Murder's Shield

  Murder's Shield

  The Destroyer #9

  Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

  For Elevator Mike and Heather

  CHAPTER ONE

  BIG PEARL WILSON SENT the white fox into the bedroom to get him two handfuls of money. He eased his $185 Gucci slippers into the ankle-high white rug that circled to his bar and around to the drape-covered windows. The drapes were drawn, separating his lush pad from the decaying, teeming Harlem streets—a touch of paradise in Hell. The curtains separating the two were fireproof, somewhat soundproof, and had cost him $2,200. He had paid in cash.

  “Have a drink, officer?” said Big Pearl, moving his slow easy majestic way to the bar, the slow and easy way that foxes sniffed.

  “No, thank you,” said the detective. He looked at his watch.

  “A snort?” offered Big Pearl, pointing to his nose.

  The detective refused the cocaine.

  “I don’t snort myself,” said Big Pearl. “You waste yourself a little bit every time you use it. These cats on the street live baddest a year, and are broke or dead or forgotten before they see the weather change. They beat on their women and one of ’em talks and it’s off to Attica. They think it’s a big game with their flashy cars. Me. My women get paid, my cops get paid, my judges get paid, my pols get paid and I make my money. And I’ve been ten years without a bust.”

  The girl came bustling back with a manila envelope, unevenly stuffed. Big Pearl gave the insides a condescending glance.

  “More,” he said. Then he sensed something was wrong. It was the detective. He was on the edge of the deep leather chair and getting up for the package, as if he would be glad to take it with less just to get out of Big Pearl’s pad.

  “A little extra for you personally,” said Big Pearl.

  The white detective nodded stiffly.

  “You’re a new man at headquarters,” said Big Pearl. “Usually, they don’t send a new man on something like this. Mind if I check with headquarters?”

  “No. Go right ahead,” said the detective.

  Big Pearl smiled his wide, glistening smile. “You know you got the most important job in the whole New York City police department tonight?”

  Big Pearl reached under the bar for the telephone. Taped lightly to the inside of the receiver was a small Derringer which slipped neatly and unseen into the palm of his large black hand as he dialed.

  “’Lo, Inspector,” said Big Pearl, suddenly sounding like a field hand. “This is yo’ boy, Big Pearl. Ah got somethin’ heah Ah just want to check out. The detective you send down, what he look like?”

  Big Pearl stared at the white detective, nodding, saying,“Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yassah. Okay. Much obliged.” Big Pearl hung up, returning the Derringer with the phone.

  “You white,” he said with a big smile, wondering how much of the needle the detective would understand. “You feel all right. You look kind of nervous.”

  “I’m all right,” said the detective. When he had the money, he said, almost as if following orders:

  “Who’s your contact for Long Island housewives? We know she’s a white woman in Great Neck. Who?”

  Big Pearl smiled. “You want more money? I’ll give you more.” It was Big Pearl’s cool that enabled him to keep the smile when the white detective drew his .38 Police Special and pointed it at Big Pearl’s eyes.

  “Hey, man. What’s that?”

  The white girl gasped and covered her mouth. Big Pearl raised his hands to show there was nothing in them. He wasn’t going to try to shoot a cop to protect some paleface in Great Neck. There were other ways, ways that kept you alive.

  “Hey, man, I can’t give you that stuff. What you need it for anyhow? You New York City. And she pay off in Great Neck.”

  “I want to know.”

  “Do you know that if she dry up in Great Neck, the honey machine dry up? No more classy white housewives from Babylon and the Hamptons and all the places where I get my real class. If the honey stop for me, it stop for you. Dig, baby?”

  “What’s her name?”

  “You sure the inspector wants this?”

  “I want it. You’ve got three seconds and it better be the right name, Big Pearl, because if it’s not, I’m going to come back here and mess up your face and your pad.”

  “What can I do?” said Big Pearl to the frightened, white chick. “Hey, don’t worry, honey. Everything works out. Now, you just stop crying.”

  Big Pearl waited a second and asked again if the detective wouldn’t take, say $3,000.

  The detective wouldn’t.

  “Mrs. Janet Brachdon,” said Big Pearl. “Mrs. Janet Brachdon of 811 Cedar Grove Lane, whose husband ain’t really all that successful in advertising. Let me know when you shake her down and for how much. ’Cause I don’t want her jacking the bill on me. I’m gonna pay it anyhow. You just driving out to Great Neck to get what comes from her anyways.”

  Big Pearl’s tone was heavy-seeded with contempt. Save him from the idiots of the world, Lord, save him from the idiots of the world.

  “Janet Brachdon, eight eleven Cedar Grove Lane,” repeated the detective.

  “Thass right,” said Big Pearl.

  The gun cracked once and Big Pearl’s black face had a hole in it between his eyes. The dark hole filled with blood. The tongue stuck out, and another shot immediately went into the falling face.

  “Oh,” said the girl weakly, and the detective drilled her in the chest, sending her into a backward somersault. He took two steps to the writhing form of Big Pearl and put a shot into the temple, although the big black pimp was obviously dying. He finished off the girl who was lying clay stiff while her thorax bubbled up red. A shot in the temple also.

