The Body Looks Familiar (8 page)
Jim Latson came away from the group and gave Dave Corday his sardonic smile. “Four more martinis, and he’ll be here before he left the capital. How’s it going, Dave?”
“Okay.”
“Don’t get drunk, kid. The governor hates a man who can’t hold his liquor. Him, he’s got a stainless steel gut. I don’t think the stuff touches him at all.”
“He can certainly hold it.”
“That’s right, Dave, he certainly can. It’s amazing how a man can stay that high and still be such a bore.” Jim Latson had not bothered to lower his voice at all. “But he likes you, Dave. I was with him when he called on Fred Van Lear. Van Lear wanted to bring one of his boys in as chief dep; and the governor was firm as an old secondhand iceberg. Nobody was going to shove his boy Dave down.”
“Decent of him.”
Jim Latson squinted his eyes, bent down to peer into Dave Corday’s lace. “Man, you don’t look good. You didn’t expect to be D.A., did you? You just don’t have what it takes, Dave. Some boys have it, and some don’t. Van Lear does; it was his price for not running for governor. My idea. Look, cheer up. How’s it if I get a couple of dollies later and show you the town? You’re too serious, Dave.”
Dave Corday was thinking. He was thinking, or maybe it was feeling, because it went much farther than his head; it filled his whole body. I was a fool, was the feeling. I should have killed Jim Latson in the first place. No substitute should have ever been thought of.
“Go to hell,” Dave Corday said, and swung on the grinning face.
Jim Latson caught Corday’s fist in his palm, squeezed it. “Take it easy, boy. You spoil the gov’s party and you’ll be a retired D.A.”
He held the fist a moment, and then threw it away.
Dave Corday turned and looked wildly for the exit.
CAP MARTIN had taken his shoes off. He leaned far back in the high-backed swivel chair; he had blocks nailed to the floor to stop the front legs of the pedestal from sliding too far and dumping him on his back.
He had a board laid across his lap; a board about fourteen inches wide and a good three feet long. It was covered with papers, each of them marked with the seal of the City Police Department.
But he wasn’t reading anything just now; the papers were in case he forgot a fact and needed to locate it. That sometimes happened, but not often.
He had read an article once about mechanical brains; the ones that the young geniuses were building and giving such weird names to: “The Maniac,” “The Idiot” and so on. The principle was what fascinated him. You fed a given fact in, and it was held in a series of vacuum tubes. Thereafter, any other facts fed in were automatically affected by the first fact. Like the average man is five-feet eight inches. So if you told the machine to start figuring how many yards of goods it would take to uniform a regiment, it would be on its way…
But if you told the machine that it took ten thousand yards of cloth to uniform a squad, it would light up something that probably said, “Tilt,” considering the youth and cuteness of most of the geniuses who built the machines.
I am the same, Cap Martin thought. I know a few things, and I don’t have to repeat them over and over. I automatically say, “Tilt” when I run up against something that doesn’t fit facts I’ve always known. Like—
Well, like Patrolman Ray Page. Page had been in the department five years, including his rookie time. He had tried twice for the Motor Squad, but had failed to pass the written tests, though he had done well enough on the physical. He had been in Traffic Control during a flu epidemic, but they had made no effort to keep him when their regular men returned to their desks.
A patrolman, half of a cruiser crew, best put on duty with another man.
But here, yesterday, Patrolman Ray Page had been put into plain clothes and made a hack inspector; an easy job and a nice one and a coveted one.
Tilt.
It was not the only “Tilt” among the records of the men who had been on watch in Hogan DeLisle’s neighborhood at the time of her death. But it was the biggest Tilt, really the only one worth noticing.
Now we go back. Lay aside all the other watch reports, the typed logs from the cruisers out and around that night, and concentrate on that one car: James Rein, radio operator, Ray Page, driver.
Rein, too, had gotten a little promotion—to the detective bureau. Third Grade Detective, no raise in salary, but a chance at the ladder of promotion. But this made sense. Rein was a damned good man. Second best stolen car recovery on the cruiser list. Rein had already passed his sergeant’s examination, was fourth in line for promotion as vacancies occurred.
But Page? Ray Page?
