Bannion went out to his car and drove to Wilks’ home, which was an unpretentious, two-storied house in the Northeast area of the city. The house was comfortably shabby, and blended nicely with its middle-class neighborhood. Wilks’ establishment in Maryland was considerably more elegant.
Wilks answered the door and greeted Bannion warmly.
“Come in, come in,” he said. “Nasty night, isn’t it? I was about ready to hit the hay when you called.” He took Bannion’s coat and hung it on an old-fashioned clothes tree in the hall. “How about a cup of coffee?” he said, ushering him into the warm, well-used living room.
“No thanks,” Bannion said. “I know it’s late, and I’ll be as quick as possible.”
Wilks laughed. “I’m always ready to sit up and talk. Here, take this chair, it’s about the only one that you’ll find comfortable.”
Wilks sat down facing Bannion and re-lit his pipe. There was an evening paper on the floor at his feet, and the radio, which was within reach of his hand, was playing soft music. “Nice night to be inside,” he said, when his pipe was drawing smoothly. “Now, what’s on your mind, Dave?”
“I talked with Parnell this evening,” Bannion said. “You know he’s working on Lucy Carroway’s murder.”
“Yes, of course.” Wilks looked interested, nothing more.
“He’s come across a lead, a rather slim one, but it bears out my theory about that job.”
Wilks took his pipe from his mouth. He said, “I don’t see how this concerns me, Dave.”
“Perhaps I can show’ you,” Bannion said. “Parnell has a line on a man who might be Biggie Burrows. A doctor living in Radnor passed a man answering Burrows’ description on the Pike the night she was murdered. The man wore a camel’s hair coat, was big, dark-complexioned, and had a prominent nose. The doctor passed him at about the spot where Lucy’s body was later found.”
“Considering that it was dark, this doctor has made a rather remarkable identification,” Wilks said. “Perhaps he even stopped and chatted with the man for a few’ minutes.”
Bannion smiled appreciatively. Wilks watched him for a few seconds, and then he smiled, too, but there was a puzzled look in his eyes. They sat in silence for an instant, smiling as if one of them had said something funny.
“Well, what’s the rest of it, Dave?” Wilks said, at last.
“Parnell tells me he checked with you on this,” Bannion said, pleasantly. “I had told him, you know, that I thought Lucy Carroway might fit somehow into Tom Deery’s suicide. He called Philadelphia Homicide to see if I’d turned up anything he could connect with this big-nosed man he’d learned was on the Pike. He did talk to you, didn’t he?”
“Why, yes, I believe he did,” Wilks said.
Bannion grinned. “He told me you said my theories were just a pipe dream.”
Wilks drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair, frowning at Bannion. They were silent for as long as thirty seconds, but Bannion was still smiling. Wilks looked at his fiddling fingers, coughed and folded his hands in his lap. “All right, I told him it was a pipe dream,” he said. “What about it?”
“Why, nothing, nothing at all,” Bannion said.
“Well, what do you want to see me about?” Wilks said, frowning now.
“I want to tell you what I told Parnell,” Bannion said.
“What did you tell him?” Wilks said, with an impatient edge on his voice.
“I told him you were right, that it was a pipe dream,” Bannion said. “I realize that now. Tom Deery, Big Burrows, just a whiff of smoke, Lieutenant. Lucy Carroway was killed by a sex fiend, probably, and the chances are a hundred to one against anyone ever nabbing that character now.”
“You told him it was a pipe dream,” Wilks said slowly.
Bannion said nothing. He nodded.
“What strikes me as a rather curious comment,” Wilks said. “Very smart, very intelligent, but still curious.”
“Coming from me it’s curious, you mean.”
“That’s what I mean, Dave. Perhaps we should have a drink and talk this over. I’d like to feel sure we understand each other.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“Excuse me.” Wilks returned shortly with a bottle of bonded Bourbon and two shot glasses. “I don’t think we need to bother with a chaser, eh?”
“Not with that kind of whiskey,” Bannion said.
“My feeling exactly.”
Bannion accepted a shot glass of whiskey and smiled at Wilks. “Here’s to sunnier days,” he said.
“Right,” Wilks said, raising his glass.
They drank and he refilled both glasses. He sat down, the drink beside him on a table, and re-lit his pipe. “Well, I’m surprised, I must say,” he said, watching Bannion with a little smile.
“You didn’t think I was that smart, eh?”
Wilks laughed. “Well, that’s putting it bluntly,” he said. His cheeks had reddened slightly with the liquor, and his pipe made a comfortable, popping noise in the still room.
“It takes some people longer than others to learn the score,” Bannion said.
“Why did you tell me this, Dave?” Wilks said, taking the pipe from his mouth.
“My reasons aren’t idealistic,” Bannion said. “I’ve got to live, that’s why. I’ve got a daughter to take care of, too, and neither of us can get by on temperament.” He shrugged. “I’ve got to work, Lieutenant. I thought of the private investigation field, since it’s about all I know. However, I wouldn’t get far without some police cooperation.”
“You would have cooperation,” Wilks said, picking up his drink. “You’ve got friends from the top to the bottom of the police department in this city. Good friends, Dave. But friendship is a give-and-take proposition. It can’t be one-sided. And friendship, the kind we’re talking about, is based on loyalty. I’ll tell you something: You could come back to the department tomorrow if you like. Or you can establish yourself as a private investigator. And in either case you’d have friends, friends who only want to be sure of your loyalty.”
“You might call Parnell, if you’re not sure,” Bannion said.
“I don’t need to do that,” Wilks said smiling. He lifted the bottle from the floor at his feet and poured two more drinks. “There’s a saying, ‘Once a cop always a cop’, and I put stock in it. You were in the business too long to forget that, Dave.” He frowned and shook his head slowly. “It was a rotten break about your wife, a dirty, rotten break. I don’t blame you for blowing your top about it.”
“I blew my top,” Bannion said. “That’s over.”
“It takes a big man to see it that way.”
“You have to live,” Bannion said.
Wilks studied him a moment, and a hard, pleased smile touched his lips. “I told you that once before, Dave,” he said. “I told you to throw your books of philosophy away. They’re full of rosy unrealities for college kids. You’ve learned more about life in the past three weeks, I think, than you have in the last three decades. You know now that you’ve got to make compromises.”
“Yes, I know that now,” Bannion said.
The hard smile left Wilks’ face. He shook his head. “This is almost funny, Dave. You know I never liked you. Does that surprise you?”
“Well, I always thought we got along all right,” Bannion said. There was an uncertain smile on his face, a puzzled little smile for Wilks’ benefit, but he was thinking: Yes, you hated me, and everything else in the world which proved that corruption wasn’t inevitable.
“No, I didn’t like you one damn bit,” Wilks said, putting down his empty glass. He was drifting into an expressive mood. “You were a little too pure for my taste, a little too sweet and innocent. And people like that get to be a nuisance, they get to be, well, critical.”