A Father's Law

  And it made him feel hotly guilty; what had he failed to do?

  What had he overlooked? And why hadn’t Ed dared be more specific over the phone? The suspense was the thing that hurt him most now. That something had happened, he knew. But what? It was bad, or Tommy would not be in the clutches of the police. But how bad? And not once did Ruddy ever think that his policemen could have made a mistake. He was much too good an officer to think or feel like that. If the police got hold of you, then it was for a damn good reason. The police were not always right, but they were more often right than wrong. Then what had Tommy blundered into? There fl ashed through his mind the image of the weeping Marie, the shock that Tommy had sustained about her dreadful illness. And then came Ed’s disturbing and speculative ideas about how some people would kill when their basic idea of the world had been shattered. No,

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  nothing like that’s happened with Tommy. It couldn’t . . . yet he recalled how sickened and shocked he had been when he had talked to Marie. Was it possible? Had that boy let that thing throw him off balance?

  He was speeding along the lakeshore now, and to his left whitecaps leaped as bright and sharp as his panicked thoughts.

  To his right, turning and fading behind him, were the tall sky-scrapers of Chicago. Well, something was happening that he had never thought would happen: the world of law was meeting and melting into the world of nonlaw. The force of law that he represented had reached its long and cold arm into his very home and snatched one of his blood kin. Goddamn . . . what would the commissioner say about this?

  He turned a long, slow right curve and headed for Brentwood Park, passing the first roadblock that he had ordered erected last night. Goddamn . . . his men looked at him and saluted as he passed. No, I don’t think they know. Ed saw to that, I suspect. Thank God it was Ed who had phoned ’im. What an impression for the new chief of police’s son to be hauled in while the chief of police was trying to throw out a dragnet to catch murderers. What ironical editorials the papers would carry.

  Yeah, hell, I’ll resign . . . what the goddamn hell! “I oughtn’t to have taken the damn job in the first place,” he said bitterly.

  When he swung into the big, guarded gate of the police station, with his siren blaring, he caught sight of Ed at once, waiting for him on the ramp. He halted the car about six inches from Ed’s tight face.

  “What’s up, Ed?” he asked tersely, alighting from the car.

  Ed did not speak; instead, he grimly caught hold of Ruddy’s arm and piloted him a few yards toward the door before he opened his mouth.

  “Your boy was picked up after a filling station was robbed,”

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  Ed reported in an undertone. “Seems like he was part of a gang.

  The gang got away. Tommy was driving the car and—”

  “What in hell are you saying, Ed?” Ruddy asked fi ercely.

  “He’s here,” Ed insisted. “Your boy . . . you talk to ’im. He broke down and confessed.”

  “He was armed?”

  “No. He was driving the getaway car. I tried to get ’im to identify the others, but he refused. That’s his out, Ruddy.

  Maybe you can get—”

  “Jesus Christ! ” Ruddy croaked as he went down the corridor.

  “He had a police radio in his car,” Ed said. “This is tough on you. Goddamn, it is!”

  Ruddy stopped abruptly in his tracks, staring bleakly ahead of him, then he turned to Ed and asked, “Where is he?”

  “Lieutenant Parrish is guarding him in your offi ce,” Ed said. “Look, you’re new here. We’ve got to handle this in—”

  “Can that,” Ruddy spoke exasperatedly. “I’m an offi cer.

  The law will take its course. Come on. Let’s get the hell up there.”

  “Gee, Ruddy,” Ed murmured, shaking his head, his eyes bewildered and baffl ed.

  “I’ll break his head,” Ruddy growled.

  “Now, look—take it easy,” Ed counseled.

  “I’ve been waiting for this,” Ruddy snapped.

  “Didn’t know you were having trouble—” Ed sighed. “He seemed so sharp to me. Bright and—”

  “Too damned bright!”

  They entered the big door together and stopped short before Tommy, who sat slumped on a sofa, and Lieutenant Parrish, who stood at his side.

