unbelievingly at the white face and staring eyes and the head with most of its top gone. Ed Russo lay dead in the wet night, the nearest puddle stained a bright red, and Johnny mentally rocked back on his heels.
The detective knelt and felt for a pulse, although the condition of the head made it only a formality. He straightened, fished a handkerchief out from under the slicker, and wiped off his hands. “Kaput,” he said unnecessarily. His light left the body to make another swing around the cement loading platforms. “-nine, ten, eleven,” he counted. His voice was bitter. “Eleven warehouse doors leading off this rabbit warren, and our man needed a key to only one. What a spot for an ambush.” The light returned to the body. “Looks like he got it at eye level. Then fell-or was pushed-down here.”
Johnny had trouble finding his voice. “How wrong can you get? I thought this guy was pitchin', not catchin'. This stones me. When we heard the shots out on the street I figured for sure he'd scratched someone else breathin' on his neck.”
“Where'd you pick him up?”
“At the hotel. He was with the widow over there. I didn't make you until between Fifth and Madison coming east.”
“I saw the widow. We'll talk to her.” Detective Rogers wiped a trickle of rain from his face and amended his statement. “Or somebody will. This one's out of our territory- first one not in the precinct. Walk out to the corner and see if you can locate the beat man. If not, call in. Not our place; it's not our baby. Yet.”
“You want me back here?”
“Certainly I want you back here. The local boys will have a few hundred assorted questions for you. Lucky for you I was standing right beside you when we heard those shots. That about used up your luck, though, because when the lieutenant finds out you were seventy-five yards away when Russo got it, you bought a tough ticket. You know what he told you.”
“He told me to stay away from the people in the public relations office. He didn't say a word about Russo.”
“Correction. He said stay away from anyone connected with the case. You didn't consider it significant that the woman you saw Russo with before you took out after him now happens to own that public relations business?”
Johnny was silent, and Rogers looked him up and down. “You're heading for a fall, Johnny. You can't buck-”
“Ahhh, stow it!” Johnny interrupted angrily. “You people think you got a patent on me? You're beginning to sound just like all the rest.”
“I have a job to do, and I do it the way I'm told,” Detective Rogers said after a short pause; there was an edge in his voice. He stopped and slapped disgustedly at the wet leg of his trousers. “Forget it. I'm worse than you are for arguing with a mulehead like you. Go on out and get somebody in here. I'm an incipient pneumonia case right this minute.”
Johnny headed out into the darkness and stumbled and splashed his way up the slight upgrade. It was black in the alley; he welcomed the comparative brightness of Forty-fourth Street. He stamped his feet on the sidewalk to remove the clinging mud which had oozed above the welt of his shoes. At the southeast corner of Second Avenue a broad-backed black raincoat glistened in the lights of the little all-night restaurant across the street, and Johnny walked up to the corner resignedly and tapped the raincoat on the arm. It turned, and elderly sharp blue eyes in a wide, pug-nosed face inspected Johnny carefully.
“Dead man in an alley up the street,” Johnny told him. “There's a detective there now, and he'd like a little help.”
“You know the detective's name, son?”
“Rogers.”
There was slight movement beneath the raincoat. “No detective named Rogers in this precinct, son.”
“He's from West Fifty-fourth.”
The patrolman grunted. “I hear you saying so. What happened to the guy in the alley?”
“He lost the top of his head.”
The wide mouth pursed doubtfully. “I ought to take a look first. Still, you don't look like the jack-rabbit type. Mind you, if I turn the precinct out on a night like this, and there's nothing in that alley, I'll knock your ears down.”
“Go ahead and make your call,” Johnny said impatiently.
The big shoulders hitched at the raincoat. “You come right along with me, son, and watch me make it. I want my eye on you.”
Johnny half restrained a smile as he followed the patrolman across the street to the restaurant. From the bulge under the raincoat he knew that the service revolver had been unholstered; the officer was carrying it in his left hand, and this created a problem for him when faced with the wall pay phone.
“Like me to dial for you?” Johnny offered. “Or I'll hold the gun.”
The blue eyes inspected him critically for a moment, and then with a rustling of rubber the bulge disappeared. “Now I've got you in the light, son, you don't look quite like I made you on the street. Better get that nose straightened, though, before you apply to teach at Sunday school.” He turned back to the wall phone, and dialed. “Glidden, Sergeant. Man reported…”
The patrolman's voice droned on while Johnny listened with just a fraction of his attention. Russo's death had collapsed completely the major props of the framework within which he had been working. Somewhere, now, there was a man who had committed four murders, and he hadn't the slightest notion who it was.
He wondered if the police were any closer. Would Jimmy Rogers have been tailing Russo if he expected any such blow-off as this tonight? It figured that Rogers had been just as wrong as he was.
Officer Glidden nodded to Johnny as he backed away from the telephone, and they walked back out into the rain. Johnny gingerly moved his shoulders beneath the raincoat, which had now become a blotter and passed on its absorption to the sodden uniform beneath. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so uncomfortably wet.
Detective Rogers moved out from a dry corner of a warehouse platform as Officer Glidden's flashlight announced them from the alley. After a brief, low-voiced colloquy with the detective the big policeman laboriously removed a notebook from his raingear, folded it back painstakingly, heaved a mighty sigh and began writing. Johnny surmised that from Glidden's perfunctory questioning of him that Detective Rogers must have mentioned Johnny's actually being in his presence when the shots were heard. He didn't fool himself that the precinct detectives would be as easily satisfied; it looked like the beginning of a long night. When Glidden snapped his notebook shut with a grunt of relief Johnny spoke up with no real hope. “That wind me up, Chief? I could use some dry clothes.”
“That's not for me to say, son.” The patrolman looked around for Jimmy Rogers, then out at the mouth of the alley as headlights beamed through the narrow passageway into the semicircular dead end. The high beam of the car lights brilliantly illuminated the sprawled figure lying in the mud at the base of the loading area, and in the glare the rain beat down steadily. Other cars stacked up behind the first one and disgorged dark figures who moved purposefully; it was the type of night when a minimum of facts speedily arrived at was the goal of all concerned.
Johnny watched Patrolman Glidden jump heavily from the platform to the alley bed and advanced to meet the second contingent. His own position on the platform was not within the perimeter of the headlights, and he looked down for a moment at the activity in the arena of light below him. Take off, Killain, he told himself suddenly. Nobody's paying any attention to you. So they'll yank you in when they miss you later; they'll have to come and get you to do it, and at least you'll be dry.
He eased over to the darkest corner of the platform and jumped lightly to the mud below. He edged around the outer rim of the platforms and squeezed his way past the first of the parked cars. He had to brush past several latecomers on their way in from the street and he received several sharp glances, but no one offered to stop him. He walked swiftly away from the flashing red lights at the alley entrance and picked up a cab at the stand at the Second Avenue intersection. He settled into the back seat and listened to the soggy squish; he oozed water from every stitch.
As the cab swung west he realized suddenly they were within a block or two of Vic's apartment, and he leaned forward. “Cut over south a block, Mac.”
The cabbie turned left and looked over his shoulder when they came to the first corner. “Straight
