The lieutenant nodded. ‘So he’ll have to go after the people on your list. If he wants his money back.’
‘If it is the money. It could be something else, something incriminating.’
The lieutenant waved an impatient hand. ‘Whatever it is, he wants it back in a bad way. You were smart, Dougherty.’
Dougherty smiled, but inside he was cringing. He could’t help himself, but whenever the lieutenant complimented him he promptly remembered that the lieutenant hadn’t finished high school. It was an odd fact he’d learned nearly by accident several years ago, before he was even in plainclothes. He never thought of it other limes, but whenever the lieutenant complimented him, told him he’d done a job well, he’d been thinking on his feet, gave him any kind of praise at all, some nasty voice within Dougherty’s mind promptly spoke up and sneered, ‘Not even a high school diploma.’
The lieutenant was saying now, ‘What you ought to do, you ought to get together with Robbery Detail, whoever’s working the stadium job, tell them what you’ve got, then start running the mug shots. How’s he compare with the composite drawing, by the way?’
Dougherty shrugged. ‘The way they always do. If you see the guy first, then you can see where the drawing looks like him. But if you see the drawing first, you can’t see at all where the guy looks like it.’
‘Then get together with the artist, whatsisname, get together with him, help him make up a new composite.’
Dougherty took a deep breath. ‘Lieutenant,’ he said, ‘I’d like to get switched off the Canaday case.’
‘You’d like to what?’
‘Have somebody else take that over for me, will you? Put me on temporary loan with Robbery Detail.’
The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed and his mouth opened. Now he didn’t look like Eisenhower at all. ‘You got a bee in your bonnet, Bill?’
It was a rare thing for the lieutenant to call him Bill; it usually preceded a chewing-out. Dougherty said, reassuringly, ‘I don’t want to be the Lone Ranger, Lieutenant, honest to Christ, I’m not the Robert Ryan type.’
‘You just want to be in on it.’ When the lieutenant was being sarcastic, he wanted the world to know about it; he carved his words out of blocks of wood and bounced them off the floor.
Dougherty let the sarcasm thud by. ‘That’s right,’ He said.
‘I want to be one of the people that runs him down.’
‘You don’t care who bumped poor little Ellen Canaday.’
‘Not for a minute.’
It almost looked as though the lieutenant would smile. Instead he opened his mouth and rubbed the side of his forefinger against his top front teeth, a rotten habit he had. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Go on home and get some sleep for a change. When you get back here I’ll have the paperwork through on you.’
‘Thanks, Lieutenant.’
‘You think you’ll find him again?’
Dougherty smiled in anticipation. ‘I’ll sure as hell look,’ he said.
Three
Kifka lay like a Teuton prince on a hill of pillows. He was in Unit One at Vimorama, the only cabin there equipped with a telephone. Janey, in an excess of zeal, had glommed the keys from Little Bob Negli and rifled the pillows from all the other cabins, heaping them up in a white slope against the headboard of the bed Kifka was arranged in till he was lying more on pillows than on bed, and he looked like a madam in an albino whorehouse. He felt like a turtle on its back, waving its legs and unable to turn over.
Only two things were within reach: Janey and the telephone. He was occupied with both, grasping Janey to him with his left hand and holding the phone to his ear with his right. Into the phone he said, ‘Buddy, if I wanted to tell a story I’d sell it to the movies. Answer the question or don’t, it’s up to you.’
The telephone said, ‘Face it, Dan, I’m curious. Ellie’s just killed a couple days ago, now you call up about her, naturally I want to know what’s going on.’
‘Nothing’s going on.’ Kifka rubbed Janey against his bare chest and winked at her. ‘I want to know who knew Ellie, that’s all. Who do you know that knew Ellie that I don’t know, you know?’
Janey made a face and whispered, ‘No new new no.’ Kifka pushed her face down into the pillows.
The telephone said, ‘When it’s all over, for Christ’s sake, then tell me, all right? I mean when it doesn’t matter any more.’
Kifka said, ‘Sure.’
‘All right,’ said the telephone. ‘Let me think.’
Kifka played with Janey.
The telephone said, ‘How about Fred? Fred Whatchamacallit, Burrows. You know Fred?’
‘Yeah. I already know him.’
‘Oh. Well, how about women? You want to know girls that knew her?’
‘Anybody.’
‘Rite Loomis. You know her?’
‘No. What’s her address?’
‘Uhhhh, Carder Avenue, I don’t know the number. She ought to be in the book.’
