Albert Curry stood looking down at the corpse, wishing it could talk.
Nervously, the cold knifing through his topcoat, he checked his watch. It was approaching nine o'clock and this slightly seedy residential neighborhood, trapped behind a wall of factories, a block north of Central off 55th, was quiet as a funeral. Quieter. Traffic was nonexistent. There were no curbside gawkers, just occasional white eyes in dark windows-not many lights on, for this time of evening. Only a few of the streetlamps were working. If it hadn't been for half a moon up in a clear, starry sky, the street would have been darker than its residents.
The paint-peeling buildings on this narrow street were for the most part your typical wide-front-porch Cleveland duplexes, run-down versions of the one he'd grown up in, and his parents still lived in, on the far east side.
On the sidewalk inside the wire fence of a small front yard filled with well-tended bushes, Toussaint Johnson stood talking to the colored couple who lived in one of the exceptions on this street: a small, neat single-family dwelling. The body had been found in their front yard, or anyway the slice of it between the front sidewalk and the wire fence. They had put frayed winter coats on over their pajamas and the man had an arm around the shoulder of his wife, who leaned into him, shivering with the cold, among other things. The husband had called in the discovery.
Curry, whose pencil and notepad were in hand, noticed that Johnson wasn't taking any field notes. That broke a fundamental rule of crime-scene technique; but Curry knew very well by now that Johnson was not a by-the-book cop. A good cop, possibly even a great cop. But not a by-the-book one.
In this instance, Curry couldn't blame him. Taking notes would only make the husband and wife ill at ease; and the benefit of having a colored cop questioning colored witnesses might well be lost.
Curry had already used ropes looped through iron stakes to fence off the corpse; he did this at the left and right, at the approximate property line, and the wire fence and the stakes with ropes made a three-sided wall. Only the street side itself was unenclosed. Using the two-way radio in his unmarked car, he had called the Detective Bureau and asked if Sergeant Merlo was on duty-which, thankfully, he was-and Merlo, who said he would call the coroner himself, should be arriving any minute now.
Curry had also called over to the Third Precinct for more uniformed men, to help preserve the crime scene, but they hadn't gotten here yet. The two uniformed cops who had got to the scene first were standing in the street; they had high-way flares lit, burning orangely in the night, helping keep this deserted street deserted.
Curry and Johnson had been on the east side that evening, as usual, rounding up numbers-racket witnesses, when they heard the call come in over the police radio. They had tried to reach Ness, and had no luck; Curry stopped at a pay phone and tried the press room at City Hall, which was across from the safety director's office, figuring Sam Wild would be there. He was, but didn't know where Ness was; Wild asked Curry what the hell was going on, off-the-record, and Curry told him. Wild said he'd do his best to round Ness up, and that had been half an hour ago. No sign of either of them.
On the porch Johnson was shaking hands with the husband, and the wife was smiling a little, timidly, but smiling. They went back in their house and Johnson came down from the porch. He didn't go out the front gate. He walked over to one side of the yard, between some bushes, hopped the wire fence, and walked around on the other side of the staked-off area. He stood in the street as near as he could to Curry and the corpse without getting on the grass.
All of which went to show. Curry noted, that Johnson knew something about crime-scene preservation, when he felt like it.
"How long this joker been dead?"
"Not very," Curry said. "Jaw's still loose. No rigor yet. He's relatively warm."
"How many holes he got in him?"
"That I can see, half a dozen."
The corpse of the white man, who had been wearing a brown suit and no tie, was face-up, sprawled. The bullet wounds were in his chest and stomach-fairly small entry wounds, with scorches on the suit indicating he was shot close up.
"Wanna turn him over?" Johnson asked. "Maybe there's a weapon under him."
"We're no homicide dicks," Curry said. "Let's wait for the experts."
Johnson nodded, and Curry carefully moved away from the corpse, out into the street.
Sirens announced two squad cars of uniforms from the Third, and the spiffy new red-and-blue cars-part of the recently motorized department. Ness's highly publicized "police force on wheels"-screeched up and officers piled out like a well-organized version of the Keystone Kops. Several of them checked in with Curry and Johnson, speaking to Johnson, whom they knew, as he normally worked out of their precinct.
Curry had told them, when he radioed it in, to bring some saw-horses along, which they had, taking them from the trunks of the two squad cars and blocking off the street at either end of the block. Another round of orange-glowing flares was lit and dropped to the pavement. It seemed a pointless exercise to Curry-traffic had been nonexistent since he'd arrived-but it was procedure.
"Why's it so quiet?" Curry asked Johnson. "Usually with a homicide, you gotta beat the spectators back with a stick."
