7

The homicide skipper that year was a Captain Gregorius, a type of copper that is getting rarer but by no means extinct, the kind that solves crimes with the bright light, the soft sap, the kick to the kidneys, the knee to the groin, the fist to the solar plexus, the night stick to the base of the spine. Six months later he was indicted for perjury before a grand jury,booted without trial, and later stamped to death by a big stallion on his ranch in Wyoming.

Right now I was his raw meat. He sat behind his desk with his coat off and his sleeves rolled almost to his shoulders. He was as bald as a brick and getting heavy around the waist like all hard-muscled men in middle age. His eyes were fish gray. His big nose was a network of burst capillaries. He was drinking coffee and not quietly. His blunt strong hands had hairs thick on their backs. Grizzled tufts stuck out of his ears. He pawed something on his desk and looked at Green.

Green said: “All we got on him is he won't tell us nothing, skipper.The phone number makes us look him up. He's out riding and don't say where. He knows Lennox pretty well and don't say when he saw him last.”

“Thinks he's tough,” Gregorius said indifferently. “We could change that.” He said it as if he didn't care one way or another. He probably didn't. Nobody was tough to him. “Point is the D.A. smells a lot of headlines on this one. Can't blame him, seeing who the girl's old man is. I guess we better pick this fellow's nose for him.”

He looked at me as if I was a cigarette stub, or an empty chair. Just something in his line of vision, without interest for him.

Dayton said respectfully: “It's pretty obvious that his whole attitude was designed to create a situation where he could refuse to talk. He quoted law at us and needles me into socking him. I was out of line there, Captain.”

Gregorius eyed him bleakly. “You must needle easy if this punk can do it. Who took the cuffs off?”

Green said he did. “Put them back on,” Gregorius said. “Tight. Give him something to brace him up.”

Green put the cuffs back on or started to. “Behind the back,”Gregorius barked. Green cuffed my hands behind my back. I was sitting in a hard chair.

“Tighter,” Gregorius said. “Make them bite.”

Green made them tighter. My hands started to feel numb.

Gregorius looked at me finally. “You can talk now. Make it snappy.”

I didn't answer him. He leaned back and grinned. His hand went out slowly for his coffee cup and went around it. He leaned forward a little.The cup jerked but I beat it by going sideways out of the chair. I landed hard on my shoulder, rolled over and got up slowly. My hands were quite numb now. They didn't feel anything. The arms above the cuffs were beginning to ache.

Green helped me back into the chair. The wet smear of the coffee was over the back and some of the seat, but most of it was on the floor.

“He don't like coffee,” Gregorius said. “He's a swifty. He moves fast. Good reflexes.”

Nobody said anything. Gregorius looked me over with fish eyes.

“In here, mister, a dick license don't mean any more than a calling card. Now let's have your statement, verbal at first. We'll take it down later. Make it complete. Let's have, say, a full account of your movements since ten P.M. last night. I mean full. This office is investigating a murder and the prime suspect is missing. You connect with him. Guy catches his wife cheating and beats her head to raw flesh and bone and bloodsoaked hair. Our old friend the bronze statuette. Not original but it works. You think any goddam private eye is going to quote law at me over this, mister,you got a hell of a tough time coming your way. There ain't a police force in the country could do its job with a law book. You got information and I want it. You could of said no and I could of not believed you. But you didn't even say no. You're not dummying up on me, my friend. Not six cents worth. Let's go.”

“Would you take the cuffs off, Captain?” I asked. “I mean if I made a statement?”

“I might. Make it short.”

“If I told you I hadn't seen Lennox within the last twenty-four hours,hadn't talked to him and had no idea where he might be—would that satisfy you, Captain?”

“It might—if I believed it.”

“If I told you I had seen him and where and when, but had no idea he had murdered anyone or that any crime had been committed, and further had no idea where he might be at this moment, that wouldn't satisfy you at all, would it?”

“With more detail I might listen. Things like where, when, what he looked like, what was talked about, where he was headed. It might grow into something.”

“With your treatment,” I said. “it would probably grow into making me an accessory.”

His jaw muscles bulged. His eyes were dirty ice. “So?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I need legal advice. I'd like to co-operate.How would it be if we had somebody from the D.A.’s office here?”

He let out a short raucous laugh. It was over very soon. He got up slowly and walked around the desk. He leaned down close to me, one big hand on the wood, and smiled. Then without change of expression he hit me on the side of the neck with a fist like a piece of iron.

The blow traveled eight or ten inches, no more. It nearly took my head off. Bile seeped into my mouth. I tasted blood mixed with it. I heard nothing but a roaring in my head. He leaned over me still smiling, his left hand still on the desk. His voice seemed to come from a long way off.

