CHAPTER NINE

Friday—4:30 P.M.

Hector Lionel Blount had been picked up in the most mundane manner imaginable.

A third-grade detective, Dave Feinberg, off duty and on his way home to his wife, had the misfortune to discover he was out of cigarettes while he stood at a street corner waiting for a bus. He had been reading the afternoon paper, folded over New York fashion to enable one hand to do the job, and had unconsciously reached into his pocket with the other for a cigarette, and encountered nothing. He stopped and thought. Places to obtain cigarettes were plentiful here, but if he caught his bus and went home, he would either have to walk three blocks to a candy store—a block and a half each way from the closest bus stop—or have to make do with a pipe until morning, which was unthinkable. Not to mention the fact that his wife, who had been nagging him for months to give up smoking, would jump at the opportunity to tell him that since he had no cigarettes on hand, the perfect hour for giving up the filthy habit had arrived.…

On the other hand, if he ducked into a bar here to buy cigarettes, he stood an excellent chance of missing his bus, and it would be at least fifteen minutes more until another one marked for his destination came along. It was a hard decision, and unluckily for Blount, Dave Feinberg decided in favor of chancing the missing of his bus. He calculated that the editorials he had been reading, together with the obituaries, would occupy a large part of the fifteen minutes even if he did miss the bus.

Third-grade Detective Feinberg, therefore, tucked his newspaper under his arm, checked his change to see if he had the requirements of the machine he knew was within, and walked into the nearest bar. The cigarette machine was in the rear, standing flat-footedly as a modest barrier between the Men’s and the Ladies’, and he made his way back through the gloom, his fingers automatically separating coins in his pocket.

Blount was sitting in the third booth to the right, and Detective Feinberg—from a habit that was so ingrained that he did it without conscious thought—stared at the faces he passed as he walked to the rear. He came to the machine, dug out a quarter and a dime, and then froze. He laid his newspaper carefully on top of the cigarette machine, loosened his topcoat to allow free play for any necessary action, and slowly retraced his steps.

At the third booth, which was now on his left, he swung in. There was a service revolver in one hand as he confronted the startled man sitting there with a beer in his hand. Detective Feinberg’s other hand held a pair of handcuffs. Blount had gone white at the confrontation, but he came quietly enough. It took a moment to convince the other customers, as well as the owner, that this was indeed a legitimate arrest; and then Blount was on his way.

A search of the wanted man while they were waiting for the patrol car disclosed a gun, but it might as well have been a pretzel for all the good it had done him. A pretzel, as a matter of fact, would have proven much more useful, because it was actually many hours before anyone got around to offering Blount any food.…

Friday—5:05 P.M.

The main hallway of the Centre Street Headquarters was in confusion as Clancy and Captain Wise pushed through the heavy doors and entered. Newspapermen were milling about; they immediately attempted to block Captain Wise’s path, but the heavy-set captain shouldered his way past them to the desk, bent over, and got the information he wanted regarding the location of the interrogation room. He motioned to Clancy with his head and the two men turned down a corridor, the newspapermen strung out behind. A familiar face suddenly appeared before Clancy; he stopped, dragging Captain Wise back with one hand, and faced the man. His voice was harsh.

“Quinleven! What are you doing here?”

Quinleven jerked his head. “I’m still covering our boy.…”

Clancy swung around; Roy Kirkwood was pushing his way through the crowd at the door of the interrogation room. Clancy’s jaw hardened; he jammed his way through the mob, grasping Kirkwood by the arm and jerking in no easy manner. The other turned, mouth open, but Clancy manhandled him away from the group and into a relatively quiet haven against one wall.

“Kirkwood—what do you think you’re doing?”

“They got Blount in there,” Kirkwood said, his voice deadly. “He’ll know where Cervera is. I want to go in there and talk to him.” He took a deep breath, bringing himself under control, trying to speak easily. “After all, Clancy, I’m from the D.A.’s office.”

