Vice Cop Page 2

  As I had expected, he had all the angles figured. No matter what happened, Maurice Spangler would come through with no one at all mad at him.

  “Okay, sir,” I said. “I’ll let you know when I’m all set to go into the undercover role.”

  When I rejoined Martin Manners, he suggested that we take his car instead of mine when we went to visit his tailor. He had a Lincoln convertible.

  En route I said, “We’ve got my phony background worked out, Mr. Manners, but if we’re supposed to be friends, shoudn’t I know something about yours? I haven’t the faintest idea who you are.”

  He looked surprised. “I’m the president of Effington Steel.”

  Effington Steel is the biggest plant in town. But that didn’t make me stupid. There are forty major industries in St. Cecilia. Do you know the names of the presidents of all of the major industrial plants in your town?

  “Anything else I ought to know about you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know why you should,” he said. “We’re only supposed to have met once.”

  “How friendly are we?” I inquired. “Do we call each other by first names, or Mr. Manners and Mr. Rudd? Or in respect for your seniority, should I call you Mr. Manners and you call me Matt?”

  He didn’t seem to resent the seniority crack. After thinking it over, he said, “We’re friendly enough for me to have invited you to look me up if you ever got to town. I’m not in the habit of doing that with people I meet casually. Sharon’s going to think it odd as it is. We’d better pretend we felt an immediate camaraderie when we met.”

  “Okay, Martin,” I said.

  His tailor was a man named Alfred Swartz in the Blain Building. Apparently he was a good enough tailor not to have to depend on customer-impressing frills, for while the Blain Building is a respectable enough location, he didn’t put on any show at all inside his shop. There were no thick rugs and no richly-appointed reception room. You walked right into his workshop, which was a large bare room all cluttered with bolts of cloth, sewing machines and a table containing cutting shears and other implements of his trade. A couple of doors off the workshop led to a storeroom and a small office.

  Alfred Swartz was a little guy with a round little paunch and a crochety expression, and he must have had enough work so he didn’t care how many customers he drove away. He started losing my future business by ignoring us for a good five minutes while he finished cutting some material.

  Finally he looked up and said in a tone implying he could spare us about thirty seconds, “Yes, Mr. Manners?”

  Manners introduced me, and the little man gave me a curt nod instead of a handshake. When Manners explained that we wanted several outfits for me, he peevishly ordered Manners to stand out of the way so that he could get at me with a measuring tape.

  Manners meekly stood in a corner.

  The little man yelled, “Jock!” and a huge hulk of a man about twenty-five years old shambled out of the stockroom with notebook and pencil in his hands. He was about six feet and weighed possibly two-forty, most of it muscle, but he was so terrified of his diminutive employer that his pencil trembled as he held it poised over the notebook to take down measurements.

  “Why do you waste money on cheap, ready-made things like this?” Swartz demanded, examining the suit I was wearing. “Shoddy material, bad cut You look like a bum. Take off the coat.”

  I took off my coat and he started bouncing around me like an animated rubber ball, whipping the tape measure here and there about my body, shouting measurements at Jock and delivering a running commentary on my physical abnormalities.

  “Shoulders twenty-two,” he said. “Your neck is too thick, mister. High lapels are out. Make you look like a wrestler. Sleeves thirty-three, chest forty-eight, waist thirty-one. Don’t you ever eat, mister? A man’s supposed to have some belly. Hips thirty-seven. No wonder your ready-made suit hangs like a sack. Hips eleven inches less than your chest. You’re deformed. But never mind. In my suits nobody will be able to tell. Trouser length thirty-three.”

  He stepped away from me, his tape measure hanging around his neck, and put his hands on his hips. “Now what you want? Couple suits? Hurry up. I ain’t got all day.”

  I looked at Manners, who said, “We thought a couple of suits, a sport jacket, a couple of pairs of slacks and a dinner jacket.”

  Alfred Swartz started tossing around bolts of cloth. Finally he found one he liked.

