Chapter 5

Between them two men were standing in the empty baby basin with their hands on their heads and looking shaken.

"Mark, take this." Ed gave Mark his .38 and reached back into the rear of the car, grabbing a megaphone. "Go to the entrance, but stay covered!"

Judge Sanger had been a policeman long enough to understand what his friend had in mind. "Can you stand on your feet?"

"Sure. Go ahead!"

When Mark had reached his position, Ed pulled himself out of the car. Leaning against the door he shouted through the megaphone: "Chief Brown here. I want all weapons dropped except Judge Sanger's, who is standing near the entrance door and who is in control of the situation. I guarantee you that we will find out who was in Fisette's service and who was not, and I guarantee everybody a fair trial."

Addressing Mark, who had a better view on the scene, he asked in a low voice: "Is the Chief still armed?"

Mark signed him that yes.

"I want all police officers to move over to the fence." There Ironside could keep them together. "Drop your handcuffs in front of the sorting grid."

They complied.

Ironside took command. "You two in the basin, come out with your hands behind your heads."

They did, and while Ironside kept pointing at the police officers, Mark handcuffed the two mobsters to the grid. Then he shifted his attention to the policemen.

Ironside rolled out to Ed. "The two standing to the left are crooks."

Ed didn't doubt his judgment for a second. "Miller and Blake, handcuff Rollins. Rogers and Brooks, arrest Stillwater." There were enough handcuffs left. Finally Mark could respire.

"Book Rollins and Stillwater," barked Ironside, who hadn't known their names up to this moment, but who was a good judge of their actions.

Meanwhile Ed called headquarters for another unit. They would have to take care of the mobsters.

"Kitty Granger is free. She's with Eve," he explained.

"Thank God!"

Yet Ironside noticed that Ed would not be able to keep upright much longer.

"I'll take it from here. Mark, drive him home."

"My deputy will have to be suspended and Granger..."

"What do you think that I will do when I say that I'll take it from here?!"

"Sorry, Chief, I..."

"It's all right. Make yourself scarce!"

Mark helped Ed back into the car.

Much softer Ironside addressed Mark, "Take good care of him, will you?"

Mark threw a compassionate look at his old friend, but Ironside himself looked drained as well. "Are you sure that you don't need me?"

"When I need a babysitter you'll be the first to know!"

Mark shook his head and started the engine of Ed's Ford.

Yet it was too late to get away: the press marched up. They blocked the exit with two vans. They beleaguered Chief Brown who had opened the window of his car... a cheer for electrical window lifters, he thought.

"Chief Brown, we heard that you were dead. How could this happen?"

"Well, I never said that I was dead, did I?"

It earned him a wave of laughter.

"What can you tell us about this strange incident?"

"That Commissioner Ironside did a great job here. Without him we would be in trouble."

"It looks as if the Mob has a lot of power in this town. Will we just have to live with that?"

Brown became very serious. "It's up to every single man, woman and child to decide if they want to live in fear from the Mob or if they stand up for the truth. Sometimes it may be tough. Sometimes it may be expensive. Sometimes it takes a lot of courage. But it can be done."

"What will be done about the corruption within the police department?"

"Actually every town has the police it deserves. The police are a mirror of the population of a town. I trust in the inhabitants of Denver, and I trust in the police. Together they will fight for justice, and they will manage to build a town where children grow up and develop their beautiful talents, where the weak get protection, where the strong get some challenging duties, where those in need get help and where everybody is ready to share their belongings and their time. Nobody is too weak or too young or not intelligent enough to help achieve this goal. It's the responsibility of each and every human being in this town. Please tell this to your readers."

Mark was taken aback by his friend's long speech. It wasn't like him. This sounded like a valediction. He had made sure that Ed's coat covered his pajama bottoms, but a female reporter with some imagination probably noticed that he wasn't wearing a shirt, a tie and a jacket. Moreover Ed couldn't conceal that his voice became weaker with every sentence. Censoriously she asked, "Chief Brown, how is your state of health?"

"I'm not quite at my best yet. Therefore I would like to go home now, if you don't mind." His voice had become very low.

Again the woman was the fastest to react, "By all means, sir! And get well soon!"

The vans were moved away and a relieved Mark drove off.

"Hospital or home?" he asked, noticing that his friend had totally spent himself.

"Home."

Mark parked as close to the entrance as possible. He helped his friend get inside and lie down onto the couch, then he covered him with the blanket which was there for the purpose.


'Denver News' - Headline:

Plea by Chief Brown: "Be brave and do the right thing!"

Contrary to what was communicated earlier and to our immense relief, Chief of police Edward D. Brown didn't die of his pneumonia. In a very engaging and impressive speech, he appealed to the residents of Denver to stand together and not give the Mob a chance to terrorize them any longer.