“You know better than that,” Clancy said. “The D.A. will be in on it soon enough.…”

Kirkwood dropped the pose. “Let me talk to him,” he said, his voice chilling in its intensity. “I’ll make him tell where Cervera is.…”

Clancy looked down the hall. A few feet below them a door led to an office. Still holding Kirkwood tightly by the arm Clancy marched to the door and swung it open. He drew Kirkwood inside; Quinleven and Captain Wise, both puzzled, followed. Clancy closed the door and looked around; two patrolmen, working at desks, looked up in surprise at the intrusion; then, recognizing their visitors they sat back, watching the scene with curiosity.

Clancy swung Kirkwood around, stepped close, and ran his hands with expert speed over the other’s body. He reached into Kirkwood’s jacket pocket, extracted a revolver, and slipped it into his own.

“You’re not very smart, are you, Roy?”

Kirkwood’s face darkened ominously. “That gun’s mine. I have a license for it.”

“And I have a license to take it away from you,” Clancy said coldly. He turned to Quinleven. “He stays right here, see? Until we get through in there. Is that understood?”

Quinleven nodded, his eyes clear and icy. “He’ll be here when you want him, Lieutenant.”

“Fine,” Clancy said. He turned to Captain Wise who had been watching the scene with a frown. “Come on, Sam—we’re missing the show.…”

They walked from the office, closing the door behind them, and crossed the hall to the interrogation room. The patrolman on the outside of the room opened the door for them and they slipped inside; a flashbulb exploded behind them as the door swung shut.

They entered to face a tableau: Blount was sitting on a hard chair in the middle of the room, Inspector Clayton was lounging easily on the corner of a desk facing him. Feinberg, the arresting officer, and Lieutenant Bill Lundberg of the Bomb Squad stood along one wall, eschewing the chairs there. A uniformed patrolman moved back across the doorway as the two men entered. Seated in an armchair on the far side of the desk was a stenotypist, his machine set on its spindly legs before him.

Clancy’s eyes went to the criminal. He was a man in his early forties, Clancy judged, with a rocklike face, heavily lined between the nostrils and the ends of his thin lips, and with a widow’s peak of dark hair beginning to gray at the temples. His shirt collar was open; the tendons in his neck stood out; a strong and tough boy, Clancy calculated.

Captain Wise laid his topcoat on a chair and moved forward to stand beside the inspector.

“What’s he got to say for himself?”

Inspector Clayton’s eyes never left the rigid face of the seated man. “He doesn’t know a thing. Not a thing.” He directed his next words to the sullen mask of the prisoner’s face. “Let’s try it all over again. Where’s Cervera?”

Blount looked at him with a poker face. “I don’t have no idea.”

“Who engineered the breakout?”

“I don’t have no idea.”

“You don’t know?” The inspector’s voice indicated his complete surprise. “You mean you just happened to be passing by at the time and thought you’d join in just for fun?”

“That’s right,” Blount said with no expression at all. “I was just passing by and I figured I’d join in for the fun of it.”

Captain Wise bent down. He stared at the tough-looking face with a face that was twice as tough-looking. “How would you like to get a fistful of knuckles right across that fat, smart lip of yours?”

Blount’s expression didn’t change in any way. Nor did he answer. He stared at Captain Wise a moment and then moved his eyes back to Inspector Clayton’s face.

Inspector Clayton sighed and then nodded. “You know that Hughes, the cop you blasted up in Ossining, is dead, don’t you? You know what that means, Blount. Even if the other killings in this thing couldn’t be pinned on you, that one is enough. You’re going to the electric chair, and you know it. Why not spill? Where’s Lenny Cervera?”

“I don’t have no idea.”

Lundberg pushed himself away from the wall and walked over, getting into the act. “How long you been in the city, Blount?”

Blount stared at him. “Long enough.”

“What did you come down here for? Little dangerous for you, wasn’t it? With all those woods north of Albany, clear up to Canada?”

Blount sneered. “I come because I wanted to see the Yanks play a night game.”

Lundberg nodded. “I see. And between watching the Yanks, have you been messing around with dynamite lately?”

“Dynamite?” Blount’s face returned to its complete immobility. “I never messed around with dynamite.”

“No? How about that time you wired that automobile up in Troy?”

“That was a bum rap.”

“And how about that bank you blew up in Glens Falls?”

“That wasn’t dyna … That was a bum rap, too.”

Captain Wise bent over him again, his face reddening with anger. “How would you like a bum rap right across that nose of yours?”

