Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (71 page)

Leopold stepped over to
the microphone, adjusting it upward from the position Herb Clarke had used.
Then he looked out at the sea of familiar faces. Carol Fletcher and the other
wives hovered in the rear, out of the way, while their husbands and the others
crowded around. Fletcher himself stood with Sergeant Riker, an old friend, and
Leopold noticed that Lieutenant Williams had moved over near Tommy Gibson. He
couldn’t see Jim Turner at the moment.

“Men, I’m going to make
this worth listening to for all that. You hear a lot at this time of the year
about Christmas being the season for kids, but I want to add something to that.
Christmas is for kids, sure—but Christmas is for cops, too. Know what I mean by
that? I’ll tell you. Christmas is perhaps the one time of the year when the cop
on the beat, or the detective on assignment, has a chance to undo some of the
ill will generated during the other eleven months. This has been a bad year for
cops around the country—most years are bad ones, it seems. We take a hell of a
lot of abuse, some deserved, but most of it not. And this is the season to
maybe right some of those wrongs. Don’t be afraid to get out on a corner with
the Salvation Army to ring a few bells, or help some lady through a puddle of
slush. Most of all, don’t be afraid to smile and talk to young people.”

He paused and glanced
down at Tommy Gibson. “There have always been some bad cops, and I guess there
always will be. That just means the rest of us have to work a lot harder. Maybe
we can just pretend the whole year is Christmas, and go about righting those
wrongs. Anyway, I’ve talked so long already I’ve grown a bit thirsty. Let’s get
back to the beer and the singing, and make it good and loud!”

Leopold jumped off the
platform and shook more hands. He’d meant to speak longer, to give them
something a bit meatier to chew on, but far at the back of the crowd some of
the younger cops were already growing restless. And, after all, they’d come
here to enjoy themselves, not to listen to a lecture. He couldn’t really blame
them.

Herb Clarke was gathering
everyone around the piano for songs, but Leopold noticed that Tommy Gibson had
suddenly disappeared. The Captain threaded his way through the crowd, searching
the familiar faces for the man he wanted. “Great talk, Captain,” Fletcher said,
coming up by his side.

“Did he tell you any
more?”

“Only that he had to hide
the tape near the Christmas tree. He said the other guy was here.”

“Who do you make it,
Captain?”

Leopold bit his lower
lip. “I make it that Tommy Gibson is one smart cookie. I think he’s playing for
time, maybe waiting for Freese to get him off the hook somehow.”

“You don’t think there’s
another crooked cop in the Detective Bureau?”

“I don’t know, Fletcher.
I guess I don’t want to think so.”

The door to the Men‘s
Room sprang open with a suddenness that surprised them both. Sergeant Riker,
his usually placid face full of alarm, stood motioning to them. Leopold quickly
covered the ground to his side. “What is it, Riker?”

“In there! My God,
Captain—in there! It’s Gibson!”

“What?”

“Tommy Gibson. He’s been
stabbed. I think he’s dead.”

* * *

Leopold pushed past him,
into the tiled Men’s Room with its scrubbed look and disinfectant odor. Tommy
Gibson was there, all right, crumpled between two of the wash basins, his eyes
glazed and open. A long pair of scissors protruded from his chest.

“Lock all the outside
doors, Fletcher,” Leopold barked. “Don’t let anyone leave.”

“Is he dead, Captain?”

“As dead as he’ll ever
be. What a mess!”

“You think one of our men
did it?”

“Who else? Call in and
report it, and get the squad on duty over here. Everyone else is a suspect.” He
stood up from examining the body and turned to Riker. “Now tell me everything
you know, Sergeant.”

Riker was a Vice Squad
detective, a middle-aged man with a placid disposition and friendly manner.
There were those who said he could even make a street-walker, like him while he
was arresting her. Just now he looked sick and pale. “I walked in and there he
was. Captain. My God! I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. I thought he was
faking, playing some sort of a trick.”

“Notice anyone leaving
before you went in?”

“No, nobody.”

“But he’s only been dead
a few minutes. That makes you a suspect, Sergeant.”

Riker’s pale complexion
seemed to shade into green at Leopold’s words. “You can’t think I killed him!
He was a friend of mine! Why in hell would I kill Tommy Gibson?”

“We’ll see,” Leopold
said, motioning him out of the Men’s Room. The other detectives and officers
were clustered around, trying to see. There was a low somber hum of
conversation. “All right, everyone!” the Captain ordered. “Keep down at the
other end of the room, away from the tree! That’s right, move away from it.”

“Captain!” It was little
Herb Clarke, pushing his way through. “Captain, what’s happened?”

“Someone killed Tommy
Gibson.”

“Tommy!”

“One of us. That’s why
nobody leaves here.”

“You can’t be serious,
Captain. Murder at the police Christmas party— the newspapers will crucify us.”

“Probably,” Leopold
pushed past him. “Nobody enters the Men’s Room,” he bellowed. “Fletcher,
Williams—come with me.” They were the only two lieutenants present, and he had
to trust them. Fletcher he’d trust with his life. He only hoped he could rely
on Williams too.

“I can’t believe it,” the
bony young Narcotics lieutenant said. “Why would anyone kill Tommy?”

Leopold cleared his
throat. “I’ll tell you why, though you may not want to believe it. Gibson was
implicated in the District Attorney’s investigation of Carl Freese’s gambling
empire. He had a tape recording of a conversation between Freese, himself, and
another detective, apparently concerning bribery. The other detective had a
dandy motive for killing him.”