“I used to be tough but I'm getting old. You take a good punch, mister,and that's all you get from me. We got boys at the City Jail that ought to be working in the stockyards. Maybe we hadn't ought to have them because they ain't nice clean powderpuff punchers like Dayton here. They don't have four kids and a rose garden like Green. They live for different amusements. It takes all kinds and labor's scarce. You got any more funny little ideas about what you might say, if you bothered to say it?”

“Not with the cuffs on, Captain.” It hurt even to say that much.

He leaned farther towards me and I smelled his sweat and the gas of corruption. Then he straightened and went back around the desk and planted his solid buttocks in his chair. He picked up a three-cornered ruler and ran his thumb along one edge as if it was a knife. He looked at Green.

“What are you waiting for, Sergeant?”

“Orders.” Green ground out the word as if he hated the sound of his own voice.

“You got to be told? You're an experienced man, it says in the records. I want a detailed statement of this man's movements for the past twenty-four hours. Maybe longer, but that much at first. I want to know what he did every minute of the time. I want it signed and witnessed and checked. I want it in two hours. Then I want him back here clean, tidy,and unmarked. And one thing more, Sergeant.”

He paused and gave Green a stare that would have frozen a fresh baked potato.

“—next time I ask a suspect a few civil questions I don't want you standing there looking as if I had torn his ear off.”

“Yes, sir.” Green turned to me. “Let's go,” he said gruffly.

Gregorius bared his teeth at me. They needed cleaning—badly. “Let's have the exit line, chum.”

“Yes, sir,” I said politely. “You probably didn't intend it, but you've done me a favor. With an assist from Detective Dayton. You've solved a problem for me. No man likes to betray a friend but I wouldn't betray an enemy into your hands. You're not only a gorilla, you're an incompetent.You don't know how to operate a simple investigation. I was balanced on a knife edge and you could have swung me either way. But you had to abuse me, throw coffee in my face, and use your fists on me when I was in a spot where all I could do was take it. From now on I wouldn't tell you the time by the clock on your own wall.”

For some strange reason he sat there perfectly still and let me say it.Then he grinned. “You're just a little old cop-hater, friend. That's all you are, shamus, just a little old cop-hater.”

“There are places where cops are not hated, Captain. But in those places you wouldn't be a cop.”

He took that too. I guess he could afford it. He'd probably taken worse many times. Then the phone rang on his desk. He looked at it and gestured. Dayton stepped smartly around the desk and lifted the receiver.

“Captain Gregorius’ office. Detective Dayton speaking.”

He listened. A tiny frown drew his handsome eyebrows together. He said softly: “One moment, please, sir.”

He held the phone out to Gregorius. “Commissioner Allbright, sir.”

Gregorius scowled. “Yeah? What's that snotty bastard want?” He took the phone, held it a moment and smoothed his face out. “Gregorius,Commissioner.”

He listened. “Yeah, he's here in my office, Commissioner. I been asking him a few questions. Not co-operative. Not co-operative at all...How's that again?” A sudden ferocious scowl twisted his face into dark knots. The blood darkened his forehead. But his voice didn't change in tone by a fraction. “If that's a direct order, it ought to come through the Chief of Detectives, Commissioner... Sure, I'll act on it until it's confirmed. Sure... Hell, no. Nobody laid a glove on him... Yes, sir. Right away.”

He put the phone back in its cradle. I thought his hand shook a little.His eyes moved up and across my face and then to Green. “Take the cuffs off,” he said tonelessly.

Green unlocked the cuffs. I rubbed my hands together, waiting for the pins and needles of circulation.

“Book him in the county jail,” Gregorius said slowly. “Suspicion of murder. The D.A. has glommed the case right out of our hands. Lovely system we got around here.”

Nobody moved. Green was close to me, breathing hard. Gregorius looked up at Dayton.

“Whatcha waiting for, cream puff? An ice-cream cone maybe?”

Dayton almost choked. “You didn't give me any orders, skipper.”

“Say sir to me, damn you! I'm skipper to sergeants and better. Not to you, kiddo. Not to you. Out.”

“Yes, sir.” Dayton walked quickly to the door and went out.Gregorius heaved himself to his feet and moved to the window and stood with his back to the room.

“Come on, let's drift,” Green muttered in my ear.

“Get him out of here before I kick his face in,” Gregorius said to the window.

Green went to the door and opened it. I started through. Gregorius barked suddenly: “Hold it! Shut that door!”

Green shut it and leaned his back to it.

“Come here, you!” Gregorius barked at me.

I didn't move. I stood and looked at him. Green didn't move either.There was a grim pause. Then very slowly Gregorius walked across the room and stood facing me toe to toe. He put his big hard hands in his pockets. He rocked on his heels.

“Never laid a glove on him,” he said under his breath, as if talking to himself. His eyes were remote and expressionless. His mouth worked convulsively.

Then he spat in my face.

He stepped back. “That will be all, thank you.”

He turned and went back to the window. Green opened the door again.

I went through it reaching for my handkerchief.