Leopold's Way (36 page)

“Just tell us how it was,” Leopold told him. “Everything you can remember.”

“It was just closing time, a few minutes after nine. The other clerk had gone home, and I'd locked the front door. That was when I heard the window smash and saw him scooping up the diamonds.”

“Let's go back a bit, Mr. Arnold. How many diamonds were in the window?”

“Dozens! We had a few large rings mounted on cards giving the prices, and then we had perhaps twenty-five or thirty smaller stones, unmounted. A melee of diamonds, to use the trade term—although that usually refers to stones of less than a quarter carat. Most of these were larger.”

“They were valued at $58,000?”

Peter Arnold nodded sadly. “I've already heard from our New York office about it.”

“Do you always leave that many diamonds in your store window?”

“Not at all. They're in the window only while the store is open. My first duty after locking the door would have been to remove them from that and the other display windows and lock them in the vault for the night. I had just locked the door and was starting for the window on the other side when I heard the smashing of glass. I looked over and saw this man scooping the diamonds out of their trays. The window alarm was ringing, of course, and as he started away Officer Begler appeared around the corner.”

“You know Phil Begler?”

The jeweler nodded. “He's been on this beat maybe four or five years. Usually he's right around this corner, but at nine he goes up to direct traffic out of the parking ramp in the next block. It was only a fluke he happened to get back just when that man broke the window.”

“Any idea what he did with the diamonds during his escape?”

“I'm baffled. If he'd dropped them, I should think at least a few would have been found.”

Leopold walked to the boarded-up window, and pulled aside the black velvet drape so he could peer into it. The diamond trays were still there, speckled with broken glass, but there were no gems. “He got everything?”

“No, there were four rings on cards and six unmounted stones that he missed, but he made a good haul. We estimate $58,000, or even a bit more.”

Leopold let the drape drop back into place. He took out a picture of Rudy Hoffman. “Ever see him in the store before the robbery, casing the place?”

“I don't remember him, but of course someone else may have been on duty.”

“I'll leave this picture with you. Show it to your manager and the clerks. See if anyone remembers him.”

“You think it was well-planned?”

“He got rid of the diamonds somewhere, and that took planning.”

On the way out, Leopold paused at the little pile of broken glass and bent to examine it.

“Find something, Captain?” Fletcher asked.

“Ever think about how much broken glass and diamonds look alike, Fletcher?”

“Are there any diamonds in that pile?”

“No, just broken glass.”

On the way back downtown, Fletcher said, “They did an X-ray on Hoffman too, incase you're thinking he might have swallowed them.”

“Never considered it for a moment.” He stared through the car's dirty windshield at the passing scene. Police headquarters was separated from the main Union Street shopping area by some ten blocks of abandoned, run-down buildings—many of them doomed by a much-postponed urban renewal project. Those that still had tenants housed record shops and adult bookstores on their lower levels, renting the rooms above to bearded young people and transient types. It was a shabby section of the inner city, but the crime rate was not as high as might be expected.

“They should tear it all down,” Fletcher commented.

“I suppose they will, one of these days.” Leopold had another thought. “What about the men who searched the street? Could one of them have pocketed the diamonds?”

Fletcher thought about it. “We've got some bad eggs in the department, Captain—like any other city—but I'd trust any of the men who were out there last night. I know them all, from Begler on down. They're honest cops.”

Leopold said no more until they reached his office. Then he asked Fletcher to bring him Rudy Hoffman's clothing. They went over each piece together, though the clothes had been searched earlier, and they found nothing.

Leopold frowned and went to stare out the window at the crowded parking lot that was his only view. “How about a wig, false teeth, something like that?”

Fletcher shook his head. “Nothing, Captain.”

Leopold turned suddenly. “Damn it, Fletcher, why didn't I think of it before? There's one thing we've completely overlooked, one thing that's missing from Hoffman's possessions!”

Fletcher looked blank. “What's that, Captain?”

