The Big Sin

By Jack Webb

When a determined Irish Catholic priest and a tough Jewish police detective team up to solve the murder of a gorgeous showgirl, the evidence of violence and corruption they uncover tears the town apart!

Of his fast and unusual thriller Jack Webb writes: “The Big Sin was written because I needed faith in myself. So I wrote a story about faith … For all the gaudiness my story may wear as a mystery filled with violence, good is good in it, and bad, bad, ant there’s strength enough in the simply faith within to swing the outcome.”

Father Shanley refused to believe that Rose had committed the big sin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Mar 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781440541445

Jack Webb

Jack Webb (1920-1982) was an American actor, television producer, director, and screenwriter, who is most famous for his role as Sgt. Joe Friday in the Dragnet franchise (which he created). He was the founder of his own production company, Mark VII Limited.

Book preview

HEAT LAY OVER THE CITY like a living thing, as tangible and malleable as the amoeba in a stagnant pool. Clinging and cloying, it drew the life of the city into shirt sleeves and thin summer dresses, into a slower tempo and a shorter temper. Unseasonably and unreasonably, summer gave no quarter to autumn in southern California.

Through the suffering crowds on the sidewalks of Broadway moved a Catholic priest. He was as oblivious to the heat of the day as he was to the face of Mayor John Gough who stared at him from lamppost and billboard and demanded re-election.

The priest was a young man in his early thirties, broad of shoulder and erect. The lines graven at the corners of his lips and fine blue eyes were saved from severity only by the touch of humor that turned the toes of the crow’s feet up and gave his face a slightly quizzical expression when it was in repose.

This sweltering afternoon, his determined stride was as much an affront to the awful heat as was his somber suiting. At the tall white mausoleum with steel-grilled windows on the top floor which served the city for a police department, the priest left the sidewalk and entered the building.

From a graying sergeant at the desk he inquired, Can you direct me to Homicide?

Sure, Father, said the sergeant, and his brogue was as thick as the soles of his service oxfords. Up the stairs and to your left. Though all you’ll find up there at this hour is the heathen they’ve left at the desk.

Heathen?

Detective-sergeant Samuel Golden, the officer informed him as though he were speaking of something lower than the Irish.

The young priest grinned, slow and easy, with Killarney devils dancing for an instant in his blue eyes. You must be Sergeant Flannigan.

Flannery, the officer corrected, with James Patrick on the handle of it. And you, Father?

Joseph Shanley. The young man’s grin broadened into a smile. Though the fact of our names doesn’t make us quite divine.

And where would you be getting that propaganda? asked Sergeant Flannery.

Father Shanley turned and went up the stairs, the laughter going out of his face with hard memory of his mission. At a glass-windowed door gilt with HOMICIDE DIVISION, he knocked and waited.

Come in, a voice rasped through the door.

The priest turned the knob. Across a broad yellow desk scalloped about the edges with cigarette burns, he met the black-eyed, intent glance of a stocky young man in shirt sleeves. Crossing the room, he held out his hand. You must be Sergeant Golden, he said. I’m Father Shanley.

Rising, the detective accepted the outstretched hand as though he were reluctant to do so, as though he were not certain of the proper courtesy with a priest and not certain that it should make any difference.

Have a seat, Sergeant Golden said, settling back into his own chair, watching the priest through narrowed eyes.

Father Shanley, drawing a chair up opposite the desk, thought, He wears his toughness like a mask.

The detective reached a crumpled package of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shook one out. On an obviously second thought, he gestured with the pack toward the priest.

Father Shanley shook his head. I’ll have my pipe. And pulling a charred briar from his pocket, he began to stuff it from an oilskin pouch as he asked, Were you on the investigation of the death of Rosa Mendez?

Mendez, Mendez? Sammy Golden blew twin streams of smoke through his nostrils and considered the blue cloud that hung motionless in the humid air between them. Rose Alyce, he said suddenly. Show girl. Suicide in Nick Sandoe’s office at La Marimba.

The priest got his pipe alight. Were you there?

Sure I was. The detective studied the calendar on the wall behind the priest’s head. Last Friday night. I planned to have the week off. I was packing a suitcase. It’s still packed.

Father Joseph leaned forward. All I’ve seen are the papers. Are the police absolutely certain it was suicide?

Sure, clear case. No doubt about it.

