Authors: Whit Masterson
The reporters lingered on a while, talking to the neighbours, but eventually they departed. The prowl car followed shortly to answer another call but with the promise that they would check back frequently during the remainder of the night. And Holt was left alone.
For a while he sat in the living room, thinking. With its blasted window and scarred wall, it reminded him of the Linneker cabana wreckage. Only the smell of death was absent. For how long, he wondered.
At last he went to bed. After midnight, he rose and telephoned the Mayatorena ranch to ascertain if Connie had arrived safely. She had. Even so, he couldn’t sleep. He wondered if McCoy and Quinlan could.
I
N
the morning, the shattered living room had a mournful look as if it too could hardly believe what had happened to it. Holt found the whole house depressing in the grey foggy light; without Connie and Nancy to brighten it, the place reminded him of a mausoleum. Despite Connie’s admonitions, he made a breakfast of coffee. Before he left the house, he telephoned a glass company to order a new front window. The pocked wall could wait.
He did not drive to the Civic Centre immediately but stopped at a downtown sporting goods store and purchased a pistol and ammunition. In his military service, Holt had carried a
.45
automatic and had achieved a marksman rating with it. But he considered the bulky weapon too cumbersome for his present purpose and so he settled for a stubby .32, a pistol that had both convenience and authority. When Holt signed the registration form, the clerk warned him that he would have to obtain a police permit to carry it.
“That is, unless you intend to keep it in your house all the time, Mr. Holt. Funny law, isn’t it?”
“A million laughs,” Holt agreed. “Do you suppose it’s all right if I carry it as far as the police station?”
“Oh, I guess so.” The clerk chuckled. “Unless you intend to shoot a cop or somebody.”
Holt didn’t make the answer he was tempted to make. Instead, he put the pistol, unloaded, in his coat pocket and drove to police headquarters. The desk sergeant heard his request and directed him to the appropriate section. With a wry smile, Holt discovered that it was one of those presided over by Sergeant Hank Quinlan.
Quinlan was present, slouched at his desk in the rear, his injured leg stuck out stiffly to the side. He didn’t greet Holt by word or nod but listened impassively as Holt made his application to one of the women clerks. There was a form to be filled out, of course.
“Reason for carrying a weapon?” the clerk asked, after the usual preamble of name, address, occupation, make and serial number of the pistol had been taken care of.
“Protection of myself and my family,” said Holt, looking past her at Quinlan. “Somebody took a shot at us last night.”
Quinlan rose ponderously, taking up his cane. “That’s very interesting,” he commented. “Isn’t it, Mac?”
Holt turned quickly. Captain McCoy was standing in back of him, a slight smile on his tanned face. Holt didn’t know how long McCoy had been standing there. McCoy moved silently, walking on the balls of his feet. To Holt’s jumpy nerves, there was something almost ghostly about McCoy’s materialization since he had imagined him miles away at the ranch.
“Very interesting,” McCoy replied. “If it’s genuine, that is. You never know. What kind of an act are you staging now, Holt?”
“Staging is more in your department, Captain,” Holt told him levelly. “What are you doing down here? I thought you were retired.”
“Oh, I just dropped in to have coffee with Hank. It’s hard to break the habits of a lifetime, you know.”
“There are good habits and there are bad habits. Which do you mean?”
“If you live to be as old as I am, you’ll understand.”
“Do you have any doubts as to my longevity, Captain?”
The polite double talk seemed to amuse McCoy. “I’ve seen men like you work themselves to death.”
The woman clerk had been standing with pen outstretched through the conversation, a little bewildered at the air of smiling hostility that vibrated between the two men. Timidly, she inquired, “Would you like to sign the application now, Mr. Holt?”
Holt did so. “When can I pick up the permit?”
Quinlan interposed before she could answer. “We’re pretty busy right now,” he said curtly. “It may take a while to process. Call us tomorrow.”
It was so obviously a stall that Holt flushed. Angry words rose to his lips but he pushed them back. He wasn’t going to give the pair the satisfaction of seeing him lose his temper. It wouldn’t accomplish anything, anyway, since they were in the driver’s seat. “All right,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” He wheeled and left the office. Behind him, he heard McCoy’s soft chuckle.
