“Which made you further suspect Whitey Dane of killing him.”
“I didn’t need that to suspect him! Whitey Dane had been seen by the only living witness!”
“Seth Randolph.”
The chief nodded, then suddenly smiled. “So maybe you had better think of this possibility — maybe Dane put on a different watch on the night he killed Trent and Amanda. Maybe someone in our department was indeed wearing a similar watch — after all, you tell me there were thousands of these watches sold.”
Frank didn’t say anything.
“It’s a possibility,” Hale said defensively.
“Why wasn’t the information about Trent Randolph’s girlfriend in the file on his murder?”
Hale said nothing.
“It wasn’t in there,” Frank answered, “because you wouldn’t let it be placed there.”
“There was no need. He was on the police commission, for God’s sake!”
“And if the public found out a pro-department commissioner might have been under the sway of a woman with close connections to a crime lord like Dane — when Dane was eluding the police, and suspicions about a leak in the department were rife — well, then, that would have made Trent Randolph’s good friend, the chief of police, look bad indeed.”
“Don’t presume you can understand the various pressures on a man in my position!”
“No,” Frank said, standing. “I’m sure I can’t understand them.”
“Am I supposed to be deaf to the insult in that reply?”
“I’m sure I can’t,
“Harriman—”
“I’m too unsophisticated,” Frank said, pausing as he reached the door. “But maybe I could have understood something simpler. If you had told me, for example, that you believed Randolph was an honest man and you couldn’t stand to see your friend’s good name damaged after he was no longer around to defend himself — or that you couldn’t bear to see young Seth Randolph shamed at a time when he had already been through so much — that sort of thing, I might have understood.”
Hale lowered his gaze to the top of his desk. “You don’t realize—” he began, but Frank Harriman was already gone.
35
Thursday, July 13, 10:15 A.M.
Greenleaf’s Cafe
Greenleaf’s Cafe was within walking distance of the Las Piernas Police Department, and the Looking Glass Man was certain that it obtained most of its customers from members of the department. He patronized it not because of convenience, but because it was one of the cleanest eating establishments in the city.
He seldom ate food prepared by others. He mistrusted their commitment to personal hygiene, their willingness to adhere to safe food preparation practices. Even if he could force himself not to think of rampaging bacteria, he could not prevent himself from considering what vermin one might encounter in the cupboards, let alone the floors of such places — this was enough to make him choose fasting over dining out.
However, Greenleaf ’s was a notable exception. The counters were kept clean and sanitized, the floors scrubbed, the tables wiped down. The kitchen, entirely visible to the patrons, could have been cleaner only if it had been his own. Even the windows sparkled.
At this particular moment, he was sitting in the warmth of summer sunlight coming in through one of these windows. He was not warm.
He was nearly alone here. The breakfast crowd had left, the lunch crowd had not yet arrived. He could sit here, drinking his coffee, so excellently prepared and thoughtfully warmed up for him by Mrs. Greenleaf, for as long as he chose to do so.
Louise Oswald, adrift without her beloved Captain Bredloe, had stood before his desk not long ago on the pretext of bringing some paperwork to him. The moment he saw her, he realized she was big with news and invited her to make herself comfortable.
To obtain this news, he had to play the game her way, which was irritating but ultimately worthwhile. And so he agreed with her when she said that no one could appreciate the burden the captain’s absence had placed on her, nodded mutely when she said that the chief’s decision that she should report to Lieutenant Carlson for the time being was a bad one, agreed that Carlson, puffed up after this announcement, was an insufferable horse’s ass unfit to supervise anyone, and so on.
Carlson, generally the sort of political animal who knew better, had been so stupid as to criticize her habit of making certain kinds of improvements in the memos he dictated to her, and would undoubtedly find it difficult to recover from this fall from grace. It was one thing to ride roughshod over one’s underlings. To mistreat the person who sat outside the boss’s door was downright dumb.
Finally, she began her confidences. (“Don’t tell anyone,” she said, invoking the favorite phrase of those who tell everyone.) Her news was that the rebellion against Carlson — whom she had once supported, but against whom she was now ready to don armor and do battle — was gaining ground. Her two best indications of this were that yesterday afternoon the chief himself had ordered Carlson to send Detective Baird on a particular assignment and that Frank Harriman — who hadn’t reported in to Carlson in
“And I hope he is telling him that we in Homicide can’t take much more of Lieutenant Carlson. Carlson is worried sick, I’m happy to say. I was going to tell you about Pete yesterday afternoon, but you weren’t in,” she said. He disliked the speculative glance that accompanied this remark.
“Why is Frank Harriman talking to the chief?” he asked.
