Call in the Feds. Gordon Landsborough
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had found; perhaps even Pedersen, on the quiet.
One of the interns came down the ambulance steps. He slipped off his rubber gloves slowly. He wasn’t hurrying at all now. Lanny strode across to him.
The intern said, casually, “You got a murder case on your hands, captain.”
“He died?”
“Just now.”
Lanny wheeled on Pedersen. “Your radio’s still okay?” Pedersen nodded. “Then get through to HQ. Tell them that Patrolman Kippax just died. They’ll know what to do.” Pedersen lingered. “The F.B.I.?”
“Sure. It’s a Federal offence to kill a cop in the United States. It’s now a job for G-men. We can get back to our job of tracking Pretty Boy.”
When Pedersen came back from radioing HQ, Lanny said. “Now, tell me what happened.”
Pedersen took off his hat and wiped the band. Lanny noticed how thin the sergeant was getting on top, though he was still in his early twenties. He said, “We got a radio call from HQ saying Pretty Boy was in town and for us to block the New York road. We were outside Marty’s Tavern, so it only took us half a minute to get here and pull across the road.
“Well, first car that comes along is some old boy who might have been pretty a long time back. Next, a black Pontiac came tooling round the bend. We weren’t ready for what happened. Suddenly it accelerated and drove straight into our car, then went back in reverse. We tried to stop it with a bullet in the tyres, but I guess we weren’t aiming too steady and it just went on. Then someone fired a gun from the back of the car and Kippax went down, screaming his guts out. The car turned, out of range, and went on back into Freshwater.”
He looked at the wrecked car. “We couldn’t do a thing. That wing’s crushed against the tyre and so we couldn’t use the car. And it was a couple of minutes before anyone else drove up. So I got through to HQ and reported the matter.”
“That’s one good thing,” said Lanny. “It didn’t wreck the radio. They’re pretty well trapped, now.”
The police maintenance wagon came screaming up just then, and Lanny went back to his car. Pedersen followed. He seemed to want to talk.
He said, “They won’t get away?”
Lanny shrugged. “I don’t see how. Thanks to Pretty Boy, every road out of town is watched, and so’s the pier, railroad, and airport. And Freshwater’s not such a big place.”
Pedersen stood with one foot on the front tyre. He was still wanting to talk. Lanny didn’t get in yet.
“Any idea who they might be?”
Lanny exploded, “Jesus Christ, what a question! They operate like New York gunnies, but we don’t have them around Freshwater that I know of.” Except Myrtle’s mob, he could have added, but didn’t.
“Maybe they’ve pulled some job in town and were on their way out?”
“Maybe. But we haven’t had word of any big job being pulled in the last hour or so,” returned Lanny. Then he said, exasperated again, “This is a day! Pretty Boy is seen in town, and within minutes someone goes and shoots a cop—a gang of gunnies!”
“You don’t think they’re connected?”
“I don’t. Pretty Boy’s no professional criminal. He’s got the killer lust, and he doesn’t kill prettily, at that. But you don’t get that kind running around with a bunch of hoods. No, this is coincidence, sergeant.”
And then he said, abruptly, “Now tell me what’s on your mind, Pedersen.”
Pedersen took his foot off the tyre, startled by the directness of the order. He was flustered, spoke defensively. “I don’t get you, captain—”
Lanny shoved his face close up to the sergeant’s. He was bigger than Pedersen, broader, dark-haired where the sergeant was blond; more aggressive in his manner...a more intelligent, more dangerous man.
He said, “You’ve been trying to say something for the last five minutes, Pedersen. Why don’t you come out with it? Think you might he talking out of turn?” There was a rasp of unpleasantness in his voice.
Pedersen suddenly looked him squarely in the eyes. “That’s it, captain. I’m goin’ to talk out of turn. Look, when I first started on patrol I used to get things given me. You know, parcels of fruit and meat and groceries, and lifts out to the races. We all get them, don’t we?”
Lanny nodded, his face hard. Pedersen squinted after the departing ambulance and said, “Of course the idea’s to soften us up in case there’s something a little bit wrong at times—if they park their cars where they shouldn’t, you know.”
Lanny got impatient. “Sure, sure, I know all that. And I know that after a time the presents get a bit bigger and you’ve to earn them. Like money from a bookie, or a softener from a ladies’ house, huh?”
Pedersen kept his eyes down the road. He said, “Sure, you know how it is. You don’t know how far you’ve gone until it’s got a bit late to do anything.”
Lanny said, “Now tell me what all this adds up to?” And then he knew he was speaking to an honest cop, even though he had taken softeners.
For Pedersen said, impatiently, “I know what I’ve done, and I’m prepared to take what comes for it. Not that I’ve got in deep. But I keep thinking, and I don’t reckon to a lot of no-goods and politicians running a police force. I’d like to see the place cleaned up. And I reckon you’re the man that can do it, and wants to do it after that Alastair Myrtle business.”
He looked round. No one was near. “I’ll give you a tip, captain. Watch your step. They know you’re dangerous, because you can’t be bought. But these grafters are making too much dough out of Freshwater, and they won’t let a police captain stand in the way. You’ll have to go, captain, and the grape vine says they’ve started moving in on you already.”
Lanny kept watching that fresh, pink face, and Pedersen all the time kept his eyes up the road.
He asked, “How do you know all this? And what do they intend to do?”
Pedersen shrugged. “There are whispers, that’s all. Nothing you can pin anyone down to, but they add up, all the same. Just things some of our no-good cops let fall when someone mentions your name. I guess a whole parcel of Freshwater cops is in Boss Myrtle’s pocket.”
“Yeah,” Lanny growled. “And don’t I know it.”
He was thinking of Alastair Myrtle, Boss Myrtle’s brother. Thinking of what happened less than a week ago.
He’d been cruising in a squad car with Sergeant Aubie Gillis and a couple of patrolmen down town. They’d seen a couple of big cars parked down the Waterway, and Lanny recognized the licence plate of one of them. Boss Myrtle’s own car.
The cars were so big, there was no room to pass, and Lanny had got out to find the drivers. They were in back of Jules Stedmann’s ramshackle old shop—Stedmann the gunsmith who had offered to supply arms to the newly-formed Freshwater Vigilance Committee. And they were beating the daylights out of him.
Jules wasn’t pretty, with his face bruised and puffy and leaking blood out of his nose and corners of his mouth. A couple of Boss Myrtle’s over-fed apes were holding him, while Alastair Myrtle worked on him with a piece of rubber.
He was beating old Jules across the face, and he wore his usual expression of grim good humour. He was a fine-built man, erect and military, with a big, handsome brown face, and a neatly waxed moustache; his clothes were sporty and the best that a New York tailor could supply.
Lanny came out with his gun, and Aubie Gillis and a patrolman who had followed in case someone had to be booked, came out with theirs, too.
Alastair Myrtle looked across with amusement and casually gave old Jules another