from the trunks of the two squad cars and blocking off the street at either end of the block. Another round of orange-glowing flares was lit and dropped to the pavement. It seemed a pointless exercise to Curry-traffic had been nonexistent since he'd arrived-but it was procedure.
'Why's it so quiet?' Curry asked Johnson. 'Usually with a homicide, you gotta beat the spectators back with a stick.'
Johnson shrugged; hands in his topcoat pockets, his breath smoking. 'Dead white cop in a Negro section. Wouldn't you run scared if you lived 'round here?'
'They fear reprisals, you mean?'
Johnson laughed without humor. 'We two blocks from where the Joe Louis riot come down. Colored kid got shot that night.'
'Oh. Yeah. That's right.'
'We been working the east side together for some weeks now, Albert. You tell me. How do these people feel about cops?'
'Not good. They fear 'em. Hate 'em. Distrust 'em.'
'That's right, and more. Now there's a dead ofay copper on the front lawn of a colored house. Regular east- side lawn jockey.'
Curry snorted a laugh. 'You could be right. We could have a riot on our hands.'
'The coloreds ain't gonna riot again.'
'I'm not talking about the coloreds,' Curry said, and he nodded toward the white uniformed cops who were putting up the saw-horse barricades. They were talking animatedly amongst themselves, obviously angry; one of them was standing by a squad car talking into the coiled hand-mike from his police radio.
'You right,' Johnson said. 'That hunky's spreadin' the word. There's gonna be some black nappy skulls get crushed tonight.'
'I hope you're wrong. I hope we're both wrong.'
Sergeant Martin Merlo arrived with a photographer, who all but jumped out of the black unmarked sedan, left it out in the middle of the blocked-off street, and began taking pictures of the corpse and the area around the corpse. Flash bulbs popped like little gun shots, the brief explosions of light like eerie lightning.
'Looks like you've done a good job, Al,' Merlo said to Curry, shaking hands ceremoniously with the younger detective. Merlo was a slender, scholarly looking man in his late forties, with horn-rim glasses and a high brow.
'Kind of tough at night,' Curry said. 'I haven't canvassed any of the neighbors.'
'Anybody touch the body?'
'Not that we know of. Uh, do you know Detective Johnson? Toussaint, this is Sergeant Merlo.'
Johnson smiled, nodded, offered his hand, which Merlo shook, smiling back professionally. 'We met couple times,' Johnson said. 'After Kingsbury Run, Sergeant Merlo, he practically an honorary citizen of the Roarin' Third.'
Merlo twitched an embarrassed smile. He had been the principal investigator of the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run murders, before the safety director took over the case. Though the case was considered unofficially closed, obsessive Merlo (unaware the real butcher had been secretly committed to an asylum) was still working it.
Despite Merlo's obsession with the Butcher, Curry-like his boss, Ness-considered Merlo the best homicide cop on the department. Whenever the safety director's investigators encountered a homicide, Merlo was their man.
Right now Merlo was combing the area around the dead man with a highbeam flashlight. Then he approached the body, kneeling as if to pray.
Curry, standing nearby but out in the street, said, 'I checked for rigor. None yet. Body's warm. He could've been killed here.'
'Doubtful,' Merlo said, dousing the corpse with the flashlight; its beam landed on the face of the dead man, who had been a forty-year-old, jowly, dark-haired cop. The upper half of the man's face looked bruised.
'Somebody rough him up before they killed him?' Curry asked.
'No,' Merlo said, shaking his head. 'That bruising effect is lividity-when his heart stopped beating, the blood gathered on his left side, meaning he lay with his left side down when he died. Only now his left side's sunny-side up.' Merlo shrugged. 'They moved him.'
Curry, who really hadn't worked many homicides, a little flustered at not recognizing lividity when he saw it, said, 'Obviously. They dumped him here.'
'But who dumped him?' Merlo said. 'And why?'
Curry thought about that. He turned to Johnson. 'Did you know this guy?'
Johnson yawned. 'Sure. He worked the east side, out of the Third. But I don't think he was workin' tonight. And he wasn't no plainclothes.'
That sparked Curry's interest. 'Oh? Then what in the hell was he doing here?'
'Ask him,' Johnson said, nodding toward the corpse.
Somebody was shouting over by one of the saw-horse barricades. Curry glanced over and saw Sam Wild, arguing with a uniform cop. They looked close to blows.
Curry walked over there and broke it up.
'Let him pass,' Curry said.
The uniformed cop, a fiftyish paddy with a vein-shot nose, said, 'On whose authority? Are you homicide?' He obviously thought Curry looked a little young to be in charge.
'I'm Detective Curry, special assistant to the safety director. Let him cross the barricade.'
The older cop cleared his throat, said, 'Excuse,' and allowed the smirking Wild to pass.
'What's goin' on?' Wild said. 'I'm anxious to see this one-man St. Valentine's Day massacre.'
'You just stick with me. Don't ask anybody any questions. Did you find the chief?'
'Yeah. Big Chief Ness was makin' whoopee with his squaw. I don't think he was thrilled to be interrupted.'
'So he's not coming?'
'Don't be stupid. He's damn near here.'
Within moments, the EN-1 sedan was cruising past the barricade and pulled up beside Merlo's car and Ness hopped out, topcoat flapping.
'Fill me in,' he said to Curry, and Curry did.
Ness went over and spoke to Merlo, who nodded as Ness gave him his orders.
Ness came over to Curry, Johnson, and Wild, and said, 'We're going to keep this block cleared off. I'm having some flood lights brought in so they can comb this crime scene efficiently. So far the only physical evidence anybody's spotted is the corpse itself.'
'I sure didn't see anything,' Curry said. 'But I think Johnson and I preserved the scene halfway decent.'
'I'm sure you did. I called the Detective Bureau and they're sending half a dozen boys to canvass this neighborhood, tonight. Somebody had to have seen something.'
'Don't count on it,' Johnson said.
Ness considered that. 'Maybe we should pull in our Negro cops and have them do the questioning.'
'That would help,' Johnson admitted.
Ness called Merlo over and told him to call in the request for the colored cops; any of them who were off-duty were to come in, as well.
Ness returned to the trio of men and asked Johnson, 'What's your reading of this?'
Johnson's mouth twitched. He said, 'Scalise did this. With Lombardi's blessin'.'
'Why?'
'To cause you trouble. Dead white cop in a colored section is goin' to fire up the frictions 'tween the police and the colored citizenry.'
Ness nodded gravely. 'We're just a couple blocks from where that riot happened, and that kid was killed.'
'Right,' Johnson said. 'But we also are just a few blocks south of the white district. Easy to kill him there, dump him here.'
Wild, who was saying nothing, was lighting up a Lucky Strike; he wasn't taking notes, Curry noticed, but he
