Masters Of Noir Vol Iv Part 3

"Never even heard of the place," Jock said.

"It's a no-good state," Sinclair said, and kept on going.

Macalay let out his breath as far as it would go. Then he hated to breathe in again because of the blue grease-smoke in the kitchen. "That was quite an ace."

Jock nodded, sadly. He had given up on the grills, was trying to get the grease off his hands. "Yeah," he said. "A pal got the word to me when he heard I was coming here. I hated to play that hole ace. I really hated to."

This time there were five naked men lined up in front of the P.K.'s desk. The P.K. looked very happy; he had the look of a man who'd hit oil digging a sewer. There was old Fitz, there was Hanning, Nosy, Jock and Macalay.

The P.K. said: "Okay. I'm paid by the year; I don't mind waiting. You were the guys on the chipping gang with Russ. This morning we go to put the boiler back in service, and he's in there stinking dead. And we've had the state cops looking for him for three days. So what happened?" He glared at them.

n.o.body said anything. The P.K. leaned back in his desk. A triangular stand of wood on it said his name was J. Odell, and he was Princ.i.p.al Keeper. Macalay wondered vaguely what the J stood for, but he didn't ask.

"I don't take it kindly that for three days the papers have been full of I let a con escape," the P.K. said. "I don't take it kindly on account of the people don't remember it wasn't so. They think they remember I got a leaky jug. It ain't good."

None of the cons said anything. It was still hot weather, and their bodies glistened. Macalay wondered if the P.K. was a little queer, the way he liked to question naked cons. It could very well be. A h.o.m.o and a s.a.d.i.s.t would be two nice things to say about the P.K.

You're thinking like a con, Macalay told himself. The P.K.'s just a sour guy who does all the work the Warden and the Deputy Warden should do. You find guys like that in police stations all over the country. Supposing they take it out in socking a prisoner now and then, it's understandable.

And a voice inside answered: "It depends on which side you stand. What a cop or a guard can understand doesn't make sense to a con or a suspect."

The P.K. said: "You guys were on the crew with Russ. One of you killed him."

Hanning said: "How did he die?"

A guard standing behind the five prisoners reached out with his swagger stick and whacked Hanning across the back. "Shut up."

"One of you knows how he croaked," the P.K. said. "It don't matter to the rest of you. I can throw the five of you into the Hole. But it's nice an' cool in the Hole now. So-" He turned to the guards. "I want five pairs of cuffs." He thought. "An' a piece of chain."

He was positively chuckling when the things were brought. "You guys like the boiler room so well, you're gonna see it. There was jungle juice in that boiler, there was a still. Having a good time, wasn't you?"

He had them handcuffed one to the other. The man at each end had one open cuff; the guard slipped a chain link over one of them, and then led the line of five, still naked, out of the office, down the stairs, across the exercise yard to the boiler room. The P.K. strolled along with them, his uniform coat open. He was whistling softly under his breath.

There was a guard on duty outside the boiler room this time. The word had gone out; the P.K. is in the yard. It wasn't a thing that happened very often; the screws were all on duty and at their posts. Some of them had even straightened their uniforms and tried to polish their badges.

The guard saluted, and the procession marched into the boiler room. There were cops, plain clothes and uniformed, from the State Police Force working around No. 4. The P.K. led his little show there and stopped.

He said: "You guys about through?"

A detective turned and grunted. "Nothing to find out here."

"Then scram."

The detective probably had a good deal of rank; he didn't seem to be used to that kind of talk. He said: "Huh?"

"Regulations say if there's a homicide in the prison, I gotta let you guys look it over. So you looked. Now I'm taking it over my way. I'll call you tonight, let you know who croaked Russ."

The detective turned a blue-eyed gaze on the five naked men. "What the h.e.l.l?"

"They're gonna talk. Probably only one or two of 'em did the killing. The others'll be glad to squeal before I get through with them."

"Stuff you get that way don't stand up in court."

"This is my pen. It'll stand up here."

The P.K. reached out, grabbed the loose end of the chain, pulled it. The con to whose cuff it went gave a little yelp as the cuff bit into his wrist. The P.K. said: "You guys make a circle around the boiler. No. 5 here. Face the boiler and stand a foot away from it." He turned to the detective. "You think I'm cruel, cap? A cruel guy wouldn't give 'em that foot. But me, I got all the time in the world."

Macalay found it was hard to force himself to step that close to the boiler side. A faint cherry glow came out of it. But the bite on his wrist was more immediate and he stepped in. The P.K. fastened the chain so they were pinned there, in a circle whose radius was just a foot more than that of the boiler rim.

The detective-captain said angrily: "I don't want to see this."

"Then don't look," the P.K. said. "Get back in your dolly-cart an' go tour the pretty scenery. You state cops give me a pain. Inside here, we know what these guys are. Rats, all of 'em. Punks. Mebbe they act nice an' pretty for you, but once that gate closes on 'em, they show up for what they are."