The priest shook his head. And you, Sergeant. Are you absolutely certain?

The detective’s eyes hardened. What are you trying to say, Father?

Father Shanley raised his head until his eyes were leveled upon Sergeant Golden’s. That Rosa Mendez did not commit suicide. She couldn’t have.

Yeah? And just what evidence did the department overlook?

Faith, Father Shanley said quietly; ‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’

The detective crushed out his half-finished cigarette and leaned across the desk. Look, Father, we each have our own business. You have souls. I, and all the guys in this department, we investigate crimes. In the case of homicide, we’re specialists in violent death. We know our business maybe even better than you know yours. We see murders that look like suicides, and suicides that look like murders. This was neither. This looked like a suicide and it was a suicide. That’s not me speaking for Sammy Golden, that’s me speaking for Homicide and the medical examiner and the crime laboratory. A quarter of a million dollars’ worth of science and training and technique so that when we want a crime solved we don’t have to go to church!

Detective Sammy Golden stopped talking, not because he had run out of breath, but because he had run out of all the polite ways he knew to tell the guy who wore his collar backward to mind his own business. Then, without quite knowing why, he was sorry he had shot his mouth off. And perhaps because the priest was studying him with a curious expression, because the priest hadn’t said a word, Sammy apologized, Look, Father, I’m sorry I blew my top. Maybe it’s the heat. Yeah, that’s it. It’s the heat. And when you came in I was thinking about a shower. A long cold shower. Maybe a couple of tons of cold water pouring down my back, and then lying on the bed in my shorts and drinking a quart of beer. Beer so cold there’d be beads on the bottle.

Father Shanley grinned at the detective, still not speaking.

Sergeant Golden continued, But take it from me that Rosa Mendez, or Rose Alyce, whatever you want to call her, committed suicide. I was there. I was there maybe ten minutes after it happened, twenty at the most. I saw the gun lying beside her. I saw the powder burn at her temple. I saw the note she left on Nick Sandoe’s desk addressed to that toothpaste ad of a band leader who had double-crossed her by running off to Las Vegas with his blonde vocalist.

The priest said suddenly, As I recall the account in the newspaper, that note was neither completed nor signed.

That’s right, Father. So what? It was in her handwriting. We’ve had experts tell us that. It began, ‘My darling, darling Matty, how could you do this thing? Over and over again, I’ve asked myself how could you do it? …’ That’s the way it began. She was writing in desperation. And writing it down like that, it hit her all of a sudden why he’d run out on her, and that’s what gave her the guts to pull the trigger.

What hit her, Sergeant?

The detective stared at his blunt fingers folded together on the desktop and then raised his eyes to meet the priest’s. "I’ll tell you what, Father. Now this time, maybe I’m guessing. It’s not like the gun, or the position of her body, or the powder burns, or the direction of the bullet’s course, or her fingerprints, or the cordite test of her right hand. It’s not like those things. But it’s something I know because I’m a Jew. Because, like her, I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.

That hundred-carat gold-plated heel, Matty Moline, ran out on Rosa Mendez because she had a family over in Royal Heights; a father who’s been thirty years with Western Electric Railways, a section hand all that time; a mother who’s as big as a house and who doesn’t speak English very well; and eight brothers and sisters who look like stairsteps when they’re standing next to each other. She was writing this letter to Matty Moline, the nice bright college boy who waves a stick at the orchestra, and all at once it hit her. She wasn’t Rose Alyce like it said on the theatrical signs. She was Rosa Mendez. And she was all the things that went with Rosa Mendez, and all of a sudden, she couldn’t take it. I know, Father. Not because it’s in the report of the crime, but because it’s in me. In Samuel Elijah Golden whose family runs a delicatessen store, God bless them for it!

Have you seen Rosa’s family since it happened? Father Shanley asked gently.

I’ve never seen them. Golden shook his head. I was lucky. I wasn’t the guy detailed to break the news or talk to them. But I’ve seen the report that was turned in. I’ve talked to the guy that made it, and I’ve seen the address where her parents live. I used to patrol that district in a radio car.

Father Shanley tapped the bowl of his pipe into an ashtray thoughtfully. I’ve listened to you, Sergeant. Now, will you listen to me?

Sergeant Golden leaned back in his chair and nodded.

Do you know what it means to be a good Roman Catholic?

