I had that hemmed-in feeling. It was as if the walls of the elevator were closing in on me, starting to crush me. I tried very hard to ignore those damn walls even though I knew it would no no good. Claustrophobia can’t be ignored. By the time we got to the seventh floor, I felt like I was in a coffin, a narrow metal coffin jammed so close around my body and head that I could bite into the the cheap, forty-cents-a-yard satin the undertaker had lined it with.
I felt better, but not much better, as I stepped into the jail’s main hallway. The sight of all those gray-painted bars and walls made me feel nauseated. There wasn’t an open door anywhere. The elevator was the only way in and out, and it had departed after depositing me in the hall.
I walked over to the booking desk.
“Pia was my client,” I told Sergeant Winebrenner. “Where’s the action? I’m in a hurry.”
I always talk fast when I feel lousy and Winebrenner frowned at me.
“Okay, okay,” he said in a fatherly tone. “Calm down, Lew. Calm down.”
He led the way to the drunk tank, passing through two sets of heavy iron gates which he unlocked and then relocked as we walked along. The locks snapping behind me, made me remember the filthy black hole where I had spent fourteen months in solitary.
I figured I could take maybe ten minutes of this—no more.
There was a gang of guys in the drunk tank. Most of them were Johns, uniformed cops and plainclothes detectives. They were busy taking pictures, measuring distances and gabbing among themselves.
“Where is he?” I asked Winebrenner. “Where’s Felix?”
“Across the street at Clapper’s,” Winebrenner said. “In the icebox.”
“What about his stuff? His clothes and personal stuff?”
“Lowney took ’em. He’s down in Detectives.”
I stood there a few minutes, feeling sick. The Johns had used yellow chalk to draw the figure of a man on the concrete floor. It was unintentionally a Virgil Partch-type of thing—the head too large, the legs and arms stubby and thick. From the way it was bent in the middle I assumed Felix had been sitting on the floor, his back against the inside bars, There was another chalk line drawn on the floor to represent the path of the bullet. It originated in a large cell along the far south wall, passed through still another cell and then entered the drunk tank.
“It hit him in the back?” I asked Winebrenner.
“Yeah.”
“Did he say anything before he died?”
“Not a thing.”
“Who was in the other cell, the one where the gun was fired?”
“Four guys,” Winebrenner said. “They got ’em down in Detectives.”
“You find the gun?”
Winebrenner shook his head.
“Don’t you consider that a little embarrassing?”
“Why should we?”
“Where’s your professional pride?” I said. “Isn’t it kind of sloppy of you guys to let some citizen sneak a gun in here, knock off another citizen and then hide the gun—right under your big noses?”
He merely blinked at me, but I could tell I’d gotten to him, because above his dark blue collar his plump neck was turning red.
I grinned at him, turned to watch one of the Johns flash another picture and then abruptly I felt sicker and the gray bars started closing in on me, like a platoon of thin soldiers marching toward me from four directions.
I leaned against Winebrenner’s heavy shoulder.
“I’m sick,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You and your big yap,” he said. “I oughta let you stay here till you molt, like a pigeon with the pip.”
He didn’t mean it. He started walking fast, leading me through the mob of Johns and out the two gates. He’s a good guy, the best friend I’ve got in the Police Department. He knows my trouble and what to do about it.
He got me to the elevator, punched the wall button and kicked the door hard in case the operator was parked somewhere between floors reading a girlie magazine. It was a long minute, with the bars squeezing in on me. I was afraid I was going to disgrace myself and throw up on Winebrenner’s clean, gray-painted floor.
When the elevator arrived, he rode down with me, telling the operator not to stop at other floors. The operator did not take kindly to this, complaining all the way down; his panel was lit up like a whisky display.
Winebrenner led me out the side door and I slumped down on the steps, praising the lord for the great outdoors, with its wholesome carbon monoxide and fresh smog.
CHAPTER IV
I REFUSED the cigarette Winebrenner offered, then I changed my mind and lit one. It tasted rotten, like I expected, and I threw it away. I sat there for about five minutes and then I stood up. I felt wobbly, but I wanted to get the job done.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Winebrenner asked as I hobbled down the steps.
“Didn’t you say Felix is at Clapper’s?”
“Yeah.” He made a pitying clucking sound with his tongue. “You’re in no shape to go over there. You’ll get the heebie jeebies again.”
“I’ll only stay a minute,” I said.
“Why in the blazes are you so interested? What’s in it for you?”
“Filipinos,” I replied.
“Hmmmm,” he said. “Kreena?”
“Maybe.”
He shook his head. “It’s an awful long shot.”
“I’ve got patience.”
“You’ll need it,” he said.
He knew I might also need more propping up, so he volunteered to accompany me on the block-long walk along Third Street to Clapper’s, the mortuary which got a good share of the cop-shop business.
Arriving at Clapper’s, we went in through a side door and down to the basement. At the preparation room entrance, I wedged one of the two swinging doors open with a triangle of wood the attendants use when rolling corpses in and out on wheeled stretchers. I felt all right while we were in the main room, with that open door behind me. When we passed into the icebox section, with its heavy closed door, I could feel things cramping me again.
An attendant led us to the table where they were tieing an identification tag on Felix’s big toe. He lay there on his back. He was a small, brownish man in his mid-thirties. I saw that the Virgil Partch-like sketch the Johns had made on the jail floor was pretty accurate. Felix had a too-large head on
