2

At eleven o’clock that lovely day, a little boy, age eight, playing hookey from school on a day too warm and pleasant to be incarcerated in a classroom, fell into the East River on the Brooklyn side, and was swept away in the strong, oily currents. His frightened classmates, after staring at the spot where he went in, silently drifted away, each taking his share of guilt with him. A winchman loading a freighter on a nearby dock saw the incident, but he was too far away to attempt rescue. He did, however, notify the police at once, and they had the river dragged for many hours without success.

The water of the East River, into which the little body had disappeared, was ten degrees warmer than normal for the date, according to the Coast Guard Bureau of Statistics. It was just another example of the fine weather that fall.

Monday–11:25 A.M.

Clancy stopped in his office long enough to divest himself of his topcoat and hat, distributing them as usual. He retrieved the wallet and the documents of the subway jumper and, still holding them in his hand, went back to the corridor and up the worn steps to Captain Wise’s office on the second floor. He swung the door open without knocking; Captain Wise, his telephone receiver almost buried in his huge hand, tilted his massive head in the general direction of a chair and returned to his conversation.

“Yes, sir, Inspector,” he was saying into the instrument. “Yes, sir. I know. I’ll have to check the duty roster and let you know. The only thing is, we’re busier than hell, and strapped to our ears.…” He looked up at Clancy, shrugged helplessly but expressively, and returned his attention to the telephone. “Yes, sir. I understand. I know.” His big hand dwarfed the pencil with which he was doodling; he scribbled something and nodded at the receiver. “I realize how serious it is, sir. I understand. I’ll call you back.”

He hung up and reached for his pipe. “That UN thing again,” he said with a scowl. “Threats and more threats. Rumors and more rumors. Why in the hell didn’t they put the damned thing on a desert island out in the middle of the ocean? Or in the Kremlin and let them worry about it?” He sucked on his empty pipe a moment and then replaced it in the ash tray; Captain Wise was in the process of stopping smoking. He withdrew his hand from the pipe as if he were releasing an old friend who would probably not understand his lack of attention. His eyes came up, studying Clancy. “Well? How did it go over at Eighty-sixth Street?”

Clancy leaned forward impressively, placed the wallet and documents on the desk, and slid them over in front of his superior. “If these papers belong to the guy who jumped in front of that subway train—and that’s being checked out downtown right now—then,” he said quietly, “I have the pleasure of informing you that Mister Caper Connelly is no longer among us.”

Captain Wise’s hand froze momentarily in the act of reaching; his bushy gray eyebrows went up. For a moment he stared at Clancy and then he picked up the document on top and opened it, studying it carefully.

“Caper Connelly, huh? That’s the hackie we’ve had so much trouble with over the years, isn’t it?”

“That’s the one,” Clancy said, nodding. He leaned back, his eyes steady on his superior’s face. “We’ve had him in here a dozen times, on suspicion of everything from pushing dope to using his cab as a ten-minute bordello, to using it to deliver hi-jacked booze to a couple of unlicensed bars. Unfortunately, we were never able to stick him with time, but the fact is he was a bad boy.”

“I remember him.” Captain Wise frowned. “How does a guy like that keep getting his license renewed?”

Clancy shrugged. “Like I said, we never could get a conviction. And the license board can’t knock a man down on suspicion only. After all, those medallions on the hood are worth upwards of twenty-seven grand …”

“Yeah.” Captain Wise picked up the wallet but made no attempt to open it. “Anything of interest in this?”

“About five hundred bucks,” Clancy said. “Which is about four hundred and ninety more than you’d find in mine. Plus cards for membership in a couple of places I also can’t afford.” His eyes went from the wallet to the captain’s face. “You might also note that it isn’t made of cheap plastic. Real alligator. Mark Cross, and expensive.”

“Yeah.” Captain Wise pushed the documents and wallet back at Clancy, started to reach for his pipe again, and changed his mind. “So what do you think?”

“Sam, I think it stinks.” Clancy frowned and slid the two items back into his pocket. He leaned back again. “It takes some pretty strong reasons for a man to jump off a subway platform in front of a train, and Caper Connelly is one guy I just can’t picture doing it. One thing is sure, he certainly didn’t do it because his conscience was bothering him, because that guy didn’t have a conscience.” He fell silent and sighed. “Still, he did do it.… Well, it’s just one more thing we have to follow; one more thing to take up our time.” He reached into his shirt pocket, extracted a cigarette and lit it. Captain Wise’s eyes followed every move hungrily. “What did you want to see me about before?”

