Читать книгу City Limits - Will Oursler - Страница 7

“WHY DON’T YOU get wise to yourself, Mike, and lay off?” District Attorney William P. (“Sunshine”) Sever asked me.

The nickname fitted him, for he was the original jolly fat man, when he wanted to be. All two hundred and fifty pounds of him. He could beam a smile at you like a ray of sunshine. He was a politician’s dream as a district attorney. A reasonably honest politician’s dream. Because Sunshine Sever was an honest D.A.—to a point—but also knew that politics did indeed make strange bed-fellows and that a D.A.’s job is basically political.

“Lay off?” I asked. “I sent for Allerup because I wanted to talk to him. What’s wrong with that?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Sunshine said, depositing his big rump on a corner of my desk and hitching his belt up with oddly slender, almost dainty thumbs. “But it won’t do one hell of a bit of good, will it?”

“You haven’t told me yet,” I said,

“This city has a good Morals Division, Mike,” Sunshine said slowly. “I don’t have to tell you what kind of help it can be to this office. So far we’ve gotten along great with Lieutenant Spooner. Just great, Mike. I’d hate to see our relationship with the division loused up.”

“Who’s lousing it up? I don’t have anything against Lieutenant Spooner. I don’t even have anything against Harry Allerup. I only want to ask him a few questions. I’m going to, Sunshine.”

“Damn it, I know you are. But hell, Mike, use your head. Allerup testified in court, didn’t he? Are you going to tell me you don’t believe his sworn testimony?”

I got tired of arguing. A little coldly I said, “I’ll put it this way, Sunshine. Either I question Harry Allerup the way I want to, or I’ll toss the whole call-girl business back in your lap.”

“Now, Mike,” he said, his voice holding a mixture of reproachfulness and paternal pain. He didn’t like the choice, because he really didn’t have any. The Citizens’ Committee for Good Government and a runaway grand jury had dumped the call-girl problem in Sunshine’s ample lap originally when a call girl named Mona St. Clair had taken an overdose of sleeping pills and died. I’d taken it on as extra duty after Sunshine had practically gotten down on his knees and begged me.

“Listen,” I said. “Gloria Townsend phones and says she’s fed up with going on two-hundred-buck weekends with clammy-handed sugar daddies. She’s willing to tell everything she knows about the call-girl racket. Then what happens?”

“You already told me what happened,” Sunshine groaned.

“Allerup picks her up on a morals charge,” I said, ignoring him. “And she promptly forgets she ever spoke to me. Does it figure? After the trial she spits in his face and later, in the elevator, calls him a lying so-and-so. When I say, ‘Who? Allerup?’ she hauls off and slugs me. You figure it out, chief.”

“I don’t want to figure it out.”

“I’m saying she knows Allerup better than came out at her trial. I’m saying—”

“Mike,” Sunshine groaned. He really looked miserable.

“Well, you can stick around while I ask him.”

“That’s white of you,” he said. “You’re not going to fire me, huh?”

Before I could answer this bit of sarcasm, the office PBX buzzed and I flicked the little button with my thumb.

Miss Rains’ voice said, “Detective Allerup to see you, Mike.”

I looked at Sunshine. “I’ll stay,” Sunshine said.

“Send him in,” I told Miss Rains, and a moment later Detective Harry Allerup entered my sanctum sanctorum.

Harry Allerup was a tall, good-looking guy on the right side of thirty by three or four years. He wore tweeds, and a plain clothes man in tweeds is about as common as a D.A. in tights. He smiled at Sunshine and I introduced them and watched them shake hands. The District Attorney has a grip like a wood vise, but Allerup didn’t wince. He said, “You wanted to see me, Mr. Macauley?”

The Mr. Macauley got me. I’d known Harry Allerup ever since he’d made the Morals Division, and it had been Harry and Mike ever since, for more than a year.

“Yeah,” I said. “I wanted to see you—Detective Allerup.”