“That’s right,” Lundberg said. He leaned over, a faint smile on his hard face. “You think you’re tough? You don’t know the captain here. Or me.” He straightened up, opening and closing a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt. “You’re going to the electric chair and you know it. But there’s no law says you got to walk there. They can carry you, too, even if you got a couple of broken legs. They can shave your head for the electrode, too, even if maybe the razor blade nicks a couple of scalp lacerations.…”

Blount stared at him. He took a deep breath.

“I’m going to the chair and I know it,” he said harshly. “But you ain’t going to make me talk first, no matter what you do.” He almost sneered. “You think I never got worked over, you don’t know the guards up there in the hole.…”

There was a knock on the door and a patrolman put his head in. He looked around the room, taking in the tense figures, and then settled his eyes on Inspector Clayton. “Mr. Wells,” he said. “He’s in your office.”

Inspector Clayton looked at Clancy. Clancy shrugged.

“Tell him to wait,” Inspector Clayton said. “We’ll be tied up here for a while longer.”

The patrolman nodded and was about to withdraw when Clancy suddenly snapped his fingers. “Hold it a second,” Clancy said. He thought a minute. “Wells is a lawyer, isn’t he? Get him in here. I think I know how we can get our tough friend here to talk.”

“Roy Kirkwood’s a lawyer, too,” Captain Wise said.

“Not Kirkwood. That’s definite,” Clancy said. “Wells will do fine.”

The patrolman looked at the inspector for confirmation, received it in a nod, and disappeared. The group in the room waited in silence; both Inspector Clayton and Captain Wise were watching Clancy, but his thin face revealed nothing. The door opened again and John Wells entered. He stared about, and then nodded at Clancy.

Clancy smiled at him. “Hello, Mr. Wells. This is Inspector Clayton, Captain Wise, Lieutenant Lundberg.…” He paused at the unknown face of the arresting officer.

“Feinberg,” the third-grade said, and nodded. Clancy turned back to the lawyer.

“And this is Blount. You can help us out in this, Mr. Wells. I want you to tell Blount here some of the finer points of the law.”

“Certainly.” Wells shrugged in nonunderstanding. “What points of the law?”

“You’ll see in a minute,” Clancy said. He turned to the seated man who was watching him now very warily. He pushed his hat back on his head, and stood before Blount, looking at him quite calmly.

“All right, Blount,” Clancy said quietly, “see if you can answer this question—how much money did your wife give you when you were together with her in the cab?”

Blount stared at him a moment and then almost sneered. “Why? You want a rake-off, copper? That’s your tough luck—I already spent it.”

“How much was it?” Clancy persisted. “One dollar? Ten dollars? One hundred dollars?”

Blount frowned. He couldn’t understand the reason for the question and it bothered him. “It was damn little. Why?”

“Because she’s going to pull down a minimum of twenty years in prison for it,” Clancy said softly.

“Twenty years? Save the bull, copper!”

“It’s no bull,” Clancy said easily. “You can ask Mr. Wells, here. He’s a lawyer.”

“And why should I believe him?”

“He has no connection with the police,” Clancy said. “And he’s a member of the Parole Board. He won’t lie to you.”

Blount thought for a moment. “What’s this twenty-year crap? Twenty years for what?”

“For being an accessory to a murder charge. And when I say twenty, I’m putting it on the low side.”

Blount scowled. “What do you mean, accessory? She didn’t have nothing to do with any of it.”

“She gave you money,” Clancy said quietly. “And she gave it to you knowing you were an escapee. She was aiding the escape of a man where a cop was killed. She’s cooked, but good. And you can ask Mr. Wells if you don’t believe me.”

Blount swung his eyes to the tall man standing at Clancy’s side. Wells nodded. “Lieutenant Clancy is telling you the truth. Accessory to a murder is a very serious charge, especially in the case where the crime was compounded by aiding an escapee.”

Blount leaned back, his face rigid. “She never give me a dime.”

“You just got through telling us she did,” Clancy pointed out. “And we have a signed affadavit from the cab driver that also says she did. You tell me who you think the jury is going to believe.”

Blount exploded. “Well, she’s my wife, damn it! What do you think she’d do?”