“Did he say who it was?”
Williams asked.

“No. Only that it was
someone who got here fairly early today. Who was here before Fletcher and I
arrived?”

Williams creased his brow
in thought. “Riker was here, and Jim Turner. And a few uniformed men.”

“No, just detectives.”

“Well, I guess Riker and
Turner were the only ones. And Herb Clarke, of course. He was here all day with
the ladies, arranging for the food and the beer.”

“Those three,” Leopold
mused. “And you, of course.”

Lieutenant Williams
grinned. “Yeah, and me.”

Leopold turned toward the
big Christmas tree. “Gibson told me he hid the tape recording near the tree.
Start looking, and don’t miss anything. It might even be in the branches.”

The investigating
officers were arriving now, and Leopold turned his attention to them. There was
something decidedly bizarre in the entire situation, a fact which was emphasized
as the doctor and morgue attendants and police photographers exchanged muted
greetings with the milling party guests. One of the young investigating
detectives who’d known Tommy Gibson turned pale at the sight of the body and
had to go outside.

When the photographers
had finished, one of the morgue men started to lift the body. He paused and
called to Leopold. “Captain, here’s something. A cigarette lighter on the floor
under him.”

Leopold bent close to
examine it without disturbing possible prints. “Initials. C.F.”

Lieutenant Williams had
come in behind him, standing at the door of the Men’s Room. “Carl Freese?” he
suggested.

Leopold used a
handkerchief to pick it up carefully by the corners. “Are we supposed to
believe that Freese entered this place in the midst of sixty cops and killed
Gibson without anybody seeing him?”

“There’s a window in the
wall over there.”

Leopold walked to the
frosted pane and examined it. “Locked from the inside. Gibson might have been
stabbed from outside, but he couldn’t have locked the window and gotten across
this room without leaving a trail of blood.”

Fletcher had come in
while they were talking. “No dice on that, Captain. My wife just identified the
scissors as a pair she was using earlier with the decorations. It’s an inside
job, all right.”

Leopold showed the
lighter. “C.F. Could be Carl Freese.”

Fletcher frowned and
licked his lips. “Yeah.” He turned away.

“Nothing,” Williams
reported.

“Nothing
in
the tree? It could be a fairly small reel.”

“Nothing.”

Leopold sighed and
motioned Fletcher and Williams to one side. He didn’t want the others to hear. “Look,
I think Gibson was probably lying, too. But he’s dead, and that very fact
indicates he might have been telling the truth. I have to figure all the
angles. Now that you two have searched the tree I want you to go into the
kitchen, close the door, and search each other. Carefully.”

“But—” Williams began. “All
right, Captain.”

“Then line everybody up
and do a search of them. You know what you’re looking for—a reel of recording
tape.”

“What about the wives,
Captain?”

“Get a matron down for
them. I’m sorry to have to do it, but if that tape is here we have to find it.”

He walked to the center
of the hall and stood looking at the tree. Lights and tinsel, holiday wreaths
and sprigs of mistletoe. All the trappings. He tried to imagine Tommy Gibson
helping to decorate the place, helping with the tree. Where would he have
hidden the tape?

Herb Clarke came over and
said, “They’re searching everybody.”

“Yes. I’m sorry to spoil
the party this way, but I guess it was spoiled for Gibson already.”

“Captain, do you have to
go on with this? Isn’t one dishonest man in the Bureau enough?”

“One is too many, Herb.
But the man we’re looking for is more than a dishonest cop now. He’s a murderer.”

Fletcher came over to
them. “We’ve searched all the detectives, Captain. They’re clean. We’re working
on the uniformed men now.”

Leopold grunted
unhappily. He was sure they’d find nothing. “Suppose,” he said slowly. “Suppose
Gibson unreeled the tape. Suppose he strung it on the tree like tinsel.”

“You see any brown tinsel
hanging anywhere, Captain? See any tinsel of any color long enough to be a
taped message?”

“No, I don’t,” Leopold
said.

Two of the sergeants,
Riker and Turner, came over to join them. “Could he have done it to himself?”
Turner asked. “The word is you were going to link him with the Freese
investigation.”

“Stabbing yourself in the
chest with a pair of scissors isn’t exactly common as a suicide method,” Leopold
pointed out. “Besides, it would be out of character for a man like Gibson.”

One of the investigating
officers came over with the lighter. “Only smudges on it, Captain. Nothing we
could identify.”

“Thanks.” Leopold took
it, turning it over between his fingers.

C.F. Carl Freese.

He flicked the lever a
couple of times but it didn’t light. Finally, on the fourth try, a flame
appeared. “All right,” he said quietly. Now he knew.

“Captain—” Fletcher
began.

“Damn it, Fletcher, it’s
your wife’s lighter and you know it! C.F. Not Carl Freese but Carol Fletcher!”

“Captain, I—” Fletcher
stopped.

Leopold felt suddenly
very tired. The colored lights of the tree seemed to blur, and he wished he was
far away, in a land where all cops were honest and everyone died of old age.

Sergeant Riker moved in. “Captain,
are you trying to say that Fletcher’s
wife
stabbed Tommy Gibson ?”

“Of course not, Riker.
That would have been quite a trick for her to follow him into the Men’s Room
unnoticed. Besides, I had to give her a match at one point this evening,
because she didn’t have this lighter.”