“The cane, of course! The silver-headed cane he used to break the window and crack Phil Begler's skull! Where is it?”

“I suppose they've got it tagged as the weapon. It would be in the evidence drawer, or else already at the D.A.'s office, for presentation before the grand jury.”

“Find it, Fletcher, and let's take a look at it.”

Lieutenant Fletcher was back in five minutes, carrying a long black walking stick with a silver head in the shape of a ball held by a bird's claw. Leopold snorted and turned it over in his hands.

“Doesn't really go with Hoffman somehow,” Fletcher commented. “Not his style.”

“No.” Leopold turned it over in his hands, and tried to twist off the top. It seemed solid, as was the shaft of the cane. “He probably stole it from somewhere. There's certainly nothing hidden in it.”

“Let's think about it,” Fletcher suggested. “Maybe something will come to us by morning.”

Leopold glanced at his watch and nodded. It was after three, and he wanted to stop by the hospital and see Officer Begler on his way home. “Good idea,” he agreed. “See you in the morning.”

“Say, how about coming over for dinner tonight, Captain? Carol was just mentioning the other day that she hasn't seen you since the Christmas party.”

“Thanks, Fletcher. I could use some of your wife's cooking, but let's make it another time. Give her my best, though.”

He drove over to Memorial Hospital and spent a half hour with Begler, who grinned from beneath his bandages and seemed in good enough spirits. Leopold paused in the lobby to chat with a couple of nurses, and then headed home to his apartment, encountering the rush-hour traffic he usually tried to avoid. Driving along Union Street, he remembered the empty coffee can in his office and pulled over at a neighborhood grocery.

The place was cluttered and crowded. He picked up a can of coffee and found a clerk to take his money. “Anything else, sir?”

Leopold shook his head. “That's it.” Then he noticed the dark-haired girl who'd entered behind him. She pretended to be choosing a loaf of bread, but she was really watching him. No one takes that long to choose bread, he knew, and when she finally moved up to the clerk with her selection her eyes were still on Leopold.

The clerk slipped the coffee can into a paper bag, and Leopold left the store. Before he could cross the sidewalk to his car he heard the girl's voice behind him. “You're a detective, aren't you?”

He turned to her with a smile he hoped was friendly. She was a good-looking girl, in her early twenties, but her face seemed drawn and tired at the moment. “You might say that.”

“Do you want the loot from the Midtown Diamond robbery?”

In all his years of police work, nothing like it had ever happened to him before. He'd spent a full day trying to locate the diamonds that had disappeared by some sort of magic, and now this girl walked up to him outside a grocery store and offered them, just like that.

“Do you know where it is?”

She nodded. “I can take you there, if you'll promise not to arrest me or my boyfriend.”

“Who is your boyfriend?”

“Names aren't important. He didn't have anything to do with the robbery. Have I your promise?”

“Then how'd he get the diamonds?”

“He's supposed to take them to New York and sell them—you know, like a fence. I don't want any part of it. I want you to take them.”

“How'd you know I was a detective?”

“I followed you from the hospital. You were visiting that policeman who was injured. I went there to find out how he was, and a nurse pointed you out as a detective.”

“You're concerned about Officer Begler?”

“Certainly. I never knew it would be anything like this when Freddy agreed to handle the stuff. I want out of it, before we all end up behind bars.”

“Can you take me to the diamonds?”

She glanced quickly down the street and nodded. “Leave your car here. We'll go in mine.”

He followed her to the corner and slid into the front seat of a little foreign sedan, still clutching his pound of coffee. She drove like a demon, weaving in and out of the rush-hour lines of traffic. In five minutes they'd reached the rundown section of Union, where the buildings waited for demolition, and he knew this was her destination. She parked the car and led him up a narrow flight of dimly lit stairs to an apartment above a vacant barber shop. In view of the long-haired residents, Leopold could easily understand why it had been forced to close.

“Is Freddy here?” he asked the girl, shifting the coffee to his left hand so his right would be near his gun.

