“More talk,” Carmody said, smiling unpleasantly. “Keep it up! Mr. Powell, tell them about right and wrong and the evil in the city’s scout packs. Myerdahl, come up with some stories of your early days as a cop. Talk your heads off, but for God’s sake don’t do anything.”
“I’d suggest you relax if I thought it would do any good,” Powell said pleasantly.
“You’re suspended!” Myerdahl shouted, leaping to his feet.
“You’re suspended, too,” Carmody said. “In a big tub of virtuous incompetence. Maybe that’s why I went crooked. Because I got tired of you good little people who can’t get anything done.”
He walked out and pulled the door shut behind him with an explosive bang.
State troopers had channeled all northbound traffic into one lane to by-pass the scene of the accident. The darkness was split by the red lights of squad cars parked on the grass off the highway. Carmody pulled up behind them and walked down to the gully where a fire-blackened convertible lay upside down, its wheels pointing grotesquely and helplessly at the sky. Men were working around it, measuring skid tracks, beginning the tests on brakes, wheel alignment, ignition system. A uniformed patrolman stood beside a small, blanket-covered figure on the ground. Carmody walked over to him and said, “Has the doctor gone?”
“Yes. He couldn’t do anything. What’s your business?” he added.
“Metropolitan police,” Carmody said opening his wallet. “I want to check an identification.”
“Sure, Sarge. Go ahead.”
Carmody knelt down and drew the blanket gently away from the small figure on the ground. He stared at her a moment, his face grim and hard in the flaring shadows thrown by the police lights. The fire, rather miraculously, hadn’t touched her face or hair. She must have crawled halfway out the window before the smoke and flame got her, he thought. For half a moment he stared at the frozen, inanimate pain on her face, at the leaves and twigs caught in her tangled blonde hair. He kept his eyes away from the rest of her body. You didn’t get back to show business, he thought. You just got murdered. He put the blanket over her face and got to his feet.
“Do you know what happened?” he asked the uniformed cop.
“I heard the talk,” the cop said respectfully; the look in Carmody’s face made him anxious to help. “She was alone in the car when the first motorist got to her and pulled her out. But nobody saw the crash. She lost control about fifty yards from the bridge, judging from the skid tracks. Then she barreled down here and tipped over.”
It was phony all the way, Carmody knew. Nancy had never been behind the wheel of a car in her life.
“She didn’t have much of a chance,” the cop said, and shook his head.
“Not a ghost.”
Carmody walked up the grade to his car. The single line of traffic passed him on his left, moving slowly despite the shouted orders from the troopers. Everyone wants a glimpse of tragedy, he thought, while faces peered out of the slowly moving cars, eager for the sounds and smells of disaster. Carmody looked down the hill at the blanket-draped figure on the ground, and then he slipped his car into gear and headed back to the city.
Half an hour later he rapped on the door of Beaumonte’s apartment. Footsteps sounded and Beaumonte, in his shirt-sleeves, opened the door, the big padded roll of his body swelling tightly against the waistband of his trousers. Without a jacket he didn’t look formidable; he was just another fat man in a silk shirt and loud suspenders.
“I’m in kind of a hurry, Mike,” he said, not moving aside. “What’s on your mind?”
The long room behind was empty and Carmody saw three pigskin bags in the middle of the floor. “You’re taking a trip?” he said.
“That’s right.” Beaumonte’s smile was a grudging concession which didn’t relieve the annoyance in his face. “I’m catching a plane in half an hour.”
“You asked me to find Nancy,” Carmody said. He walked into the room, forcing Beaumonte to step aside, and tossed his hat in a chair.
“Well, where is she?” Beaumonte asked him anxiously.
Carmody faced him with his hands on his hips. “She’s under a blanket, Dan. They pulled her out of a wreck on the Turnpike about an hour ago. She’s dead.”
“Dead?” Beaumonte stared at him incredulously. “No, you’re kidding,” he whispered. His face had turned white and his lips were beginning to tremble. “She can’t be dead,” he said, shaking his head quickly.
“I saw her. She burned to death.”
Beaumonte put both hands over his face and lurched blindly toward the sofa. He sat down, his body sprawling slackly on the cushions, and began to cry in a soft, anguished voice.
Carmody lit a cigarette and flipped the match toward the ashtray. He watched Beaumonte’s efforts to get himself under control with no expression at all on his face.
“I loved that girl,” Beaumonte said, in a choking voice. His eyes were closed but tears welled under the lids and coursed slowly down his white cheeks. “I loved her and she never looked at another guy. She was all mine. Where did it happen? Who was with her?”
“She was alone,” Carmody said.
It took several seconds for this to register. When it did, Beaumonte opened his eyes and struggled up to a sitting position. “She never drove, she couldn’t,” he said hoarsely. “What are you saying, Mike?”
“She was murdered,” Carmody said.
Beaumonte shook his head so quickly that tears were shaken from his fat cheeks. “Ackerman said he wouldn’t hurt her,” he cried in a rising voice. “He said he wouldn’t touch her.”
“And you believed him. Like I believed you when you said you’d give Eddie forty-eight hours.”
“Why did he kill her?” Beaumonte said, mumbling the words through his trembling lips. “He didn’t have to do that. I could have kept her quiet.”
“She was killed because she told me about Dobbs,” Carmody said coldly. “That’s going to hang Ackerman. And it may hang you, too, Dan.”
Beaumonte began to weep. “Mike, please. I been through enough.”
“You’ve put hundreds of people on the same rack,” Carmody said bitterly. “I could laugh at you if you were lying in hell with your back broken. Now get this: you and Ackerman are going down the drain and I helped pull the plug. I’m going with you, but that seems a fair price. You can sweat out the next six months in jail, or you can die right now. The choice is yours.”
“What do you mean?”
Carmody took out his revolver and shoved the barrel deep into Beaumonte’s wide stomach. “I want the name of the guy who killed my brother,” he said gently. “And his address.”
“Ackerman made the plans,” Beaumonte said, his voice going up in a squeal. “He got a guy named Joie Langley from Chicago.”
“Is he still in town?”
Beaumonte wet his lips as he stared into Carmody’s cold gray eyes. “Don’t shoot, Mike,” he whispered. “I’m talking. Langley’s staying in a rooming house on Broome Street. The address is 4842. Ackerman didn’t want him to leave while there was a witness who could finger him. If he couldn’t get rid of the witness, then he planned to get rid of Langley. Langley’s got no money at all, and he can’t move. He’s a bad kid, Mike.”
“I’ll make an angel out of him,” Carmody said, putting away his gun. “Now don’t move until I’m gone.”
When the door closed Beaumonte struggled to his feet, breathing heavily, his eyes glistening with tears. Sweat was streaming down his body, plastering his silk shirt to the slabs of flesh that armored his ribs. He walked around the room, wandering in a circle, occasionally moaning like a man goaded by an intense, recurring pain. Finally, he went to the telephone, lifted the receiver and dialed a number. Staring at the wall, he wet his lips and attempted desperately to get himself under control.