  “Hello, Chief,” Lieutenant Parrish mumbled.

  “Hi,” Ruddy answered, his eyes hard on his son.

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  Tommy’s eyes were bloodshot and his fi ngers were nervously picking at a torn gap in his sleeve. Ruddy moved closer, then stepped back. Then he sat before his son and lowered his forehead into his palm.

  “Goddamn, you let me down,” he moaned.

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  “What have you got to say for yourself?”

  Tommy did not reply. He shrugged, his eyes staring sullenly into space.

  “I guess the best thing for me to do is resign,” Ruddy said, looking from Lieutenant Parrish to Ed.

  A tense silence fell upon the office. Lieutenant Parrish let his eyes rove from Tommy to Ed and then to Ruddy, with lifted eyebrows and a serious face. Ed frowned, sat, rose, and cleared his throat. His lips moved several times before he spoke.

  “Ruddy, I want to talk frankly,” Ed began. “You’re our chief.

  You’re the boss. What you say goes, with me and all the rest.

  You’re going to do what you want; that’s your right, your privi-lege. You can use your judgment and make whatever decisions you feel that you ought to make . . .” Ed’s voice died, and when he resumed speaking, his tone indicated that he was thinking intensely, weighing many factors and probabilities. “. . . The decision you feel or you think you’ve got to make. There’s only one thing I’m asking: let me question this boy. You’re dealing now with your own family, and you’re likely to get subjective about it.

  If you trust me, I’ll try to get to the bottom of this. I’m not trying to sound partial to you, but if I know anything about police work, there’s something goddamn fishy about this holdup—”

  “What do you mean, Ed?” Ruddy asked, his face becoming pale.

  “Will you let me question your son?” Ed said, asking for trust and latitude.

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  “Did you do it, son?” Ruddy asked, turning swiftly to Tommy.

  “Yeah. Now, you know.” Tommy spoke sullenly, his eyes avoiding his father’s.

  “Did they disguise themselves with handkerchiefs?” Ed asked Tommy in a quick stab of voice.

  “Yeah, they covered their faces,” Tommy said, sounding surprised and quick at the same time.

  “Hunh huh,” Ed said, nodding, his eyes serious. “And they used a .38, I suppose?”

  “No,” Tommy said, “they had a .32.”

  “Oh,” Ed said. “And they ordered the guy running the fi lling station to back out of the front door, eh?”

  “Yeah. He backed out and they rifl ed the drawer,” Tommy said, nodding defi antly.

  “How long were they in that filling station while you waited to drive ’em off?” Ed asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I was excited,” Tommy said. “A few minutes . . .”

  “And you weren’t with the gang?” Ed asked.

  “Yeah. I was with ’em,” Tommy answered, yet evading Ed’s question

  “You went into the station?”

  “I was in the car—”

  “You said you were with ’em and—”

  “We planned it together, you see.”

  “You haven’t answered me, Tommy,” Ed said, hunching his shoulders and tucking his head down, bulldog like.

  “What do you want to know?” Tommy asked belligerently.

  “Did you hold up that filling station?” Ed roared.

  “I was with ’em,” Tommy argued. ??
?They asked me to drive the car.”

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  “Oh, Tommy, why in God’s name did you do it?” Ruddy begged in despair. “Haven’t I been good to you? Haven’t I given you everything you wanted . . . everything you asked for . . . everything you needed? You’re in the university, and you go and mess up your life!”

  “Did you go into that fi lling station with those boys?” Ed asked again, insistently.

  “No,” Tommy said, “they told me to wait at the corner . . .

  in the car . . . with the motor running—”

  “Then why didn’t you drive ’em away when they came running out?” Ed asked.

  Tommy hesitated; his eyes held a look of terror.

  “I told you the cops came too quickly,” he fumed. “You see, they ran and—”

  “Why were you waiting at the corner in your car?” Ed demanded. “That’s more than a hundred yards away? The fi lling station attendant never saw you.”

  Tommy was silent, biting his lips.

