The Second Half of the Double Feature, page 14
Mr. Malcolm needed the excuse of counting prisoners to get away from his desk several times a day. Most of the time we merely sat in the cramped little office, smoking and drinking coffee. We had tried to talk to each other at first, but neither of us was much for small talk. The trusty, “Mary Ellen” Wolgast, brought us coffee, cake, sandwiches, or ran errands, whenever we hollered for him, and the turnkeys, all of them well past middle age, needed no supervision.
The turnkeys were ex-police officers or ex-deputies. Obviously, Mr. Malcolm had selected them with great care. They were as silent and colorless as Mr. Malcolm himself. They did their work quietly, and treated the prisoners firmly but fairly. I snooped around a little, naturally, but none of the turnkeys was violating any of Mr. Malcolm’s rules. The prisoners who had money on the books were allowed to send out for cigarettes, candy, and restaurant meals, and the turnkey who made the outside trip charged the flat rate of fifty cents for every delivery, whether it was a pack of cigarettes or a hamburger.
After three weeks of sitting in the city jailer’s office doing nothing, I gained seven pounds. The following Monday morning I called on Chief Gar Carey in his office.
He grinned as I entered. “Morning, Bill. I expected to see you sooner or later.”
“This isn’t working out,” I said bitterly. “It’s worse than being a prisoner.”
He nodded. “I know it’s tough on an active man, Bill, just sitting over there. But you’ll simply have to sweat it out until things blow over. The public has a short memory, and after a year or so—”
“A year or so!”
“I’d say at least a year. But if you’re willing to wait it out, I’ll be able to get you a rehearing, and—”
I shook my head. “Gar, I can’t do it. If I sit in that office for a full year I’ll be as stir-simple as Mr. Malcolm.”
Gar shrugged. “Okay. You were officially cleared on the Craig and Brett shooting—”
“Craig only,” I quickly reminded him. “Brett died as the result of an automobile accident.”
He ignored my interruption. “—so you’re perfectly justified to resign from the force at any time. You aren’t quitting under fire, and if you want to leave I’ll give you an excellent recommendation if you want to work on another police force in some other city.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot,” I said dryly. “If I resign, what happens to my retirement?”
He raised his shaggy gray eyebrows in mock surprise. “You lose it, of course, as you very well know. You only get the half-retirement pittance when you’re forced out because of circumstances beyond your control, on a line of duty basis, naturally.”
“Fifteen good years down the drain, or another ten years sitting in the city jailer’s office. This is some choice to give a man with my proven ability.”
Gar’s face reddened. “I did you a favor, and you grabbed it because you damned well had to! Don’t come sniveling to me because you’re drawing six hundred bucks a month for sitting out your time.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Gar, and you don’t have any call to get hot at me, either. I just thought . . .”
“All right, then, face the facts. In another year, I can probably get you a rehearing and a reinstatement on your old job. If you’re turned down the first time, you’ll get back on active duty the second or third year. These things blow over eventually; you have to give them time.”
“Sure, Gar. I understand. Thanks for seeing me this morning, and thanks for the time.”
In the slow days that followed, my mind worked overtime in an effort to find a way out. But the restrictions imposed by the board, I soon learned, went beyond the simple denial of my carrying a pistol. I called the commandant of the police academy, volunteering to teach a course to police cadets. He was delighted. An hour later he called me back to tell me he was sorry, but he had a full complement of instructors and couldn’t use me after all. I got the idea. The board, as well as Chief Carey, wanted me out of sight and mind for the months it would take the public to forget about me; and they didn’t consider me a good example for rookie cops, either.
There was only one sure way out of my problem, and that was to become a hero. And the only way I could become a hero was to make a spectacular arrest of some kind without, of course, having a pistol or firing a shot. But the regulations were particularly strict in this area; any policeman who made an arrest when he was unarmed would be suspended immediately, and he would then meet a board to see if he had enough marbles in his head to be retained on the force.
