 Broadway's My Beat, from Times Square to Columbus Circle, the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomeest mile in the world. Broadway's My Beat with Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover. When it's October and the night has slipped down over Broadway, the street has spangled with autumn strollers. They come here, the seekers after something or other, pick a doorway with promising neon, pick a smile and run after it, pick a postcard, write home about it. It's the place to be, you've got to leave your mark, buy a turtle and have your name painted on its back, buy a necktie, buy a pillow and send it back to mom. Sometimes you'll be lucky and get lipstick on your handkerchief, but the odds say you'll buy a newspaper and go to bed, but it's Broadway, kid, and you've had it. And where Broadway ebbs off into the side streets downtown, where I was, close to where I was, close to where 18th Street touches the river, the shock was a thing composed of crowd in a nighttime sky lit by flame. The elements, later to be noted in police and fire department records, fire at Russell's Chemical Company, time 4.15 a.m. They're bringing somebody out now, Danny. That's strange. What? What'd you say? I said it's strange, Muggevin. After four in the morning, why should anybody be... Come on, let's see. Put the stretchers down here. Somebody better... How are they? Oh, hello, Danny. These two, I think that's always in there. I just wanted to say somebody better get a priest. They're both dead. This one is the other one. Danny, look at him. Ed Costa. Huh? Do something for him. Don't let... Hey, Doc! Doc! Over here. Ed Costa. Hurry up, Doc! You know him, Danny? Yeah, he's a policeman. Policeman? What was he doing in there? Doc, do something for him. The flames beating against the night sky, burning and opening for dawn. In the street, the reflected glow darts across the face of death, holds for an instant, then scurries at the breath of the October wind. This is the time of shadows, the brief time, the time for shrouding in the charred body of a man, the time for quick gentleness, and the other man still in anguish, and the lifting of them into the vehicle reserved for the dead and the dying, the closing of a door upon them, the hushed ride that puts an end to night. In the morning at headquarters, watch the sergeant lift a phone, dial a number, and after a silence, ask for news of a man who was known to him, who was a friend. It's me again, Dr. Sinski, Barad Koster. Any change? Any... No, thank you, doctor. I'll keep calling. Gino. What do you want? How is he? You heard? No change. Hits us all, Gino. Koster's that kind of man. It's been to the Tataglia house. Dangled at the Tataglia child on his knee. Make it. That'll make it. Sorry, Danny. I keep thinking about Ed's wife, Vera. I keep thinking... He got something for me, Gino. Yeah. Yeah, I got something. I'm sorry, Danny. The man found with Ed the dead man. The technical checked up on him in ways they got to check on such things. Fingerprints, maybe. They know who he is. We got a file on him this long, to my arm. Joe Gant, professional arsonist, a man who sets fires. This way he makes his daily bread by burning... Anything else? It's on the record. Gant was friends to Frankie Crone. All? How were they friends? Gant once little playful little bonfire in a machine shop concerned. Frankie Crown bailed him out. Treated him to Frankie's lawyer. Gant got off. Let's see Frankie get out of this one. I hear Frankie's a big man now, huh? Not that big. I want to talk to him. Yeah, but maybe you better listen to this other thing first, Danny. What? It was called in a few minutes ago. The automobile of one George Russell exploded, in the place of his daughter, Patrice, in the driveway with a booby trap. Russell? Of the Russell Chemical Company, where the fire was. Home address, uptown, 1923, east 112. Thanks, Gino. Dr. Szynski, me again. About that. Any change? I'll call again in a little while. Mr. Russell? Yes, what is it? My name's Clover, police. Mind if I come in? I suppose you may. Patrice, Mr. Clover, another policeman. Hi. How do you feel, Miss Russell? Got my pinching hand in the cast. Oh, the disadvantage of it all. Well, Jimmy sees it. Patrice. It was your fault, Daddy. Wasn't it his fault, Mr. Clover? I understand your car blew up this morning. Not mine, his. Daddy's. What happened? Her car is in the garage being repaired. I loaned her mine. You see how it's his fault, Mr. Clover? He spoils me. I only wheeled him for the car this much. And he patted me and said, yes, my darling daughter. You stepped on the starter and it... And it blew. No way things do. Bang. Like that, bang. She's a lucky girl. Fortunate me. Hand in a sling, gauze on my cheek, and plaster dabbled with it. Poor Jimmy. Your car booby-trapped, Mr. Russell. Your plants set fire to by an arsonist. An arsonist? That's right. The man who died had a record of arson. What's happening? I don't understand. Oh, Pop. Hey, Pop, how's business, Pop? Patrice, you'd better... Do what, Pop? My business is fine, Mr. Clover. If you've got any idea, I had my... Pop carries a lot of insurance. Cut it out, Patrice. Look, Mr. Clover, what? Don't pay any attention to her. I know you police have to think along certain lines. If it was arson, what happened to my