Johnson shrugged; hands in his topcoat pockets, his breath smoking. "Dead white cop in a Negro section. Wouldn't you run scared if you lived 'round here?"
"They fear reprisals, you mean?"
Johnson laughed without humor. "We two blocks from where the Joe Louis riot come down. Colored kid got shot that night."
"Oh. Yeah. That's right."
"We been working the east side together for some weeks now, Albert. You tell me. How do these people feel about cops?"
"Not good. They fear 'em. Hate 'em. Distrust 'em."
"That's right, and more. Now there's a dead ofay copper on the front lawn of a colored house. Regular east-side lawn jockey."
Curry snorted a laugh. "You could be right. We could have a riot on our hands."
"The coloreds ain't gonna riot again."
"I'm not talking about the coloreds," Curry said, and he nodded toward the white uniformed cops who were putting up the saw-horse barricades. They were talking animatedly amongst themselves, obviously angry; one of them was standing by a squad car talking into the coiled hand-mike from his police radio.
"You right," Johnson said. "That hunky's spreadin' the word. There's gonna be some black nappy skulls get crushed tonight."
"I hope you're wrong. I hope we're both wrong."
Sergeant Martin Merlo arrived with a photographer, who all but jumped out of the black unmarked sedan, left it out in the middle of the blocked-off street, and began taking pictures of the corpse and the area around the corpse. Flash bulbs popped like little gun shots, the brief explosions of light like eerie lightning.
"Looks like you've done a good job, Al," Merlo said to Curry, shaking hands ceremoniously with the younger detective. Merlo was a slender, scholarly looking man in his late forties, with horn-rim glasses and a high brow.
"Kind of tough at night," Curry said. "I haven't canvassed any of the neighbors."
"Anybody touch the body?"
"Not that we know of. Uh, do you know Detective Johnson? Toussaint, this is Sergeant Merlo."
Johnson smiled, nodded, offered his hand, which Merlo shook, smiling back professionally. "We met couple times," Johnson said. "After Kingsbury Run, Sergeant Merlo, he practically an honorary citizen of the Roarin' Third."
Merlo twitched an embarrassed smile. He had been the principal investigator of the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run murders, before the safety director took over the case. Though the case was considered unofficially closed, obsessive Merlo (unaware the real butcher had been secretly committed to an asylum) was still working it.
Despite Merlo's obsession with the Butcher, Curry-like his boss, Ness-considered Merlo the best homicide cop on the department. Whenever the safety director's investigators encountered a homicide, Merlo was their man.
Right now Merlo was combing the area around the dead man with a highbeam flashlight. Then he approached the body, kneeling as if to pray.
Curry, standing nearby but out in the street, said, "I checked for rigor. None yet. Body's warm. He could've been killed here."
"Doubtful," Merlo said, dousing the corpse with the flashlight; its beam landed on the face of the dead man, who had been a forty-year-old, jowly, dark-haired cop. The upper half of the man's face looked bruised.
"Somebody rough him up before they killed him?" Curry asked.
"No," Merlo said, shaking his head. "That bruising effect is lividity-when his heart stopped beating, the blood gathered on his left side, meaning he lay with his left side down when he died. Only now his left side's sunny-side up." Merlo shrugged. "They moved him."
Curry, who really hadn't worked many homicides, a little flustered at not recognizing lividity when he saw it, said, "Obviously. They dumped him here."
"But who dumped him?" Merlo said. "And why?"
Curry thought about that. He turned to Johnson. "Did you know this guy?"
Johnson yawned. "Sure. He worked the east side, out of the Third. But I don't think he was workin' tonight. And he wasn't no plainclothes."
That sparked Curry's interest. "Oh? Then what in the hell was he doing here?"
"Ask him," Johnson said, nodding toward the corpse.
Somebody was shouting over by one of the saw-horse barricades. Curry glanced over and saw Sam Wild, arguing with a uniform cop. They looked close to blows.
Curry walked over there and broke it up.
"Let him pass," Curry said.
The uniformed cop, a fiftyish paddy with a vein-shot nose, said, "On whose authority? Are you homicide?" He obviously thought Curry looked a little young to be in charge.
"I'm Detective Curry, special assistant to the safety director. Let him cross the barricade."
The older cop cleared his throat, said, "Excuse," and allowed the smirking Wild to pass.
"What's goin' on?" Wild said. "I'm anxious to see this one-man St. Valentine's Day massacre."
"You just stick with me. Don't ask anybody any questions. Did you find the chief?"
"Yeah. Big Chief Ness was makin' whoopee with his squaw. I don't think he was thrilled to be interrupted."
"So he's not coming?"
"Don't be stupid. He's damn near here."
