you did was choose the person in your company who couldn’t speak English at all. The thing was, Ollie hadn’t realized till now that this practice had spread to the Police Department.
From what he could gather, the .32 Smith & Wesson recovered from a sewer in the alley off the western end of the King Memorial auditorium either was or was not the pistol that had fired the fatal shots into Lester Henderson. From what he could gather further, a pistol bearing the serial numbers of the recovered weapon either was or was not registered to someone in this city.
“Listen,” Ollie said, “is there somebody there speaks English?”
The dope got insulted and hung up.
Ollie dialed back at once.
Another guy who couldn’t speak English answered the phone.
“What is this?” Ollie asked. “Did Castro invade the United States?”
“Quien es?”the guy asked.
“Detective/First Grade Oliver Wendell Weeks,” Ollie said. “Give me somebody speaks English down there.”
He heard the phone rattling onto a counter top down there. Probably dangerous weapons all over the place down there, nobody could speak English.
“Detective Hogan,” somebody said.
“Hooray,” Ollie said.
“Who’s this?”
“Weeks, the Eight-Eight. You got an evidence piece we sent down for Comp and ID, I’m tryin’a get a report on it.”
“Didn’t somebody call you?”
“Somebody called me.”
“So?”
“So nowI’mcallinyou.Did you test-fire the piece, and if so did you get a match?”
“Test bullets were positive for the evidence weapon, yes,” Hogan said. “Anything else?”
Ollie figured he was pissed off cause his spic buddies couldn’t speak English too good. “If it’s not too much trouble,” he said sweetly, “can you perhaps tell me if you ran a computer check on the evidence weapon?”
“Serial numbers were obliterated,” Hogan said. “Anything else?”
“Yes. What’s your first name, Hogan?”
“Why?”
“Cause I don’t like your attitude is why. I’m investigating a homicide here, of acouncilmanno less, and you happen to have in your possession themurderweapon. So if you don’t mind, Mr. Hogan, and if it ain’t too much trouble, what I’d like you to do isrestorethose numbers for me and then run the piece to see who mightownthe thing. Do you think you might know how to do that, Mr. Hogan? First you clean the site of the numbers…”
“I know how to do it,” Hogan said. “So do my partners.”
“Well, good, maybe the numbers are written in Spanish. After you bring ’em up, let me know what you find in the system, okay? I’ll be waiting. So will the Mayor’s Office, cause Lester Henderson wasn’t just some punk on the street, you know?” He paused for emphasis. “I wouldn’t be bothering you with all this, Mr. Hogan, cause I know how valuable your time is, but it so happens the only prints on the weapon were smeared, and we got nothing to go on. Which is why your expertise in the matter is so urgently demanded, ah yes,” Ollie said.
“The numbers were filed deep,” Hogan said. “Gonna be tough to bring ’em up.”
“Well now, gee, that’s your job, ain’t it?” Ollie said, and hung up.
6
ANDY PARKERdidn’t particularly like being partnered with women, especially any woman who’d been hurt on the job. The way he understood it, Eileen Burke had been slashed while serving as an undercover decoy in a case she’d been working with the Rape Squad. Blue wisdom maintained she’d also been violated at the time, so to speak, but nobody talked about that because Burke had friends with short tempers, among them Bert Kling who Parker knew for a fact had been going steady with her when all this occurred. What went on between them—or even between her legs, for that matter—was none of his business. What happened on the job when you were partnered with someone who’d been cut or shot was another matter. They were never the same again, he knew that for a fact, too.
The man they were talking to this Wednesday night was a person Parker had been working with ever since February. His name was Francisco Palacios, and he owned and operated a cozy little shop that sold medicinal herbs, dream books, religious statues, numbers books, tarot cards, and other related items.
His silent partners, however, were named Gaucho Palacios and Cowboy Palacios, and they ran a shopbehindthe other shop, andthisone offered for sale various unrelated and medically approved “marital aids” like dildoes, French ticklers, open-crotch panties, plastic vibrators, leather executioners’ masks, chastity belts, whips with leather thongs, penis extenders, aphrodisiacs, inflatable life-sized female dolls, condoms in every color of the rainbow including vermilion, books on how to hypnotize and otherwise overcome reluctant women, ben wa balls in both plastic and gold plate, and a highly popular mechanical device guaranteed to bring satisfaction and imaginatively called Suc-u-lator.
Francisco, The Gaucho, and The Cowboy were in fact one and the same person, and they were collectively a police informer, a stoolie, a snitch, or in some quarters even a rat. At the back of El Castillo de Palacios, as The Gaucho called his bifurcated shop, he sat with the two detectives and tried to fill them in on what was about to come down next Tuesday night. He found it somewhat difficult to concentrate on business, however, because his eyes kept wandering to the redheaded detective’s crossed legs, and he kept wondering what it would be like to put her in a pair ofbragas sin entrepiernaand leather anklets studded with chrome.
The Gaucho wondered if she found him good-looking.
He himself thought he was one coolhombre.As tall and as lean as a matinee idol, with dark brown eyes and a mustache he hadn’t sported a year or so ago, he still wore his long black hair in a high pompadour, the way kids used to wear it in the fifties. He did not admit to having four wives because that was against the law—havingthem, notadmittingto having them. But none of them was redheaded. In fact, he had never been to bed with a redheaded woman in his life. He wondered if it was true that they were even more passionate than blondes. None of his wives was blond, either. Not really blond, anyway. He wondered if Eileen Burke here, with her splendidly crossedgambasand the faintest trace of a scar on her left cheek was, in fact, arealredhead. Does the carpet match the drapes, he wondered, or is she merely Miss Clairol’s cousin?
“What is going to happen next Tuesday at midnight,” he said, “is a very large quantity…”
“When you sayTuesdayat midnight,” Parker interrupted, “do you meanTuesdaynight when the…”
“Yes,” Palacios said.
“…clock strikes twelve…”
“Yes.”
“OrMondaynight when the clock strikes twelve?” Parker asked, cleaving the air with the edge of his hand.
Palacios looked at him.
“What I’m asking is…let’s say it’s eleven fifty-nineP.M., and then it’s midnight, and then the minute hand moves to twelve-ohone…is thisTuesdaynight we’re talking about, orMondaynight?”
“I am talking aboutTuesdayat midnight,” Palacios said. “It is eleven fifty-nine on Tuesday night, and then it is midnight, and then it is twelve-oh-one on Wednesday morning. The shit will go down on Tuesday night at midnight.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to look at a calendar?” Eileen suggested.
Men, she thought.
There was, in fact, a calendar on the wall of The Gaucho’s shop, and it showed a picture of a dark-haired,
