Their faces were pale blots; with that light in my eyes, I could make out no features, but the first voice was older: “Okay, boyo—lean your hands against the side of the car.”
I gladly turned my back on the blinding light, heading back to the Terraplane, where I leaned against the sleek curve of a fender, waiting for the frisk. It came. My gun was back in the motel room, which was a good thing, I guessed. I felt my wallet leave my back pocket; my little notebook was in the motel room, also.
“Does this car belong to you?” the second one asked; he was young, or anyway younger.
“No it doesn’t.”
“You’re damn right it doesn’t,” the older cop said. “This car was reported stolen.”
Christ! Putnam. Somehow he got wind I was using Amy’s car, and he set me up, the prick.
“This is a misunderstanding,” I said, and risked looking back with a small smile. “I was loaned this car.”
“That may come as news to the guy you pinched it from,” the older one said. “You’re going to have to come with us, boyo.”
A night in jail loomed ahead. No reason to fight it. Mantz could straighten it out tomorrow morning; this was just Putnam’s way of getting back at me.
The older officer took me by the arm and hauled me around; a little rough, nothing special, par for the copper course. I knew enough not to cross him.
“Hey, Calvin,” the younger one said, gazing into my open wallet as if it were a crystal ball. “I think this guy’s a cop….”
Calvin, still holding onto my arm, snatched the wallet from his young partner’s grasp and held it close to his face. “What’s this…Chicago Police Benevolent Association?…You on the job?”
“I work private now,” I said. “I was on the Chicago department for ten years.” That was a five-year lie.
I could now make out their faces. The older one had sharp features and dull eyes. The younger one had a bulldog mug that would make a great cop face, in a few years, but right now it looked a little silly.
“Ten years, you say,” the older one said. “Why’d you step down?”
“Disability,” I lied. With my free hand, I gestured to the arm he had hold of me by. “Took one in the shoulder.”
He blinked and let go of my arm as if it were hot. “How’d it happen, son?”
I’d gone from “boyo” to “son”—an encouraging raise in rank.
“Stickup guy,” I said, as if that explained it.
They nodded, as if I’d explained it.
The older cop’s sharp features softened. “You didn’t really steal this car, did you, son?”
“No. It was loaned to me. Like I said.”
The two cops looked at each other, then the younger one’s bulldog mug wrinkled into a plea of mercy, and the older one nodded.
“Look, friend,” the older one said, promoting me again, “this was a roust. We were supposed to haul you in. Keep you busy.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.” The younger one shrugged. “A guy tipped us you’d be driving down this road sometime this evening, and we been keepin’ an eye out.”
I jerked a thumb toward the Terraplane. “
“No,” Calvin said, shaking his head, a thumb in his gunbelt. “But the guy said you’d buy the story.”
I nodded. “And you’d just put me in a holding cell for a few hours.”
“Yeah,” the young one said. “And call a number and let this guy know we had ya…then again when we let ya out.”
Didn’t these clowns know they might have been setting me up for a rubout? No self-respecting Chicago cop would do that—for less than a C-note.
“What did this guy look like?”
“Gray hair, dark eyebrows, dark suit,” the younger one said. “Medium build, maybe six feet. Respectable- looking.”
Miller.
“What did he pay you?”
“Sawbuck each,” Calvin said.
Life was cheap in California. I dug in my pocket, but the younger one said, “No! Your money’s no good.”
I don’t think his partner appreciated this magnanimous gesture, but he let it go.
In fact, he said, “We ain’t gonna be party to rousting a brother officer.”
“Thank you, fellas,” I said.
And they tipped their hats to me, walked back to their black Ford, cut the spotlight, and headed back toward Burbank.
