wrong things you did, Joey. Don’t you-'
'Will they ever let me out again?'
'Oh, I expect so, sometime. Don’t you feel sorry for doing all these things? Sorry you hurt those ladies?'
Joey turned a thoughtful calm gaze on him. 'No, I don’t guess I do. I guess as soon as they let me out I’d go do things like that again.'
'Why, Joey?'
'Well, I guess I don’t know.'
Grace turned him over to the Juvenile Hall staff and started home, feeling baffled.
When Piggott and Shogart came on-it was Schenke’s night off-they heard something about that from the desk. It was one for the books all right, but in this place, this time, ones like that seemed to come up every week.
Shogart switched on his desk radio to the Traffic calls, put his feet up and shut his eyes. Piggott, reminding himself of several fundamentalist Christian texts on forbearance and tolerance, tried to shut his ears, and opened a new book on the tropical fish. But neither of them had much time to relax on the job; their first call came in twenty minutes later. It was a genuine hit-run, with several witnesses to say so, of course no make on the car, but a dead man and a report to write.
Piggott had just finished writing it when they had another call, a body somewhere on Maryland Street. It was an old house cut up into four apartments, and waiting reluctantly with the Traffic men was one of the upper-floor tenants, Mr. Walter Pepple. 'Of all the damned nuisances,' he said disgustedly, 'this is the damnedest! Now I suppose I got to waste time going in court to tell about it. Just because I happened to be next door. I was tired, I had to do an extra shift last night, I was all in, and these damned people across the hall were like a bunch of hyenas, yelling and laughing-I stood it as long as I could and then I got up and put on a robe to go complain, see, and just about then I hear somebody go tearing down the hall, sure I mean running, and when I go out the door’s open and here’s this guy bleeding all over the floor-'
He had been indeed, stabbed repeatedly; there was a knife left beside him. Pepple didn’t know who he was, said he thought he’d just moved in. There wasn’t a landlord on the premises. They found a wallet in a jacket in the closet; if it was his, his name was Rodrigo Peralta. Let the S.I.D. men look for anything else, said Shogart. There were needle-marks all over Peralta’s arms; at first glance, and probably at second, it was just another argument between addict and seller, or addict and addict.
They got back to the office at ten-forty, and Shogart had just turned the radio on again when they had a call from the main desk. 'Say, I just picked up something a little strange,' said Patrolman Bill Moss. 'We had a call to a public phone down on Washington, and this guy insisted we bring him here to see a Mr. Galeano. He won’t take no, and he’s an old guy in quite a state, he won’t talk to us, just asks for Galeano, so we thought-'
'Well, and what’s all that about? You’d better bring him up,' said Piggott, rather intrigued. 'Who is he?'
'I’ve got no idea,' said Moss. 'I thought it might be something to do with a case, when he knows Galeano. We’ll be up.' Five minutes later he came in, escorting a little potbellied old man limping and panting.
'Detective Galeano’s gone home,' said Piggott. 'Mr. -er? What is it you want to see him about?'
'Dixon. You just tell him, Mr. Dixon. Seeing it’s his fault I damn near got murdered too,' said the old man testily, 'least he can do is listen to me. I’m staying right here till he shows up, if it’s tomorrow morning.' He lowered himself into Hackett’s desk chair painfully and panted. Piggott looked up Galeano’s number and dialed it. 'I don’t know what it’s all about, but he seems to think you will.'
'Dixon?' said Galeano. 'Well, I’m damned if I do know, Matt, but I’ll come in and find out. I hadn’t gone to bed anyway, I’m off tomorrow.'
When he walked in half an hour later, Dixon had dropped off to sleep and was snoring slightly, head back. He woke up with a start at Galeano’s voice, sat up and grimaced, a hand to his back.
'What’s this all about, Mr. Dixon?'
'I had me quite a night, all on accounta you, young feller. Havin’ to get out in this damp weather, my arthritis is killing me. Ow. I tried to give you fellows a little hint about Bob, quiet like, and you have to come out flat-footed and say so! Oh, you didn’t say it was me on account you didn’t know, but them two bitches can add two and two. They knew. How they’d’ve covered up about me gettin’ killed I don't know, because I don't go out and get drunk and pick fights like Bob did, but they was gonna get me-they said so-do me just like they did Bob, beat the poor guy to death they did, I saw it-whangin’ away with a couple o’ chairs, and that Elmer just a-laughin’ all the while they was at it. And they’d’ve got me too, only for once I was too quick for ’em.' He chuckled. 'You wouldn’t have a cup of coffee around here, would you? I’m still cold as bedamned, that night air.'
Piggott went down the hall to the coffee machine.
'You mean Mrs. Chard and-' Galeano, even as steeped in sin as any cop of experience, was momentarily startled.
'Who else? Them two bitches,' said Dixon. 'I’m a patient man, Galeano, but enough’s enough. I wasn’t no pal of Bob’s, but they didn’t need to go kill the poor bastard. Just because Cissy found he was runnin’ with another woman, for which I can’t blame him-and he had a little life insurance too. They beat him to death, the two of ’em, right there in the kitchen, and Elmer got the wheelbarrow from out back and they carted him off somewheres, figure leave him on the street and you’d think he got killed by a car.'
'Well, I’ll be Goddamned,' said Galeano blankly.
'And then, damn it, you had to go and tell ’em there’d been some tip on it, and acourse they guessed it was me! They’d ’a’ got me too, but I was too smart for ’em. Locked m’self in the bedroom, and I heard Cissy tell her ma I’d have to come out sooner or later, they’d grab me then-but I got out the window and climbed a fence to the next yard, how I done it I dunno with the way my back’s been, but I did, and called up a squad car. And you better believe, Galeano, I don’t stir outta the police station till them two bitches and that Elmer, they’re all locked up good and tight!'
'For God’s sake! ' said Galeano. He looked at Piggott and Shogart.
'The statement’s enough to go on.' Shogart was grinning wryly. 'This is his wife and daughter? Well, we’d better go get ’em, and make it all kosher with the warrants tomorrow, get the statement down. My God, what does go on.'
They all went out to the Constance Street house, but ended up calling a wagon. The Dixons and Cecelia Chard were all on the way to being drunk, and the two women went berserk. Before it was all over Galeano and Shogart were well marked up by fingernails, Galeano’s shirt was torn and one sleeve out of his jacket, and Piggott had the beginning of a nice black eye from Elmer.
'I thought they were riffraff,' said Galeano ruefully, 'but I never got beyond that. My good God.' They had to wake Dixon up again to tell him they were all in jail, and they would see he was driven home if that was where he wanted to go.
'Sure,' he said, sitting up and yawning. 'It’ll be damn good to have some peace and quiet in that house. I only hope some damn fool judge don’t let ’em out in a hurry. They’d sure as hell get me good, then.'
Mendoza, who had a perverted sense of humor about these things, was still laughing over Dixon that next morning when Conway started out with Wanda to question the Dixons and Mrs. Chard, get statements and warrants.
' Mas vale que digan, Aqui corrie, y no, Aqui murio,' he gasped to Hackett, shoving over Galeano’s note. 'How right Nick is, if you don’t get rich at this job you get a look at human nature. Dios mio, the people we meet. And how are you and George doing on your private hunt?'
'We’re not. Nothing suggestive’s turned up at all. I’m beginning to think George is right, that cigarette pack could have been there for weeks, maybe she just didn’t notice it. We’ll go on to the bitter end, but I think it’s a waste of time.'
'Which I understand,' said Palliser, passing Hackett in the doorway, 'Tom’s been saying about my brainwave on Sandra. What do you think?'
