The Body Looks Familiar (16 page)

“So you sold out, Corday.”

But Dave Corday was done for, pulled apart, beaten and ruined. His white face told Jim Latson that, his unlawyerlike, meaningless gabble, his shaking hands.

“Spilled your guts to the newspapers, didn’t you?” Jim Latson could feel the anger growing in him; and after all these years of caution and craft and deep thought, it felt good to him to let go, to let anger take over from his brain.

“Did he tell you he killed the DeLisle girl, Weber?” Jim Latson asked. “Killed her and tried to frame me for it?”

Harry Weber was saying, “Good Lord,” or something like that. But Jim Latson was not worrying about Harry Weber. He said, “Cap Martin has the dope, Weber. He’ll send Corday up for you. He would have before, but I had to protect that sniveling—” He couldn’t think of a noun for Corday, and anyway it didn’t matter; the time for talking was over.

Days of practice paid off one at a time, and his draw was a classic for all rookie policemen to study; smooth and fast and on the target a split second after his hand started for his holster.

Harry Weber was jumping back, as though the noise could hurt him, and Dave Corday was going down on the desk, a mess.

“He isn’t dead,” Jim Latson said. “I gut-shot him. He’ll die in about ten minutes. I’m taking a powder, Harry. Tell your paper, tell the mayor, tell the FBI. I’m betting I’m smart enough to get away with it, too.”

Harry Weber said, “The South Seas? Hongkong? They’ll find you, Jim.”

“No one ever told you you could use my first name,” Latson said, and turned away, for the door. His mind was already ahead of him; it was getting him past the girl in the outer office, past the people who must have heard the shot, getting him down to the street and—

And then Dave Corday shot him in the back with the pistol from his desk drawer.

Harry Weber grabbed the red phone. He yelled into it, “Get an ambulance crew to Dave Corday’s office, on the double.”

He heard the police operator answering, and slammed that phone down and grabbed the other one, dialed the
News-Journal,
asked for the desk, gave his name out, and gave them a masterful one-sentence summary: “Jim Latson and Dave Corday just shot each other. They are dying before my eyes.”

They got him a rewrite man, fast, and he started dictating an eyewitness account. Over at the office it would be like a movie; they would really be stopping the presses, something he’d never seen done; they would be replating fast, and calling in all the trucks, they would be dispatching reporters to Latson’s apartment, his office.

He said, “Hold it. Latson’s trying to say something.”

Jim Latson had been knocked down by the force of the bullet. But he twisted around, he got a little off the floor. He said, “I didn’t think he had it in him. I didn’t think so. And you know something? He couldn’t have done it if I’d kept my eye on him. He shot Hogan DeLisle; but he never had the guts to put a slug in me, not while I was watching him.”

Harry said, “Ambulance on the way, Chief.”

“A hell of a chief. Wasn’t even man enough to keep watching a louse like Corday. He dead yet?”

“Going fast,” Harry said.

“So am I,” Chief Latson said, and fell back to the floor.

Harry said, “All right, take this: Before he died, Jim Latson said—”

He was still talking when the ambulance men came in, past a screaming Alice; but it was too late for Dave Corday. And for Jim Latson.

DEPUTY CHIEF OF POLICE (ACTING) B. L. MARTIN came out of the grand jury room to face a mess of reporters. He stood calmly, one hand raised, waiting for silence. He had chosen to wear his new uniform, with stars instead of tracks, to the hearing, and he was amused at himself for it. Vanity, he thought. At age fifty, I get tracked down by vanity.

He said, “Nothing happened. You can’t indict dead men. I’ve been ordered to clean up Headquarters. See Mr. Van Lear.”

Frederick Van Lear had been masterful, he thought, conducting the hearing. Frederick Van Lear would be elected governor in all probability, and what did he want it for?

One of the reporters said, “Has your appointment been made permanent?”

Chief Martin frowned. He had been offered Jim Latson’s job on a permanent basis; it meant more money, and he ought to take it.

But the Gardens had been so peaceful. A man could think out there.

And at Headquarters—the temptation was something terrible. The papers were full of denunciations of Latson and Corday. Phrases like “betrayal of great trust,” and “perfidy in high places,” and “shocking breakdown of leadership,” were being used with frequency and unction.

But Chief Martin (acting) didn’t see it that way. They shoved temptation at a man like Latson, and they paid him a cop’s salary, and they asked him please not to bother the citizens with any troubles. Just run the department.

What did they expect?

And Corday, with his miserable G.I. years behind him, trying hard to make up for poverty and deprivation—and life in a Quonset hut—what did they expect of him?

And B. L. Martin wasn’t much better. He’d taken it for years, from the Latsons and the Cordays, the politicos and their sponsors, the rich and the powerful. He had to admit it felt good to have all the strong ones running to him, saying, please, take over our police department, put it back on its feet.

He said, “Boys, I’ll tell you. I’m too weak a man and too old a one to stand the gaff in the chief’s office. Soon as things are running right again, I’m going back to the Gardens. Come see me when the first crocus blooms through the snow; I’ll give you a statement on it.”