“I don’t think about it at all,” Clancy said. “I’m just telling you that if we want, we can build up a solid case against her that will send her up for a long, long time.”

Blount absorbed this slowly; his frown increased. “If you want?” He paused, wetting his lips nervously, listening to Clancy’s words again in his mind. “What are you driving at, copper?”

Clancy turned to John Wells. “You tell him.”

Wells nodded and looked down at the seated man. “Lieutenant Clancy is saying that if you co-operate with the police and answer their questions, they’ll take this fact under consideration when the question of your wife’s culpability comes up.”

Blount swung to Clancy. “This guy talks too fancy. What are you trying to say? If I spill she gets off?”

“I won’t promise that she gets off,” Clancy said. “But she stands a lot better chance of getting off. And I’ll tell you this, Blount—” He bent down, shoving his face into the other’s, his eyes suddenly blazing with a wild fierceness that did not admit of doubt. “—if you don’t answer our questions and answer them truthfully, I swear on my mother’s name I’ll do everything in my power to see that your wife gets the limit!”

Blount wet his lips. His eyes swung back to the lawyer. “How do I know I can trust you guys? I know I’m going to fry. After I’m dead, how do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“Lieutenant Clancy will keep his word,” Wells said. “He has nothing to gain by persecuting your wife.”

“Besides which you have to trust me,” Clancy said brutally, “because you know what’ll happen to your wife if you don’t come clean.…”

There was a few minutes of silence as Blount sat squinting in deep thought. The other men in the room waited quietly, not moving, not wishing to break the spell that was fixing itself upon the doomed man. At last he leaned back in his chair, staring at Clancy, his lips working in and out silently. When he spoke it was in a dead, harsh voice.

“You got a deal.… What do you want to know?”

The other men in the room remained fixed, not showing in any way their relief. Clancy swallowed a sigh of triumph, speaking in an even tone of voice. “First of all, who engineered the breakout?”

Blount scowled unhappily. “I was afraid you was going to stick to that one. You ain’t going to believe me.…”

“Try me,” Clancy said invitingly.

“All right,” Blount said wearily. “I don’t know, and that’s the truth. This guard come to me with the proposition. I figured it was a setup for the brass up there to get me, but good—all I ever had from them was grief since I went up. So I told him to stuff it. But then Marcus comes and tells me the break is on the up and up, and that the guard is on the take and is O.K. He says the thing is set for the three of us, and the third one was Williams. I knew Williams; he was one of the few straight guys up there, and I talked to him, and after that I cut myself in.”

“How about Cervera?”

“I cut him in, too. Him and me worked together up there in the commissary. The deal was set to go out from the commissary, so they needed me, but I told them either Lenny goes with us, or count me out. Me and Lenny was pals, and I don’t let my pals down.”

Clancy stared at him. “Why would Lenny go out with you guys when he was so close to parole?”

Blount almost sneered. “You ain’t never been in, have you, copper? Lenny still had six-eight-months’ minimum, and that may sound like a weekend to you, but to a guy who’s already practically stir bugs, it’s ten lifetimes.” He leaned back, thinking, and then shrugged. “And another thing—he knew if we went out through the commissary and left him behind, he could forget all about his parole unless he talked, and Lenny wouldn’t rat. So it wasn’t so simple, like you think. Plus he’d get the hole, plus a fat lip, plus all the rest of the things those bastards up there can dream up to make a guy spill, or wish he never was born!”

Clancy nodded. “You make it sound convincing. But you don’t know who arranged the break?”

“I don’t. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”

“All right, let’s forget that for the time being. Let’s get on. Where is Lenny Cervera now?”

Blount shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Yesterday morning. I … I had a package for him.…”

“A book?”

Blount’s jaw tightened. “Yeah, a book.” He looked up. “Look, I’m telling you all this, copper, because you promised—”

“Just keep telling it,” Clancy said. “You’re doing fine. What’s the story about the book?” He paused. “Or better yet, take the whole thing from the beginning, when you two ducked out of that truck.”

Blount wrinkled his forehead; he seemed to be wondering whether his confession was going to help his wife or simply put her in worse trouble for being married to him. Across the desk from him the stenotypist paused, fingers poised over the keys, waiting.