Captain Wise dragged his eyes from the aromatic cigarette and looked away, a bit embarrassed. “Actually, Clancy, it wasn’t anything of any great importance.”

“Come on, Sam,” Clancy said patiently. He blew cigarette smoke across the desk as if by accident. “We’ve known each other since we were kids. You used to wipe my nose for me when I was a shrimp in school; I know you like a book. And I know when you’ve got something on your mind. Come on; what’s bothering you?”

“Me? Nothing.” The captain’s expression was the purest of innocence. He reached for his pipe once again, but it was only for something to do with his hands. Captain Wise was a man of will-power. He pulled his hand back as if he had inadvertently found himself reaching for a bomb with a lit fuse. “I was only going to ask you about your date last night, is all.…”

“My date?” Clancy stared at the other for several moments and then shook his head in mock disgust. “Sam, Sam! When are you going to give up, and stop trying to marry me off?”

“Mary Kelly’s a nice girl, Clancy. And a good policewoman. And she comes from a nice Irish family.…”

“As if you care.” Clancy grinned and blew some more smoke across the desk. “Sam, you don’t know Mary Kelly’s family from Gamal Nasser’s family. And I know it, and you know I know it. As a matter of fact, I don’t know them myself. They live out in Kansas or Iowa or someplace, and for all I know they’ve never even been to New York.”

“A girl like that has to come from a good family,” Captain Wise argued stubbornly. He forced himself to disregard the tempting aroma of the smoke drifting across the desk at him. “Anyway, what difference does it make, her family? Were our families so much we should criticize? Your father was the only Irish pants-presser in the shop my father was a cutter. Anyway, you don’t marry a family, you marry a girl …”

“Hold it,” Clancy said firmly. “Now I’m getting married, am I? I have one dinner with a woman and before dessert you’ve got me coming down the aisle.”

“And just what’s wrong with that?” Captain Wise demanded, as if insulted. “What’s wrong?” For a moment he tried to seethe without staring at Clancy’s cigarette, and then gave it up. He shook his head, this time sincerely. “Look, Clancy—what kind of a life is it you lead? Work, work, work! And then go home to a crummy apartment …”

“Crummy?”

“You know what I mean. Is this the life for a grown man your age? My Sarah says …”

“Whoa!” Clancy held up a hand to stop the flow of words. “You’ll pardon me, Sam, but your Sarah would rather be a successful matchmaker than a good cook, and that’s saying something. Why don’t you and Sarah let me run my own love life?”

“Just so long as it is a love life,” Captain Wise said, and shook his grizzly head disconsolately. “Meshuga! Some day, Clancy, you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

Clancy crushed out his cigarette, got to his feet, and moved to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob. “Some day, Sam,” he said, “I’ll get married and have fourteen children. Plus eighteen grandchildren, a dog, a cat and a canary. Just for you and Sarah. In the meantime, I’ve got a desk full of work, so if you’ll pardon me …”

Captain Wise sighed deeply. “Stubborn,” he said in a hopeless tone of voice.

“That’s what they pay me for,” Clancy said with a grin, and went out of the door.

Monday–11:50 A.M.

Second-grade Detective Kaproski poked his head in at the open doorway of Lieutenant Clancy’s office, saw the lieutenant at his desk, and came into the room. Kaproski was a large bulky man with a wild shock of unruly blond hair and a good-natured square face marked with a flattened nose and very bright blue eyes, set deep in sockets cut at an angle in his wide forehead. When he smiled, which was frequently, he exhibited even glistening white blocks of teeth; when he frowned, someone once said he looked like a ten-ton garbage truck coming around a sharp corner at eighty miles an hour. At the moment he was holding a folder in one huge hand; he laid it on the corner of Clancy’s desk a bit diffidently, and then stepped back several steps.

“Hi, Lieutenant.” He pointed. “There’s the report on them muggings in the park.”

Clancy picked up the folder and hefted it slowly in his hand, as if attempting to gather its import from its weight. He looked up. “Does it say anything worth reading?”