“Who told you his name?” she asked, startled.

“You did.”

“All right. No, he's not here. If he knew what I was doing, he'd probably kill me!” she prophesied.

She unlocked the door and led Leopold into a drab, dim livingroom. A large white cat came running to meet her, and she knelt to stroke its fur. “Where are the diamonds?” he asked her.

“This way. In the kitchen.”

He followed her out, expecting a trap, expecting a seduction, expecting almost anything but the little leather pouch she took from the breadbox and opened before his eyes. She poured them out on the counter—big diamonds, little diamonds, some in rings but most unset. Leopold simply stared, almost at a loss for words. “These are all of them?” he asked finally.

“Yes.”

“How did Hoffman get them to you? He's in jail.”

“He has an accomplice who brought them to Freddy. Now take them and go, before he comes back!”

But as Leopold's hand closed over the little pouch of diamonds, they heard a sound at the apartment door. It was a key in a lock, and a moment later they heard the door open. “Is that him?” Leopold whispered.

“Yes, yes! He'll kill us both!”

“Go out and try to stall him.”

She hurried through the swinging kitchen door, her face white, and Leopold looked around for a way out. There was only a door to a dead-end pantry, and a window that looked out onto a back alley. He tried the window and found it painted shut, unbudging. He turned back toward the door to the livingroom, listening to the muffled voices on the other side, and slipped the revolver from his holster. He stared down at the jewels for a moment and an idea came to him.

Two minutes later, he stepped through the swinging door with his gun drawn. “Hold it right there, Freddy.”

There was a gasp from the girl and Freddy turned, startled at the voice, but it took him only an instant to realize what was happening. “You damned little double-crossing tramp!” he shouted at the girl. “Glenda, I'll kill you for this!” He started for her, but Leopold waved him back with the gun.

“You'll kill no one. I'm Captain Leopold of Violent Crimes, and if anything happens to her I'll have you behind bars.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She brought me here to give me the diamonds, to try and save your skin, but somebody beat us to them. They're gone.”

Freddy was on his feet. He was a little man with mouselike features, and he moved now like a rodent who discovered the trap does not even contain a piece of cheese. “What do you mean, they're gone? They can't be gone!”

Glenda's eyes had widened in wonder, as she tried to decide what Leopold was up to. “Look for yourself,” he told Freddy, and lowered his gun.

The little man lost no time in getting to the kitchen. He tore through the breadbox, the wastebasket, the cupboards, while Leopold stood in the doorway. Finally, after ten minutes of searching, he asked, “Where are they, Glenda? Get them now!”

“It's like he said, Freddy! Honest!”

“You hid them somewhere,” he accused.

“No! Honest!”

“Would she have brought me here if she'd hidden the diamonds somewhere else?” Leopold argued.

Freddy eyed him with open distrust. “How do I know they're not in your pocket?”

Leopold put away his gun and raised his arms. “You can search me if you want.” Now that he'd seen Freddy in action, he knew he didn't need the gun to take him, if it came to that.

The little man stepped close, eyeing Leopold, and ran his hands carefully over his body, checking his topcoat and pants cuffs and sleeves. It was a good search, but he found nothing. Leopold removed his gun to show the inside of the holster, then opened the revolver itself to show that the chambers held nothing but bullets.

“What's in the bag?” Freddy asked.

Leopold smiled. “A pound of coffee. I was on my way home when Glenda contacted me.”

Freddy took out the coffee can and looked into the bag. Then he replaced it in disgust. “All right, I believe you—but if the diamonds aren't here, where are they?”

“I'm as anxious to get them as you are,” Leopold assured him. “It seems to me there's only one other person who could have them.”

“Who's that?”

“The guy who brought them to you in the first place—Rudy Hoffman's accomplice.”

Freddy thought about that. “Why would he take them?”

Leopold shrugged. “With Hoffman in jail, maybe he figured he could keep the loot for himself. By delivering the diamonds to you, and then stealing them back, he'd be in the clear.”