Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 4. Whole No. 143, October 1955

“Just me,” Joe said. “I’m the only one.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to turn you in.”

“That’s what I figured,” Kennedy said.

“You trained me, George. I’m supposed to be your kind of a cop.”

The big man gazed down at his hands. He had not yet sagged, but under the glare of the light his flesh seemed whiter, softer. It was hot in the room. In the dense hair on Kennedy’s arms, and on his brow, the sweat stood shiny, separate, and clear, like beads of cooked tapioca. When he looked up again the lopsided grin was gone from his loose-hanging jaw.

Joe didn’t know what to say. A bare white shade moved slowly at the window, yielding to the press of a breeze no stronger than a breath. In the quiet house a drainpipe accepted a quantity of water, sucking it down with a shrill whine: Mary’s shampoo. Joe could hear her voice, rising to them from below. He looked once again at her father, sitting here in reduced yet terrible strength — watching, waiting, with the look of death two inches deep behind his gaze. This much was real, he believed. Help me, he thought, and almost spoke the words aloud.

“What was Solly to get for the cash, George?”

“Peace and contentment,” Kennedy said. “A weekly card game in his apartment. A small book for a select clientele. That sort of thing. Lots of money and no commotion.” Kennedy breathed deeply, ruefully. “One wrong step and I fell on my face, huh, Joe? One time in thirty years and I had to louse it up. It was as simple as you say?”

“The way I told you on the phone,” Joe said. “One chance in a million. I saw Freddie Gelb give you the money. Why you didn’t hear me walk into the room I still don’t know. I just stood there like a dummy and you never turned around. I got hold of Freddie later and kept hitting his head on the jamb of his kitchen door until he told met the dough was from Solly. I didn’t believe it, yet I had to.”

“Well, you’re a nice young fellow, Joey,” Kennedy said, “and you’re a better cop than me.” The older man brushed wood shavings from his lap. He picked splinters from his shirt. The fingers trembled. “You hear me, Joey? I’m right?”

Joe didn’t reply. He’s working on me now, Joe thought. He isn’t begging, but he’s working, because the hope isn’t dead in him yet. He’s a weaker man than he was yesterday. It’s in his face.

“Where’d you put the money, George?”

Kennedy pointed. “The box,” he said.

The money lay in the carved and beautiful tool chest Kennedy himself had made. The bills were girded at their center like the stacks of cash you see in banks. Joe picked it up and fanned the money like a deck of cards. It was new and crisp in 100s, 50s, 20s. He dropped it back into the box among the heavy shavings and sawdust, jumbled nails, hack-saw blades, sandpaper sheets, and odd things jumbled together. Kennedy, a skilled man, had never been a tidy one. Andrew Jackson looked up at Joe from a miserable twenty. He turned away from the stern face. It was Kennedy who mattered.

“Are you sorry now, George, that you took it?”

“I wish I was dead,” said Kennedy.

Joe walked away as far as the wall and wanted to punch a hole in the plaster there. He could hear Mary and her mother now, talking downstairs in their natural tones, not knowing the axe that hung over them all. A younger Kennedy ran down a flight of stairs, a routine occurrence that always sounded like a horse collapsing on a drum. Joe couldn’t stand much more.

“Give the money back to Solly,” he almost shouted. “Do you hear?” That was the thing, he almost persuaded himself, and Kennedy looked paler. His lips fell open.

“You’ll let me give it back?” he asked.

Kennedy, Joe thought, the super-cop, the Galahad-with-a-badge. He could see the hope leap now beyond those bounds of frigid dignity that Kennedy had worn like a corset all of his adult life.

“You’d do that much for me, Joe?”

“Who am I?” he demanded fiercely. “I’m to make the final judgment?”

Now Kennedy knew he had won. Even when wrong, he had won. Joe watched him rise from the chair, the planed wood falling from his hands, the light debris of his labor clinging to the top of his pants. The big hands touched him with gratitude. Kennedy’s mouth, no longer firm, tried to do it with words.

“Chuck it,” Joe said. “Get away. I’m wrong, I know. In your life you never gave anyone a break like this.”

“Bless you,” Kennedy said. “I must have been out of my mind.”

Joe looked away. The thick tongue of sentiment had always made him uneasy; coming from Kennedy, it was unendurable. “When will you give the money back, George?”

“Tonight,” said Kennedy, “when you’re gone. When they’re asleep downstairs, I’ll go to Solly, Joe. Let me do it my way.”