a couple of apes,” he said. “Beat it!”

They performed orderly about-faces and marched back into the interrogation room.

Lowney flung a large Manila envelope on the desk.

“Here’s his stuff,” he said. “Look at it and then leave me in peace!”

Opening the envelope, I dumped Felix Pia’s effects out onto the desk. It was the usual miscellany of a man’s pockets —sixty-five cents in change, a ring of keys, a pencil stub, a newspaper recipe for Lobster Cantonese, a tan leather billfold, a handkerchief, a business card, a comb with several long oily hairs caught in the plastic teeth, and a second newspaper clipping telling the arrival date of the S. S. Caledonia from Quezon City.

“Okay,” Lowney said. “You’ve seen it all.”

He started putting the objects back in the envelope.

“Hold it,” I said. “I’m not through.”

I pushed his hand aside and picked up the business card, noticing as I did so that it had fallen atop a green-corroded key which was not connected to the main ring. I glanced at the card face and saw the words: CHARLES HORONDO, Business Opportunities Broker. Flipping the card over, I saw the letter “S” in feminine script on the back and below it a phone number.

I performed two manipulations. One was mental: I memorized the phone number.

The second was physical. I stuck the card under Lowney’s pointed nose and asked: “Ever hear of this guy?”

And at the same time my other hand palmed the key off the desk.

“Never heard of him,” Lowney said.

He snatched the card from my fingers and shoved it and the rest of the objects into the envelope. Then he seized my shoulder and propelled me through the door.

“And stay out!” he said.

I didn’t mind the bum’s rush. Somehow I felt I had the most important thing—the key.