  “You said they drove the attendant out, didn’t you?” Ed asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well?” Ed asked.

  Tommy was silent, his eyes glazed. Ruddy had looked from Ed to Tommy during this exchange of questions and answers, his eyes blinking.

  “And what was going to be your split?” Ed asked Tommy.

  “Even. We were going to split it evenly between us,” Tommy explained.

  “Now, tell me: where did you plan the holdup?” Ed demanded.

  “In a drugstore—out on Stoney Island,” Tommy said vaguely.

  “What number?”

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  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the name of the drugstore?”

  “I didn’t look. . . . I don’t know—”

  “Tommy, you’re lying!” Ed shouted. “Now, tell us what really happened!”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Tommy screamed, sweat bead-ing on his face.

  Ed laughed suddenly and sat down beside Tommy and then placed his right palm tenderly on Tommy’s knee—a knee that shook.

  “Tommy, stickups don’t happen like that,” Ed told the boy.

  The office was so silent that the hard sound of Tommy’s breathing could be heard.

  “How do you know?” Tommy asked finally in a child’s voice.

  In the silence that followed, a soft wind of relaxation blew through the offi ce.

  “You want us police to tell you the secrets of our trade, eh, Tommy?” Ed asked kindly.

  Ruddy slapped his thigh and stood.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he sang in a harsh, throaty tone.

  He turned to Tommy and stormed, “I ought to slap you into the middle of next week!”

  “Take it easy, Ruddy,” Ed cautioned. “We haven’t got to the bottom of this yet.”

  “Boy, are you crazy?” Ruddy demanded. “Making up a wild tale like that—”

  “You see,” Ed explained, “he heard about the call to the police over his car radio. What happened was this: he got there a few seconds before the police. The station attendant pressed an alarm. The boys took the dough and beat it. Tommy saw the

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  attendant come out of the station after the boys had run. He made up the whole thing!”

  “No!” Tommy screamed in shame.

  “What are you doing, Tommy?” Ruddy demanded. “Why are you acting this way?”

  Tommy stared at his father and did not answer. Ruddy felt he knew. But he had never dreamed that Tommy’s reaction would assume this form of defiance. Then a feeling of relief came over Ruddy. Well, that meant that Tommy surely had nothing to do with the murders! Ruddy had been expecting some kind of blowup and had been afraid that it had gone in that direction.

  “You see, this morning we were talking of ‘borrowing’

  crimes,” Ed said soothingly, keeping his hand still on the boy’s trembling knee. “And then he went and did it. But the question is: Why?”

  They were frozen and almost missed the tingling of the telephone.

  “Chief Turner speaking,” Ruddy mumbled into the receiver.

  “Squad car 188 reports that the men who held up the fi lling station have been captured,” Mary Jane reported.

  “Thanks,” Ruddy said, hanging up. He turned to Tommy.

  “Now, your partners who helped you have been taken in. Do you want to be tried with ’em? Will they agree that you helped ’em?”

  Tommy stared in disbelief, then hung his head.

  “They will laugh at you in court if you tell that tale,” Ed told the boy. “Those guys would scorn to say that you helped ’em.”

  A tiny tinge of compassion crept into Ruddy when Tommy’s eyes glistened with tears. But what had made the boy do it?

  “If you insist that you did it, shall we take down your confession?” Ed asked softly.

  Tommy squirmed, unable to take his eyes off the fl oor.

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  “Well,” Ed sighed, turning to Ruddy, “the rest is up to you.”

  “I’ll take care of ’im,” Ruddy said in a tone of simulated confidence. “Okay, Lieutenant Parrish, you can leave ’im.” Ruddy looked about in a disturbed manner, then drew from his pocket the paper holding the tiny wad of cement. “Say,” he spoke to Lieutenant Parrish, “take this to the lab and have ’em analyze it. It’s a bit of cement. I want to know what kind of cement was used, the quality of sand, and the ratio of cement to sand.”

  “Yes sir, Chief,” Lieutenant Parrish said and left, looking lingeringly at Tommy.