  “Brown is your best color,” he said. “Don’t ever wear a gray check like that thing you got on again. Feel this.”

  Dutifully I felt the material. It didn’t mean anything to me. I don’t know Scotch tweed from burlap. “Feels fine,” I murmured.

  “One suit from bolt twenty-seven,” he shouted at Jock. “Deep-cut lapels, patch pockets.” He started throwing around more bolts of cloth. “Now we pick a second.”

  Manners risked coming out of his corner. “Perhaps a dark blue, Mr. Swartz?”

  The little man paused to stare at Manners, “You’re all of a sudden a tailor, Mr. Manners?” he inquired in a silky voice. “You can look at a man, tell what colors are his? Do I come down by your plant and tell you how to make steel?”

  “It was just a suggestion,” Manners said apologetically.

  “Who needs suggestions? In blue he’ll look like a head waiter. Maybe I’ll let him have dark green, if I got just the right color. Otherwise something else.”

  He managed to find a shade of dark green he liked. Eventually he located what he thought I should have for the sport jacket and the slacks. He let me pick my own dinner jacket material, because it was all the same shade of black and I suppose he figured even I couldn’t pick wrong. He asked when we wanted them.

  “We’re in something of a rush,” Manners said deferentially. “Could we get them in a couple of days?”

  “Two days!” the little man squawked. “You think I’m an octopus with eight arms?”

  “Well, how soon can we have them?” Manners asked pacifically.

  Having made his point and put Manners in his place, Swartz decided to be cooperative. “Day after tomorrow,” he said. “Your fitting appointment is at three sharp. Don’t be late.”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” I told him.

  When we got outside, I paused to look Manners up and down.

  “What’s the matter?” he inquired.

  “Just checking to see if any artistry goes with all that temperment. I guess it does.”

  I realized that a good part of the reason Manners looked like the man of distinction was his clothes. They fitted beautifully, and it was only by close examination that you could detect he had a decided paunch. I had been under the impression he was slim because of the skillful cut of his clothes.

  I wondered what the tailor charged for a suit, but decided not to ask. I was afraid if I knew, I’d be scared to move after I got in one for fear of tearing the pants.

  CHAPTER III

  Friday afternoon I showed up at Alfred Swartz’s tailoring shop promptly at three and found all four outfits ready. When I tried them on in the shop, none required any alterations. I put my old suit back on and carried the new ones away in a couple of boxes.

  As Martin Manners had informed me that his daughter wouldn’t be home Friday evening, there wasn’t any point in beginning the masquerate until the next day. Plans were for me to check into the Hotel Leland Saturday morning and phone his home from there. We had decided my excuse for being in town would be to attend the harness races at the Everglade Raceway just outside of St. Cecilia.

  With a free Friday evening, I decided to drop by my folks’ flat down on the south side and show off one of my new suits. I wore the brown one.

  My parents are sixty-three, but Dad still works full-time as a foreman for the Marsh Steel Metal Company. They could afford a better home than the four-room flat they’ve lived in all their married lives, but it’s only three blocks from where Dad works, and besides he likes the Polish section. Years ago I stopped trying t
o argue him into buying a home in some less crowded district.

  Both my parents came over from the old country as infants and are thoroughly Americanized. Dad even Anglicized his first name. In Polish it’s Boleszlaw, with the second l crossed like a t. He Anglicized it to Boleslaus. But in spite of their Americanization, they’re a little old-fashioned. Dad, aware that St. Cecilia is a politics-controlled town, has always been under the impression that the police department is riddled with graft and corruption. He doesn’t much approve of my being a cop.

  Mom doesn’t either, but for a different reason. She’s afraid I’ll get shot. She also can’t understand why I insist on maintaining an uptown apartment when I could have a nice place to sleep on the daybed in the front room.

  My sister Julie is the only one in the family who totally approves of me. Julie is blonde, twenty and a knockout. According to her last confidential report to me, she had received seventeen proposals of marriage to date, but apparently the right man hasn’t yet asked her, for she continues to work as a stenographer for a wholesale house. Mom is afraid she’ll never get married; Dad is afraid she will.