The captain was not visible to Macalay any more. He said: "All right, boys, the Warden doesn't seem to need us anymore."

There was the shuffle of men moving together. There was the snarl of the P.K.'s voice. "I'm not the Warden. I'm just the lousy Princ.i.p.al Keeper."

But the heat had started now. Sweat streamed down his front, into his eyes, into his mouth when he gasped. He shut his eyes tight, and red flames flickered against the eyelids.

His wrists hurt, and he had to brace himself. The men on the other side of the circle were pulling back, trying to get away from the cherry-glow of the boiler wall, and that meant they were pulling him in. He braced his naked, aching feet, and pulled back, and across the boiler one of the men shrieked. He didn't know which one.

Old Fitz was next to him. Macalay heard him mutter: "We gotta hold our own."

The boiler room floor was greasy, the puddle of sweat didn't help. But he braced himself, and leaned backwards.

Jock's voice on the other side of the boiler yelped: "Give us a little slack here. Hanning's touching the metal!" Macalay realized then that the scream he'd heard had never stopped. He let up on the pull a little, and the screaming stopped, broke off into a mumbled wail.

The sweat had stopped, he suddenly realized. Guess there's just so much in a man, and his was gone.

Now his head began to go around, and his eyeb.a.l.l.s began to swell. It was as though all the liquid left in his body had gone to his eyes. He was sure they would burst in a moment, and that seemed worse to him than dying. The picture of his eyes bursting, and their liquid spattering on the boiler wall and drying there became so real that he jerked back, and the scream came from the other side again.

He shook his head and came back to a sort of half-sanity, a limbo-land on the edge of reason. The P.K.'s gravelly voice came through to him: "All right, you lice. Anybody want to confess an' save four other guys' lives?"

He got no answer; perhaps he hadn't expected any. The voice deepened to a snarl: "All right. If you think I mind seeing the whole bunch of you shrivel up an' blow away, just keep your mouths shut. It don't matter to me."

The snarl went on. But Macalay had a new worry. Old Fitz on his left wrist had fainted. He fell forward, almost breaking Macalay's arm, and Macalay and Nosy, on either side of him, flipped him back, automatically, and held him there. The cuff bit through the skin and Macalay began to bleed. The blood running down his hand felt cool and nice.

Maybe I'll bleed to death and get out of this. Easy dough, Strane's kind, you can't take it along. Wouldn't it be nice to die, just to die?

A new noise cut over the P.K.'s growl. It was Nosy. "Got a guy pa.s.sed out, sir. He's breaking my arm."

"Fine," the P.K. said, "fine. So talk, and get outta the daisy chain."

"How can I talk ?" Nosy asked. "My arm's breaking."

"Let it break," the P.K. said. "Talk with your mouth."

"Go to h.e.l.l," said Nosy.

Through the fog of his pain, he heard the P.K.'s feet tramping towards him. Grit on the boiler room floor ground under those big feet, and they did it on a note high enough to cut piercingly through Macalay's head and add one more pain to a system that was nearly all pain now.

The P.K. had kicked Nosy up against the boiler.

Nosy screamed, and jerked back, and Hanning on the other side screamed, and then Hanning's scream turned into words. "Macalay," he yelled. "Macalay an' Jock was the last two in the boiler with him. They did it, Jock and Macalay."

"All right," the Princ.i.p.al Keeper said. "Open the chain, boys. Take Hanning and Fitz and Nosy to the hospital. Lay the other two out on the floor here and throw a bucket of water on 'em."

Macalay felt hands on him, but he couldn't be sure what they were doing. But he did feel cooler, and there was some sensation left in his back, because he could feel the filth of the floor biting into his skin.

"G'wan," the P.K. said. "Throw some water on 'em."

Another voice said: "Sir, those burns'll blister if you hit them with cold water."

"So? Let 'em blister."

"I thought the Princ.i.p.al Keeper wanted them for trial. Any jury'd let them off if they get blistered."

"Who's going to try them?" The Princ.i.p.al Keeper was laughing now. "There wasn't any fingerprints on that s.h.i.+v except Russ'; we'd never get a conviction. But if these crumbs had told me about Russ when it happened, the papers never would have printed that I'd let a guy escape. I want to teach these b.u.ms that they better keep clean with me. Throw some water on 'em and put 'em in the Hole. They gotta learn."

Macalay, for all his pain, laughed inside when he heard he was going to the Hole again. It was cool in the Hole, and this was summer. He could take it; he'd taken it before....

And once he'd been sorry for himself, just because he was in a detention cell in the city. Sorry for himself because he was lonely. That was why he had been so glad when Inspector Strane showed up.

Inspector Strane, William Martin Strane, was something in the Department; a man four years beyond the retirement age, the city council had had to pa.s.s a special law exempting him from retirement. Theoretically, Inspector Strane couldn't live forever; but the city, and the city's police, had no idea of what they would do when and if he died.

He didn't look like dying as he sat down on Macalay's bunk and stared at him from ice-colored eyes. He didn't seem to have much time to waste on words. "Macalay, you had no business being on duty that night."