plant, you got to think maybe I was the cause of it. Look for reasons. Well, I netted 70,000 last year, and this year it's better than ever. To coin a phrase. What am I going to do with you, Patrice? I'm a mess, my daddy. Mr. Russell, there's some connection between the arsonist who was found and a hoodlum named Frankie Crown. Do you know Frankie? Frankie Crown? A hoodlum? Why should I? Look, Mr. Clover, I didn't ask you into my house to listen. I just asked. That's all he did, Pop. I don't know him. Never heard of it. All right. It's fun, huh, Mr. Clover? Hoodlums, arson, booby traps? The nice things that can happen to a modern miss. Oh, brother, wait till Jimmy hears. Tonight's the night he won't be able to shut me up. And consider the girl for a moment. Consider the delight she had found in the touch of horror upon her. Then the intrusion of her father's face began with the sudden fleeting understanding of the girl, then turning to you, trying to smile, trying to erase the impression his child has made. She's suffering a shock. She doesn't understand, Mr. Clover. She doesn't know. And the girl looks up, laughs at him, and leaves him like that. Then to the discreet office of Frankie Crown in a discreet downtown building dedicated to the deep understanding of stocks and bonds in the affairs of commerce. The shiny new setting for Frankie Crown, the hoodlum, alley boy, friend of dead arsonists. And Frankie holds out a discreetly manicured hand to have it shaken, only it doesn't happen to him. Mm-mm. Have it your own way, Danny. I thought it would spark something between us if he shook my hand. You're a long way from home, Frankie. Blessed, that's me. I've been blessed. Wipe your hands of the old life and a new world shivers on the horizon waiting just for you. You ought to try it, Danny. Ain't any good fires lately, Frankie? Oh, busy, busy, busy, busy. Frankie Crown has been so busy you couldn't conceive no fires, no straight dances, no fawn anywhere. The penalties are the new life, Danny. Friend of yours was at a fire, though. I got crazy friends. They flip over the craziest things. Joe Gant, arsonist. Friend of yours, Frankie. Somewhere in the back of my brain, the name Gant Shivers helped me there. The consensus is he set a fire early yesterday morning at a chemical company. He died in it. Gant. You bailed him out once, favored him with your private lawyer, got him off. Joe Gant. I did all that? We got a memory course at headquarters, Frankie. You just signed up. Don't get hard, Danny. Doesn't suit you. I always said about you. Come on. The touch of your hand brought it back to me. Gant. Some ways got a mother. Joe, because she came to me that time, cried on my sleeve, please help Joe. She cried. He's a good boy, she cried. Made my eyes water how with my dough and lawyer, Joe Gant was going to reform, so I gave in. I break up at a mother's tears. Maybe she'll cry some for me. You going to look at her? No, don't bother, Danny. I bought her a place in her old country. She impressed me so much as a typical mother. You close all the doors behind you, don't you, Frankie? The mark of a polite man to close doors. How about the one on George Russell? It'd come over the tape, the Russell plant burnt to the ground. This morning his car blew up in his daughter's lap. Now there's a door that's never been opened to me, Danny. The Russell door. I'm blessed, huh? Absolutely blessed. Get out of there. Back to headquarters. Sit at your desk and shuffle your thoughts. The coincidence of a booby-trapped car and a fire. The link between a hoodlum, newly respectable, and an arsonist, newly dead. And another man, a businessman, who had a daughter. Try to find a category for her. Try to find... Danny Clover. Dr. Sinske, I'm calling from the hospital. How's Ed Costa? Get down here, Danny, right away. And go there. And the only sound in the corridor is your footsteps. The sound that hurries toward pain. Open a door and find it. He's dead, Danny. Oh, Ed. You are listening to Broadway's My Beat, written by Morton Fine and David Friedkin, and starring Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover. In days of old, when nights were bold, King Arthur and his round table were the rage. History is not exactly repeating itself, but the best entertainment of Arthur Godfrey's weekday shows is every Sunday afternoon on King Arthur Godfrey's round table. Listen for it starting tomorrow afternoon on most of these same stations. King Arthur Godfrey's round table on CBS Radio. The sunlit visions that never happened. But the October wind shrieks it out of their hands, pushes it into a corner with the rest of the debris. That's how autumn happens to Broadway, kid. Go fight it. And autumn has other sounds. The lingering overtones that float in from a hospital corridor. A woman's called with dead husband and... And... Vera, let me give you something. Let me give you... Don't...don't talk to me. Just for a minute. Don't talk to me. Vera. Empty. Nothing. There's no more crying left in me. I'll get you something, Vera. Something it says on the bottle that makes you feel better. I told you, Doctor. There's nothing I want. Nothing I need. From anyone. Ed was a fine man, Vera. We... You'll miss him? You, Danny? You, Doctor Sinske. All of you. Vera. They say death comes when... They say bitterness won't