  When Ruddy and Ed were alone with the boy, Ed asked,

  “What happened, Ruddy?”

  “Don’t know. Leave it to me, Ed. I’ll get the truth out of

  ’im,” Ruddy said, crestfallen.

  “Okay.”

  “Ed, I want you and Jock to take charge of those cement blocks that are being brought in,” Ruddy directed. “Maybe you’ll have to get some of the city prisoners to come over with sledgehammers and start pounding the stuff. I want every bit of metal out of that cement.”

  “Right.”

  Ed left, first patting Tommy’s shoulder and looking compassionately at Ruddy. Alone with his son, Ruddy said nothing for long minutes. He sat at his desk, his cap still on, staring into space. Tommy sat huddled on the sofa, sniffing now and then, not daring to lift his eyes.

  “Tommy, what’s happening to you?” Ruddy fi nally asked.

  The boy did not reply.

  “You know, you’re skating pretty near the edge of something that could ruin both you and me, don’t you?” Ruddy prompted.

  “I don’t care,” Tommy whispered.

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  “All of this started with what happened to Marie, didn’t it, Tommy?”

  Tommy still failed to respond.

  “If you talk about it openly, maybe I can help you,” Ruddy told him.

  “Nobody can help me,” Tommy mumbled.

  “Aw, hell,” Ruddy said. “Now, tell me, what has this pretending that you’re a holdup man got to do with Marie?”

  “Nothing,” Tommy said.

  “Were you trying to test out what Ed said this morning about people pretending to commit crimes—borrowing crimes?”

  Tommy shook his head.

  “Well, you were trying to pretend something.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tommy sighed.

  “And what does being sorry mean now?”

  Tommy remained obstinately silent.

  “Say, did you tell the Globe about a gun being missing in the Heard home?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Ruddy felt a bit more at ease. “They called you at home, the Globe did.”

  “I want to go away,” Tommy said suddenly.

  “You’re going nowhere,” Ruddy snapped.
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  “But I-I—”

  “Shut up about it,” Ruddy snapped. “If you keep talking like that, I’ll have you sent to a clinic.”

  Tommy quailed and Ruddy knew that the blow had hit home.

  The boy bit his trembling lower lip, then lifted eyes that were flooded with tears yet showing a kind of desperate cunning.

  “You w-won’t tell Mama about this,” he begged in a dying whisper.

  Ruddy felt trapped, yet he had to marvel at the boy’s sharp

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  presence of mind. He sighed, which was his sign of reluctant consent to the boy’s plea. Tommy knew how ardently he had always sought to keep the sordidness of the world dealt with by the police out of the home and from the feelings of Agnes. Indeed, his ada-mant decree that police work was not to be too much discussed at home was a kind of apology for his being a policeman. And now he was feeling that maybe it was his being a man of the law that had brought this turmoil down upon the head of his son.

  “Tommy, are you fighting me in some way?” he asked, smiling wryly.

  “No,” Tommy said in a surly tone.

  “Why do you answer like that?”

  “Why do you keep asking me these crazy questions?”

  “My questions are not crazy,” Ruddy said. “I’m supposed to be solving murder cases, and here I am taking up time to try to talk some common sense into you. Son, this foolish thing you did . . . it means that you ought to let somebody help you.”

  “I’ll be all right.” He leaned forward. “Will there be a r-record of this?”

  “Luckily, no.” He felt that he had spoken too quickly, too lightly. “Not this time, at any rate.” He had felt compelled to toss a mild threat into his assurance. “Tommy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All this comes from what happened to you and Marie, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” Tommy snapped.

  “Then where does it come from?”

  “Don’t know. But I’m all right now.”

  A possible solution struck Ruddy. Was it impossible? Why not try it?

  “Say, you know, Marie told me that she was cured. Son, these modern miracle drugs—”

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  “No. I don’t want to hear that,” Tommy’s voice rose for the fi rst time.

  “You said that you loved the girl and—”