We looked at each other. I smiled first, then Harry Allerup grinned at me. He still looked uneasy, though. “Aw, Mike,” he said.

“Sit down, Harry,” I said.

He took a seat. “Lieutenant Spooner says I’m to cooperate in every way possible,” he said stiffly.

“There, you see?” Sunshine boomed at me.

“That’s what Lieutenant Spooner said, Harry. What do you say?”

“I don’t even know what you wanted to see me about, Mike.”

Before I could tell him, the PBX buzzed again. Pushing down the button, I started to say, “I don’t want to be dis–”

Miss Rains broke in excitedly, “Remember when you came back from the Courts Building yesterday morning and said if a Miss Gloria Townsend got in touch with this office I was to drop whatever I was doing and—”

“Gloria Townsend!” I shouted.

Harry Allerup stiffened in his chair as though it were a trial run for the hot seat. Sunshine looked like Sunshine will look when he’s dismayed.

“On the telephone, Mike,” Miss Rains said.

I pushed the switch over to one of the outside lines before she could tell me which number. I got a dial tone for my trouble. I pushed the switch again, and this time there was the faint sound of music. Otherwise silence.

“Macauley,” I said.

I didn’t recognize her voice over the telephone. She sounded somehow more sure of herself, as though she could do what had to be done as long as she didn’t have to look the world squarely in the eye. “This is Gloria Townsend, Mr. Macauley. I—I did a lot of thinking last night and I—”

Her voice trailed off and the background music seemed to rise in volume. I shouted, “Are you still there? Where are you?”

“It’s hot in this phone booth,” Gloria Townsend said. “They ought to have a fan. I want to see you, Mr. Macauley.”

“Right now,” I said. “Wherever you are. Don’t go away.”

“I won’t, Mr. Macauley. It’s a roadhouse on Rivershore Drive. The Lagoon. You know the place?”

“I can find it,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

I cut the connection and got my Panama and told Sunshine, “She’s in a place called the Lagoon on Rivershore. I’m going out there.”

“Rivershore is outside our jurisdiction, Mike.”

“I’m just going to talk to the dame,” I said hotly. “What do I need, a volunteer deputy sheriff’s badge?”

“Take it easy, Mike.”

Instead of answering him, I asked Allerup, “Want to come along for the ride?”

“No thanks, Mike. I’d rather not.”

“Don’t want to see her, huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Allerup demanded, flushing.

I looked at him. “You tell me, Harry. I’ll listen all the way out to Rivershore.”

“No. You saw what she thought of me.”

“What do you care? You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

“Aw, go to hell,” he said, and stormed out of the office.

I tried to swap glances with Sunshine, but he wasn’t trading. I went outside and Miss Rains pointed to the door.

“He went thataway,” she said.

There wasn’t any other way to go. I said, “I thought maybe he jumped out the window.”

When I reached the corridor, the elevator doors were already sliding shut. I shrugged and took the steps down the five flights to the basement garage and drew an official black Merc from the City Hall car pool. The dispatcher asked if I wanted a driver, and I said I did not. I felt an urgency tugging at my muscles, constricting my throat and making it dry. I didn’t know why, but I knew I was going to hurry.

I took City Hall Street to Mark Twain Boulevard, running two traffic lights before I decided to switch on the siren. After that it was smooth sailing out Mark Twain to the Hawkins Creek Bridge and across the Bridge to Rivershore Drive. Suburban housing developments slipped by and a billboard told me what kind of gasoline was best for my car. I looked at the speedometer. I was doing seventy-five and the needle was climbing.

The suburbs gave way to farmland and more billboards. At a crossroad a state cop in gray uniform kicked over his motorcycle and came after me. I had cut the siren after crossing the Hawkins Creek Bridge, but I switched it back on and the state cop pulled back and out of sight. He didn’t have to; I guess it was professional courtesy.

I was just congratulating myself on the good time I was making when the left rear tire blew with a sound like a .45 fired in a small room without any windows.