Kaproski shrugged nonchalantly. “It says that two guys were mugged last night over in Central Park, is about all. About an hour apart. One of the guys got banged up a little; they shoved him around. I saw him over at St. Joseph’s Hospital a while ago. He’ll be all right—a couple of scratches is all. He ought to be out tomorrow. The other guy got shoved around, too, but no damage. He was scared more than anything else. They’ll both live.”

“Any description of the muggers?”

“Just that they was three of them in a gang, young and tough—and big, naturally. Nobody wants to admit they was taken by three little guys. But it sounds like it was the same three kids both times, and damn near in the same place, too. Maybe half a block apart at the most. The guy I saw at his apartment is going downtown this afternoon to look at the file of mug-shots; the other guy says he’ll go down as soon as they let him loose from the hospital, which I figure is tomorrow afternoon at the latest. They just pushed him around a little, is all.”

“And what were they doing in the park?”

Kaproski raised his shoulders. “Getting mugged, I guess. You know, Lieutenant, you’d think people would have more brains than to wander around the park after dark, especially up in that neighborhood, but they don’t. I guess everybody figures it won’t happen to them.”

“Yeah.” Clancy looked at him. “Did they lose much?”

“One guy about twenty bucks and a wristwatch. And all of his papers, of course; driver’s license, social security card and that stuff. The other guy—the one in the hospital—claims he lost a hundred and eighty bucks, but to me he don’t look like the kind ever saw that much dough at one time in his life. And he also says he lost a wristwatch, a fountain pen set, and all his papers, too.”

“O.K.,” Clancy said. He tossed the folder on top of the pile of reports and nodded. “Follow it up after the two men see the mug-shots. In the meantime I’ve got another job for you. Sit down.”

Kaproski nodded pleasantly and pulled a chair over next to the file cabinets. “Sure, Lieutenant. What’s up?”

Clancy’s eyes were steady on the other’s face, as if trying to judge the effect of his next words. “For your information,” he said slowly, “Caper Connelly took a dive off the uptown platform of the Eighty-sixth Street IRT about an hour or so ago.”

“Caper Connelly?” Kaproski had been in the act of tilting his chair back on two legs; it came down to the floor again with a thump. His blue eyes were wide in disbelief. “The hackie? I don’t believe it! The day Caper Connelly does the dutch, my guess is it’ll be against somebody else. It don’t make sense!”

“If the papers in his pocket mean anything,” Clancy said, “it was Caper Connelly in the flesh …” For an instant his mind went back to the battered body lying in the trough of the subway tracks, and he shuddered slightly. “… and I do mean in the flesh. They’re checking him out at the morgue, but so far I think it was him.”

“I don’t get it, Lieutenant,” Kaproski said slowly. He tilted his chair back against the wall again and stared at his superior somberly. “Why would a guy like Caper kill himself? I can think of a dozen guys would probably want to kill him, but he wasn’t one of them himself.” He thought a moment and frowned. “And what was he doing in the subway in the first place? He was a hackie; they don’t use the subway.”

“That’s a good question,” Clancy said. “One of a dozen good questions I could ask.”

“Yeah,” Kaproski said. “Like even if he was in the subway, what was he doing on the uptown side. I’ll bet Caper’s never been above 110th Street in his whole life. He was strictly a downtown boy; he figured they had Indians up there in Van Cortlandt Park might scalp him he ever got that far north.”

“True.…”

“Although,” Kaproski was forced to admit, in a tone that clearly indicated his dislike of his own theory, “if a guy, any guy—even Caper—wants out and decides to take it by diving under a train, he’s got to go where the trains are, hackie or no.”

Clancy could not refrain from snorting. “A dive under a train? Why? Even supposing a hackie wants to commit suicide, he’s got a motor full of sweet carbon dioxide. Why would he pick a messy way of killing himself like the subway?” He shook his head. “Out of all the ways, it’s about the worst. For my money the whole thing stinks.”

“That it does,” Kaproski agreed equably. He looked at Clancy steadily. “What do you want me to do, Lieutenant?”

Clancy’s fingers were drumming on the desk; he seemed to be making up his mind. “He didn’t get off the train there; he was waiting on the platform. So his cab ought to be parked within a block or two of the Eighty-sixth Street station …”

“And?”