Then I got stubborn. I decided to do my time just like any other prisoner with a long stretch, one day at a time.
To keep my mind from going dull, I worked the daily chess problem in the newspaper each morning, and studied the rest of the day in preparation for the annual exam coming up for lieutenant. I was eligible to take the exam, and the idea pleased me. If I made the highest score on the exam—and I had a good chance, with nothing to do but study all day—the promotion board would be shaken up when they had to refuse a promotion to the brightest member of the force, a highly trained police officer who was doing absolutely nothing for his monthly salary. The irony of the situation cheered me up considerably, and each morning I arrived at the office eager to hit the books.
This was about as far as I could go in making a break for myself without any outside help. But when the real break came, I very nearly missed it.
At nine thirty A.M. I told Mary Ellen, the trusty, to bring me a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee from the kitchen upstairs. Mr. Malcolm ordered black coffee only. I had figured out the final move on my chess board by the time Mary Ellen returned with the tray. Two bites later my teeth bit into a piece of paper. I pulled out the slip of paper and tossed it into my wastebasket, making a mental note to chew Mary Ellen out later for being so careless when he made my sandwich. Not until I had finished the sandwich and started on the coffee did I realize that Mary Ellen would not be likely to make a mistake of that nature. He was too neat to leave a piece of paper on the ham.
Watching Mr. Malcolm out of the corner of my eye, I dumped my ashtray into the wastebasket, retrieving the piece of paper at the same time. Holding it in my lap, I read the faintly printed message: SGT. HARTIGAN, IMPORTANT! MEET ME DOWNSTAIRS JOHN DURING 11 A.M. COUNT.
The note wasn’t signed, but it had to be from Mary Ellen Wolgast; he was the only prisoner excused from Mr. Malcolm’s count.
At five minutes to eleven, Mr. Malcolm and I left the office together. I headed down the corridor to the men’s room; he had his clipboard, and took the self-operated elevator upstairs to make his count. Wolgast was already in the latrine, swishing a damp mop over the vinyl-tiled floor.
“Intrigue, Mary Ellen?” I asked.
He didn’t smile; he was too frightened. Chewing nervously on his lip, he leaned the mop handle against the wall and, with difficulty, fished a folded twenty dollar bill out of his pocket. He handed the bill to me and said, “I’m in a jam, Sergeant Hartigan, a real jam.”
“This isn’t supposed to be a bribe, is it?” I grinned.
“No, sir. Not to you— to me; and I don’t want any part of it! Bert Gulick gave it to me to— to help him escape.” Close to tears, he ran his long fingers through his lank blond hair.
“Go ahead,” I encouraged him, “tell me about it. And don’t worry about Gulick finding out you told me.” I was interested, keenly interested.
Wolgast nodded, and his bulging Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively for more air. “I didn’t know what else to do. Bert Gunlock’s got a good plan worked out that will get him out of here tonight, but he couldn’t get away without my help. I don’t want to get involved and lose my good time. I only got forty days to go,” he whined.
“Get on with it,” I said impatiently.
“But if you catch him, he’ll beat me up. I know he will!”
“No,” I shook my head, “I guarantee you that he won’t touch you. That’s a promise.”
“I don’t have any choice, anyway. You know the corridor from the elevator to the back door of the kitchen on the second floor? After supper at night I usually get a volunteer to help me bring down the trays. If nobody volunteers I have to wash ‘em myself, but I usually get somebody because it gets a man away from the tank for an hour, and the cook always gives us a sandwich or something to take with us when we finish up. Anyway, the wire-mesh screen at the end of the corridor by the fire escape is only set in there with screws, and for the last three nights Bert Gunlock’s been helping me, loosening up the screws while we wait for the elevator. Tonight, when we come down, I’m supposed to tell the cook I couldn’t get any volunteer to help me. But Gulick’ll come down with me, take off the screen and go down the back fire escape. He’ll have at least an hour’s advantage, but they’ll know I had to lie and—”
“Never mind about that. You’re in the clear already. What time do you bring down the dirty trays?”