Within moments, the EN-1 sedan was cruising past the barricade and pulled up beside Merlo's car and Ness hopped out, topcoat flapping.
"Fill me in," he said to Curry, and Curry did.
Ness went over and spoke to Merlo, who nodded as Ness gave him his orders.
Ness came over to Curry, Johnson, and Wild, and said, "We're going to keep this block cleared off. I'm having some flood lights brought in so they can comb this crime scene efficiently. So far the only physical evidence anybody's spotted is the corpse itself."
"I sure didn't see anything," Curry said. "But I think Johnson and I preserved the scene halfway decent."
"I'm sure you did. I called the Detective Bureau and they're sending half a dozen boys to canvass this neighborhood, tonight. Somebody had to have seen something."
"Don't count on it," Johnson said.
Ness considered that. "Maybe we should pull in our Negro cops and have them do the questioning."
"That would help," Johnson admitted.
Ness called Merlo over and told him to call in the request for the colored cops; any of them who were off-duty were to come in, as well.
Ness returned to the trio of men and asked Johnson, "What's your reading of this?"
Johnson's mouth twitched. He said, "Scalise did this. With Lombardi's blessin'."
"Why?"
"To cause you trouble. Dead white cop in a colored section is goin' to fire up the frictions 'tween the police and the colored citizenry."
Ness nodded gravely. "We're just a couple blocks from where that riot happened, and that kid was killed."
"Right," Johnson said. "But we also are just a few blocks south of the white district. Easy to kill him there, dump him here."
Wild, who was saying nothing, was lighting up a Lucky Strike; he wasn't taking notes, Curry noticed, but he wasn't missing a word.
"This does sound like Lombardi and Scalise," Ness said, grinning like a skull. "We're gathering witnesses, trying to build confidence in our ability to safeguard those witnesses-and the Mayfield boys bump off a cop and dump him here. Here we are assuring witnesses of protection, and one of our own gets it, and is tossed in their literal front yard." He laughed bitterly.
"Hell," said Johnson, "we just two and a half blocks from where one of our prime witnesses lives."
Ness looked at him sharply. "Who's that?"
"John C. Washington," Curry said. "One of the former policy kings. You've talked to him."
"He's a key witness, all right," Ness said, thinking that over. He checked his watch. "It's not even ten. Let's go over there and talk to him. Curry, Johnson, you ride with me. Sam, you want to come?"
Wild grinned, pitched his Lucky into the night, trailing sparks. "Sure. No more dead bodies gonna turn up here."
As they drove the two blocks, Ness kept going over it. "Okay, we know why they dumped the body in this district- to embarrass us, to generally…"
"Fuck up our investigation," Johnson said.
"Yes. That's exactly right. But it doesn't explain why this man.. what was his name, Clifford Willis? Why this officer was killed."
"Like we said," Johnson said. "To cause trouble and embarrassment."
"No. That's why they dumped him here. Not why they killed him. Johnson, you knew Willis?"
"To speak to. Worked outa the same precinct."
"Was he Scalise's man? Was he dirty?"
"Not that I know of."
"Jesus!" Wild said, as they rounded the corner of 46th. "What the hell is goin' on up there?"
Three red-and-blue squad cars were parked in the street at askew angles in front of the yellow frame Victorian. All the lights were on in the house, and blue shapes were moving in the windows; cops were swarming all over the front porch. There was yelling, male; there was the sound of breaking glass; there was a scream, female.
"What the hell is this?" Ness said, under his breath.
Curry glanced over at his chief, and saw the glazed, hollow look that spoke great anger on the part of this quiet man.
Ness pulled up next to the squad cars and jumped out of the sedan, leaving it running. Curry, Wild, and Johnson followed as the safety director ran up the sidewalk onto the front porch. The cops there, who seemed to be in the process of dismantling a porch swing, froze with surprise at seeing the safety director standing before them, obviously not pleased.
"What in hell are you men doing?" he demanded.
Their arms fell to their sides, swinging limply; they were like school kids caught being naughty.
He didn't wait for an answer; he moved on inside, and Curry followed. Johnson and Wild waited outside.
The inside of the house was a shambles. The beautiful little home's furniture was upended and in many cases splintered into scrap wood; the banister on the second-floor staircase had been kicked apart and its posts stuck out at odd angles, and some were gone, like a smile missing many of its teeth.
Ness wasn't smiling. This damage was being perpetrated by uniformed police officers, who were roaming the small house, trashing it, busting out windows with nightsticks, ripping drapes apart like rapists tearing the clothes off a virginal victim.
John C. Washington, dressed in silk pajamas, and his pretty, plumpish wife, who was in a silk dressing gown, were standing beside the fireplace. He had his arm around her shoulder and she was burying her face in his chest; the woman was crying, the man was standing tall, coldly furious, as his house, his possessions, were turned into rubble before his eyes, by representatives of the city government.