Holt was still angry when he entered the district attorney’s office fifteen minutes later. Adair rose to greet him with an expression of surprised concern. “Mitch, I’m glad to see you. I’ve heard about what happened, of course. I wasn’t sure you’d be around today.”
“I’ll be around for a long time.”
“Well, I heard that Connie and your girl left for Mexico and I supposed — ”
“I didn’t feel like running away.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” Adair was the picture of sympathetic understanding. “But if it were I, you wouldn’t find me hanging around for the Buccios to take pot shots at. This isn’t cowardice, Mitch, just common sense.”
Holt sat down. Adair’s overfriendliness and obvious willingness to believe that the Buccios were responsible for the attack told him that this was going to be a long and wearying interview. “It wasn’t the Buccios who shot at us. It was McCoy.”
Adair stiffened. “And just why do you believe it was McCoy?”
“Because Quinlan would have used his fists.”
“That isn’t what I meant and I believe you know it.” Adair retreated behind his desk and his cordiality retreated with him. “I want to know why you’re persisting in this ridiculous theory of yours. I’ve given it some hard thought and I’d hoped you had too. You simply haven’t got a case.”
“What does it take to convince you?”
“Proof. I’m old-fashioned that way.”
“Then give me a chance to dig up proof. I don’t care how this comes out as long as it’s subjected to a thorough investigation. But you’re trying to stop me before I can even get started.” Holt leaned forward. “Look, all I ask is that you keep an open mind. Let me take a week or two, really dig into — ”
Adair said, “If there’s anyone in this office who doesn’t have an open mind, he isn’t sitting on my side of the desk. The only conclusion I can draw is that you’ve worked yourself into a blind spot and are just too hardheaded to admit it. Either that, or you’ve got some personal grudge against McCoy and Quinlan that you aren’t telling.”
Holt said thinly, “If that’s what you believe, you have my resignation.”
“I didn’t say that I believed it. I don’t believe it.” Adair’s voice took on a fatherly tone as he realized he had gone too far. “I know you too well, Mitch. We’ve worked together too long. But I do believe that you haven’t thought this thing out as far as you should. Do you know what the consequences of this could be? You’re setting out to destroy two men whom the public believes in. And whether you’re right or wrong — and I know you’re wrong — if this gets out, why, doubt will be cast on every case in which McCoy and Quinlan have been involved. That goes back thirty years, Mitch! Don’t you see what that will mean to the public? They’ll lose confidence in the whole police department — more than that, in the whole fabric of justice. Is that what you want?”
“But what’s the alternative?” Holt asked. “Let’s suppose that I’m right and we bury it for the sake of the public. How about men now in prison who are possibly innocent? How about relatives of these men, their families, who have had to live with the shame and humiliation of having a jailbird for a son or a husband or a father? It’s possible that some innocent men have even been executed on perjured testimony. Aren’t they all part of the public, too?”
“What do you propose?” Adair snapped. “To open the prisons and turn a bunch of criminals loose on society? You talk blandly about re-investigating these old cases. Do you have any idea what that means in dollars and cents? We’d be laying the county open to damage suits running into the millions. Cases would have to be re-opened and re-tried. At this late date most of them couldn’t be re-tried. Witnesses have died or dispersed. The only alternative would be to declare a general amnesty and empty the prisons. Do you want to be responsible for that?”
“I’d say even that would be better than keeping one innocent man in prison.” Holt hefted his brief case. “Sure, it seems pretty staggering right now. But it isn’t quite the mountain you’re making it out to be. A good many of the cases McCoy and Quinlan were involved in didn’t hinge solely on their testimony. Some of the defendants were found guilty on other evidence, including their own confessions. It’s not a question of a general amnesty at all.”
“It would amount to the same thing before you were through. Even if you were right, you’d be burning down a whole house just to get rid of a rat.”
“A pair of rats,” Holt corrected, unsmiling.
Adair sighed. “Well, Mitch, why don’t we do this? I still don’t believe in your theory but I’ll meet you halfway. I’ll arrange it that McCoy and Quinlan will never work on another case. That should be enough to satisfy you.”
A compromise is always harder to resist than outright opposition and Holt had to struggle against accepting this one. It would be so easy while the other course promised nothing but trouble. But the brief case lay heavily on his knees, like a fat leather conscience. “No,” he said slowly, “that’s not enough.”