“Well, we bring them down on the cart about six, but it’ll only take Gulick a second to take out the screen and raise the window. The screws are just barely in there now.”
“Doesn’t a turnkey come down with you?”
“No. We’re checked out upstairs when we get in the elevator. Without the elevator key, the elevator won’t come down to the first floor; it’s locked and set only to go to the second, so nobody needs to go to the kitchen with us. The turnkey, Mr. Conroy, has the key, and he unlocks the elevator when the cook goes home at night.”
“Okay, Wolgast, I get the setup. And don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of things from now on. Just go ahead as you’ve planned it, and say nothing to Bert Gulick.” I unfolded the twenty. “This twenty, and another one just like it, will be put on the books for you to draw on.” I grinned. “If you spend a dollar a day, you can be flat broke when you’re released.”
“If Gulick ever finds out that I—”
“I told you not to worry. Your name won’t be mentioned. Just go ahead with it, and keep your mouth shut.”
At five o’clock I left the office, went to my car in the back lot, and got my pistol out of the glove compartment.
It felt nice and heavy in my hand. I smoked a cigarette, waved goodbye to Mr. Malcolm as he spluttered out of the lot on his ancient motorcycle, and looked through the windshield at the lovely darkening sky. It wouldn’t be completely dark until well after six but, thanks to a low overcast of purple rain clouds, dusk would be darker than it usually was at this time of the year.
There was more than one way for me to handle the situation. For publicity purposes it would be much better for me to apprehend Gulick in the act of escaping than it would be simply to plug up the escape route and prevent a “possible” breakout. After I picked Bert Gulick up at the bottom of the ladder, I could then march him around the front of the building and make a dramatic entrance with him. My picture would be in the morning newspapers. There would be a photo of me around back, pointing up at the fire escape and the raised window and, with luck, there might even be a posed shot of me holding my pistol on Gulick in the downstairs outer office. The fact that I had picked him up without shooting him would carry a lot of weight with the board.
I was quite pleased with myself when I took my position in the shadowy recessed delivery doorway beneath the back fire escape. I didn’t worry about Bert Gulick; he was a wife beater, not a strong-arm boy. Although he might be armed with a knife, he certainly didn’t have a gun. I hoped he had a knife; it would be that much better for me when I took it away from him.
I didn’t hear the noise of the screen being removed, but I heard the squeal of the tight window as he pushed it up. The rusty iron steps rattled and shook as Gulick backed down them as noiselessly as he could. I waited until he was midway between the second floor and the ground floor before stepping out of the dark doorway.
“Freeze, Gulick,” I said sharply. “This is Hartigan.”
He froze all right, not moving a muscle, with his back to me; and he was so frightened by my name that he clung there trembling and rattling the metal ladder. All I had to do now was to back him down a step at a time, put the cuffs on him, and march him around the building to the front entrance. With a spectacular arrest to my credit, I’d be back on my old job within a few weeks, doing what I wanted to do.
And what did I really want to do?
The realization hit me for the first time. I honestly hadn’t known it until this very minute. I wanted to shoot and kill men like Gulick; that’s what I really wanted to do! And with Bert Gulick as Number Six, I would be retired on a hundred and fifty a month for life. Why not Gulick? Why should I wait for someone else at a later date? Sooner or later I was going to get a sixth victim anyway. And because Gulick was my last free one, the last man I would be able to shoot legally before I lost my shooting license, my hand was never steadier as I squeezed the trigger.
A Matter of Taste
THE CAFE was called MOM’S, and it was about three blocks away from the downtown public library. I walked in and ordered a bowl of chile and a cup of coffee, black. There were eight stools at the counter, and a sign on the wall stating: WE CAN FEED 8,000,000 PEOPLE—8 AT A TIME.
My companions at the counter were an old hook-nosed man, wearing a filthy nylon windbreaker, and an equally old woman, who resembled Queen Mary. The cook-and-counterman was a thin, quick fellow with a glabrous skull, and quivering, mottled hands. He and the old man with the wind-breaker were apparently old friends, because they kept talking to each other all the time I was in there.