“And I want it,” Clancy said firmly. “In the precinct garage as soon as possible.” He shuffled through the papers on his desk and extracted the license, studied it a moment, and then passed it over. “It’s an owner-Yellow, plates 277–566.”

Kaproski took the paper and shoved it in his pocket. “O.K., Lieutenant. You got the keys?”

“No. They’ll have them down at the morgue, but you shouldn’t need them. Take a master, or a spider—or get hold of a truck and tow the damned thing for all I care. Just get it here.”

“Right, Lieutenant.” Kaproski got to his feet, pushed his chair out of the way, and then paused uncertainly. “Stanton’s over on the Drive where that old man got himself knocked off this morning.” Stanton was the second-grade who was his usual partner. “I don’t know who else is around. Who do you want I should take with me?”

“You can take yourself with you,” Clancy said curtly. “We’re so short-handed we can barely afford that.”

“O.K., Lieutenant,” Kaproski said philosophically, and walked out of the room. Clancy sat and stared at the papers on his desk for several moments in deep thought; the sudden ringing of the telephone brought his mind back to the small room. He reached out, lifting the instrument from its hook.

“Yes?”

“Lieutenant Clancy?” The voice was high and a bit unctuous; it clearly indicated authority. “On that man who jumped in front of that subway train, you took all of his identification with you …”

Clancy scowled. “Who’s this?”

“Sergeant McClure, at Bellevue. You took his papers …”

“I know I took his papers,” Clancy said shortly. “Stop repeating yourself. Did you do a check of his fingerprints? And compare them with the file at the taxi-licensing bureau? Or with our own files?” He glowered at the instrument. “Or with anything?”

“Yes, sir.” Sergeant McClure certainly didn’t sound put down by Clancy’s tone. “It was a man named Oswald Connelly, sometimes called Caper, picked up many times for questioning but never charged.” He returned to his original query, refusing to be side-tracked. “Regarding those papers, Lieutenant, we like to keep all of the effects together. Sometimes relatives ask for them. And basically, we are responsible …”

Clancy cut him off. “Save it, Sergeant,” he said wearily. “I’m not in the mood. You’ll get his papers when I’m through with them, and not before. Put a slip in the folder and say I’ve got them.”

“But when do you think …?”

Clancy hung up. His hand remained on the instrument a moment; there was another call he wanted to make. He withdrew his hand; this was a call that had to be made from outside the precinct. He pulled himself to his feet and took his hat from its usual place on top of the filing cabinet; the day had warmed up and a topcoat was not necessary. He placed the hat squarely on his head and walked out to the desk.

“Sergeant, I’m going out for some lunch.”

The sergeant looked up from his papers. “I could send out for some sandwiches for you, Lieutenant.”

“No, that’s all right,” Clancy said, and pushed through the doors.

The weather was still fine; the sun was high in the cloudless sky and the air was still, but it now contained a slight tang that wakened the blood and brought hope that winter would eventually arrive. Clancy turned down the street, walked the short block that separated the precinct house from the corner, and entered a cigar store there. A row of telephone booths stood against one wall; he edged himself into one, dropped a coin in the slot, and dialed a familiar number. There was a brief pause while the telephone at the other end rang; then the receiver was finally lifted and a cautious voice answered.

“Hello?”

Clancy shut the door of the booth more firmly. “Porky?”

“Yes …?”

“Porky, how would you like me to buy you lunch?”

The tone at the other end warmed up immediately. “Ah, Mr. C.! I recognize those smooth official tones. Lunch? With you? It’s a very pleasant thought; I hate to eat alone.”

“Good,” Clancy said. “So do I. I’ll meet you at Angelo’s at …” He twisted in the restricted space of the narrow booth and managed to bring his wristwatch into view. He stared at it, calculating. “… at twelve-thirty. In fifteen minutes.”

“Angelo’s? The bar and grill?” Porky sounded put upon. “I thought when you offered to buy me lunch you meant something a bit more substantial—not to mention elegant—than hard-boiled eggs and yesterday’s bread.” Porky’s tone became slightly accusing. “I’m afraid your ideas of food in general, Mr. C., stem from your being a bachelor.…”

“My God!” Clancy said, only half-pretending to sound horrified. “Not you too! In fifteen minutes. At Angelo’s.”

