“I don’t know, Tim,” he said. “There just isn’t anywhere to go. We figured out where the killer shot from — figuring the angle the bullet went into the body — and it was the roof of that movie theater across the street from the diner. We went up there and looked around, but there wasn’t a thing. Not even a used cartridge. He must have taken it with him. Sometimes, you can get a good fingerprint from the base of a cartridge. Where the guy pushes it into the gun.” That part had come straight from his police academy training. “But there just wasn’t anything up there,” he finished.
“How did he get on top of the movie?”
“Fire escape in back. He must have come down the next block over, Morton Street. There’s a short alley leading to the back of the theater, where the fire escape is. He went up that and onto the roof. There’s a fake wall in the front of the theater, sticks up about five feet above the roof. So he just steadied his arm on that, and fired. Then he went back down the fire escape and drove away.”
“We know how,” I said, “and we know why. Now all we need is who.”
He gave me a wan smile. “That’s the tough part,” he said. “It usually is.”
“I’d like to work with you on this thing, Hal,” I said. “We keep in touch, tell each other anything we find out.”
“You aren’t going to do something like these private detectives in books, are you? I mean, you aren’t trying to catch him yourself so you can shoot him or anything?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “I like my license too much for that. We find him, and you put him behind bars, and then he can’t shoot at me any more. That’s all I want.”
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll work together. But I don’t know what we’re going to work on. I don’t have a thing.”
“Something will break,” I told him.
“I hope so.”
“Mind if I use your phone?” I asked him.
“Go right ahead.”
I called Cathy, at City Hall. I’d just remembered I was supposed to go over to her place for dinner, so I told her to hang around for a while, and I’d pick her up and drive her home. Then I thanked Hal for talking things over with me, and we assured each other something would turn up.
Driving back through the sad community of Hillview toward town, I thought again about Ron Lascow’s little scheme, and I had the idea it would be a good thing if Ron came out here and looked at the people he was about to put the squeeze on. It might change his mind. I knew right now it was simply an abstraction on paper for him, something clever and intricate he’d worked out, and that he was proud of because it was clever and intricate and he had worked it out.
That’s the trouble with kids like Ron. They see the beauty of a clever plan, but they never see the people. I decided that was going to have to be my good deed of the day some day soon. Bring Ron Lascow out here and rub his nose in Hillview a little. It would be good for him.
Twelve
George Watkins, the world’s fattest DA, hailed me in the corridor at City Hall. I turned and waited, and he came puffing toward me at a half-trot, his bald head gleaming beneath the overhead globes. “You got a minute, Tim?” he panted, when he reached me.
I checked my watch. It was almost five-thirty, and Cathy was supposed to be finished work at five. “A minute,” I said. “But not much more.”
“This won’t take long,” he promised. “Come on into my office.”
He led the way, going at a more sensible pace this time, and I fell in beside him. His secretary had gone from the outer office, and he led me through and inside, where he motioned me to sit down and himself settled gratefully behind his desk.
I noticed a thick sheaf of papers on his desk, bound in maroon cloth, a title stamped on the cloth in gold. “New play?” I asked him.
He nodded happily. “Got it in the mail yesterday,” he said. “They want me to put some of the money up.”
“Will you?”
“I think so.” He patted the manuscript fondly. “Looks like a real hit to me,” he said.
I leaned forward and read the title upside down. A Sound of Distant Drums. If it was a hit, it would be George’s first. “Good luck,” I said.
“Thanks.” He became suddenly businesslike. “I won’t beat around the bush, Tim,” he said. “It’s about this CCG thing.”
“I’d guessed that part of it,” I told him.
“Now, the CCG,” he said, “is a political outfit, just like any other. Take it from me. All they want is a reputation, to be able to say they’ve cleaned up this town and that town and the other town. But they’ve got ambitions, you can count on it. I don’t know what, whether they’re trying for Albany or New York City or the whole state or what, but they’ve got a purpose behind all this.”
Judging from Masetti, their purpose was pretty virginal, but I nodded anyway, to help him get to the point.
“The way I see it,” he said, “they’re going to be wanting friends later on. Once they’ve got their reputation made, and they’re ready to make their move, they’ll want friends. And that means,” he concluded triumphantly, “that they’ll make a deal.”
That one caught me off guard. “A deal?”
“Of course. We make it easy for them, give them their scandal on a silver platter, and then they make it easy for us.”
“That sounds like desperation talking, George,” I said.
“The hell it is. Tim, look. No outfit could be as efficient and tough-minded and politically aware as the CCG and be totally clean.”
“Is this what you and Myron Stoneman were arguing about at the meeting?”
“Myron,” he said disgustedly, and made a brushing-away motion. “They’ll make a deal, I’m sure of it.”
I shrugged. “So be sure of it.”
“Now here’s the thing,” he said. “We can’t risk having an elected official seen talking with anybody from the CCG, so there’s the problem of who’s going to suggest the deal. We want you, Tim. You’re safe. You can make the suggestion, and even if they turn it down they can’t touch you. You aren’t an official.”
“What’s the deal?” I asked him.
“You’ll do it?”
I wouldn’t, but I was holding back the refusal till I got the story. “First tell me what the deal is,” I said.
“We give them one man,” he told me. “One man to raise a stink about.”
“Who?”
He looked doubtful, and hedged. “We aren’t one hundred per cent sure yet, Tim.” Which was a lie. They were sure, but they wanted an out in case I was loudly opposed to their choice.
“Who do you think?” I insisted.
“Jack Wycza.”
Jack Wycza. City Councilman from the Fourth Ward, over in Hunkytown on the North Side, where the factory workers from Amalgamated Machine Parts all lived. His cousin Gar was the traffic cop I’d been exchanging grins with all day. His other cousin Dan was one of the cops who’d come out to the diner last night after the shooting.
The thing was, Wycza was an independent force up there in Hunkytown, free of City Hall and unpredictable. If somebody had to be thrown to the wolves, he was the natural choice. He was a Councilman, which was enough for a good-sized scandal on the local level. And he was a thorn in the side of the City Hall regulars, because he was a free agent. And, last but not least, he was kept out of the general monkeyshines, so he couldn’t return the favor by hollering on anybody else.
It wouldn’t be hard to nail Jack Wycza, either. Within his own ward, he’d broken almost any law you’ve ever heard of. Every last one of his relatives was drawing a city salary. He got pay-offs and kickbacks and protection money all over the ward. He ran his own horse-room on Miller Street. He was very, very nailable.
“What do you think, Tim?” George asked me.