The cook said:
“There was a guy come in here Monday morning, said he just got out of jail. They’d kept him over the weekend, and didn’t feed him good. He ordered himself up a dozen scrambled eggs, four sides of ham, two bowls of grits and coffee. I just stood there lookin’ at him, of course, till he put a ten-spot down on the counter. Well, I fixed it all up for him, and he ate every bit of it. And to top it off, he drank down a quart of milk.”
“That’s the way it is,” said Hooknose. “No matter how much a man gets to eat in jail, the day he gets out he’s always hungry.”
“How’d you like a steady diet of swordfish?” I said.
The two men and the old lady looked at me.
“I got vagged once in L.A. back in the ‘thirties,” I continued, “and I was given three days in the Lincoln Heights jail. This was about the time that Zane Grey, the Western writer, was fishing off Catalina Island. He caught a bunch of swordfish and gave them all to the city, and for three days, morning, noon, and night, we ate nothing but boiled swordfish.”
“That must’ve been pretty rough,” the counterman said.
“They can’t arrest a man for vagrancy now,” Hooknose said. “It’s unconstitutional.”
“I know,” I said, “but they could then, and it was rough. I was lucky though, because I only had to eat swordfish for three days. Those other guys who were still in there had to eat it for about ten more days.”
The woman with the Queen Mary hat cleared her throat. “You would think,” she said, “that a brilliant writer like Zane Grey would have better sense than to give all that fish to prisoners.”
“I don’t know,” Hooknose said. “What with the depression and all, he probably thought he was doin’ a good deed. A lot of those rich guys who mean well just don’t use their heads. I remember one night— I dinged a guy in the street for some money. I wasn’t hungry or nothing, I just had a few friends coming over to my room that night and I wanted to get some more dough for gin. This guy insisted that I eat, and he took me into a restaurant and ordered me up a big meal. I ate it, all of it, but it danged near killed me. But I didn’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings, you see. He thought he was doin’ a ‘good deed.’ ”
“You did right to eat the meal,” I said.
“Hell, that’s all I could do.”
The old lady had finished eating now, and she lighted a Salem 100 Light. She waggled gloved fingers at the cook. “I don’t usually say this,” she said, “but that was the best hamburger I ever ate. In fact, I think that’s the first time I ever seen one fixed that way.”
The cook shrugged. “It’s easy. I just smear mayonnaise on the bun before I toast it on the grill. That’s what’s called ‘marination.’ All good cooks know how to do it, but most of 'em just don’t care.”
“All I know,” she said, “it sure makes a good hamburger.” She paid him and left.
After the door banged shut behind her, the cook laughed. “I sure wish I knew her name.”
“Why?” Hooknose asked.
“Because she’ll be back tomorrow or the next day askin’ for credit, that’s why. I never seen it to fail. If somebody says something nice to you, they want something. She’s gonna be fooled though, because I don’t give no credit. If I gave credit to everybody who asked for it, I’d be broke in a week.”
“Maybe she meant it,” Hooknose suggested.
“How long you think I been behind a counter? She either wants credit or she’s tryin’ to cover up something.” He was clearing away the old lady’s dirty dishes. “Here it is! She burnt a hole in this here plastic plate. See?” He showed the brown spot to Hooknose, and then to me.
“That’s it, all right,” Hooknose said, nodding. “She was tryin’ to pass it off by giving you a compliment.”
“Of course,” the cook said. “A hamburger is a hamburger. None of these people can fool me. I’ve been in this racket too long.” He took my empty bowl. “Want some more coffee?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “How much do I owe you?”
“A dollar for the chile, a quarter for the coffee, plus tax. . .”
I paid him, and headed for the door. He called to me. “How was the chile?”
“I’ve had better,” I said, “and a hellova lot cheaper.” I started down the street toward the library. I had decided to look up the definition of “marination.”
