Rafferty Page 3

  It was only then that Rafferty realized Leroy had been hurt. He knelt beside his friend on the concrete highway. He was dead. The murderer was identified as a small-time crook, wanted at that time only for the stolen car he was driving. But the experience taught Rafferty a lesson; one he was never to forget. Never again did he approach a criminal, a crook, or a suspicious person without caution. Alertness in a police officer is better protection than a paid-up life insurance policy. The experience indoctrinated Rafferty with a hatred of killers he continued to carry most of his life.

  At this point the story of Emmet Rafferty’s life began to take on warmth. Up to now Katherine Rafferty could tell me only of events which had happened before she knew Emmet. Events during years when she had not known he was alive; a bare recital of facts which she had heard, but which had never touched her. Now, her life met that of Emmet’s.

  Chapter Three

  He stood in the door of the small telephone exchange, an erect, compact figure in his neat gray trooper’s uniform. Removing the wide-brimmed campaign hat, he drew a hand across a perspiring forehead. The skin of his face was tanned a deep mahogany, and ended abruptly in a white line across his forehead where the sun met his hat. ‘I want to put a call in to the barracks at Gilmore Springs,’ he said.

  Katherine McManus hurriedly made the connections and nodded toward a telephone which was standing on the counter. Rafferty picked it up and made his report. Replacing the phone, he sat on the edge of the counter for a moment and lit a cigarette. ‘Pretty busy?’ the girl asked him.

  Rafferty smiled. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not very.’ He looked around the small room with its single switchboard. ‘Is this open all night?’

  Katherine shook her head. ‘The exchange closes at 2:00 A.M.’

  ‘That’s a good thing to know,’ Rafferty replied. ‘This is the end of our swing,’ he explained. ‘We’re supposed to report in before we start back. That means I better get here before two.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the girl. ‘If we’re ever closed—and something important comes up—I’ll be glad to open up the board again for you.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ the girl replied.

  ‘With your folks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Rafferty nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll remember.’ He swung away from the counter and stepped out onto the street. Light from the telephone office brushed lightly on the uneven sidewalk paved with red bricks. He paused for a moment and looked up toward the second story of the dusty, white frame building, which carried a roughly lettered sign:

  FLETCHER TELEPHONE COMPANY

  ‘Come on,’ said a tired voice, ‘let’s get travelin’.’ It was the voice of Ted Holland, his new partner since the death of Leroy. Rafferty climbed into the car, and Holland swung it in a wide U-turn in the middle of the silent, deserted road. The car rolled down the short block of the main street—a stretch of oil-topped dirt road which was faced with one- and two-story buildings boasting false fronts. A great summer moon brought out the faces of the building in grotesque masks—painting eyes and mouths from darkened windows. Past the feed store, the drugstore, the two grocery stores, the notions store, past the garage and filling station, the land bank, the hardware store, the equipment dealer, the combination furniture store and undertaking establishment, the barbershop, a flash of railroad tracks and a deserted station, and the patrol car turned onto the main highway and began its long trip back to Gilmore Springs.

  They alternated at the wheel, turn and turn about, sometimes dozing, talking but little, occasionally stopping to inspect trucks which had pulled off the shoulder of the highway while the driver caught a short nap; helping stranded motorists; flushing spooners from the side roads with their spotlight.

  But each night, at twelve o’clock, Rafferty stopped in the telephone exchange at Fletcher to make his report. The second week Katherine had a thermos of coffee standing by the switchboard. As Rafferty turned to leave the office, she offered it to him shyly. ‘Would you like some of my coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘I sure would,’ he said and his smile flashed across the darkness of his face. ‘That is, if there’s enough.’

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty,’ she hastened to assure him. ‘I made plenty.’

  ‘My partner’s outside,’ he said. ‘Is there enough for a cup for him?’

  Katherine struggled with her disappointment, but her laugh gave no trace of her feeling. ‘There’s more than plenty,’ she said. ‘Invite him in.’

