The Blind Pig Read Online Free Page B

the bedroom and jerk the bed away and, sure as shit, Speedball is under the bed. He's shaking so bad I can't get him to stand still while I'm searching him, so I had to pacify him a little.”
    “You read him his rights, I suppose,” Mulheisen said.
    “Speedball knows his rights, don't worry about that,” Dennis said.
    “What did you find?”
    “The guy's a walking pharmacy,” Noell said. “You wouldn't believe it. I told him when I shut the door on him, ‘This is it, Calvin. You ain't a juve no more. You're a keeper now.’ “
    Mulheisen wondered. If Calvin “Speedball” Jackson couldafford a lawyer, or even if he got a public defender who wasn't hopelessly servile toward the court, the prosecutor wouldn't stand a chance. Illegal entry, no search warrant, violation of civil rights . . . Something seemed very wrong to Mulheisen. How was it that the department—to say nothing of Buchanan—could tolerate the Big 4 but threw up their hands in dismay on something like Patrolman Vaughan's alleged brutality? He supposed it was a matter of publicity and politics. For the benefit of the “bleeding hearts,” the department would pillory Vaughan; for the “get tough with crime” crowd, they could proudly trot out the Big 4.
    Mulheisen told Dennis that he didn't think that Speedball was a keeper yet.
    The Menace shrugged. “He's in the system,” he said. “The thing is, the courts won't put these bastards away, but if you beat on them enough, they hurt. You gotta whack ‘em, Mul. Nothing else gets through their thick skulls.”
    “Dennis, Speedball will forget about you the minute his wounds heal. He's not a genius. What's he going to do, go to night school for a degree in pharmacy and join Rexall?”
    “He'll get a nice vacation at Milan or Jackson before long,” Noell said. “Maybe he'll learn a trade. Which reminds me: guess who I saw on the street yesterday? Good Ol’ Earl.”
    “Good Ol’ Earl?”
    “You don't remember Ol’ Earl? I sent him down six years ago. It was a gun deal. He was peddling some of that stuff they took in the Light Guard Armory raid.”
    Mulheisen shook his head. He was amazed by Noell's prodigious memory for the faces and records of criminals.
    “He looked terrible,” Dennis said. “All fat and squishy, like a slug. I chatted with him. He's staying at the Tuttle.”
    “Did you lean on him?” Mulheisen asked.
    “Lean on OF Earl? I wouldn't lean on Earl. He's a hell of a good guy. Seemed awful glad to see me. Quite a gunsmith, Earl is. Not much chance to practice his trade for the last few years, though. But I guess he'll get back into it quick enough. Take him a while to catch up with the new stuff. I was tellinghim about this new cartridge Remington's got, the ‘Accelerator.’ It's a sabot.”
    “What the hell is a sabot?” Mulheisen was not well versed in guns and ballistics. He had never understood the tremendous attraction the subject seemed to have for some of his colleagues. He'd had a .22 rifle as a boy, plinking away at tin cans and muskrats along the St. Clair River. And now he carried a revolver, a .38 Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special, with a shrouded hammer. He went to the firing range when required and he shot average scores.
    “The sabot is a plastic vehicle, kind of like the first stage of a rocket, that carries the bullet. It drops away a few inches beyond the barrel of the gun. The thing is, they can load a much more powerful charge that way. This mother starts out at over four thousand feet per second—it's really a .30-06 55 grain load, see? And flat? It drops less than—”
    “What the hell's it good for?” Mulheisen asked. “Squirrels?”
    “No, it'd go through a squirrel so fast the varmint wouldn't know he'd been hit,” Dennis said. “It'd be a great assassination weapon. No ballistics! See, because of the sabot, the actual bullet doesn't touch the barrel.”
    “Oh, great! Just what we need: a better assassination weapon. Look, what is it