In front of the swimming pool the reporters had gathered. The woman had spoken up, "Chief Brown talked about responsibility. We also have a responsibility now. We will report what we have seen and heard here, the truth: a plea to do the right thing. A very brave man has reminded us that we are human beings, and that we have to act as human beings. That's what we will report, and nothing else. Do you agree with me?"

They did – and nobody heard or read a single word about a man in pajamas with a breaking voice who could hardly keep upright, but they were called to be as brave as their Chief of police.


Hank Riley and a second officer turned up. They would have to book the mobsters. "After that you arrest Granger and his daughter," ordered Ironside. It would be up to the judge to decide about them.

Ironside was tired and cold and hungry. Nevertheless he returned to headquarters. Deputy Chief Bennet had been expecting that he would be suspended. Ironside thought that maybe he had just been Fisette's marionette, but he was not supportable right now.

Ironside didn't get to close the door of his office behind him: a familiar face showed up. It was Jamie, one of the kids of the children's home.

"Sir, are you all right?" he asked, when he noticed that the big man was rubbing his injured right arm.

It made Ironside smile: The kid was developing a protective instinct!

"I'm fine, thanks. Why did you come here?"

"I saw the news on TV," said Jamie. "I'm not quite sure if this is important, but one of our oldest boys, Chris, who was in prison until a few days ago, lost this." He dug a pink ribbon out of his coat pocket. "I thought that it looked like the ones of that missed girl, Kitty something."

"This may be very important, my friend! Well done. Do you know where Chris went?"

"No, but he and Bill have been behaving strangely lately. Over the last few nights one of them was out all the time. And today when Bill showed up he seemed to be very angry. He hasn't been like this since Chief Brown has helped him after he and Chris started that fire last summer."

"Thank you, Jamie! Did you notice anything else?"

"Well, Bill's eyes were swollen. I think he has cried. Big boys don't cry, do they?"

Ironside combined quickly. "Sometimes they do." Maybe the Mob had used the teenagers to abduct Kitty. This didn't quite explain their strange behavior though; he would have to find out about the details.

"Now tell me – if they would want to hide out, where would they go?"

"I could show you some of the hideouts we know – but there are stairs, that's why Bill and I didn't take you there when you were on the run."

"We'll take a car to get around."

In the meantime Hank Riley had come in. Ironside chose him as his driver, and they used the same van as on earlier occasions when Ironside had been in Denver.

It was in the second hideout, not far from the swimming pool, that they found Bill and Chris. Hank helped Ironside with the stairs.

The boys didn't resist, when Hank asked them to come out. They had been debating about going home anyway and seemed to be glad that they didn't have to hide anymore. "Someone phoned us and told us that Mr. Granger wanted to kill Chief Brown. They wanted us to kidnap his daughter to keep him from doing it," explained Bill.

"We didn't want to do it," added Chris. "But did we have a choice? And now Chief Brown is dead anyway. I don't care if I have to go back to prison. It's just so fricking unjust that they killed him."

Ironside felt that they really cared about Ed who had become their role model.

"Chief Brown is alive."

The two boys stared at him dumbfounded.

Then, as if he had switched on a lamp, their faces lit up.

"No jive?"

"No jive."

"Then what we did helped safe his live?"

Ironside sighed. "No. The people who made you abduct Kitty lied to you. They ordered the prison director to kill Chief Brown and threatened that otherwise Kitty would be killed."

Now the boys were totally confused. They would never have killed Kitty!

Their fate would depend on how they had treated their victim, thought Ironside.

"Did you abuse the girl?" he asked sternly.

"Sir! Of course not! We want to talk to Chief Brown! He will believe us!"

"You can't. He's a sick man."

"What can we do to prove that we didn't harm a hair on her head?!"

"Bill, you have a red stain on your cheek. What's that?"

Bill turned almost as red as the red spot. "She kissed me. She said that she wanted to marry me..."

Now – that was probably enough to prove that the boys hadn't done any harm to Kitty, thought Ironside.

He decided to let them go. They would have to stay in the children's home for future questioning.

Jerry arrived at the scene. "Chief, do you think that we have caught all the crooked cops now?"

Ironside shook his head. "No, Jerry." He was beat and his arm was sore. "No, Jerry. Unfortunately we never catch all of them."


When Ironside finally arrived at the Browns' house Mark filled him in about Ed, who had hardly managed to get back into the house.

"Chief – will he ever be himself again?"

"Mark, he is being himself. Maybe more than ever. See - there's just a narrow ridge between accepting one's limits and giving up. Ed will not err on the side of giving up. He will fight and maybe burn the candle at both ends, same as during the last years. That's the way he is. He will do just fine."

"He had a good teacher. You are the king of the over-comers."

Just to make him feel better Ironside grinned. "For once you are perfectly right."