There was nothing in the typewritten log to show any irregularity. Their patrol did not run along either the side or the front of the Belmont…
Cap Martin found a pipe in his desk, filled it, lit it. It occurred to him that he was as absolutely certain of his own sense of correctness as a machine would be. It was conceit, and he rather liked himself for it. He picked up the phone, dialed his home. “Babe, I’ll be there in about half an hour. Get the chow warm again… No, I haven’t eaten yet. This stuff you get around town, it doesn’t deserve the name of food… Put some records on, too. Hell, a man deserves a little home life.”
He hung up, grinning, and puffed his pipe as he walked down to the Records Department. The clerk on night watch there was a civilian employee; Cap Martin was careful with him. “I want the rough logs of all the two-hundred series cruisers for the last week.”
The clerk walked down a row of files and presently came back with the sheaf of long sheets from the cruisers’ clipboards.
These were turned in at the end of each watch and copied by girl typists. The rough logs weren’t kept very long…
Rein and Page’s sheet for the crucial night was missing.
Cap Martin had shielded the logs with his body as he looked through them. Now, satisfied that the clerk did not know which car he’d been interested in, he shuffled the papers a little, handed them back. “Afraid I got them out of order.”
“I’ll straighten them, Captain. Glad to have something to do.”
“Good.”
The Communications Room, and then he could go home. Communications was sorry. Deputy Chief Latson had taken their log for that night. Wasn’t that the night there was the murder, the Guild case?
Cap Martin shrugged, and went to get his hat and coat. Jim Latson, and it didn’t surprise him. Latson was cover-up man for the politicians. Latson was the politician in the department.
Yeah. Transferring Rein and Page was a good trick. Anxious and nervous over learning new jobs, they would not gossip around about something that had probably not been very big in the first place—in their eyes. Yeah. Jim Latson. The chief was smart. A campaign was coming up, and somebody was going to kick in big for this cover-up…
Cap Martin considered. It was highly probable that whoever was being covered up had not committed the murder.
Latson and his politicians were much more likely to entertain bribes from a witness than from an out-and-out murderer; such a man would be very likely to freeze up, to tell no one, both from fear and from the knowledge that an admission of murder to the politicos would cause them to bleed him white.
But that was deduction on a purely mental basis. Let’s pin it down a little.
Let’s picture two people, Hogan DeLisle and a gent, coming to her apartment. Gent would be full of courtesy and attention, expecting both to pay off.
So he would take her key from her, and open her door for her, and stand aside to let her enter first—
Or maybe not, if this were an affair of long standing. Maybe she’d open her own door, go on in and—
Suddenly Captain Martin was grinning. Key. Of course.
The key was the key.
There had been no key in the girl’s handbag, none in the door, none on the floor.
So the sandwich-buyer had carried it away with him.
Which meant panic, not premeditation. Also, Captain Martin thought it unlikely that a man planning on murdering a girl would take her out on the town first.
So the gent was a witness, not a killer, for there had been no signs of a fight, and no time for an argument; they hadn’t gotten far enough into the apartment.
The missing man was missing because of fear of scandal, not because of guilt.
Just to be sure, Cap Martin checked. No key on the girl, none found any place except in the back of a dressing table drawer, and that would be a spare.
Problem: Was it worthwhile fighting City Hall for a mere witness? For a killer there would be no doubt, but get Jim Latson and the machine mad just for a witness who, at best, could clear Guild only so he could be deported?
Cap Martin, sadly deciding to call it a day, already knew the answer. It was worthwhile. It might mean going out to a precinct, it might mean even being framed out of his pension, but he knew he was going to do it.
For a final act of the day, he put in a note: Rein and Page were to report to him when they came on for the day watch tomorrow. And a memo to Jake: Call Latson’s secretary and ask for an appointment as early as was convenient for the chief.
The egg, as the kids said, had hit the electric fan. From time to time, other things hit that fan, too. But Cap Martin, a family man, believed in clean talk.
FOG COVERED THE CITY, had even managed to find its way into the interview room at the County Jail. It mixed with the sweat on Dave Corday’s face, but it didn’t cool him.
He slapped the picture with the palm of his hand. “This is your man,” he said. “You shot Miss DeLisle, and this man was present.”
