Art stopped at nine because Duross had moved to the table and was fingering the boxes. As he drew away with one in his hand Art demanded, “Gimme.” Duross hesitated but passed the box over, and after a glance at the address Art ripped the tape off, opened the flap of the box, took out a wad of tissue paper, and then a ring box. From that he removed a ring, yellow gold, with a large greenish stone. Helen Lauro made a noise in her throat. Koenig let out a grunt, evidently meant for applause. Duross made a grab, not for the ring but for the box on which he had put an address, and missed.
“It stuck out as plain as your nose,” Art told him, “but of course my going for the boxes was just a good guess. Did you pay sixty-two bucks for this?”
Duross’s lips parted, but no words came. Apparently he had none. He nodded, not vigorously.
Art turned to the girl. “Look, Miss Lauro. You say you’re through here. You ought to have something to remember it by. You could make some trouble for Mr. Duross for the dirty trick he tried to play on you, and if you lay off I expect he’d like to show his appreciation by giving you this ring. Wouldn’t you, Mr. Duross?”
Duross managed to get it out. “Sure I would.”
“Shall I give it to her for you?”
“Sure.” Duross’s jaw worked. “Go ahead.”
Art held out the ring and the girl took it, but not looking at it because she was gazing incredulously at him. It was a gaze so intense as to disconcert him, and he covered up by turning to Duross and proffering the box with an address on it.
“Here,” he said, “you can have this. Next time you cook up a plan for getting credit with your wife for buying her a ring, and collecting from the insurance company for its cost, and sending the ring to a girl friend—all in one neat little operation—don’t do it. And don’t forget you gave Miss Lauro that ring before witnesses.”
Duross gulped and nodded.
Koenig spoke. “Your name is not Hippie, officer, it’s Santa Claus. You have given her the ring she would have given her life for, you have given him an out on a charge of attempted fraud, and you have given me a crossoff on a claim. That’s the ticket! That’s the old yuletide spirit! Merry Christmas!”
“Nuts,” Art said contemptuously, and turned and marched from the room, down the stairs, and out to the sidewalk. As he headed in the direction of the station house he decided that he would tone it down a little in his report. Getting a name for being tough was okay, but not too damn tough. That insurance guy sure was dumb, calling him Santa Claus—him. Art Ripple, feeling as he did about Christmas.
Which reminded him, Christmas Eve would be a swell time for the murder.
WHITE LIKE THE SNOW – Dan Stumpf
Lieutenant Mayhew brought one of the rookies upstairs to the detective bureau last week, I guess to show where he could go in a few years if he kept his pants clean. I did my bit to make an impression by hiding the magazine I was reading under a report I closed out six weeks ago. Not for Nicky-New-Guy, you understand, but more for Mayhew’s benefit. Anyway, the kid got to looking at some of the old photos we hang around the place and damn if he didn’t spot an old one of Sergeant Sughrue, smiling at the camera like a clean shotgun, and ask who it was.
“Someone before my time.” Mayhew’s one of the chiefs five-year wonders. He looked at the picture closer, then half turned to me. “How ‘bout it, Jake? You know this guy?”
Yeah, I knew him; time was when half the folks in town lived in mortal fear of Sergeant “Sugar” Sughrue and the rest of us just worried about him a lot. But nobody remembers him much these days, and the picture’d hung there so long I quit seeing it myself. So I said, “That’s just some guy I killed once.” The kid hesitated, laughed; Mayhew laughed, then pushed him down the hall and I got back to my magazine.
Not that I actually
It was Christmas morning, maybe ten years ago, maybe not that long. And it was snowing to beat hell; over a foot since midnight and no end in sight. I was supposed to take care of business in the detective bureau, but there wasn’t much, this being Christmas in the suburbs, so I brought in a portable TV to pass the time. I was lugging it into the station and I passed Dibbs on the way out—he has the cubicle next to mine—and we wished each other “Merry Christmas” kind of automatically.
At least it was automatic for me; Dibbs took it serious, though, and stopped to look sorry for me. “Damn, Jake,” he said, “nothing worse than working Christmas, is there?”
Well, there’s lots of things worse than working Christmas at a suburban police department: young love and getting your foot stuck in a cannon are the two I know most about, but there’s bound to be more. Actually, with not much work to do and all the food folks bring in, it’s not bad at all. But I looked mournful for Dibbs’s sake and went in to goof off for eight hours.
It should have been that simple. I wish it had been, sometimes. I mean, Sughrue was a pain all right, but what I went through was sure a tall price to get rid of him. And on Christmas, too.
I should tell you about Sergeant “Sugar” Sughrue. Lots of folks used to wonder what made him act so mean all the time, but I think he just figured if you got a God-given talent for something, you oughta use it, and he sure as hell had the touch for making folks around him unhappy. If not plain scared. See, Sughrue was big and fast and strong, and he could shoot good. Him and me, we were on the range one time and he put five shots in a playing card fifty feet away while I was still pulling my piece out of the holster and looking for the target. That’s how good he was.
He was smart, too, and he liked to show it off. No one I ever saw at the station ever won an argument with Sughrue. Even if they were right. Sughrue’d just talk and argue and beat on them with words till they gave up. You win arguments that way, but you never convince anybody.
Being dangerous and capable like he was, it’s no wonder Sughrue made sergeant fast. And it’s no wonder he didn’t go any farther. Once he got into a spot where he could give orders and chew folks out on a regular basis, the brass could see how much he liked it, which was way too much. And about that time, talk started about him and the crowd at Smokey’s, and that was pretty much as far as his career ever went.
So that’s all you need to know about Sughrue, except he shouldn’t even have been in that day, sergeants get holidays off unless we call them in for something, and Sughrue being like he was, the building could burn down, no one would call him. But I hadn’t been there more than an hour and in he comes, looking like hell’s own hangover. He didn’t even stop to rag me; just shuffled into his office and shut the door.
Well, it was good I didn’t have to talk to him, but bad, too, because any minute he might come back out, so I couldn’t get too laid back. No idea how long he’d be in there or even what he was doing here on Christmas. If Sughrue came out and saw me having fun, or not looking busy enough, or even just not looking miserable, he’d make sure I got that way in a hurry.
I sighed, turned off my TV, and went to the dispatch room to find a magazine I could hide under a report; old tricks are still the best.
It was quiet in there, too. Sometimes phones ring and guys yammer on the radio all the time, but this being Christmas, no one was doing much. Ed Rosemont turned from the radio console when I came in; his big swivel chair groaning under him made the only noise in the room. I gave him a look and jerked my thumb at Sughrue’s office. “The hell’s he doing here?”
“I will be damned if I know.” Rosey’s got one of those big. rich, pear-shaped voices, and a body to match— the kind I been working on all my life but never could get just right. Always struck me funny, hearing him swear in that important-sounding voice. “He said he had paperwork to catch up. What do you think?”
“Whoever he’s sleeping with sobered up and kicked him out, is my theory,” I said. Sughrue always had a reputation for acting nasty, but he never had any trouble getting women. Just keeping them. “Where’s he hang his pants lately, anyway?”
Turned out neither me nor Rosey knew who Sughrue was jumping with since his last divorce. But that didn’t keep us from tossing ideas around, and that led to a lively discussion about who else might be sleeping with who else, and what with one thing and another, we went on for nearly half an hour. Which is how I came to be there when we got the call. And saw Rosey’s face go from polite to serious to scared as he sat upright and started jotting