The detective shook his head grinning wryly. I’m not even very good at being a Jew when it comes to that.

None of us is good enough, the priest shrugged. But will you take my word for it, Rosa Mendez was a good Catholic. Oh, not without her transgressions. But her sins came from the job she had to do, the place she had to work. Not things, you understand, that came from the faith.

I’ll take your word for it.

Good. Father Shanley stared at his finger tips. "Now, I have to tell you what suicide means in our faith. All I can give you are words. But try to surround them with the unutterable hell that Rosa would have felt before she pulled the trigger.

"Suicide is an attempt against the domain and rightful ownership of the Creator. It’s an absolute contradiction to everything the Christian religion teaches us as an end and object of life. It’s weakness and cowardice. And whatever else Rosa Mendez was, she was neither weak nor a coward.

"This is a dreadful thing to say, but I say it sincerely. It would have been more likely for Rosa to murder this Matty Moline than it would have been for her to take her own life.

As her father confessor, Sergeant, I knew Rosa Mendez better, perhaps, than even she knew herself.

That all, Father? Detective Golden asked not unkindly.

All? The priest shot a surprised glance at the detective. "No indeed, Golden. So far I’ve spoken only of Rosa Mendez. Actually, what Rosa did, or what was done to her, lies between the girl and her God. It’s what’s left here on earth that brought me up the stairs to your office.

I don’t know whether you know it or not, but the remains of a suicide are denied Christian burial. She cannot be buried in sacred ground. Nor can services be held for her in the Church of Saint Anne.

Rough, Golden said gruffly. But, so what?

Father Shanley stood up, leaned across the desk with his hands flat upon the top of it and his eyes blazing. So that great grand family of Rosa’s are suffering as you’ve never seen people suffer, Sergeant. They are making their own hell here on earth. A hell for which there may be no need. A hell that could be removed with one clean sweep if it could be proved that Rosa did not take her own life!

Sammy Golden’s face was a mask again. Even his eyes were tough. He said, Sorry, Father. The case is closed. That girl pulled the trigger herself. Take my word for it. Or I’ll get the file up here and let you look it over yourself.

The priest retreated a step from the desk. I’m sorry to have imposed upon you. Thank you for your time. He turned and started for the door, squaring his shoulders against the fatigue that had come into his body with the sense of defeat.

At the door he turned abruptly and stared across the room into the opaque eyes of Detective Golden. Would you do me a favor, Sergeant?

Depends, the sergeant said cautiously.

Give me one hour of your time. Be at the Church of St. Anne at nine o’clock tonight.

Why? A flat word with no expression in it.

I’m holding a special service for the Mendez family. We are praying together that God in his infinite wisdom may see fit to reveal to the world the innocence of Rosa Mendez.

Without waiting for a reply, Father Shanley swung through the door and went down the steps. He nodded curtly to the grizzled Sergeant Flannery at the receiving desk and went out into the hot slanting light of the late afternoon sun. It struck through the black broadcloth of his coat and found the weakness that had come with defeat, and he felt a complaint rising in him even against the heat of the dying day.

For a long time, Detective-sergeant Sammy Golden sat at the desk with his feet hooked up over the edge of it and his hands clasped behind his head. Then stretching his body awkwardly, he reached the phone from its cradle.

Give me the Department of Records. While he waited, he whistled tunelessly. And then, Roarity? This is Golden up in Homicide. Will you dig out the file on Mendez, Rosa, alias Alyce, Rose, suicide, and send it up to me? … Sure, I know it’s closed.

He dropped the phone, unhooked his legs from the corner of the desk and stood up. Shoving his hands deep in his pockets, he strolled to the window, still whistling tunelessly.

He stared out the window across the street at the huge election poster hanging on the face of Hotel Fairland. The eyes of John Gough, enlarged to the size of saucers, were staring back at him.

‘The substance of things hoped for,’ he said to the face, ‘the evidence of things not seen.’ … Ever do anything on faith, John? Sergeant Golden suddenly asked the poster. He laughed.

The detective turned his back on the election poster and returned to the desk. The corners of his lips were set in a tight grin. And he had put on a tougher expression than even Father Shanley had seen.

Two floors below him in the basement, a weasel-faced little man named Roarity found the Mendez file. He handed it to a clerk with instructions to deliver it to Sergeant Golden in Homicide.

