CHAPTER 5

You Can Be Thinking of Me

Jablonski pulled Ryan’s head close to his own and whispered in husky, meat-flavored whispers. As he did, Ryan’s expression lengthened.

“But that’s—well, manufacturing evidence,” he said.

“Sure it is.” Jablonski spoke airily but he was watching Ryan.

“It’s—well, it’s like framing the guy.” Ryan didn’t like it. Fairness and respect for the letter of the law were implicit in him.

“Framing!” Jablonski’s scorn was boisterous. “Framing a guy like Derby? You checked the numbers on that bill yourself, Neill. You heard him admit he killed her, didn’t you? Framing, for God’s sake! All we’re doing is proving what we know. It ain’t as if he was innocent.”

“I know it’s not as if he was innocent,” Ryan muttered. “It’s just—that tampering with evidence…”

He felt weary and oddly numb. It was getting on towards three a.m.; this had been a tough night. It was no time to debate the subtler shades of justice. Still, he didn’t like it.

“Look, Neill,” Jablonski said. “He killed her—we know that. And when he hit her with the lamp he could have got a little of the dust on his jacket. So all we do now is—well, just make sure he did.”

“Sure, but…”

“Look, Neill.” For Jablonski necessity had become the mother of eloquence. “I want this collar bad—so do you. You know what it can do for both of us. And you know what happens to my retirement if it gets back to the desk that I let him burn that C-note. If we bring Derby in and then lose the case against him—”

“Sure,” said Ryan uncomfortably. “Sure. I know. But when he rumbles that he was framed—then where are you?”

Jablonski snorted. “Who the hell will believe him? Look, Neill. We got a case against him now—of sorts. What we need is the clincher. That’s what the hundred dollar bill was until we—until I let him burn it. That’s what your little piece of pottery will be, especially the way I’ll do it. Jeez, can you imagine him getting on the stand and claiming that I—well, you can see for yourself.”

Ryan nodded. What Jablonski proposed doing was fantastic. That’s what made it safe.

Derby, straining his ears, sensed something going wrong. He chanced a quick squint over his shoulder. He did not like what he saw.

“We don’t have anything to worry about.” In reassuring Ryan, Jablonski was also reassuring himself. “Matter of fact, our only real trouble would come from telling the truth.” He saw that this was the wrong tack. “Look, Neill, do you think you have any right to let this guy go free? What about all the women who are out nights working? What’ll you say if he’s turned loose and knocks off another dame? All you’re doing is what you promised to do the day you took your oath.”

He was right, of course. A more experienced cop wouldn’t give it a second thought, Ryan thought, not when a guy like Derby was involved. It was just the idea of someone going to the chair, even when he was guilty, on the basis of manufactured evidence. But what was the alternative—giving him a good chance to go free? They couldn’t do that.

“Okay,” he heard himself say. “Go ahead. Here it is.”

Jablonski took the little yellow-glazed button of china.

Ryan lit his last cigarette. Derby frowned suspiciously at the baseboard. Jablonski walked to the door, grinning craftily.

There was a crumpled brown paper sack in the wastebasket near it. Jablonski smoothed it out on the table and placed the little chip on it. He set a beer can on it and pressed down hard, grunting. The little fragment of china crumbled with a grating noise.

Derby’s mouth was a tight apprehensive slit. Something was going wrong.

Jablonski pressed the can on the china fragments again, grinding them down. Then he rolled the can on them like a rolling pin, reducing them to powder. He rolled steadily, looking up once to grin at Ryan. “Get his jacket on him,” he said.

“I’ll have to take off the cuffs.”

“Just unlock one of them.”

Ryan did and threw Derby his jacket. “Put it on.”

“Where we goin’?” asked Derby.

“Out,” said Ryan. “And we’re not coming back.” Derby put on the jacket.

Jablonski folded the brown paper bag to make a trough of it, and poured the fine, whitish-yellow dust into his left hand. He walked over to Derby. “Cover me, Neill,” he said.

“You get the hell away from me,” said Derby.

Ryan took out his gun.

“Turn around,” Jablonski told Derby.

“Go to hell,” said Derby.

Jablonski pushed his foot against the back of Derby’s knee. Derby buckled, partly turning, and Jablonski swung him around, half-falling, still farther. Then carefully, deliberately, he blew the powder in his left hand over the front of Derby’s wool jacket. Derby swung a flailing blow at Jablonski’s hand but it was more a gesture of protest than of attack. Jablonski laughed.

“What the hell is this?” asked Derby, and began dusting himself off ineffectually.

“That fixes you,” said Jablonski.