  He left the apartment. The deep white rug was soaking up great quantities of human blood.

  At 8:45 that night, Mrs. Janet Brachdon was serving a roast according to the tenets of Julia Child. The potatoes had not just been mashed; they had been blended with homegrown herbs as Julia had suggested on her television show. Two men, one white and one black, entered the front door and blew Mrs. Brachdon’s brains into the blended potatoes as her husband and eldest son looked on. The men apologized to the boy, then shot both the father and son.

  In Harrisburg, Pa., a pillar of the community was preparing to address the Chamber of Commerce. His topics were creative financing and how to deal more effectively with the ghetto. His car blew up when he turned on the key. The next day, the local paper received an unusual press release. It was a detailed analysis of how creative the pillar of the community had been.

  He could afford to lose money in erecting Hope House for addicts, the news release pointed out. He made enough in heroin sales to absorb the loss.

  In Connecticut, a judge who traditionally showed appalling leniency toward people reputed to be members of the Mafia, was taken to his backyard pool by two men with drawn guns. He was asked, under pain of death, to demonstrate his swimming prowess. The request was rather unfair. He had a handicap. His nineteen-inch portable color television set. It was chained to his neck. It was still chained to his neck when the local police department fished him out three hours later.

  These deaths, and a half-dozen others, all went to the chairman of a Congressional subcommittee who, one fine bright autumn day, came to the inescapable conclusion that the deaths were not mob warfare. They were something else, something far more sinister. He told the U.S. Attorney General that he intended to launch a Congressional investigation. He asked for the help of the Justice Department. He was assured he would have it. But that did not give him total assurance. Not in his gut.

  Outside the Justice Building, in the still, warm Washington Street, Representative Francis X. Duffy of New
York City’s 13th Congressional District, suddenly remembered the fear he had experienced when he dropped behind the lines in France for the OSS in World War II.

  It was his stomach that suddenly lost all feeling and sent the signal to his mind to block out thoughts of anything other than what was around him. Some men lost touch with their surroundings when frightened, and tried to shut out reality. Duffy closed off emotion instead. Which was why he returned from World War II, and some of his colleagues didn’t. It was not a virtue that Duffy had perfected. He was born with it, just as he was born with a heart that pumped blood and lungs that took oxygen from the air.

  The kind of stomach-rotting fear that most other people experienced came to Francis X. Duffy when he couldn’t manage his son, or in a close election, or when his wife went into St. Vincent’s Hospital for an operation. That was when his stomach jumped, his palms sweated, and he had to fight for control of himself. Death was another matter.

  So here it is, said Frank Duffy’s mind. So here it is coming at you. He stood before the Justice Building, a fifty-five-year-old man, his fine, neat-combed hair graying, his face lined with the marks of life, his briefcase filled with reports he was sure he would never use. And what amazed him was how well his body remembered to prepare for the possibility of death.

  He strolled to a bench. It was speckled with fallen red, yellow, and brown leaves; he brushed them aside. Some youngsters must have spread them there because leaves did not fall that heavy, least of all in Washington in late October.

  Things to do before death. The will was all right. Two. Tell Mary Pat that he loved her. Three. Tell his son that life was good and that this was a good country to live it in, maybe the best. Nothing too heavy, though. Maybe just shake his hand and tell him how proud he was of him. Four, confession. That would be necessary, but how could he honestly make his peace with God when he had used methods to have only one child, methods not approved by the Church?

  He would have to promise to amend his life, and it seemed dishonest to promise such a thing when the promise didn’t mean anything any more. He knew full well that he would not have more children if he could now, so the promise would be a lie. And he did not wish to lie to God, not now.

  God had been a problem since his arguments with the sisters at St. Xavier’s, extending all the way through the formality of joining the Knights of Columbus because Irish-Catholic politicians from the 13th C.D. all belonged to the Knights of Columbus, just as the Jews sprinkled themselves on hospital boards and social agencies. The religions met at Muscular Dystrophy.

  Duffy smiled and breathed the autumn in Washington. He loved this city to the very depth of his being. This crime-ridden brothel on the Potomac where the best hope of mankind still legislated its tortuous way toward a system where people could live safely and justly with other people. Where the son of an Irish bootlegger could rise to congressman and vote with sons of oil millionaires, paupers, farmers, cobblers, racketeers, clergymen, hustlers, and professors. That was America. What the radicals of both the left and right hated about it was its very humanity. They wanted to model America on some abstract purity that had never existed and would never exist. The right with the past; the left with tomorrow.

  Duffy looked at his briefcase. In it were reports on the deaths of a pimp, a female recruiter of prostitutes, a heroin dealer, and a judge who had been obviously earning a tidy profit from acquitting people he shouldn’t have. And in that briefcase were the signs of great danger to the beautiful country that did exist. America. What to do? The Attorney General had been a good first step, but already it could be dangerous. Could Duffy trust the Justice Department or the FBI? How far had this thing gone? It was big enough to kill a half dozen people already. Was it national? Did it infect the federal agencies? How far and how deep? On that question depended how long he would live. His enemies might not know it yet but they would kill a congressman if need be. They could not stop at anyone now. They had cut themselves free from reality, and now they would destroy what they sought to preserve.

