"searchlightsontheriver" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barton Gary)

"You think maybe Ricky Sloane was framed, Johnny?" Murphy asked me after a while.

"If he wasn't," I said, "it was the sweetest job of railroading ever pulled in this
State."

"He was as guilty as hell!" the cop beside me snarled. "He was in with Mike Lombardi's
outfit, wasn't he? He was gambling, wasn't he? Like the court said--Gordon found out he was
takin' bribes from Lombardi and got him kicked off the force. Then Sloane got hot-headed and
knocked Gordon off--"

That's the way the Ricky Sloane case went to court. They claimed that Ricky had shot
Vincent Gordon in his home. and Ricky had admitted that he had been there that night. But
he'd said that he'd received a phone call from Gordon. It had sounded pretty weak.

But they'd found the murder gun in Ricky's car that same night. It wasn't his service
pistol; it had been a smaller gun of his own. And that, in itself, had shouted frame to me,
No guy, especially the cop that Ricky Sloane had been, is going to leave a murder gun around
as evidence.

That's why I had hounded the case even after Ricky had been convicted.

But the harder I'd worked on the investigation, the tighter the case had become against
him. Every lead I ran down had made him seem more guilty than ever.

And the bribes--that's one thing I'll never believe. But they'd been Exhibit A in court:
deposits made to the account of Richard Sloane at different banks; Mike Lombardi admitting:
"Yes, I paid Sloane one thousand dollars--for services." Barney Walters testifying: "I took
one thousand dollars to Ricky Sloane one night last August.... No, I don't remember what
night it was. But I know I took it. He was in Mike Lombardi's bar."

I remembered it all so vividly: I'd been over it so many times. And now I wasn't so sure
that it had been a frame. But if it had, I was waiting for someone to slip. They always do.

Murphy was saying, "Gordon. Hell, Gordon was a heel. And say--didn't Gordon use to go
around with Norma Sloane?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Nothing. Only there was some talk during the trial that Norma Sloane tried to get
Gordon to have Ricky put back on the force, and I thinking maybe--"

"I'll do the thinking," I snapped. "You drive." The cruiser was doubling back to the
city. Ricky Sloane must have realized that he was being tailed. "And don't lose that car,"
I said.


The detective cruiser wheeled into the business section and pulled to the curb. As Murphy
braked the car to a stop behind it, I saw Ricky Sloane vanish through the canopied entrance-
way of Mike Lombardi's club.