Читать книгу City Limits - Will Oursler - Страница 13

THE FIRST THING Monday morning I phoned headquarters and asked for the Morals Division. Lieutenant Spooner wasn’t in, and neither was Harry Allerup. I left word asking for the first one who showed to call me back.

A few minutes later Sunshine Sever called me onto the carpet in his office. He wasn’t beaming any ray of sunshine today. His scowl was as black as a hurricane warning.

He waved a piece of paper at me and said, “Mike, I’ve got a formal complaint here from Sheriff Merz’s office. What in the devil did you say to the man?”

“Just called him the crook he is.”

The district attorney rose from his desk and prowled up and down the room with his hands clasped behind his back in overweight imitation of Felix the Cat. “Look, Mike,” he said in the patient tone of a grade-school teacher explaining a simple problem to the class dunce, “I’ve told you I like to keep friendly relations with other agencies. You can’t walk into a neighboring law-enforcement officer’s personal sanctum and throw around wild accusations.”

“They weren’t wild,” I said. “It’s obvious he’s collecting a payoff from Tupper Smith.”

“Can you prove it?” he snapped at me.

Reluctantly I shook my head. “He has to be, Sunshine. Smith couldn’t operate without his protection.”

Sunshine shook his head too, sadly and reproachfully. “You’re a law graduate, Mike. You know better than to make an accusation without evidence. Merz could sue you for defamation of character.”

“He hasn’t any character,” I said. “Besides, there weren’t any witnesses.”

He looked a little relieved. “At least that’s something. I hate to do this, Mike, but you won’t take my suggestions, so I’m making it an order. Stay within the city limits.”

I hiked a couple of eyebrows. “During duty hours, you mean.”

“I mean any time.”

I shook my head regretfully. “This isn’t Russia, and you’re no commissar, comrade. I take your orders up to five P.M. After that I’m a private citizen. If you think I’m asking your permission to dine at some county roadhouse, or take a drive along the river, guess again.”

“You know that isn’t what I mean,” he said impatiently. “Just stay out of the county as a representative of this office. I mean it, Mike. You clash with Merz again, and I won’t back you up an inch.”

“How about this time?” I asked. “Going to write him a nice long apology?”

He said shortly, “I’m going to acknowledge receipt of his complaint. Period. No comment one way or the other.”

I grinned at him. Sunshine liked to keep inter-agency peace, but he didn’t like to kowtow. Despite his threat, I knew that if it came to a showdown, the D.A. would stand behind me like a rock.

“I probably won’t see Merz again anyway,” I told him. “There isn’t much point in butting my head against a wall.”

By noon, when I still hadn’t heard from either Lieutenant Spooner or Harry Allerup, I called the Morals Division again. I got hold of Spooner.

“You were going to send Allerup over for a talk this morning,” I reminded him.

“Jeepers, Mike,” he said with a mixture of embarrassment and regret. “I guess I goofed everything up. I was out all morning, and while I was gone the chief of detectives glooped him off for a special assignment. He’s on his way to Chicago to pick up a prisoner.”

“Nuts,” I said heartily.

“I’m really sorry,” Spooner said. “It never occurred to me something like that would happen, so I didn’t leave word with anybody that you wanted to see Allerup. I thought I’d just tell him myself.”

“Well, it can’t be helped,” I told him. “When’s he due back?”

“Not till Wednesday night. I’ll have him over to your office Thursday morning for sure.”

“Okay, Stan,” I said. “Thanks.”

Later that day I phoned the county hospital and learned that Gloria Townsend was now allowed visitors. I decided to hit Ross Memorial Hospital during the seven-to-eight visiting hour that evening. I needled Sunshine a little by telling him I was making the call not as an assistant D.A., but as a friend of the family.

He only grunted.

At Ross Memorial Hospital I made my way to ward 2-B and asked a passing nurse where I could find Miss Henning, the nurse who had been keeping me posted on Gloria’s condition. She said Miss Henning worked the day trick, so I asked for Gloria’s room number. She was in two thirty-six.

Two thirty-six was a single room and Gloria was sitting up in bed. There were still bruises on her face, but the swelling had died and, except for a couple of discolored spots, she looked as beautiful as ever. Her long tawny hair was carefully brushed, she wore a touch of makeup and she had on a frilly bed jacket.

She had two other visitors, a man and a woman. The woman, a lushly-built redhead with catlike green eyes and a full, sensuous mouth, looked me over calculatingly when I entered the room, judging my build, my clothes and my bank balance. Some women can’t help looking at every man they see like that.

The man was enormous. He must have gone six feet six and over two hundred and fifty pounds. He had thick, unimaginative features, somewhat battered shoulders which made him look as though he wore football pads and no fat on him. Both the man and the woman were dressed expensively.

Gloria looked at me without much enthusiasm and said, “Oh, hello, Mr. Macauley.”