  What to do now? Well, a little protection from someone he could trust would do for a starter. The toughest man he knew. Maybe the toughest man in the world. Mean on the outside and mean on the inside.

  That afternoon with a pile of change in front of him, Congressman Duffy dialed a long distance number from a pay phone.

  “Hello, you lazy sonofabitch, how are you, this is Duffy.”

  “Are you still alive?” came back the voice. “That candy-ass life you lead should have put you in the grave long before this.”

  “You’d know on national television or the New York Times if I were dead. I’m not a nobody police inspector.”

  “You wouldn’t have the brass for police work, Frankie. You’d only live three minutes with your weepy West Side liberalism.”

  “Which brings up why I called you, Bill. You don’t think I’d just want to say hello.”

  “No, not a big-shot faggy liberal congressman like you. What do you want, Frankie?”

  “I want you to die for me, Bill.”

  “Okay, just so long as I don’t have to listen to your political bullshit. What’s up?”

  “I think I’m going to be a target very soon. What say we meet at that special place?”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave right away. And Fag-Ass, do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t get yourself killed before then. They’ll make you into another martyr. We got enough of those.”

  “Just try to read the map without moving your lips, Bill.”

  Frank Duffy delayed telling his wife he loved her and his son how proud he was of him and God that he was sorry. Inspector William McGurk was another two weeks at least. Guaranteed. Maybe even a natural death.

  He drove into Maryland to escape the heavy liquor tax and bought ten quarts of Jack Daniels. Since he would not be stopping at any other stores, he also purchased some soda to go with it.

  “A quart,” said Congressman Duffy. “A quart of club soda.”

  The clerk looked at the row of Jack Daniels bottles and said, “You sure a quart’s what you want?”

  Duffy shook his head.

  “You’re right. Make it a pint. One of those little bottles.”

  “We don’t have little bottles.”

  “Then, that’s okay. Just what’s here on the counter. Hell, make it an even dozen.”

  “Jack Daniels?”

  “What do you think?”

  Duffy drove to the airport and loaded the Jack Daniels onto his Cessna, making sure the bottles were flat and even, a central weight on the plane. Not that they would make that much difference, but why take chances? There were old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.

  Duffy landed that night in a small private airstrip outside Seneca Falls, New York. A car was waiting. McGurk had driven from New York City. The cold night, the unloading of the plane, and the meeting with McGurk, reminded Duffy of the night in France when he had first met the best weapons man he would ever know. It had been early spring in France and although they knew an invasion would come soon from England, they did not know when or where because high risk people are never given information that the upstairs would not want to see in enemy hands.

  It was a weapons drop in Brittany. McGurk and Duffy had been assigned to distribute and teach the use of said weapons in a manner consistent, and with a degree of skill commensurate with, the practical use of such weapons in the field of operations. That is what their secret orders had said.

  “We gotta show the frogs how not to blow their feet off when they fire these things,” said McGurk.

  He was taller than Duffy and his face was surprisingly fleshy for a man so thin, a moon of a face with a button of a nose and rounded soft lips that made him appear about as incisive as a balloon.

  Duffy yelled out in French that each man should carry one case and no more. There were three cases left and a young Maqu
is man tried to hoist one of the extras.

  “Bury them,” said Duffy in French. “There’s no point in your dropping off because you’re tired. I’d rather have one case and one man than no case and no man.”

  The young Maquis still attempted to carry two. McGurk slapped him in the face and pushed him toward the line that was wending its way to the night-shrouded forest near the field.

  “You can’t explain things to these people,” said McGurk. “The only thing they understand is a slap in the face.”

  In two days, McGurk had taught the French Maquis some basic skills with their new weapons. His instructional method was a slap to get attention, then a demonstration, then another slap if the student failed. To test their proficiency, McGurk asked Duffy to stage a preliminary raid, before the Maquis received their first real combat order. Duffy chose a pass in which to trap a small Nazi convoy that regularly plied its way from a Wehrmacht army base to a major airfield.

  The convoy was ambushed at noon. The battle was over in less than three minutes. The French drivers and the German guards came pouring out of the trucks with their hands raised in surrender.

  McGurk got them in a line. Then he motioned to the worst marksman among the Maquis.” You. Go fifty yards up that hill. Kill someone. “

  The young Maquis scrambled up the hill and without catching his breath, fired off a shot. It caught a German guard in the shoulder. The other prisoners fell to the ground, covering their heads with their hands and bringing their knees up into their stomachs. It looked like a road littered with grown fetuses.

  “Keep going,” McGurk yelled up the hill. “You’ll fire until you kill him.”

  The next shot went wild. The shot after that took out part of a stomach. The next shot after that was wild. The young Maquis was crying.

  “I don’t want to kill like this,” he yelled.

  “You kill him or I kill you,” said McGurk and raised his carbine to his shoulder, pointing it up the hill. “And I’m no crummy frog marksman. I’ll take out your eyes.”

  Crying, the young Maquis fired again, catching the downed German in the mouth. The head was nearly severed from the neck.