help. They're dead wrong. It helps. I'll take you home, Vera, then when you... Some other time we'll talk... About Ed? Yes. What's wrong with now, Danny? You can talk to me about Ed now. We never held secrets from each other. I couldn't understand something. Was there about Ed Costa you couldn't understand? Only how he happened to be at the scene of the fire. How he must have been there even before... He was called, Danny. An anonymous call. It told him a fire was being set at that chemical company. It even told him what time to get there. Did he have the call traced? It came from a public phone booth. Ed was new on the burglary squad. He was glad for the tip. He thought it would make for a good start on the burglary detail. He thought maybe... The narcotics squad before that put in for a transfer. Do you know why, Vera? Because I asked him to. Because I didn't like the idea of his being in the narcotics squad. It... It didn't fit Ed. Ed was fine. A good man. He gave me all his love. All his kindness. And listen to her until the time comes when your only answer is silence. Silence, quite, because the screaming questions intrude themselves. What is the word to give to a woman whose husband is dead? How do you fill in reports? How do you make a statistic out of it and file it in a ledger? How do you write heartbreak as a number? You don't know how. So you turn your back on it. Leave. And to headquarters again. Call in Detective Muggerman. Tell him to get out the record of Ed Koster. And wait. And a while later, a door opens and Detective Muggerman walks in. I got it, Danny. Okay, put it down. Aren't you going to look at it? It's a matter of Muggerman. You're restless. I'll look at it. I know you will, but I think you ought to look at it right away. Look, Muggerman, you... All right, then I'll show you. Hey, sit. Here. This arrest June 12th this year. Patrice Russell. Uh-huh. Ed arrested her for the possession of narcotics. Now you know why I wanted you... Take it, Muggerman. Lieutenant Clover's office, Muggerman speak... What? Bad? Oh, sure. Sure, right away. Danny. Uh-huh? A bomb was thrown into the home of George Russell. When? A few minutes ago into the living room. The fire department... Let's go. I checked with the boys in the fire department. You looked yourself? Yeah, Danny, I did. There's no one else in the house. Just him, you and me. You ask about his daughter? Woman in the crowd outside told me she saw her go out a couple of hours ago. Described her wearing a pearl right up to her hat. The woman in the crowd leans out a window and notices things like that about her neighbors. You make a note of what the girl was wearing? It happens to me like a reflex now, Danny. They tried to kill Russell once before. This time they made it. They can't be going to another room and talk, Danny. The way it hit him... In a minute. He must have been sitting at this window. The force of the explosion threw him... Yeah. Like that. He sure wanted him dead, didn't he? Then routine. Put it on the teletype for all the precincts. Have men go to places where a girl like Patrice Russell might be. Wait. Patrice Russell is at none of these places. Then on all points bullet and find Patrice Russell. And more routine. Out of your office, down two flights of steps down a corridor, open a door. And for all that effort, a man named Gordon greets you. Close the door, Lieutenant. Thank you very much, Lieutenant. Don't you ever open a window in here, Gordon? For fresh air? You need fresh air, Lieutenant? Oh, poor you. Down here in technical, you're hermetically sealed. Take a whiff, Lieutenant. Hermetic, hmm? About the fire at the Russell Chemical Company. I've been sitting here for two hours watching the door, waiting for you to scrape in here, Lieutenant. You need Gordon again, don't you? Look, Gordon... Don't raise your voice, Lieutenant. I'm a civilian technician. I don't have to bow my head and shuffle my feet when you talk to me. Next time you walk in here, say to yourself, don't raise your voice to Gordon. What about the report? Nicely phrased. Hmm. In case the three syllable type words make you scratch your head in utter dismay, I'd better tell you. The fire was not only set by an arsonist, but there was an explosion, and it was a place of neatly placed to explode at a comparatively low heat. Danny, I got a morsel for you. You... close the door. Close it yourself. Let's get out of here, Geno. I say... I heard what you said. Come on, Geno. What have you got? Patrice Russell. Protect the fuller spotter in the village. She climbed the stair, went to a party at 1212 Bank Street, where she is at this moment. Thanks, Geno. Where's Patrice Russell? Thanks. Patrice. Come on, dance with me. Come to me. Come on, we're getting out of here, Patrice. Goodie. Where are we going? Just away from here. I've got to talk to you. My car's outside. I know a lovely place to talk. Outside in the halls far enough. Halls are trapped. Come on. Or you'll bruise me. All right, come on. Let's go out in the hall. Here? Here. For what? Your father's dead. Kidding? No, you're not, are you? How? Someone tossed a bomb in your living room. Poor Daddy. Who did it, Patrice? Honest. I don't know. I loved him, you know. I really did. And he loved you. I know. I know he did. Patrice. I wasn't very nice to him, Daddy. You know something? Every