  Rafferty and Holland leaned against the counter of the small office while Katherine filled two delicate china cups with coffee from the thermos. She placed them before the men, and beside the cups she set a sugar bowl and a small pitcher of thick, golden cream. Awkwardly the men drank from the fragile cups.

  ‘That’s sure good coffee,’ said Rafferty.

  ‘Beats the mud we pick up on the road,’ agreed Holland.

  ‘More?’ asked Katherine.

  ‘No... no thanks,’ said Rafferty. ‘We got to get going.’ He carefully replaced his cup and turned to his partner. ‘Ready, Ted?’

  ‘Sure. Let’s go.’

  Katherine watched them leave the office and climb into the car. Slowly she gathered the cups and carried them upstairs.

  In the car Rafferty was driving. Holland was sprawled in the seat beside him. Lighting a cigarette, Holland eyed the road ahead. ‘That’s a nice girl,’ he said casually.

  Rafferty nodded his agreement.

  ‘She’s after you,’ Holland added.

  Rafferty looked at him in surprise. ‘You’re crazy!’ he replied.

  ‘Like hell I am,’ said Holland. He shifted his holster from his side, and eased further back into the seat. ‘She didn’t have to offer you coffee...’

  ‘Why... she made it for herself,’ said Rafferty. ‘She just happened to have some left over.’

  Holland laughed. ‘She had two cups... just two cups. Neither one of them used. One was to be for you... one for her. And she didn’t like it... when I joined the party.’ He paused. ‘Besides that, thermos was full to the top when she opened it.’ He sighed in mock tragedy. ‘I wish I had that something women went for...’

  Rafferty kept the car at a steady speed. ‘She isn’t a bad kid.’ He glanced at Holland. ‘She’s pretty—real pretty—come to think of it.’

  ‘Besides, it was good coffee,’ said Holland.

  The countryside was drugged in the heat of the late summer. From the highway, the eye stretched for miles over the great ocean of standing corn. The small towns and villages, nestled in the occasional swell of the rolling land, hugged into the bends of small, torpid rivers and dozed in sweaty stupor. But at night, the land and people became awake. Tiny fingers of wind, unfelt by the cheek, tugged and pried the fields of corn... arousing it gently... prodding the leaves into restless life. And for miles, the nervous rustling of the corn talked in the darkness with a peculiar, delicate sound unlike the sound of anything else in the world, and the farmers would say, ‘This is real corn weather. Last night you could hear it growing.’

  The young men of the farms and towns would stir into life, too, appearing at night in the roadhouses or at public dances dressed in freshly washed denims, or trousers and shirts; the shirts opened at the throat, the sleeves rolled high to their shoulders showing the firm, hard muscles of their arms. They would order bottles of ‘near beer,’ and spike the lifeless beverage with an ounce of raw alcohol, drinking the lethal concoction until their sanity was dulled. Back of the roadhouses and dance halls they would fight each other with an insane fury, meeting with bare fists, fighting until they were exhausted.

  The summer nights aroused the emotions of the women, too, drawing them into incautious liaisons in the back seats of the cars parked at the roadhouses, or clandestine meetings, after dusk, on the sprawling acres of their parents’ farms. That summer affected Emmet Rafferty also. He was lonely and restless. The death of Leroy had left him without a
close friend. The long hours of duty made it impossible for him to meet many girls; the girls he did meet in the performance of his job left much to be desired. He was separated from his family and its closely knit ties and, in particular, from his brother Sean, who was studying in a seminary. To Sean, in the novitiate of the Order of St. Francis, he wrote regularly offering encouragement, enclosing in the envelope a five- or ten-dollar bill from his own small salary. The fact that Sean turned these contributions over to the Order did not discourage him; he felt a fierce pride that his brother was holding his own in the school. Sean, in return, when permitted to write, replied at long, irregular intervals with warmth and deep affection. But the letters were not enough to fill Emmet Rafferty’s personal life. Thus his nightly meetings with Catherine McManus grew in importance, assuming new proportions, developing into the high point of pleasure in his day.

  ‘You’re early tonight,’ Katherine told him. ‘It’s only eleven-thirty.’

