'I have every confidence that you.'11 find whoever it was who hacked my son to death,' Nelson said. 'And then we both know what will happen. It will, after a long while, get into a courtroom, where some asshole of a lawyer will try every trick in the business to get him off. And if he doesn't, if the jury finds him guilty, and the judge has the balls to sentence him to the electric chair, he'll appeal, for ten years or so, and the odds are some yellow- livered sonofabitch of a governor will commute his sentence to life. I'm sure you know what it costs to keep a man in jail. About twice what it costs to send a kid to an Ivy League college. The taxpayers will provide this animal with three meals a day, and a warm place to sleep for the rest of his life.'
Wohl didn't reply. Nelson drained his drink and walked to the bar to make another, then returned.
'Have you ever been involved in the arrest of someone who did something really terrible, something like what happened to my son?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And were you tempted to put a.38 between his eyes right then and there, to save the taxpayers the cost of a trial, and/or lifelong imprisonment?'
'No, sir.'
'Why not?'
'Straight answer?' Peter asked. Nelson nodded. 'I could say because you realize that you would lower yourself to his level,' Peter said, ' but the truth is that you don't do it because it would cost you. They investigate all shootings, and-'
'Vigilante justice,' Nelson interrupted, raising his glass. 'Right now, it seems like a splendid idea to me.'
He is not suggesting that I go out and shoot whoever killed his son. He is in shock, as well as grief, and as a newspaperman, he knows the way the system works, and now that he!$ going to be involved with the system himself, doesn't like it at all.
'It gets out of hand almost immediately,' Peter said.
'Yes, of course,' Nelson said. 'Please excuse me, Inspector, for subjecting you to this. I probably should not have come to work, in my mental condition. But the alternative was sitting at home, looking out the window…'
'I understand perfectly, sir,' Peter said.
'Have there been any developments?' Nelson asked.
'I came here directly from Stockton Place,' Peter said, 'where I spoke to the detective to whom the case has been assigned-'
'I thought it had been assigned to you,' Nelson interrupted.
'No, sir,' Peter said. 'Detective Harris of the Homicide Division has been assigned to the case.'
'Then what's your role in this? Ted Czernick led me to believe that you would be in charge.'
'Commissioner Czernick has asked me to keep him advised, to keep you advised, and to make sure that Detective Harris has all the assistance he asks for,' Wohl said.
'I was pleased,' Nelson interrupted again. 'I checked you out. You're in Internal Security, that sounds important whatever it means, and you're the man who caught the Honorable Mr. Housing Director Weaver and that Friend of Labor, J. Francis Donleavy, with both of their hands in the municipal cookie jar. And now you're telling me you're not on the case…'
'Sir, what it means is that Commissioner Czernick assigned the best availableHomicide detective to the case. That's a special skill, sir. Harris is better equipped than I am to conduct the investigation-'
'That's why he's a detective, right, and you're an inspector?'
'And then the commissioner called me in and told me to drop whatever else I was doing, so that I could keep both you and him advised of developments, and so that I could provide Detective Harris with whatever help he needs,' Wohl plunged on doggedly.
Arthur J. Nelson looked at Wohl suspiciously for a moment.
'I had the other idea,' he said, finally. 'All right, so what has Mr. Harris come up with so far?'
'Harris believes that a number of valuables have been stolen from the apartment, Mr. Nelson.'
'He figured that out himself, did he?' Nelson said, angrily sarcastic. 'What other reason could there possibly be than a robbery? My son came home and found his apartment being burglarized, and the burglar killed him. All I can say is that, thank God, his girl friend wasn't with him. Or she would be dead, too.'
Girlfriend? Jesus!
'Detective Harris, who will want to talk to you himself, Mr. Nelson, asked me if you could come up with a list of valuables, jewelry, that sort of thing, that were in the apartment.'
'I'll have my secretary get in touch with the insurance company,' Nelson said. 'There must be an inventory around someplace.'
'Your son's car, one of them, the Jaguar, is missing from the garage.'
'Well, by now, it's either on a boat to Mexico, or gone through a dismantler's,' Nelson snapped. 'All you're going to find is the license plate, if you find that.'
'Sometimes we get lucky,' Peter said. 'We're looking for it, of course, here and all up and down the Eastern Seaboard.'
'I suppose you've asked his girl friend? It's unlikely, but possible that she might have it. Or for that matter, that it might be in the dealer's garage.'
'You mentioned his girl friend a moment ago, Mr. Nelson,' Wohl said, carefully, suspecting he was on thin ice. 'Can you give me her name?'
'Dutton, Louise Dutton,' Nelson said. 'Youare aware that she found Jerry? That she went into his bedroom, and found him like that?'
'I wasn't aware of a relationship between them, Mr. Nelson,' Peter said. 'But I do know that Miss Dutton does not have Mr. Nelson's car.'
'Miss Dutton is a prominent television personality,' Nelson said. 'It would not be good for her public image were it to become widely know that she and her gentleman friend lived in the same apartment building. I would have thought, however, that you would have been able to put two and two together.'
Jesus Christ! Does he expect me to believe that? Does he believe it himself?
He looked at Nelson's face, and then understood: He knows what his son was, and he probably knows that I know. I have just been given the official cover story. Arthur J. Nelson wants the fact that his son was homosexual swept under the rug. For his own ego, or maybe, even more likely, because there's a mother around. What the hell, my father would do the same thing.
'Insofar as theLedger is concerned,' Nelson said, meeting Wohl's eyes, 'every effort will be made to spare Miss Dutton any embarrassment. I can only hope my competition will be as understanding.'
He obviously feels he can get to Louise, somehow, and get her to stand still for being identified as Jerome's girl friend. Well, why not? 'Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' works at all echelons.
'I understand, sir,' Peter said.
'Thank you for coming to see me, Inspector,' Arthur J. Nelson said, putting out his hand. 'When I see Ted Czernick, I will tell him how much I appreciate your courtesy and understanding.'
The translation of which is 'Do what you 're told, or I'll lower the boom on you.'
Peter Wohl called Detective Tony Harris from a pay phone in the lobby of the Ledger Building and told him that Arthur J. Nelson's secretary was going to come up with a list of jewelry and other valuables that probably had been in the apartment, and that it would probably be ready by the time Harris could come to the Ledger Building.
And then he told Harris what Nelson had said about Louise Dutton being Jerome Nelson's girl friend, and warned him not to get into Jerome's sexual preference if there was any way it could be avoided. Somewhat surprising Wohl, Harris didn't seem surprised.
'Thanks for the warning,' he said. 'I can handle that.'
'He also suggested that by now the Jaguar has been stripped,' Wohl said.
'Could well be. They haven't found it yet, and Jaguars are pretty easy to spot; there aren't that many of them. Either stripped, or on a dock in New York or Baltimore waiting to get loaded on a boat for South America. I think we should keep looking.'
