he bought?'
'Bourbon — a pint. Medium price.'
'Kesslers'
'Yeah, I think it was.'
'Okay, good. What's your name?'
'My name? Hey, wait a minute, I don't want to get involved in anything…'
'Don't worry, it's not what you're thinking.'
It took a little more convincing, but he gave me his name finally and I wrote it down in my notebook. And thanked him and hurried out of there.
I had something more than an idea now.
Eberhardt said, 'I ought to knock you flat on your ass.'
He had just come out of his bedroom, eyes foggy with sleep, hair standing straight up, wearing a wine- colored bathrobe. Dana stood beside him looking fretful.
'I'm sorry I woke you up, Eb,' I said. 'But I didn't think you'd be in bed this early. It's only six o'clock.'
He said something I didn't hear, but that Dana heard. She cracked him on the arm to show her disapproval, then turned and left us alone.
Eberhardt went over and sat on the couch and glared at me. 'I've had about six hours' sleep in the past forty-eight,' he said. 'I got called out last night after you left, I didn't get home until three A.M., I was up at seven, I worked all goddamn day and knocked off early so I could get some sleep, and what happens? I'm in bed ten minutes and you show up.'
'Eb, it's important.'
'What is?'
'Colly Babcock.'
'Ah, Christ, you don't give up, do you?'
'Sometimes I do, but not this time. Not now.' I told him what I had learned from the guy at Tay's Liquors.
'So Babcock bought a bottle there,' Eberhardt said. 'So what?'
'If he was planning to burglarize a liquor store, do you think he'd have bothered to buy a bottle fifteen minutes before?'
'Hell, the job might have been spur-of-the-moment.'
'Colly didn't work that way. When he was pulling them, they were all carefully planned well in advance. Always.'
'He was getting old,' Eberhardt said. 'People change.'
'You didn't know Colly. Besides, there are a few other things.'
'Such as?'
'The burglaries themselves. They were all done the same way — back door jimmied, marks on the jamb and lock made with a hand bar or something.' I paused. 'They didn't find any tool like that on Colly. Or inside the store either.'
'Maybe he got rid of it.'
'When did he have time? They caught him coming out the door,'
Eberhardt scowled. I had his interest now. 'Go ahead,' he said.
'The pattern of the burglaries, like I was saying, is doors jimmied, drawers rifled, papers and things strewn about. No fingerprints, but it smacks of amateurism. Or somebody trying to make it look like amateurism.'
'And Babcock was a professional.'
'He could have done the book,' I said. 'He used lock picks and glass cutters to get into a place, never anything like a hand bar. He didn't ransack; he always knew exactly what he was after. He never deviated from that, Eb. Not once.'
Eberhardt got to his feet and paced around for a time. Then he stopped in front of me and said, 'So what do you think, then?'
'You figure it.'
'Yeah,' he said slowly, 'I can figure it, all right. But I don't like it. I don't like it at all.'
'And Colly?' I said. 'You think he liked it?'
Eberhardt turned abruptly, went to the telephone. He spoke to someone at the Hall of Justice, then someone else. When he hung up, he was already shrugging out of his bathrobe.
He gave me a grim look. 'I hope you're wrong, you know that.'
'I hope I'm not,' I said.
I was sitting in my flat, reading one of the pulps from my collection of several thousand issues, when the telephone rang just before eleven o'clock. It was Eberhardt, and the first thing he said was, 'You weren't wrong.'
I didn't say anything, waiting.
'Avinisi and Carstairs,' he said bitterly. 'Each of them on the force a little more than two years. The old story: bills, long hours, not enough pay — and greed. They cooked up the idea one night while they were cruising Glen Park, and it worked just fine until two nights ago. Who'd figure the cops for it?'
'You have any trouble with them?'
'No. I wish they'd given me some so I could have slapped them with a resisting-arrest charge, too.'
'How did it happen with Colly?'
'It was the other way around,' he said. 'Babcock was cutting through the alley when he saw them coming out the rear door. He turned to run and they panicked and Avinisi shot him in the back. When they went to check, Carstairs found a note from Babcock's parole officer in one of his pockets, identifying him as an ex-con. That's when they decided to frame him.'
'Look, Eb, I — '
'Forget it,' he said. 'I know what you're going to say.'
'You can't help it if a couple of cops turn out that way…
'I said forget it, all right?' And the line went dead.
I listened to the empty buzzing for a couple of seconds. It's a lousy world, I thought. But sometimes, at least, there is justice.
Then I called Lucille Babcock and told her why her husband had died.
They had a nice funeral for Colly.
The services were held in a small nondenominational church on Monterey Boulevard. There were a lot of flowers, carnations mostly; Lucille said they had been Colly's favorites. Quite a few people came. Tommy Belknap was there, and Sam Biehler and old man Harlin and the rest of them from D. E. O'Mira. Eberhardt, too, which might have seemed surprising unless you knew him. I also saw faces I didn't recognize; the whole thing had gotten a big play in the media.
Afterward, there was the funeral procession to the cemetery in Colma, where we listened to the minister's final words and watched them put Colly into the ground. When it was done I offered to drive Lucille home, but she said no, there were some arrangements she wanted to make with the caretaker for upkeep of the plot; one of her neighbors would stay with her and see to it she got home all right. Then she held my hand and kissed me on the cheek and told me again how grateful she was.
I went to where my car was parked. Eberhardt was waiting; he had ridden down with me.
'I don't like funerals,' he said.
'No,' I said.
We got into the car. 'So what are you planning to do when we get back to the city?' Eberhardt asked.
'I hadn't thought about it.'
'Come over to my place. Dana's gone off to visit her sister, and I've got a refrigerator full of beer.'
'All right.'
'Maybe we'll get drunk,' he said.