  ‘I know it,’ Rafferty replied. ‘I stepped it up.’

  ‘Do you want me to get Gilmore Springs for you?’

  ‘No. Let it ride for a while. I don’t have to call them until twelve.’ He threw his hat on the counter, waiting.

  ‘Some coffee?’ The question had now become part of their ritual.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How about Ted?’ she asked.

  ‘He doesn’t want any. He said he’d wait in the car. It’s cooler.’

  ‘Mother baked some pie today. How about a piece?’

  He nodded. ‘If it’s not too much trouble...’

  She hurried upstairs to the apartment, and in a few minutes descended with the food. She placed it before him and poured his coffee. He ate, standing at the counter. When he was finished, she placed his call to Gilmore Springs and he made his report. Hanging up the phone, he placed the wide-brimmed hat on his head. ‘How about Tuesday night?’ he asked. ‘Can you get somebody to take your place at the board?’

  Katherine smiled happily. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think I can...’

  ‘Tuesday’s my day off,’ he replied. ‘I can get hold of a car. I’ll drive up.’

  ‘Why don’t you come in time for dinner?’ she asked.

  ‘Too much trouble?’

  ‘No trouble at all.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll be here.’

  They were married that Thanksgiving, and moved into a small furnished apartment in Gilmore Springs. In the early months of her marriage, the newness of her life and the strangeness of her role as wife made Katherine very happy. She moved contentedly through the furnished rooms, careful to avoid awakening Emmet during the daytime hours of his slumber, sitting up at night awaiting his return. Sometimes he would be hours late in returning, and she sat, her mind rigidly blanked out against the prying fingers of worry, until she heard his footsteps on the porch.

  As the weeks turned into months, Emmet became quiet, withdrawn... speaking seldom. The monotony of the patrolling, the quiet lonesome hours of the nights could be read in his face. Katherine Rafferty could stand it no longer.

  ‘Emmet,’ she said, ‘we must do something. You’re unhappy... and that makes me unhappy too.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he shook his head, ‘what the trouble is. I guess maybe I’m just tired.’

  ‘It’s more than that.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe I’m bored with everything.’

  ‘With me?’ asked Katherine.

  ‘No, not with you.’

  ‘If you are, it might be best if I went back to Fletcher...’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he said.

  She was not convinced. ‘I’m not sure that you love me, and perhaps one of the reasons you’re unhappy is because you’re sorry we were married.’

  ‘I love you, Katherine. Maybe I don’t go round talking about it, but I do. Have I ever been unkind to you? Mean to you?’

  ‘Never,’ she said, ‘but that doesn’t mean that you love me, either. Tell me, Emmet... tell me honestly. Why did you marry me? Were you lonesome? Did you just want a home? What was it?’

  ‘I married you because I loved you,’ he replied heavily.

  ‘Before... before I knew you, were you ever in love with another girl?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You know that. I was never in love with anybody. You’re the only girl I ever had...’

  ‘It wasn’t because you couldn’t have gotten them,’ said Katherine slowly, struggling to put her thoughts into exact words. ‘The important thing is you didn’t want them—didn’t need them.’ She took a deep breath and faced him squarely. ‘You have never really been in love with me, or anyone.’ She stopped his interruption, ‘I know it. I can feel it. You don’t need me...’

  He caught her up and held her gently. ‘Come off it, Kathy,’ he told her. ‘You’re sounding crazy. Of course I love you. And I need you, and every night when I’m a sergeant I’ll bring you a dozen roses.’ He sat down on a chair and drew her into his lap, nestling her in his arms. ‘But you’re right about one thing... this life... the hours and the nights and the miles... they’re not right to make a man happy. But what can we do about it?’

  ‘You could get another job,’ Katherine replied.

  He shifted his shoulders defensively. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘maybe...’

  ‘You’re young, Frank... real young ye, not yet twenty-four. There’s plenty you could do. Fine jobs. Jobs with a future!’