He hung up and jockeyed the door of the booth back to allow egress, stopped at the counter to pick up two packs of cigarettes, and went back to the beautiful weather outside. His car was still parked down the street in front of the precinct house, but after a moment’s thought he decided to take a cab instead. It was doubtful if anybody over on Second Avenue would recognize his old battered Chevy, but on the other hand there was little point in taking any needless chances.

He walked out into the street and flagged down a cab.

Monday–12:30 P.M.

Angelo’s Bar & Grill might well have been purchased intact from the same assembly line that had produced the hundreds of exact duplicates that catered to the neighborhood drinking habits of the denizens of New York City. The mahogany bar, the scuffed foot-rail, the stools with the plastic upholstery worn in places to the cloth base, the chalk-marked mirror—all had apparently been designed with the thought in mind of making any stranger feel he was back in his own familiar bar. Even the heavy aroma that lay like a yeasty fog in the place seemed to have a standard quality about it. They must spray these places with old beer dregs after they close each night, Clancy thought sourly, and walked past the noisy crowded bar towards the high-backed booths in the rear.

Porky Frank was seated in the last booth to the left in the narrow passageway that led to the kitchen and the restroom beyond. He was a handsome young man in his early thirties, well-built and nattily dressed, with a pleasant smile that showed even white teeth, and an outgoing ebullient pseudo-brashness that made him popular with many people on both sides of the law. His major occupation was running a small but honest book; his alter avocation was being a stool pigeon. His appearance, personality, and approach were all diametrically opposite to the popular and prejudiced views on how a stool pigeon should look and act; Porky Frank found all this to be a distinct advantage in pursuing his sideline.

He looked up with a pleased smile as Clancy slid into the booth across from him; one neatly manicured hand gestured languidly but politely toward the glass before him.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t wait, Mr. C.,” he said in a half-apologetic tone, “but if one is going to have lunch, normal custom dictates that one should first have breakfast.” He nodded toward his drink. “This is breakfast.”

Clancy took off his hat and placed it carelessly on the bench beside him. He turned back to his companion with a grin. “A whiskey sour?”

“Well,” Porky said airily, explaining the evident, “I’d scarcely trust the champagne in a place like this. Even assuming your department budget could afford it.” He shook his head reproachfully at Clancy. “Which reminds me, Mr. C.—I don’t mind meeting in bars, but it does strike me that for lunch you ought to be able to tap the expense account for something a bit classier than Angelo’s.”

Clancy waved down a waiter coming from the kitchen and ordered a bottle of beer. He waited until the waiter had padded toward the bar in front before answering. “I doubt if it would do your reputation any good, Porky, being seen with me in a place like Twenty-one, or Sardi’s.…”

“True,” Porky agreed, and grinned. “Especially in view of the way you dress.” The waiter was returning; Porky waited until Clancy had been served and then raised his glass in a small gesture of a toast. “Well, Mr. C., this time I’m forced to believe, contrary to past experience, that you invited me for purely social reasons. At least this morning’s New York Times gives me no indication of any local naughtiness where my latent talents might be of any assistance.”

Clancy drank, set his glass down, wiped his lips, and then shook his head admiringly. “Porky, with your command of the English language, you should have been a professor.”

“I considered it,” Porky said with a twinkle in his eye. “I seriously considered it. In fact, I’d say at one time the odds were maybe five to eight on it. Then one day I saw the wage scale. That decided me.” His smile faded; his eyes caught those of the smaller man across the table and held them for several seconds. He sighed. “Well, Mr. C., enough of memories. To business. What’s on your mind?”

Clancy nodded. He pushed his glass to one side and leaned over the table. His voice lowered; his gray eyes were steady on his companion’s face. “Caper Connelly,” he said quietly.

Porky Frank’s eyebrows climbed only a fraction of an inch; he prided himself on the rigid control of his emotions when circumstances demanded. “My Lord,” he said, unable to keep all of his surprise at the subject out of his voice. “Don’t tell me he’s still giving you headaches.”

Clancy’s eyes narrowed suddenly; he leaned forward. “What do you mean by that?”

Porky looked across the table with a curious frown. “Did I say something? Did I touch a nerve?” He shrugged. “I meant just what I said, and nothing more. The word I hear around and about is that Caper Connelly is sufficiently well financed at the moment to be able to forego his usual small-time antics.”

Clancy continued to stare at him. “Well financed how? Or by whom?”