Then, tapping nervously with a pencil on the corner of his immaculate desk, he picked up the phone and said, Give me an outside line.

Hearing the steady hum in the earpiece, he glanced suspiciously around the catacombs of files behind him, and then dialed a number.

When he spoke, his voice was guarded. "This is Roarity, Department of Records. Thought somebody would be interested in hearing that Homicide has asked for the file on that dame who bumped herself off in Nick Sandoe’s club last week.

Yeah. A detective-sergeant, Golden…. Sure, I’ll forget it…. Just remember that it was Francis P. Roarity who passed the word along…. Yes, sir. Thank you…. You bet!

He cradled the phone, settling back in his chair and crossing his skinny legs. He rubbed his moist palms together with satisfaction.

Sergeant Golden followed the clerk to the door of the office, closed the door behind him and returned to his desk. Opening the Mendez file, he spilled a half dozen glossy photographs. Strictly for cheesecake, they displayed a minimum of costume and a maximum of Rosa Mendez. With appreciative eyes, Sammy arranged the photographs side by side. Then, selecting one in which not enough feathers to satisfy a bantam rooster separated Rosa from her public, he shuffled the remaining photographs together and turned them face down on the desk.

Reaching in the top drawer, he secured a pair of scissors and attacked the picture. After a moment’s work, he crumpled a large part of the photograph and dropped it into the wastebasket. What he kept in his hand was snap-shot size and contained the head and shoulders of the girl.

He held it up before him, his expression changing as the dark, bright eyes in the photograph met his own. What do you know, he murmured aloud, this chick also had a face.

Slipping the fragment of photograph into the pocket of the coat on the back of his chair, he turned his attention to the folder on the desk and bent his head over the report of the crime. Occasionally-his lips moved as they formed words he wanted to impress upon his mind. From time to time, he paused to copy a name and address onto a scratch-pad before him.

The phone interrupted.

Automatically, Sammy scooped it to his ear. Golden, Homicide, he said as he rocked the swivel chair backward, at the same time fishing with his left hand to find a cigarette.

Lieutenant Cantrell, the phone informed him.

Yeah, Lieutenant, what’s on your mind? Sammy got the cigarette alight.

You were planning to take some time off last Friday?

That’s right.

And I called you in on the show out at La Marimba. What was the girl’s name?

Mendez, Sammy told him.

Yeah, well, that’s on ice. Why don’t you go ahead and take your vacation? Lord knows you got it coming?

You mean tomorrow?

I mean tonight. I’ve taken the liberty of calling Johnston. He’s coming in to take over for you. No reason you can’t be on your way to Ensenada or wherever you were going and be out of this heat in a couple of hours.

You feeling all right? Sammy inquired solicitously.

Sure I’m feeling all right! Cantrell snapped. And then more lightly, Bend a couple elbows for me. You know, Golden, the tall cool ones with a head on. You’re a lucky stiff to be getting out of town this week.

Yeah, Lieutenant. Sure! The surprise gone from Sammy’s face, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he cradled the phone.

He stared at the report on the desk before him, unconsciously beginning his tuneless whistle again.

There was a knock on the door. The detective slid the list he had been making under the blotter. Come in!

Francis P. Roarity entered the office. His pale eyes darted ferretlike to the desk. I’m closing the department for the night, he announced, and I was wondering about the file on Mendez.

Sammy’s voice was bland as he gestured at the desk-top. Take it along.

Roarity minced over to the desk and gathered up the folder. Picking up the pile of photographs, he turned them over to slip them into the folder. He whistled thinly. How about dating something like that?

You can dream, can’t you? Sammy asked.

Roarity was grinning as he nodded and closed the door after him.

Sammy Golden pushed back the chair and stood. Reaching the scratch-pad from under the blotter, he tore off the top sheet on which he had noted names and addresses. He carried the page with him to the window.

For a long moment he stared at the election poster on the Fairland Hotel. The enormous eyes of John Gough seemed to move as a desultory breeze flicked the edge of the canvas.

You sure get around in a hurry, John, Sammy said to the poster. He took the notes he had

Reviews for The Big Sin

[patrick631 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was so so. I thought it would be better since Jack Webb wrote it. I always enjoyed watching the old shows like Dragnet and Adam 12, maybe if I would have listened to an audio book of it with Jack Webb reading the story it would have been better.