don't you?
You got a witness and you've got a corpse with a knife in his hand.'
'So?'
'The corpse was hired to tag me. When I know who he is I'm probably going to know who hired him. I think he was also hired to kill somebody else a while ago, and when I know his name and background I'll be able to come up with evidence that should lock right into the person who's paying the check.'
'And you can't open up on any of this in the meantime?'
'No.'
'Any particular reason?'
'I don't want to get the wrong person in trouble.'
'You play a very lone hand, don't you?'
I shrugged.
'They're checking downtown right now. If he doesn't show there, we'll wire the prints down to the
Bureau in D.C. It could add up to a long night.'
'I'll hang around, if it's all right.'
'I'd just as soon you did, matter of fact. There's a couch in the loot's office if you want to close your eyes for a while.'
I said I'd wait until the word came back from downtown. He found something to do, and I went into an empty office and picked up a newspaper. I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew, Birnbaum was shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes.
'Nothing downtown, Matt. Our boy's never taken a bust in New York.'
'That's what I thought.'
'I thought you didn't know anything about him.'
'I don't. I'm running hunches, I told you that.'
'You could save us trouble if you told us where to look.'
I shook my head. 'I can't think of anything faster than wiring Washington.'
'His prints are already on the wire. Might be a couple of hours anyway, and it's getting light outside already. Why don't you go home, and I'll give you a call soon as anything comes in.'
'You got a full set. Doesn't the Bureau do this sort of things by computer these days?'
'Sure. But somebody has to tell the computer what to do, and they tend to take their time down there.
Go home and get some sleep.'
'I'll wait.'
'Suit yourself.' He started for the door, then turned to remind me about the couch in the lieutenant's office. But the time I'd dozed in the chair had taken the edge off the urge to sleep. I was exhausted, certainly, but sleep was no longer possible. Too many mental wheels were starting to turn, and I couldn't shut them off.
He had to be Prager's boy. It just had to add up that way. Either he had somehow missed the news that Prager was dead and out of the picture, or he was tied in close to Prager and wanted me dead out of spite. Or he had been hired through an intermediary, somehow, and didn't know that Prager was a part of it.
Something, anything, because otherwise—
I didn't want to think about the otherwise.
I had been telling Birnbaum the truth. I had a hunch, and the more I thought about it the more I believed in it, and at the same time I kept wanting to be wrong.
So I sat around the station house and read newspapers and drank endless cups of weak coffee and tried not to think about all of the things I couldn't possibly avoid thinking about. Somewhere along the line Birnbaum went home, after he'd briefed another detective named Guzik, and around nine thirty Guzik came over to me and said they had a make from Washington.
He read it off the teletype sheet. 'Lundgren, John Michael. Date of birth fourteen March 'forty-three.
Place of birth San Bernardino, California. Whole trail of arrests here, Matt.
Living off immoral earnings, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft auto, grand larceny. He did local bits all up and down the West Coast, pulled some hard time in Quentin.'
'He pulled a one-to-five in Folsom,' I said. 'I don't know whether they called it extortion or larceny.
That would have been fairly recent.'
He looked up at me. 'I thought you didn't know him.'
'I don't. He was working a badger game. Arrested in San Diego, and his partner turned state's evidence and got off. Sentence suspended.'
'That's more detail than I've got here.'
I asked him if he had a cigarette. He said he didn't smoke. He turned to ask if anybody had a cigarette, but I told him to forget it. 'Get somebody with a steno pad,' I said. 'There's a lot to tell.'