  Wearing my new suit was a mistake. Dad took one look at me and said, “You didn’t buy clothes like that on a policeman’s salary. You’re taking graft, are you?”

  Mom said, “Graft or no graft, he looks wonderful. You should be an executive of some big company, Mateusz.”

  Julie guessed, “You’re going to get married.”

  “It’s a disguise,” I informed them. “I’ll be on an undercover assignment for a while. That’s what I dropped by to tell you. You won’t be able to reach me either at headquarters or at my apartment for a couple of weeks.”

  This information dismayed Mom, who imagined me working my way into some mob of killers, who would find me out and riddle me with bullets. It thrilled Julie, who imagined the same thing but had more confidence in my survival ability. It didn’t impress Dad one way or the other, since he imagines a policeman’s life as primarily one of pinochle playing in the squadroom, with an occasional forage outdoors to arrest some jaywalker.

  “There isn’t any danger in the assignment,” I assured my mother. “I won’t even be carrying a gun.”

  Mom was relieved, Julie disappointed and Dad was unmoved. He didn’t think I was ever in any danger.

  To avoid having to parry questions about just exactly what my undercover assignment was, I stayed only a few minutes, then pleaded another engagement and left.

  The next day I checked into the Leland at nine A.M., registering as Mathew Rudd of New York City. They gave me a room on the eighth floor. Immediately I phoned Martin Manners’ home number.

  What sounded like a colored maid answered the phone. When I asked for Manners, she said, “Just a moment, please, suh.”

  It was only a moment before Manners came to the phone. He must have been standing by for the call.

  When his voice said, “Manners speaking,” I said, “Matt Rudd, Martin.”

  “Well, I’ll be!” he said in simulated surprise. “When did you get in town?” Apparently somebody was listening.

  He was overacting, but I was afraid to warn him because for all I knew there might be a dozen extensions in the house and his daughter might be listening in on one.

  “Just this morning,” I said. “I’m at the Leland.”

  “How long will you be around?”

  “A week. Maybe two. Depends on how they run. I’m down for the harness races.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Manners said with patently false enthusiasm. “How about coming out for lunch?”

  If he had been a better actor, I would have prolonged the game by saying I didn’t want to impose and letting him talk me into it. But in case anyone were listening in, I wanted him offstage as rapidly as possible.

  I said, “Okay. I know your address. What time?”

  “Can you be here by noon?”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  Since I had nearly three hours to get there, and it was only about a thirty-minute drive, I took a leisurely shower and carefully dressed in my new sport jacket and a pair of the new slacks. It seemed funny not to be wearing a gun, but it would have been out of character for a playboy. I stowed my .38 Detective Special and its holster in the bottom of my suitcase.

  Before checking into the hotel I had rented a new Ford. It was identical to my own car, but driving a car with local license plates and no rental sticker on it would have been too hard to explain. At eleven-twenty I phoned the desk and asked that my car be brought around front.

  On my way to my luncheon date I kept hoping that when Manners announced to his daughter that they were having a guest, his acting would improve. If it didn’t, she was going to be suspicious of me before we even met.

  The Manners home was on West Sheridan Drive in the heart of St. Cecilia’s most exclusive residential district. It was a mammoth two-story place of rose granite and stone surrounded by broad lawns. There was a swimming pool at one side of the house.

  Out here in the west end they seldom got smoke from the factories because the prevailing wind pushed it southeast. The air was clear and sunlit, though there was a slight September snap to it. When I pulled into the graveled drive, I was surprised to see three people at the edge of the swimming pool. Then I took a second look and realized none were in swim suits. The two men wore coats against the slight snap in the air and the woman wore a short-sleeved woolly sweater. She wore only brief shorts on the lower part of her body, however, which was typically feminine. Women’s legs never seem to get cold.