Ness grabbed one of the cops by the arm, a heavy-set red-haired fellow of perhaps thirty, who turned with a snarling expression, until he saw who he was snarling at, and melted like wax.
"Who's in charge?" Ness demanded, shaking him. "Who the hell's in charge!"
"No… nobody. We just got the call…"
" What call?"
From upstairs came the cracking of furniture getting busted up, the sound of shattering glass.
The red-haired officer gestured helplessly with both hands. "A white cop was killed, Air. Ness. A white cop!"
"What does that have to do with this?"
"Johnny C. is a policy racketeer, Mr. Ness. Surely you know that."
Ness threw the man against the stairs.
He stalked back outside. Curry followed him, close as a shadow.
Ness stood in the street. Curry was at his side. Johnson and Wild were across the street on the sidewalk, just taking it all in.
"Give me your gun," Ness said to Curry.
"What are you going to do?"
"Give me your goddamn gun."
Curry swallowed. Ness swore only rarely, and hardly ever used a gun. From under his shoulder Curry withdrew the. 38 revolver and handed it to Ness.
Who fired it into the air.
Once.
Twice.
Six times.
Gun still held upward, smoke twirling out the barrel, Ness stood in the middle of the street and waited.
Cops emptied out of the house like Johns in a whorehouse fire. They had guns in hand and wore expressions of rage.
And they were stopped short, all of them, when they saw who was standing in the street before them.
"You men," Ness said, evenly, through teeth gritted so tight they ought to have broken, "are going to give your names and badge numbers to my assistant, Detective Curry, here. Then you're going to get the hell out of my sight. And when you're drifting off to sleep tonight, ponder this question: Why am I a police officer? And when you've searched your soul on that one, ponder this: Will I still be a police officer tomorrow morning?"
Glumly, sheepishly, they gathered around Curry, who took their names. Fifteen of them. The men muttered excuses. The word "nigger" turned up frequently, the phrase "cop killers" equally often. Within ten minutes, they were gone, their squad cars sliding slowly away, sirens off, red-and-blue tails tucked 'tween their legs.
Curry went inside, where Ness was talking to Washington and his wife. A place on a couch that was more or less intact had been cleared of rubble and glass. Washington sat with his arm around the shoulder of his trembling wife.
Ness stood before him, hat in hand. "We can put you up in a hotel, Mr. Washington."
"No, sir. I have friends in my own community."
"I can't excuse what happened tonight. But I can assure you I will have a crew from the city here tomorrow to help clean your place up. And I'll get funds to help cover the damage done."
Washington said nothing; his eyes were cold.
"There was a cop killing tonight," Ness said. "I have reason to believe your old friends Lombardi and Scalise were responsible-but they left the body on your doorstep, in effect."
Standing across the room by the fireplace, contemplating a picture in a broken frame of a fat uniformed colored soldier, Johnson said, "Cops go bughouse, Johnny, when one of their own gets it."
Washington said nothing.
Ness said, "We need your testimony, Mr. Washington. We can't let Lombardi and Scalise get away with, this ruse."
Washington sighed heavily. " 'Ruse'? Does this look like a ruse to you, Mr. Ness? My home, is it a ruse? Or does it look more like a shambles?"
Curry said, "Mr. Washington-why do you think you were singled out for this?"
Nobody said anything, though Ness looked shrewdly at Curry.
Finally Washington answered: "Maybe this is going on all over the east side… police terrorism running rampant. There are a lot of police in Cleveland."
Ness looked at Johnson. "What do you think, Detective?"
"Johnny just happened to be close to the scene of the crime," Johnson said, matter-of-factly. "Easy target for somebody lookin' to take somethin' out on somebody."
Eyes narrowed, Ness said, "Did you know Clifford Willis? The officer shot?"
Bristling, Washington said, "Am I a suspect? We entertained friends earlier this evening, and arrived home at…"
Washington's wife looked at Ness with disdain.
Ness patted the air with one hand. "No… that's not why I'm asking. But if there's a connection…"
Washington stood and his wife stood with him; they might have been Siamese twins. "Mr. Ness. If you gentlemen wouldn't mind leaving me, and my wife, to what is left of our home…?"
Ness nodded, sighed, stood. "We'll talk later, Mr. Washington. I'm sorry this happened."
"I should hope so."
"I don't just mean your house, Mr. Washington. A police officer was killed tonight. Let's not lose sight of that."
"Yes," Washington said, looking about his ruined home significantly. "But that's such small solace."
And the former policy king, in the midst of his stormed, sacked castle, pointed to the door.