“Let’s lace it with a little something. Got an hour to kill the breath before I check in.”
“That makes this an unofficial visit.”
He shrugged. “You weren’t busy. I figured we could slide our cards together and take a cold reading. Call it official or unofficial. Mox nix.”
Novak went back to the kitchenette and brought back the coffee-maker and an asbestos pad. As the coffee was filtering, he got out cups and saucers and the sugar bowl. While Morely poured, Novak carried over a bottle of California brandy. Morely ignored the sugar and topped his cup with brandy. Then he leaned back in his chair, tasted and sighed. “Night duty. Three more weeks on night shift before I get to see my kids again. Around the flat I’m just a legend—the beardy guy snoring in the corner bedroom.” He drank more of his coffee. “How far you figure the Senators will get this season?”
“About like last. Unless they buy a couple of hitters.”
“Yeah. I hear they may get Frank Howard or Billy O’Dell on a trade.”
“For what—the rest of the club?”
Morely chuckled and put his coffee down on the table. “Now we got the League’s problems solved, let’s look over the messy little lash-up down at your mattress store. First off, you were seen chatting with Barada’s dame in the park this morning. What about it?”
“She was out walking her dog. I noticed her there.”
Morely nodded slowly. “You seen Barada lately?”
“No.”
“What about Mrs. Boyd?”
“She complains you guys won’t release the corpse so she can bury and forget him.”
“That’s how we’re keeping her in town. Her and the witch doctor. Maybe they’ll get nervous enough to tell us something we’d like to hear.”
Novak shook his head. “Julia’s in no hurry. Any nerves she has are well padded with lard. While you guys sweat, all she has to do is hibernate.”
“You maybe got something there. Oh, yeah, the slug we fished out of her husband told us damn little. Small caliber gun, but we got that mostly from the wound. Not much left of the slug after piercing the rib cage and spattering into the vertebra where we found it. No riflings and too badly fragmented to identify by weight. The lab boys feel real bad but they look at things differently from me. Whoever gunned Boyd had a reason: avarice, fright, revenge. Like that. All the old ones. To find the killer all I have to do is figure the motive and match it to the right guy. I don’t need no head-shrinkers or test-tube wizards to get the answers.” He sipped his brandy-coffee. “Start throwing technical evidence at a jury and you got yourself a mountain of trouble. It’s what defense shysters love to pick the most. For every expert the State gets on the stand, the defense can hire two more to give a conflicting story.” He made a noisy sound with his lips. “What convinces juries is the old-fashioned combination clinching motive, opportunity and method. And that don’t just materialize from a hypo of truth serum.”
Novak got up and opened the window. When he went back to his chair Morely was squinting at the ceiling. “Wonder if you noticed something about the Boyd killing that jumped up and shouted at me.”
“Afraid I haven’t had your years of experience, Lieutenant.”
Morely smiled indulgently. “When a gun goes off it makes a loud noise—even a small-bore pistol. Think anyone can convince me Boyd was shot in the sitting room and his drowsy missus never heard it?” He made a sour face. “Someone’s lying. Either that or Boyd was shot elsewhere and taken back to his own place. If that’s what happened it took not only strength but nerve. And I figure Boyd wasn’t moved overly far.” He shifted in his chair and stared at Novak. “The Barada dame’s holed up across the hall and the Doc’s down the way. I doubt the little lady coulda lugged him but the Doc might have. Or Barada himself.”
Novak’s face had grown cold. He flexed his fingers and stared at them. White scars showed where skates had slashed them years ago. Lighting a cigarette, he propped his heels on an old leather hassock. An old cop and a damn shrewd one.
Morely murmured, “I wouldn’t mind a lengthy chat with Barada. And I’d like to know more about the Doc than I do. He’s done time, by the way. Runs some kind of an herb store in Chicago now.”
“Yeah, I ran credit traces on him.”
Morely nodded musingly. “Any of the maids mention hearing a shot last night?”
“Not to me. There was only one floor maid working after eight last night. She was on change at the far end and unless Boyd was gunned in the hallway she couldn’t have heard a shot.”
“Neither did the neighbors,” He sighed. “Spill me a little more java, Pete. I got a long dark night ahead.”
Novak filled his cup and slid the brandy bottle across the table. Morely shook his head, “I can’t waltz in singing
“When’s that?”
“Too damn long away.” He drank the coffee steadily, then lowered the empty cup. “I hear Barada’s dame is a looker. Enough mink to stuff a trunk and a snappy little toy dog she sports around.”
“Skye terrier.”
“Maybe. Whenever I see a sub-rosa cutie like her I do the old-fashioned slow burn. If my wife’s lucky this year she gets the old squirrel wrap reconditioned at Hecht’s on a summer fur special. If we can’t scrape up the dough she wears it another winter the way it is. But Boyd’s kept woman can swirl into the Tilden in a cloud of silver mink and French perfume, never mind where the dough comes from or how.” He shook his head disgustedly. “No wonder hoods figure police are squares. Hood kids get chauffeured cars to take them to private schools and riding academies; police kids hop a trolley or a crowded bus, rain, snow or shine. And carry their own lunches to save two bits every noon. But the public howls for a cop’s blood when he takes a Christmas fiver from a bartender. They never figure the patrolman has been wrestling drunks out of the bar all year long and saving the mirrors and the furniture from getting busted. Some quiz genius grabs a hundred grand the clever way and the whole country dissolves in tears. Boo hoo. Ahhhhh, the hell with it. If I’m in the wrong game I’ve been in it too long to change.” He stood up and reached for his hat. “Don’t suppose you’d like to lend me your passkey so I could shake down the Doc’s place. And the dame’s?”
Novak got up. “Not without a search warrant, Lieutenant. It’d be my job. You know that.”
“No harm asking.”
“No harm.”
He laid the crown of his hat in his right palm and squashed it on the top of his head. “The net’s out for Barada, Pete. If you see him first, holler down the rain barrel.”
Novak nodded.
“And thanks for the coffee and the California sauce.”
“Any time.” He followed Morely to the door, switched on the staircase light and waited until Morely was in the alley before turning it off. An honest, hardworking cop. Poor bastard. Within an hour he’d probably be following the meat wagon downtown to collect a throat-slit corpse; at three he might be poking around a Vermont Avenue rooming house, pulling prints off the windowsill of a room where an old lodger had been strangled by a prowl thief or rapist. And so on until well past dawn. With the Boyd murder still unsolved.
Novak loosened his tie, collected the used coffee gear and washed it in the kitchenette. Then he refilled the globe with water and measured coffee into the filter to save time in the morning.
He went into his bedroom, pulled off his shirt and shoes and lay down on the bed. For a while he smoked, thinking, and then he pulled over a half-finished crossword puzzle from the Sunday supplement and filled a few more squares. “A dealer in textile fabrics” in six letters turned out to be
The telephone rang and he lifted the receiver before the ring had ended. It was a harsh gutter voice that spoke: “Novak—never mind who’s talking. You been prowling around for some missing jewelry—well, I got it. What’s the ante?”
“A grand was mentioned.”
A hoarse guffaw. The voice sounded as though the man had a cold, as though his nose was stopped up. “Pal, that ain’t even ten per cent.”
“Five’s the usual around Washington.”
“Okay, five gees does it. Only it has to be tonight.”