Guild shook his head. He seemed to have shrunk since he had been in jail; probably all that had happened was that the damp air made his dungarees droop even more than when they had been issued to him.
“I did not shoot Miss DeLisle,” he said. “I am a family man, I cannot dishonor my name.”
Dave Corday let his voice out a couple of notches. “Your name? You fool, it isn’t your name! You came into this country under a name that wasn’t your own, and then you even changed that! What was the idea, were you going to send the papers you came in under back to the old country, sell them over again?”
“Please, I am sorry I came in that way, outside the law. But I have worked hard since I have been here; I am good American.”
Dave Corday used the dramatic fall in volume now. He put a hissing quality into his voice, he chose plenty of words with s’s in them. A good legal education pays off. “The United States stinks for your presence. I’m sending you back out of the States. Back behind the Iron Curtain!”
That hurt. That was the line to take. Little Guild’s face collapsed. He said, “Well, I know. I did not kill Miss DeLisle, but yes, I bought another’s papers to come here. His quota number.”
“And you’ll go back without ever seeing your baby,” Dave Corday said. He did not have to bother with voice tricks now; what he was saying carried its own weight. “Why should anyone give you a favor?”
Ralph Guild began to cry.
Dave Corday leaned over, and spoke harshly: “There’s only one man can save you: me! Sign this thing, and identify this man, and I’ll drop the charge against you down to murder two—second-degree murder. It means you’ll go out on bail; and I’ll see you get that bail.”
Ralph Guild said, “And—and then?”
Corday said, “Time, man, time.” He leaned back, used his kindly tone. “Think it over, Guild. Time to spend with your family. Mr. Van Lear will ask for postponement after postponement. He’s a smart man. Think, Guild, think.”
He thought to himself: This is the way. This will get Jim Latson into court, stripped of his power. By the time the trial starts, he won’t have a friend left; they’ll scare off quick when they find he was involved in a murder. And then—hell, then we can trace the gun to him. He got it some way; took it off a criminal, got it as a gift, bought it.
And whatever he did about the fingerprints will come out, too. And I’ll look like an honest prosecutor who mistook a witness for a murderer and a murderer for a witness.
Publicity? Fred Van Lear’s perfectly right; this case is going to be page one all the way. All my way. I won’t settle for D.A. I’ll be governor myself. And I certainly will sign no reprieve for Jim Latson.
Ralph Guild was talking. “I am afraid.”
“Afraid? You, a Czech, afraid? Think what they’ll do to you if you go back home. Just think of that.”
“I’m afraid of this man here.” Guild gingerly touched the photograph of Jim Latson. “He was here with you when you came before. Such men!”
“For every one we have here, there are six in Czechoslovakia. And you’ll be free, man. Tomorrow morning! Free to go to the hospital, to see your wife, to look at your son!”
Ralph Guild stared at him. “How do I know you are not another? You were with him!”
Dave Corday knew he had won. He only had to say one word more and he was through. “If I am, Guild, you can’t be worse off than you are: in jail, booked for murder, with me about to try you. Can you?”
Ralph Guild reached for the pen, and slowly signed.
Dave Corday pressed the buzzer.
Peter Poldear himself came up. “Through, Dave?”
“He’s confessed, Pete. Send for the press.”
THE COUNTY JAIL was a mess. It had never been meant to accommodate a full-scale news break; but now more than forty newsmen—daily papers, wire-services, radio and TV reporters, plus a few people from the weekly magazines—were all storming in to see Ralph Guild.
Peter Poldear, the sheriff, wasn’t having any. Jim Latson, jumping out of the patrolman-driven car, counted at least two dozen of his men thrown around the jail; and that many more turnkeys were on duty in their clumsy blue uniforms and old-fashioned looking badges.
They saw Jim Latson, and stormed him; the yells of “Chief” were reminiscent of newsreel sound tracks from the old Mussolini days. He saw two of his big motor cops heading for him and shook his head at them.
Policy was at stake. That ass, Poldear, had damn near alienated the entire local, state, and national press. He raised a hand for silence, and said, “Boys, give me five minutes. I just got the flash. In fact, I got it after you did; Wade Cohen and I were both in the Oak Bar, and his call came in first. But I was soberer.”