The Ace of Spades - Dell Shannon by Dell Shannon Page A

which was saying something,
and it was not a large office.
    "You can talk!" said Callaghan bitterly.
"All you got to think about is dead people! Who was there, who
wanted them dead? Clear as day— evidence all according to the book!
Nobody says to you— "
    "Oh, we run into it too, occasionally. Now calm
down and talk to me about Bratti."
    "I don't want even to think about Bratti,"
said Callaghan. "I'm goin' to quit the force and take up some
nice peaceful occupation like farming. Why should I knock myself out
protecting the public? They don't give a damn about me. They call me
an officious cop, persecutin' innocent bystanders— "
    "You'll wear out the carpet, Patrick."
    "And I'll tell you something else! One thing
like this— and the good God knows it's not the first or the last—
and every single pro in this town, he has a good laugh at the cops,
and he gets twice as cocky as he was before, because he knows damn
well we can beat our brains out and never get him inside— "
    “ You'll give yourself ulcers. Bratti."
    "Get out of my chair," said Callaghan, and
flung himself into it and drove a hand through his carrot-red hair.
    "What about Bratti?"
    "He'll be in competition with some others in
business on his level. Middlemen, who run strings of pushers."
    "Oh, all very businesslike these days. Sure.
Same position, almost exactly, as the fellow who owns a lot of slum
tenements. Fellow who says, hell, you always get some people who like
to live like that, why should go to the expense of cleaning up the
place, make it a little fancier for 'em? In six months it's just as
bad. I don't cut my profits for any such damn foolishness. But he
doesn't live there himself, oh, no, he's got a nice clean new house
out in Bel-Air. He hires an agent to collect the rent so he needn't
mingle with the hoi polloi and listen to complaints. If you get me.
Gimme a cigarette, I'm out .... There's Bratti. And in this burg,
call it about a dozen like him. Sure, 'way up at the top there's a
hook— up with the syndicate— with the real big boys, and we know
where they are these days. Sitting happy as clams in some country
where they can't be extradited— even if, God help us, we had any
admissible evidence to charge 'em with— "
    "Pray a moment's silence," said Mendoza
sardonically, "while we return thanks to the Bureau of Internal
Revenue for small mercies."
    “ Very damn small," said Callaghan gloomily.
"Sure, sure, about the only legal charge on some of those boys.
Only some of them. I'm not worrying about 'em— I can't, who can?—
like worrying about the bomb. I don't know the answer to the
syndicates, except it's a little bit like killing fleas on a dog—
you've got to get after the little ones so they  can't grow up
to be big ones— and you can't stop a minute because they breed
like, well, fleas. The ones here and now I got to worry about are the
syndicate agents and the boys like Bratti and the boys they hire. The
port authorities can worry about the stuff coming in, and isn't it
God's truth, they could do with ten times more men like all of us. It
gets in. This way, that way. And it gets to the agents. And they get
it to the Brattis. And the Brattis— wearin' kid gloves and takin'
great care of their respectable surfaces— they see it gets to the
pushers. Everybody making the hell of a profit every time it changes
hands— strictly cash basis, no credit— because it gets cut so
much on the way. A little deck of worth a hundred bucks raw, coming
in, by the time it gets to Bratti to distribute, it's twenty times
bigger and worth a thousand times the cash."
    "This isn't news to me, friend. I've been on the
force just as long as you. All about Bratti, por
favor ."
    "I could write a book," said Callaghan,
"and what good would it do me? I don't know what kind of
background he came from, but I'd guess he's had a fair education, he
uses pretty good English. Let that go. I don't know where he got his
capital. For the legitimate business,