  He shook his head. ‘Not for me, Kathy. I’m a cop—a peace officer. I’d never be happy being anything else.’

  ‘But you don’t need to be a state trooper! Get a job on a force in the town... or the city.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not a small-town cop,’ he said. ‘Not a cop in a made-over uniform... each year getting a little sloppier and a little more shiftless. I’ve seen too many of them, Katherine, with a smell of booze on their breath.’ He was definite now. ‘At least in this outfit we keep our self-respect!’

  She slipped off his lap and seated herself on the floor, resting her arms on his legs. She ran her finger lightly up the knee-high, black leather boot. ‘How about Chicago... or... New York?’ She looked questioningly into his face. ‘They have big forces. Fine forces... and maybe some day you could be a captain... or even the commissioner!’

  He laughed. ‘Not a commissioner,’ he said. ‘That takes pull. It’s an appointive job.’

  ‘But you could become a... lieutenant or a captain. Sure you could, Emmet! They need men! And you have a fine record. You could get a job all right. Just think, we could have a regular home... regular hours...’

  ‘I could never have regular hours,’ he told her gently. ‘Not if I’m still a cop.’

  ‘But it would be better than it is now!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it would be better than it is now.’

  Rafferty’s decision came slowly, and it wasn’t until the summer of the next year, 1929, that the break was made. In the spring of 1929 Emmet had taken a three-day leave and the two of them had gone to Chicago. They stopped at a cheap little hotel on Wabash, with an ‘El’ running beneath their windows. The trains shook the dingy room and stirred tiny flurries of soot in the corners. The first day they were in Chicago, Frank went down to Police Headquarters on South State Street, seeking out the men of his profession, engaging in the talk of his trade. He listened to the unspoken protests of the honest cops, prevented from tracking down the gang killers riding the streets by the graft and bribes paid to then-superiors. He heard the stories of bell captains in the big hotels riding to work in chauffeured limousines, bought and supported by their bootlegging and vice activities. In Chicago he sat through his first ‘working over.’

  In the Homicide Bureau, on the third floor of the building on South State, he was talking to a big sergeant, Max Turner, when Joe Covicci was brought in. Covicci, a slender, arrogant man, shrugged the hands of the two accompanying detectives from his sleeves. Deliberately he pushed the fuzzy, gray hat back on his head and turned to the big sergeant. ‘What
’s the charge this time?’ he demanded of Turner.

  ‘Maybe no charge at all,’ replied Turner. ‘We just want to talk to you.’

  ‘Either charge me or let me go!’

  ‘Just a friendly little talk first, huh?’

  ‘I ain’t talking without my lawyer being here. And don’t worry, Sarg, he’ll be here in a couple minutes.’

  Turner looked at the two detectives. They nodded silently. ‘Where’d you pick him up?’ he asked them.

  ‘At his hotel.’

  Turner swore softly. ‘Anybody see you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said one of the detectives, ‘We had to take him through the lobby.’

  The sergeant shrugged.

  ‘You’re goddamned right!’ Covicci said. ‘My lawyer’s been notified by now and he’s on his way down. I know my rights...’

  The sergeant turned to the detectives. ‘Bring him to the back room.’ The detectives hauled the protesting gangster into a small, square room overlooking an air shaft. One pulled the window down and locked it, drawing a heavy green blind over the glass and anchoring it to the sill with a hook. The room was entirely bare, containing only a small closet with a wash basin. A heavy wooden door connected the closet with the room. Wordlessly the detectives stripped the coat, the shirt, and tie from Covicci’s squirming body, handing them to Turner, who folded them carefully and placed them in a corner. Quickly Covicci’s hands were bound together with a short leather strap; the heavy wooden door was opened to right angles with the closet, and his arms forced above his head. His bound hands were placed expertly-over the top of the heavy door. His body, hanging at arms’ length, permitted only the extreme end of his toes to touch the floor.

  ‘You won’t get away with this,’ said Covicci.

  ‘Get away with what?’ asked Turner. ‘We’re not doing anything. All we want to do is ask a few questions.’

  ‘Such as what?’