Porky shook his head. “That I don’t know, mainly because I never made it my business to find out, mainly because I couldn’t have cared less.” He lifted one well-kept hand. “Not, of course, that I couldn’t find out if you’re interested. Or not that I couldn’t try.”

“Fine,” Clancy said evenly. “Then try.”

Porky frowned at the table a moment; he reached out and idly pushed his empty glass in small circles, staring at the trails of dampness it left, as if searching for some answer there. When he looked up again after several moments his voice was light, but beneath the surface tone there was a serious note.

“May a poor but honest bookie ask a poor but honest question? Just why are the boys in blue interested in a punk cab driver like Caper Connelly? Especially since, if what I hear is true, he has apparently seen the error of his past ways?”

“Has he?” Clancy asked.

“Hasn’t he? I hear he hasn’t been up before you people in lo, these many months.”

“Sometimes,” Clancy said quietly, “we worry more about certain people in their absence than in their presence.”

Porky shook his head sadly. “You are trying to confuse me, Mr. C.,” he said reproachfully. “You obviously have something on your mind. What is it?”

Clancy took a deep breath. “Well,” he said, “since it’ll be in all the afternoon papers anyway, not to mention radio and television probably, you might as well get a preview. This morning Mr. Caper Connelly stepped off a subway platform up at Eighty-sixth Street. Right in front of a train.”

For once Porky’s control came close to deserting him. “What?”

Clancy nodded. “That’s right. And the train didn’t miss.”

“You mean he’s dead?” Porky was incredulous.

“He’s dead,” Clancy said flatly. “Believe me.”

Porky smothered an involuntary whistle, shaking his head. “Man! Will money change hands tonight! The book on that gonif must have been about eleven to three that he eventually hangs! I’ll be double-damned!” His eyes came up to Clancy’s curiously; he hesitated a moment. “Pardon me, Mr. C., but in that case, why the continued interest in the poor man? Unless, of course, you feel that somebody helped him to jump …”

Clancy shook his head regretfully. “No. The witnesses—there were two of them, the motorman and some young kid riding up front next to him—both say there wasn’t a soul near him at the time. No; he jumped.”

Porky frowned, puzzled. “But then exactly what do you want of my talents? Unless you want me to organize a celebration, since of course it would be most unseemly for the police to do so …”

Clancy was not amused; his eyes held those of the other man. “I want to know why he jumped. Call it stubbornness, or call it curiosity, but I knew Caper and you knew Caper and we both know he wasn’t the type to do something like that without a damned strong reason. And I want to know what it was.” He took a deep breath. “Especially since you say he was in the dough. I want to know what this new-found wealth consisted of, where it came from, and who was involved in it. I want to know everything about Caper I don’t already know.”

“I see.” Porky sounded as if he really did. “In other words, you want to know because you want to know. Which for me is reason enough.” He slid back a neatly cuff-linked sleeve and consulted the thin gold watch that lay exposed; he looked back at Clancy. “I assume you weren’t actually serious in suggesting that we lunch together in this crumb-joint.”

“Not necessarily,” Clancy said.

“In that case I’ll take a rain-check on your hospitality and get to work.” Porky pushed himself to his feet, brushed an invisible bit of lint from the sleeve of his jacket, edged out into the aisle, and stood looking down at the still seated man. “I’ll be in touch. When I’ve got something to be in touch about.”

“Do that,” Clancy said politely.

Porky’s face broke into a smile. “And if you’re going to stay and eat here,” he said, “at least let me talk to the bartender and explain to him that you’re a friend of mine. Otherwise I should hate to warrant the condition of your stomach tomorrow. Strangers in this place automatically get served left-overs.”

Clancy sounded surprised. “You mean they have something else?”

“Of course,” Porky said, amazed at such ignorance. “Even left-overs have to have an origin.”

He winked and walked easily toward the front. Clancy leaned back; he had to eat someplace, and since he was already here he might as well get it over with. I wonder, he suddenly thought, how it would be to come home at noon for a hot lunch, pleasantly served on a clean tablecloth and with silver that didn’t look as if it had been used on off-hours to pry open beer bottles? And by someone with a pleasant smile, and nice curves, and a soft smile …?

He wiped the thought almost angrily from his mind and raised an arm for the slow waiter.