That fixed him. You always try to find any possible trace of the criminal at the scene, Ryan had been taught at the police academy. And you always try to find some trace of the scene or victim on the criminal. Either one can convict; getting both is ideal.

“What is that?” Derby was saying anxiously, over and over. “What was that? Was that junk? What was that?”

“That,” said Jablonski, “was a little piece of plaster from the lamp you hit the old lady with, Harry. And now it’s all over you, and it places you at the scene—even better’n the C-note. And all the Farraguts in the world can’t explain that dust in your jacket. You can’t cross-examine a spectroscope, Harry.”

As Derby frowned in concentration, his hands slowed their dusting movements. He had no idea of what a spectroscope was, but he had a sure sense of evidence and an animal’s quick instinct for the moves of the enemy. He looked at the two of them. The older one was smiling sarcastically. The other bastard was wooden-faced, giving nothing to nobody. But he didn’t have to. Derby got the general idea. They were framing him.

Frustration had always produced only one reaction in Derby. Jablonski saw it coming in the swelling of his shoulders, but before his mouth could begin a warning, Derby charged, head down, fists hooking, one of them flapping a handcuff.

Jablonski had just reached his revolver when one knotty fist caught the side of his head and knocked him off balance and backward. Derby leaped after him and Ryan saw Derby’s long bony knee drive up and catch Jablonski in the stomach. Jablonski uttered a loud wordless cry and his revolver slipped out from his coat and skittered across the floor toward Ryan.

For a second Ryan could not shoot; they were too close together. Jablonski swayed forward on unhinged legs, holding his stomach, his face ghastly. Derby stepped back to bring a roundhouse punch up from the floor. Ryan fired.

The shot missed Derby, but it stopped him because it reminded him of Ryan. With hardly a lost motion he wheeled, took a quick boxer’s shuffle forward and swung at Ryan. Jablonski began sagging to the floor.

Ryan stepped backward; he had seen the punch coming, but the force of it spun Derby half around. Ryan coldly thumbed the hammer of his gun. The quiet click ended Derby’s outbreak. He knew what it meant—and the revolver just three feet away was pointed directly into his stomach. Ryan was looking at him.

“Start swinging again,” he said. “Come on. Give me an excuse.”

They looked at each other while the tension went out of Derby. “Face to the wall and hands up against it,” said Ryan, and Derby obeyed. Ryan picked up Jablonski’s gun.

From Jablonski came a soft sigh.

“How is it, Jabby?”

“’M okay…all right in a minute. He…got me with his knee…”

Ryan had played football; he knew how long it would hurt and how much. Jablonski groaned, trying not to.

There was a knock and the door swung open timidly. Mrs. Daniels stood in the doorway, and behind her a stringy individual in gallus-draped pants and a woolen undershirt.

“Is—is everything all right?” She looked inquiringly toward Derby.

“You go to the telephone,” Ryan began.

“There ain’t one in this building. Did you shoot—”

“You with the pants on,” said Ryan. “You get over to Second Avenue to that all-night hamburger joint and call Spring seven three one hundred. Got that number?”

“Listen, mister, I gotta get some sleep.”

Jablonski was trying to get up.

“What’s the matter with your friend?” said Mrs. Daniels.

Ryan turned enough so they both could see the revolver in his hand.

“You call that number,” he said. “Right now!” He spoke doggedly. “Spring seven three one hundred. Tell them an officer is in trouble here. Get going.”

The stringy man hitched up a gallus. “Okay,” he said. “Okay,” and left.

“You shoot your friend?” asked Mrs. Daniels.

“Get him some of your whisky,” said Ryan.

She went downstairs without a word.

Jablonski was rubbing his abdomen, methodically and painfully. “Wipe off the beer can,” he said, “and get rid of that paper.” His voice was a croak.

You nervy old son of a bitch, thought Ryan, as he pocketed the brown paper. Your guts must hurt like hell, but you still remember that Derby mustn’t have a chance to prove what we’ve done.

“Right, Jabby.” It was the first time he had ever felt genuine respect for Jablonski.

“Hey, Derby,” Jablonski croaked. “Listen. My belly hurts. See? But it’ll stop after a while. And just think, Derby. Some night soon, you’ll burn. Think of that. And you know what? That night it’ll be me who’s home drinkin’ beer. And waitin’ for that flash on the radio. What do you think of that, Derby?”

It was a very silent room when he stopped.

“You can be thinking of me when you get that jolt, Derby. ’Cause I’ll be thinking of you.” His jaws moved unnaturally, and he retched.

From outside and below came the onrushing sound of an automobile moving fast. Ryan heard the clump of heavy feet on the stairs and then there were two blue uniforms and silver shields and alert faces in the doorway.

They looked awfully good to Ryan.