Adair pressed his lips together in a thin line. “I see,” he said coldly, but what he saw wasn’t made plain because they were interrupted by a light knock on the door and the district attorney’s secretary stuck her head in.
“Chief Gould is here to see you, Mr. Adair,” she announced and waited.
“Oh?” said Adair, obviously surprised. “Well — have him come in, then.” He rose, glancing at Holt to indicate that their conversation was finished. But Holt didn’t take the cue. He remained seated, stubbornly refusing to be dismissed with the problem unsettled. And before Adair could say anything further, Chief Gould came in.
The big police chief looked startled when he discovered Holt. “Oh, I didn’t know I was interrupting anything, Jim.”
“It’s quite all right,” Adair told him. “Mitch and I were finished.”
When Holt still didn’t rise, Gould said uneasily, “I wanted to have a little talk with you, Jim, but it could wait, I guess.”
Holt said, “If this is something personal, I’ll get out. But if it concerns what I think it does, then I want to hear it, too.”
There was an uncomfortable silence broken by Gould’s awkward laugh. “Well, maybe you’ll think it’s personal, Holt, but if you want to hear it I don’t have any objections. I’m not trying to hide anything. All right, Jim?”
Adair was staring coldly at his assistant. “By all means. Pull up a chair, Chief.”
Gould did so, seating himself so that he was facing the district attorney, with his ruggedly handsome profile to Holt. After a moment, he began, “It’s about what happened last night. The shooting at Holt’s home. I’ve gone over the reports and talked to the investigating officers. I’m not at all convinced that we’ve been given the straight facts.”
Holt didn’t say anything. Adair murmured. “What’re you getting at?”
“I can generally smell a phoney deal and I smell one now. I don’t believe in this so-called shot-gun attack. I think it was staged.”
“Who told you?” Holt asked calmly. “McCoy or Quinlan?”
Gould swivelled his head to regard him. “For your information, I generally form my own conclusions. We’ve only your word for what happened, Holt. There’s no other evidence to support it.”
“My word — and my wife’s,” Holt contradicted.
“Your wife,” Gould echoed. “Who has gone off somewhere to Mexico, I believe, very conveniently. The Mexican customs boys tell me that she was carrying some guns with her when she crossed the border. Was one of them a shotgun?”
“Didn’t they tell you that, too?”
“They weren’t sure. But I find it strange that you can’t give any description of the car, that no shell was found on your premises, and that you didn’t appear concerned enough to want police surveillance of your home afterwards. You can’t even give a reason for the shooting.”
“Oh, I can give a reason,” Holt said. “But I don’t think you’d believe it.”
“I’ve got a reason of my own. One that ties in neatly with your behaviour of the past few days. I think that you’re a bright young man who intends to climb to the top fast, and over the body of the police department.”
Adair, who had been listening uncomfortably as the exchange grew more heated, said, “Now let’s not go jumping at conclusions, any of us.”
Gould said, “Look at it this way, Jim. Here’s Holt, a good-looking young attorney who’s gotten his picture on the front page a few times. This is an election year and there’s still plenty of time to file for the primaries. He’s got a Mexican wife to corner that vote and he’s probably backed by Linneker money. All he needs is a crusade. That adds up, to me.”
It was so absurd that Holt couldn’t rouse any anger at the accusations. He merely smiled, not believing that the charges needed any serious defence. Adair felt differently, however. He said uneasily, “I think you’ve misjudged Mitch. He’s sometimes a trifle bullheaded and he can make a mistake like anybody else — matter of fact, we were just talking about that very thing when you came in — but he’s the least political-minded man I know. Even if he did have political ambitions, I’m sure he’d be honourable enough not to go behind my back.” It was meant as a declaration of confidence but to Holt it sounded more like a question. “We’re all just a little jumpy this morning.”
“Politics are none of my business,” declared Gould, a trifle belligerently since that was the way he had gotten his appointment. “But I intend to protect my department from smear attacks.”
Adair tried a reassuring laugh that came out false. “You must have taken seriously that old legal saying, Chief. ‘Beware the young man with a book?’ But you don’t have to worry about Mitch.” Adair sent a pointed glance at Holt. “He’s leaving on his vacation today — it’s long overdue — and when he gets back, things will look different all around.” He tried again to turn the disagreement into a joke. “Even his office. I’m having it repainted just so he’ll have to take a rest. He’ll have no place to work.”