“Well,” Blount said at last, “as soon as we changed clothes we ducked out of the truck. Cholly pulled around this corner Marcus pointed out to him and we jumped out and into a car that was parked there—”

“Who parked it there?”

Blount shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Marcus said there was two cars, one for us and another one for him and Cholly further along. Anyway this car was there and Marcus pointed it out to us and the keys were in it and we got out of there in a hurry.…”

“What kind of a car was it?”

“I don’t know. Big and black, a couple of years old, I guess. The kind of car nobody ever takes a second look at. I don’t know what kind. I don’t know nothing about cars.”

“Except to wire them with grenades,” Lundberg could not help but say.

Blount disregarded this. “Anyway, Lenny was driving. He swung around and headed out of town on the north and he dropped me just outside Peekskill near the railway yards. He said he was going the long way around to the city, over to the other side of the river, then down through Jersey, and then back to the city from the south, from Staten Island. He gives me this number to call when I get down here.…”

“What was the number?” Clancy asked.

Blount shook his head stubbornly. “Pick a number—I’ll go along with it. The number didn’t have nothing to do with me or Lenny. I ain’t putting nobody else on the spot. Hell, you’re getting your money’s worth.…”

“Forget the number for now,” Clancy said. “Keep going.”

Blount took a deep breath. “Well, when I come to town—finally—I called and got hold of Lenny and he sets up a meet, and he’s got a couple of sticks he picked up someplace and he wants me to fix them up this way like Phil Marcus showed us, and I did.…”

“Where was Lenny hanging out then?”

“I don’t know. He set the meet up in a bar.”

“Which bar?”

“Pick a bar, too,” Blount said. “I’ll go along.…”

“All right,” Clancy said. “He isn’t holed up in a bar, I’m sure. Let’s go on.”

“Well, that’s about all. Yesterday I give him the setup and that’s the last I seen of him.”

“Did you arrange another meet for today?”

Blount looked at him curiously. “We didn’t, but even if we had, do you think he’d show after every paper in town has the story of me being picked up?”

Inspector Clayton bent over. “Did you knock off the guard who set up the breakout?”

Blount looked startled. “Me …? No.” He thought a moment. “Maybe it was Lenny.…”

Clancy came back into the interrogation. “When you first saw Lenny here in New York, did he say anything about his knocking off his girl friend?”

“She ratted on him,” Blount said. “What do you think? He was going to buy her diamonds?”

There was a few minutes’ silence. Inspector Clayton looked over from his position on the desk and spoke quietly. “And that’s that.… You say you don’t have any idea where Cervera is now?”

“Far away from here, is my guess,” Blount said. “He didn’t give me no timetables.”

“Gone? Without finishing up on me and Mr. Kirkwood?” Clancy sounded as if he were surprised.

Blount shrugged. “The one he really hated was this Judge Kiele. All the time up there he kept talking about how he was going to get him once he got out.…”

John Wells had been absorbing the confession slowly. It finally seemed to get through to him. “You mean you made the bomb that killed Judge Kiele?”

Blount looked at him evenly. “I fixed up a book for my pal Lenny. I didn’t ask him what he was going to do with it.” For the first time a faint smile twisted the lined face. “One thing I guarantee is that he wasn’t going to read it.”

“But you’re the one who made the bomb.…”

Inspector Clayton looked at him. “What’s your point, Mr. Wells?”

Wells shook his head in a dazed fashion. “My wife is in a state of shock, just because of this man.… He’ll die in the chair, but it seems such a little thing for him to only die once.…”

Inspector Clayton nodded in sympathy. “It’s all the law allows. But die he will. Thanks to Detective Feinberg.”

Wells looked over at the man against the wall. “Yes. You know, of course, that we were planning on offering a reward; I’m sure my wife will still want to do so. And Detective Feinberg ought to rate a substantial part of it.”

Clancy shook his head. “I’m not so sure. It seems to me that Roy Kirkwood ought to rate most of it.”

Heads turned to stare at him in surprise. Blount, uninterested in the conversation, spoke again. “You gave your word, Lieutenant. You said if I spilled, you’d go easy on my wife. You promised. You won’t forget?”