Macalay knew the Inspector, from hearsay and personal knowledge. You didn't kid around with him. He said: "No, sir."

Strane said: "I want to brief you on your physical condition. Seems you're not aware of it. Your right arm's gone out four times in the last two months. You dislocated it wrestling at the Y, and the civilian doctor you went to hasn't been able to fix it."

"No, sir. No, he hasn't."

"You got a physical exam coming up next month. You wouldn't be able to pa.s.s it, even if you had the chance to take it." The Inspector reached his leg out and squashed a c.o.c.kroach under the sole of his high-laced kangaroo shoe.

Macalay said nothing.

"Hmph." Even the Inspector's grunt had an old-fas.h.i.+oned quality about it. "Some day you'll have to learn a trade. Clerk in an office or something."

Macalay s.h.i.+fted from one foot to the other. He didn't dare sit down until the Inspector asked him to.

"Listen, Macalay," the Inspector said. "Those jewels in your shoe weren't worth a million, but they were still worth a h.e.l.l of a lot. Even if they were gla.s.s, you'd still be on a spot. You know that."

All Macalay said was: "Yes, sir."

"The Jewelers a.s.sociation has posted a hundred thousand dollars reward for that gang, arrest and conviction. It's their sixth job."

He stopped, and Macalay waited. The Inspector pulled a narrow cigar out of his pocket and lit it. He half-closed his ice-cube eyes against the smoke. For a man with a reputation for bluntness, he was being surprisingly circuitous.

"That's a lot of money," Macalay said, to break the silence, wondering when Strane would get to the point.

"Yeah. Jewelers pay a lot of insurance. A gang like this raises the premium-y'know? These b.u.ms have heisted several million bucks' worth."

"You'd think they'd retire," Macalay said.

Inspector Strane stared at him, as though trying to figure out if this cop in a cell was trying to be funny. Finally, he concluded Macalay wasn't. He said: "b.u.ms never got enough money. Their friends blackmail 'em; their dames cost money; the fences rook them. I never knew one to die rich."

Macalay had no observations to make on b.u.ms and their money problems.

Inspector Strane let the silence build; then he nodded, as though pleased with the young man. "Okay," he said. "You got the picture. Signify anything to you?"

Macalay shook his head slightly.

"You've not got too much to choose from," Inspector Strane said. "So. Why not take on this case? The Jewelers' a.s.sociation's been talking to me. They want a man."

"Me?" Macalay laughed a non-funny laugh. "I'm sure as h.e.l.l not going to be around.

Inspector Strane crossed his legs and the bunk creaked. He took the thin cigar from his mouth. "Why'd you take those diamonds? No c.r.a.p now, Macalay."

"Like you said, Inspector: the doc told me I'd never pa.s.s another physical. They were right there for me to take. I'd just come to after being slugged and there they were. If I hadn't pa.s.sed out trying to get to Gresham, I'd have got away with those stones."

Strane came as close to smiling as he ever got. "We want the b.u.ms who have have been getting away with too d.a.m.n much." been getting away with too d.a.m.n much."

Macalay said: "And don't forget Gresham."

"You'd like to square things for him, wouldn't you?"

A silence hung between them. Strane wasn't getting to his point. Macalay figured he'd help him.

"You said something about a hundred thousand reward. That dough interests me."

"All right," Strane said, and then laid it on the line. He had given it to him like an itemized account. His offer and the alternatives, numbering them one to three, for definiteness as well as clarity: In return for information, Macalay would be sprung, his sentence whatever it might be, nullified. That plus the reward. If he failed, tough-Strane had no bargaining tools; he served his time. In either case, he ran the risk of a s.h.i.+v in his gut by a con. There was only one thing worse, to a con's way of thinking, than a cop ... and that was a double-crossing cop.

"Why go into the pen to crack this case?" Macalay wanted to know.

"We got no leads on the outside, that's why." Strane sounded annoyed. "Well?"

"A guy can live forever on a hundred grand. Live real well. His shoulder'll never bother him."

"You sound like I'm giving you a guarantee." Inspector Strane shook his head dolefully. "b.u.ms don't talk, remember that." It was his standard word for crooks. "Especially to cops."

"They talk to other b.u.ms," Macalay said.

"Hmph." The Inspector's grunt belittled Macalay's confidence. "And there's another thing to remember. We go on working on this case on the outside. We crack it before you, the deal's over. You understand?"

"I still like the sound of that big lump of dough."

Inspector Strane nodded. "I just hope you're tough enough. Once you start on this, you know, there's no out?" He spotted another c.o.c.kroach; his foot went for it and got it. "Write when you've got something to tell me. My first two names, William Martin. On second thought, make it Miss Billie Martin. Tell her you miss her. The box number is 1151, here at the Central Post Office. The b.u.m you're to get close to is a loft-man by the name of Russell. He's the brother of that safecracker who died right alongside of Gresham. That's about it."