morning I'd wake up and say to myself, this is a day that I'm not going to hurt Daddy. And it never worked out. I want to ask you something, Patrice. Because I never tried. Around breakfast time I'd think of something to do. And during the day I'd find out a way to do it. What about the narcotics? What? The narcotics. Oh, no more, Danny. I promised him that. And I kept my promise. I took the cure and it worked. I haven't touched it since. Not since that detective picked me up for it. His name is Ed Costa, Patrice. He died because of that fire at your father's place. I'm sorry. Come on, Danny, about the narcotics. I want you to know it's all over. He lost me everything. I had a boy. We were going to get married. And he's gone. You know what I do now? I go to parties. Goodbye, Danny. And leave her and leave Greenwich Village. Ride uptown to the one stop you had to make. The final stop. In front of a canopy entrance to a grey stone apartment house. Give your badge sniffed, Anthony. Be told the man you're looking for is a penthouse dweller. Find the elevator. Press a button because the man you want is 30 floors away. Get there. The man you want is waiting for you. You should step out. Hey, come on in, Danny. Thanks. Like Frankie's new house, Danny? Placid. Where do I show you outside? I got the city for an honor. Come on, I'll show you. All right. My Manhattan Tower, Danny. I'm happy for you. If you figure out renting a place like this, that's why you come to look. Uh-oh. And at what? I want to take you away from all this, Frankie. Too much sweat got me here, Danny. It isn't going to be easy. Not hard. Just a walk to the elevator and a ride downtown. Uh-uh. There were times when that could have happened to Frankie no more. It's going to happen. It's got murder in it. What are you talking about? George Russell. What about him? Dead. Had a bomb pitched through his living room window. Rumor said you used to do things like that, Frankie. Uh-uh. Rubber balls through tenement windows. When I was a kid, I'd give it up. No future. It all gets back to Joe Gant, Frankie. Come on, Danny. You're in a classy place. Make classy conversation. What about Joe Gant? The connection between you and who? Finish the visit, Danny. I got a date. It'll wait. Maybe I can still catch it, Danny. Maybe she's got a friend. You want me to try? Don't bother. Well, let's finish the visit. Sure. It started way back in June. What, dead, Danny? Come on. When Patrice Russell was picked up on a narcotics charge. George Russell, Patrice Russell. What is it with all these Russells? George Russell must have pleaded with the officer not to press charges against his daughter, Patrice. He didn't make it. The charge nearly wrecked his daughter. All right. What's this got to do with me? The arresting officer's name was Ed Costa. Russell was going to get back at him. Danny. He found a way to do it. Somehow he found out Costa was transferred from narcotics to burglary. That was his chance. That's my day, Danny. I don't like to keep a lady waiting. Tough. See? She's impatient. Tough. I'm telling a story. Russell came to you. He said he wanted a fire set in his place for whatever reason he gave you, for whatever amount he gave you. Look, Danny. You better forget it. So you arranged it, sent Joe Gant. Joe set the fire, all right, but he was followed by Officer Ed Costa. Because Ed got a phone call telling him where a burglar would be at what time. All right, so they both burned. Why should that keep me from a date? The phone call Ed came from Russell. Russell rigged the place to blow up when the fire started. It blew all right. Gant was killed. Ed died. And I wiped a tear with the back of my hand. You couldn't let Russell get away with that. One of your boys was killed. Bad for your reputation. You evened it. The bomb in the car didn't work, but the bomb in the living room did. Danny. You can say goodbye to her on your way, Frankie. I asked you, Danny. You didn't agree. I'll kill you. Put down that gun. Yeah. You're not going to get to say goodbye to her, Frankie. She went away. Broadway's wearing its harlequin clothes. It winks an eye and beckons. And in the press of crowd there, that pale girl walks like a queen because Broadway's a dream street. That man with begging eyes hungry for a new dream. It's a laugh or a cry with nothing in between. It's Broadway, the godiest, the most violent, the lonesomeest mile in the world. Broadway, My Beat. Broadway's My Beat stars Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover, with Charles Calvert as Tortaglia, and Jack Cushion as Muggevin. The program was produced and directed by Elliot Lewis with musical score composed and conducted by Alexander Courage. In tonight's story, Anthony Barrett was heard as Frankie Crown. Featured in the cast were Michael Ann Barrett, Paula Winslow, Herb Butterfield, and Ed Max. My friend Irma is everybody's friend Irma. There's something downright appealing in that gal's goofy mentality, but this Sunday evening Marie Wilson stars as the world's most adorable dumbbell, my friend Irma. Kathy Lewis is her level-headed roommate on most of these stations Sunday nights. Enjoy CBS Radio's My Friend Irma. Bill Anders speaking, and remember the Frankie Lane show is your date for slick syncopation every Sunday afternoon on the CBS Radio Network.