“I always keep my promises,” Clancy said. He walked over to the wall, dragged a chair free, and pulled it up facing Blount. He straddled it, pushed his hat farther back on his head, and stared at the other evenly. “I gave you my word. I told you what I would do, and I will. I’ll see to it that your wife goes up for the absolute limit …!”

Blount caught his breath; his face turned ugly. “Why, you …!”

Clancy sighed. “Blount, let’s start all over. My deal still stands. But this time let’s start from a different angle. I want one question answered first, and then we can go on from there.…” He reached into his pocket, pulled a cigarette out, and lit it. The matchstick was held negligently in his fingers as he took a deep drag and blew the flame out with the smoke. “Blount, here it comes—

“What did you do with Cervera’s body after you killed him?”

This time the silence in the room was broken by several shocked gasps. Captain Wise’s eyes narrowed; Inspector Clayton looked at Clancy’s face and apparently recognized a look that he had seen and admired many times before. The men along the wall had straightened up and were watching wide-eyed. Only the stenotypist, fingers poised in waiting for further conversation, seemed unmoved.

Blount’s face had gone a dirty white. He wet his lips and swallowed. Clancy’s eyes never left the other’s face. His voice as he continued was almost gentle.

“I’m waiting, Blount.”

“You’re crazy.…”

Clancy shook his head slowly. “I’m not crazy, Blount. You are. You think you can get away with a stupid string of lies that wouldn’t fool a child, and still keep your wife off the hook. You think you can not only keep her off the hook, but leave her a pile of money to enjoy. You know you don’t have a chance; you know you’re going to die in the chair, but you think you can save your wife from the consequences of being an accessory. You’re the one that’s crazy.”

Blount took a deep breath. He looked around the room like a caged animal, fighting for some semblance of control. He had been thinking furiously and now he seemed to make up his mind, collapsing a bit in his chair.

“All right,” he said dully, hopelessly. “All right, you smart son of a bitch! I killed Lenny. I put him in the river below Peekskill, down by some little fishing dock nobody ever goes to. And I killed the girl, and I planted the bomb.…”

Clancy looked at him almost sadly. “You killed the girl when you were in Albany?” He shook his head. “You really insist on sending your wife up for twenty minimum, don’t you, Blount? You must really want to see her suffer—do you know what a woman’s prison is like? You think Sing Sing is tough? You don’t know.… I hear your wife is a pretty woman, Blount. They’ll fight for her up there, those dikes. She may hold off for a while, but she won’t hold off forever. You’ll wish she’d been sitting in your lap when they pull the switch.…”

Blount started to gather himself to leap, his face twisted; the other men started to step forward but Clancy didn’t move an inch. He simply put a hand out and pushed the man gently back into his chair.

“When are you going to realize, Blount, that I’m serious? That I’m asking you questions that I already know the answers to? Maybe it would be better if you just didn’t say anything. You’re just not equipped to talk for yourself. Let a lawyer talk for you. You’re just making things worse.” He turned, looking over his shoulder. “Mr. Wells, here’s a man who needs counsel. Why don’t you help him?”

Wells stared at him. “Help the man who killed Judge Kiele?”

“Well, no,” Clancy said, trying to sound reasonable. “The man who killed Judge Kiele is beyond help. You ought to realize that, Mr. Wells.…” He looked at the tall man beside him curiously. “Do you want to try and bluff it out? Or do you want to confess? We have Blount here in a spot where he can’t think up any more lies. He doesn’t have the imagination to keep it up. And we’ve got you—” His fist came up and clenched tightly. “—like that!”

Wells stared at him speechlessly.

“I’m not guessing,” Clancy said gently. He tilted his head ever so little in the direction of the seated criminal. “And Blount is going to give it all, now. He wants to save his wife as much as he can, and he knows my promise was good. He knows both of them were good.” He shrugged. “True, she won’t have the money you promised, but that’s the way the breaks go. At least she won’t get the works.…”

The tall handsome man standing beside Clancy seemed to visibly fade before their eyes. The blood drained from his face; he stared about blindly a moment and then crumpled before anyone could catch him. Clancy lifted his eyes from the prostrate figure on the floor, raising them to stare at the horrified face of the man seated before him.

“All right, Blount,” he said wearily. “Now let’s have it all, right from the beginning.…”