  One of the men was Martin Manners. I assumed the woman was his daughter. The other man was a stranger. All three were gathered around a portable charcoal broiler at the edge of the pool on which Manners seemed to be cooking something.

  Parking behind a Jaguar in the drive, I walked over to the group. Manners advanced to meet me halfway, pumped my hand and simultaneously slapped me on the shoulder.

  “It’s certainly good to see you, Matt,” he said loudly.

  Smiling for the benefit of the man and girl at the edge of the pool, I said between my teeth, “You’re overplaying it. Tone it down.”

  He looked a little abashed. Leading me over to the other two, he said in a more normal tone, “Sharon, I want you to meet Mathew Rudd. Matt, my daughter Sharon. And this is Howard Farrell.”

  Because of Manner’s mentions of marijuana and aphrodisiac-spiked wine and orgies, I think I must have expected his daughted to be hard-faced and dissipated-looking in spite of her youth. She was a distinct surprise. She had the pale, angelic face of a choir singer and there was a youthful splash of freckles across her nose. Her flaming red hair was worn in the carefully calculated disarray of a mop hairdo, which ordinarily I don’t like. But on her it only accentuated her fresh, innocent appearance to make her look like a sixteen-year-old kid. Her body was all woman, though. She was only about five feet two, but every inch of her was luscious. Her legs were the kind shorts were invented for and her tight, short-sleeved sweater divulged that she hadn’t been cheated by nature above the waist either.

  Howard Farrell was about my age, lean and handsome and suntanned. He possessed the indolent sort of poise you develop only after years of gentle sports, attending cocktail parties and doing very little work.

  When Sharon murmured, “How do you do, Mr. Rudd?” I gave her a sincere look of admiration and told her it was a pleasure to meet her. Howard Farrell offered a limp handshake and a meaningless smile.

  “Father says you’re from New York,” Sharon said politely. “Are you in St. Cecilia on business?”

  “Pleasure,” I said. “I don’t have any business. I’m one of the great mass of unemployed.”

  The handsome Howard Farrell showed a little more interest in me. After examining the cut of my clothes, he said sardonically, “Welcome to the club. Sharon and I are parasites on the economy, too. What pleasure can you find in this town that there isn’t more of in New York?”

&nbs
p; “Harness racing.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I thought New York State had a number of tracks.”

  I was ready for that one. I only attend the races about once a year, and keep no track of the horses when I don’t attend, but during the two days I was waiting for Alfred Swartz to build my suits I had done some boning up.

  “I’ve been following Ethyl’s Boy,” I said. “He starts here Monday night.”

  When Farrell looked puzzled, I explained. “His owners moved him down here from Batavia Downs. I don’t think there’s a trotter around here who can touch him when they finally decide to turn him loose. I think he’ll clean up.”

  Farrell looked impressed that I would come all the way from New York just to follow a trotter I liked. But before he could delve into the matter further, the conversation was broken up by the smell of singed meat. Martin Manners let out a gasp and rushed to flip the hamburgers he had broiling on the grill. Farrell moved after him to offer moral assistance.

  Sharon examined me critically. “What do you have on my father, Mr. Rudd?” she inquired.

  I looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Ever since you called this morning, he’s been acting as though you were his oldest friend. Yet I never heard him mention you before, and as nearly as I can make out, the two of you only met once.”

  Manners’ idiotic overacting, I thought. I forced a grin. “I own some stock in Effington Steel. Company presidents are usually friendly with major stockholders. But it doesn’t mean anything. I inherited my shares and I wouldn’t be caught dead at a stockholder’s meeting. I just clip the coupons.”

  “That accounts for it,” she said with a wise nod. She grinned back, as though to a kindred soul.

  It turned out that the hamburgers were only slightly scorched, and not ruined. A Negro maid brought out bowls of potato salad and Boston baked beans and put them on a picnic table which was already set with paper plates and silver. Manners carried a platter of hamburger sandwiches from the grill over to the table and we were ready to eat.