The Last Cop Out Read Free Page A

covering the bosses and just hoping for some action. The big meeting in Chicago last night laid one thing on the line... since the Manhattan end couldn’t clear things up themselves, get out where you can be a target and make the opposition show themselves. That order’s got the big boys working on their own personal shit hemorrhages. Anyone under the red line in the chain of command has to play this new version of Russian roulette or answer to the big board.”
    “And now the department is doing bodyguard duty too.”
    “That’s about it,” Long agreed.
    “A new twist, covering those punks.”
    Long twisted his mouth in a disgusted grimace before he looked up at Gill again. “The only redeeming feature is that you’re not involved any more. Right now it’s distasteful, but at least it’s temporary. If you ever were assigned to that detail we’d all be picking bone splinters out of our eyes and bursting our asses to keep it under cover.”
    “I wasn’t all that bad, captain.”
    “No, but blood never was a deterrent to working out things your own way.”
    “How many times was I wrong?”
    “A few times.”
    “Never on the big ones.”
    “No, not then. You never left much room for discussion, either.”
    “There are ways and ways of doing things,” Gill said.
    “Like the right way, the wrong way and your way.”
    Gill nodded slowly. “That’s the way the other side played the game too.”
    “Sure.” The captain got up, wiped his mouth and stuck out his hand. “You take care. I have to run. See you over the weekend.”
    “Right.”
     
    At a quarter to six Gill Burke turned the key in his apartment door lock, walked inside and latched it behind him. He caught the news on TV, then opened a mock-secret door in the leg of the old rolltop desk. Three guns of various makes hung there. He inspected them once, nodded silently and went back to watching TV again.
    At eight o’clock he switched off the set and went to bed.

2
     

     
    Until the present meeting, no one except Mark Shelby had met the Frenchman. Francois Verdun was the special envoy from the head office of the organization, a troubleshooter answerable to nobody save the top three men who controlled the vast machinery of the third government and whose very presence left a pall of fear that was almost a tangible thing. In every respect, he was seemingly medium, a nonentity in a crowd, a pleasant sort of person who enjoyed being called Frank by everyone.
    Frank Verdun’s kill record made that of Mark Shelby insignificant by comparison. Administering death was a pleasure he had long ago learned to appreciate, whether done with his own hand during those periods when he decided to polish his expertise, or upon his command when the results were relished through reading the newspapers or watching the report on television. When he was fifteen he had killed his own brother; at twenty his best friend went down under his blade when the organization demanded it, at twenty-five he had personally arranged for a West Coast family of sixteen persons, who had grown too demanding, to be extinguished in a single bomb blast. At thirty he had reassembled a broken European narcotics ring, delivered it intact to his bosses, who, out of sheer admiration for his work and devotion to their cause, had installed him in an eviable position of supreme importance where death became a matter of simple routine to be accomplished quickly and untraceably ... with great material recompense to the Frenchman whose tastes were extraordinarily bizarre and extremely expensive.
    And now the organization, at a hurried summit meeting, decided to take matters out of the hands of the New York chapter and expedite the solution. Frank Verdun was assigned to locate and kill any and all persons connected with the disruption of the organization’s business. Everyone was instructed to cooperate. They were ordered to obey any order Frank Verdun decided to issue.
    In Chicago, alone in his