“What do you have on the girl?” he asked Dirksen.
“She works as a waitress in the coffee shop in the lobby. No folks in town. She lives in a boardinghouse on Elm Street with another girl. One of the waiters in the coffee shop remembers that Degget and she were pretty friendly. You know, he kidded around with her a lot.”
Carmody frowned and looked once more at the whiskey bottles. Two different brands, one bottle empty, the other full. He checked his watch. The State liquor stores had closed two hours ago; he was wondering where Degget had got the second bottle. It wasn’t likely that he had bought them both at the same time; if so, they would have been the same brand.
He glanced at Dirksen, who wet his lips. “Something wrong?” Dirksen asked, worried by Carmody’s expression.
“Call the bell captain and ask him if there was any service to this room tonight,” Carmody said.
Dirksen was on the phone a moment, and then looked over the receiver at Carmody. “No service, but somebody from here asked to see a bellhop.”
“They may have run out of booze and wanted another bottle,” Carmody said sharply. “Bellhops can find one for a price. Get the name of the boy who came up here, and find out if he’s still on duty.”
“Sure, sure.” Dirksen looked up from the phone a moment later. “It was a fellow named Ernie, but he’s not around. Do you think—”
“Get his address and send a car out there. And put him on the air. He can’t be far away. Take Degget in as a material witness but get this guy Ernie.”
“Right, Sarge.” With routine to absorb him, Dirksen was crisp and confident. Myers drifted over, looking puzzled. “What’s all this, Mike?”
“It was Jack the Ripper, really,” Carmody said, smiling coldly at him. “I spotted it right away.”
“What’s funny about it?” Myers said, irritation tightening his cautious mouth.
“Nothing at all,” Carmody said. “Actually, it’s pretty sad.”
“We got the man who—”
“No you haven’t,” Carmody said. “Not if my hunch is right. But Dirk can fill you in. I’ve got to be going.”
It was nearly midnight when he got to Beaumonte’s, and by then the night had turned clear and cool. Beaumonte opened the door and said, “Well, you and your brother must have had quite a talk.” He wore a crimson silk dressing gown and held a pumpkin-sized brandy snifter in one hand.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Carmody said. He strolled into the room and saw with a slight shock that Bill Ackerman was sitting in a deep chair beside the fireplace. The Delaney business was very big, he knew then. Nothing but high-priority operations could get Ackerman in from the country.
“Hello, Mike,” Ackerman said, smiling briefly at him.
Carmody smiled and said hello. There was another man sitting in a chair with his back to the window, a powerfully built young man with wide pale features and dull observant eyes. Carmody said hello to him, too. His name was Johnny Stark and he had been a highly touted heavyweight contender until something went wrong with his ears. He was slightly deaf, and worrying about it had stamped a solemn, surprised look on his face. Ackerman owned his contract when he was fighting, and had taken him on as bodyguard when the medical examiners barred him from the ring. Stark sat with his huge hands hanging between his legs, his fairly good ear cocked toward Ackerman and his dull eyes flicking around the room like those of an inquisitive dog. He mumbled his answer to Carmody’s greeting; this had become a habit since his hearing had gone bad. He was never sure what people said to him and he covered up with grunts and mumbles which could mean anything.
“Well, how’d it go?” Beaumonte said, easing himself into the sofa.
“The kid was sensible; he’ll cooperate,” Carmody said. This wasn’t a lie, he thought; he’d bring Eddie around some way.
“That’s just fine,” Beaumonte said, smiling at him. “I told you I didn’t want trouble.”
“There won’t be any.”
Ackerman stood and stretched leisurely, his hands stuck deep into his trouser pockets. Carmody didn’t know whether he had been listening or not; it was impossible to guess accurately about anything connected with Bill Ackerman. He was a tall man in his middle fifties, with the lean, disciplined body of a professional soldier.
There was nothing to be learned from his features, which were tanned and hard, nor from his eyes which were merely sharp black globes beneath bushy gray eyebrows. His hair was the color of well-used and well-kept silver, and he dressed like a banker in town and a rancher in the country. He was a cold, controlled man who emanated a quality of blunt, explosive power; there was none of Beaumonte’s phoniness in him. He lived in the country because he liked it there. The fact that it was pleasant for his wife and two daughters was simply coincidence. Had he wanted to live in the city, that’s where he would live. Ackerman was driven by cool, dispassionate greed; he wanted to expand and expand, consolidate his gains and expand again. There was no definite goal on the horizon; it was the struggle as well as the victory that pleased him. Greed dominated his life. His farms and stock paid for themselves and his foreman and hands admired his shrewd tough efficiency. Everything in Ackerman’s operations paid its way or was dropped. His world was money, and rivers of it flowed to him from handbooks and policy wheels throughout the state. More of it rolled in from his trucking and contracting firms, from fleets of cabs and packing houses. The money mounted faster and faster, and with a fraction of it he bought immunity from the law. Every cop he hired, every politician he subsidized, every judge he elevated became a prop to his empire, chained into place forever by guilt. No one got away from him; men were chattels, and he was as greedy for them as he was for money.
Carmody wasn’t afraid of Ackerman; but he wondered why he bothered to tell himself this so often. If there was anyone to fear in this deal, it was Ackerman. He had fought his way up in the rackets with cold and awful efficiency; he had begun in Chicago with Dion O’Bannion’s hoodlums, had run his own mob after repeal and had moved East to crash into the unions and the black market during the war. His past was marked with terror and violence but somehow he had come through it without being killed or jailed for life.
Now he stared at Carmody, his eyes narrowed under the bushy gray brows. “Your brother is a smart man, Mike. Runs in the family, I guess.”
Carmody felt a sharp surge of anger at that. But he said quietly, “He’s smart enough.”
“Specifically, he won’t identify Delaney at the trial. Is that right?”
“That’s the agreement.”
“What is it costing us?”
“Ten thousand. That’s what Beaumonte said.”
“It’s a fair price,” Ackerman said, rubbing his jaw. He didn’t like paying off; it wasn’t natural for money to flow the other way. “Probably more dough than he’s ever seen in one piece, eh?”
“Sure,” Carmody said.
Ackerman said casually, “I want to talk to him, Mike. Fix it up for tomorrow night.”
“Will that look good?” Carmody asked. He knew Ackerman had tried to jolt him, and that was ominous. It meant that Ackerman hadn’t believed him completely. He smiled coldly, his tough strength and brains responding to the challenge. “If you’re seen huddling with him before the trial it won’t look good when he double-crosses the D.A.”
“I said I want to talk to him,” Ackerman said, watching Carmody curiously. He looked more surprised than angry. There was never any discussion about his orders; he insisted on automatic compliance. “You bring him here tomorrow night. Let’s say ten o’clock. Got that?”
Beaumonte was watching them over the rim of his brandy snifter, and Johnny Stark had cocked his good ear anxiously toward the edge in Ackerman’s voice. The tension held in the long graceful room until Carmody dismissed it with a little shrug. “Sure, I’ve got it. Ten o’clock.”