She introduced the man as her brother, Sid Trask, and the woman as Alice Dill. My first assumption, probably because of the calculating look she had given me, was that the redhead was a fellow call girl of Gloria’s, but then I got the impression that she was Sid Trask’s girl friend.

Alice Dill said, “Mike Macauley? Seems to me I’ve seen that name in the papers. Aren’t you with the District Attorney’s office?”

“I’m an assistant D.A.,” I admitted.

Up to then the enormous Sid Trask had accepted me on probation, reserving judgment until he found out who I was and what I wanted. Now he glowered at me.

I said to Gloria, “How you feeling, Gloria?”

Before she could tell me, Sid Trask growled in the husky voice of a man who has been hit once too often in the Adam’s apple, “What’s this Gloria stuff, mister? Why’s she registered as Gloria Townsend, when her name’s Gladys Trask? And what business has the District Attorney’s office got with her?”

I decided to ignore the first question and answer the second. “What makes you think it has any? Maybe I just stopped in as a friend.”

This didn’t mollify him much. “A friend who don’t know her right name? You haven’t answered the first question, mister.”

I shrugged. “You’ll have to ask your sister. The identification on her said Gloria Townsend.”

“I have asked her.” He turned to the girl in the bed. “For cripes sake, Sis, what’s this all about? Stop giving me the runaround.”

“Please, Sid, not now. You’re giving me a headache.” She pressed the back of one hand to her brow. “It’s just a name I was using to try for an acting job. I told you.”

“Acting job hell,” he said huskily. “You don’t change your driver’s license and identification card and stuff when you take a stage name. You been up to something, and I want to know what.”

“Later, Sid. After I feel better.”

The red-haired Alice Dill said, “Leave her alone now, Sid. She’s been through enough.”

I managed to insert a question to Gloria as to whether or not she recognized whoever had beaten her.

She shook her head wearily. “I didn’t even see them. I was standing at the sink when they came through the door from the parking lot. I started to glance up, and something hit me alongside the neck. I think it was a judo chop.”

“You didn’t see anything at all?” I asked. “You don’t even know how many there were?”

“At least two,” she said. “A man and a woman. I got a bare glimpse of their feet as I went down. I think it must have been the woman who came in first and hit me in the neck. Or maybe I just imagined that because it was the ladies’ room, and I assumed whoever was coming in the door was female.”

Sid Trask said, “She’s already told all this to Sheriff Merz. Leave her alone.”

I looked at him. “Don’t you care who beat your sister?”

He was seated in a chair on the opposite side of the bed, and Alice Dill was seated in the window sill alongside of him. He started to get out of his chair, but the redhead pushed him back again.

I said to Gloria, “We won’t talk about it now, in front of your company, but are you still willing to tell me what you were going to?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.” Her eyes warned me to drop the subject.

“Think about what?” Trask asked. “What were you going to tell this guy, Sis?”

Gloria simply ignored him.

I said, “Has it occurred to you, Gloria—Gladys—that when you get out of here, the same people may be waiting to work you over again?”

Gloria looked frightened and Sid Trask made a growling noise deep in his throat.

“Well, has it?” I insisted.

She said in a low voice, “Yes.”

“For your own safety I have a suggestion,” I said. “Suppose I pick you up personally when you’re ready to leave the hospital, and hide you in some hotel in town? I’ll arrange a police watch to protect you.”

“Listen, Buster,” Sid Trask said. “When she’s ready to leave the hospital, I’ll pick her up and take care of her. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the cops themselves who beat her up. Or maybe even yon. What’s this stuff about Gladys telling you something? You people been giving her a third-degree?”

Ignoring him, I continued to look at Gloria.

“I—I don’t know what to do, Mr. Macauley. I’ll have to think about it. I’ll be here several days yet.”

Her brother demanded, “What’s this information you want, Macauley?”

Alice Dill said thoughtfully, “You know what Mr. Macauley’s current project is, Sid? It was in the papers.”

“What?” he asked.

“The call-girl racket.”

Sid Trask stared at her for a moment, then he stared at me for a while, then he surged to his feet. This time the redhead’s push didn’t sit him down again.

“Why, you bastard,” he said to me. “You say my sister’s a call girl and I’ll knock your silly head off.”

“I didn’t say it,” I said reasonably. “Your girl friend did. Why don’t you knock her head off?”

He started around the bed and Gloria said sharply, “Sid!”

He stopped long enough to look at her.

Gloria said, “You start a rumpus in here and I’ll ring for the nurse and have you barred from future visiting. Now sit down.”

He stared at her for a time, then went back to his seat. He said to me, “I’ll look you up outside the hospital, Buster. Expect me.”

There wasn’t much point in staying longer, because I obviously wasn’t going to accomplish anything with the brother there. I told Gloria I’d be back another time and left.