The Body Looks Familiar (6 page)

Lyons shrugged. “Nothing here would hock,” he said. “Maybe seventy-five bucks, selling it outright. Clothes and all.”

Jim Latson said, “That’s about an all-time low,” and turned toward the front door. Feet were clumping on the porch. It was Cap Martin’s driver. He was saying, “Call your office, Captain. Something they didn’t want to put on the air.”

Cap Martin nodded. He stood there a moment, looking at the floor, a blocky man, strong and bright and at home in his job. Then he stared at Harry Weber, but Weber made no move to give him privacy.

Finally Cap Martin shrugged, and walked to the phone that the hotel had probably required Guild to have. Or maybe the waiter had put it in when his wife got near the end of her term of pregnancy. Considering the sparseness of everything else in the Guild house, the telephone was sheer wanton luxury.

Cap Martin took a last look at Jim Latson who, as senior officer present, should have asked Harry to step outside. But Latson was cheerfully lighting a cigarette, a mere spectator of another man’s work. Martin dialed the number.

Then he said, “Homicide,” and then, “Martin.” No reporter would grow healthy, wealthy and wise from Cap Martin’s end of a phone conversation. What Harry heard was, “Yeah,” and “I see,” and “I’m starting right in.” There was not even a good-by.

Cap Martin put the phone down and smiled a little. He said, “Put this stuff back like it was, boys, and resume your standby.” Then he went out the front door, leaving his chief and Harry to follow him.

The driver was already back behind the wheel. When Martin said, “Office,” he picked up the handphone, said, “H-four to H-one. Coming in, over and out,” and started the car. Martin said, “Code two,” which meant the driver could use his red light and siren.

So they went back the way Lyons and Koch had come down here the other time, instead of by the more traffic-free riverfront boulevard. Occasionally, the siren moaned a short cry as they pushed through the machinery center, the produce belt.

Jim Latson smoked his cigarette. Cap Martin kept his face stolid. Harry Weber made no effort to keep his face from looking curious.

Finally Martin spoke; they were only a couple of blocks from the Civic Center now. He said, “The federals want Guild if we don’t. Illegal entry.”

Latson whistled, cranked the window down a little, and dropped the cigarette out. “I’d say we want him. This about ties up the case.”

Harry Weber said, “That’s right. Never hit a man when he’s down; wait till someone else comes along to hit him first.”

“The guy’s already a criminal,” Jim Latson said. “You can’t expect us to exactly make love to him. It’s not what the people pay policemen for.”

“Oh, lay off,” Harry Weber said. “What you’re saying is, the guy’s likely to confess to save himself getting deported.”

Jim Latson laughed. “Think again,” he said. “He’s going to get deported any way you look at it. It’s a question of whether he does time first or not.”

“Or gets electrocuted first.”

Jim Latson’s careless voice said, “Oh, Dave Corday won’t ask first degree. You never get it without a witness.”

Harry Weber stared. Cap Martin had told him, just before they started down to Guild’s house, that a man had brought Hogan DeLisle home, had been there when she was shot. It seemed funny he hadn’t told the chief.

Latson’s voice was sharp. “Or was there a witness?”

Cap Martin said, “Yeah. Man brought her home.”

The car stopped at headquarters then. The homicide captain and the newsman waited politely for the deputy chief of all the city’s policemen to get out. He did, fast.

“I won’t have time to see your federal man, Marty,” he said. But he said it over his shoulder and was gone.

DAVE CORDAY sat in his nice office, and wrote careful words on a sheet of fine bond. The district attorney’s suite was high in the County Building, and, as chief deputy, he had the corner that faced north and west. The district attorney himself had chosen the south and east exposures, one for the sun and the other for its magnificent view of approaching storms.

Next year, Dave Corday could have that office. The district attorney had announced this morning that he was running for governor. He hadn’t put a hand on Dave Corday’s shoulder to tap him as successor, but the party would do that; there hadn’t been a chief deputy yet who hadn’t been offered the top job when it became vacant.

Dave Corday was writing his platform, his declaration of how he would run the office when he got it.

Once in office, he’d be the equal, the superior of the Jim Latsons. He’d get the good tables at the restaurants, the salutes of the doormen, the invitations to speak at luncheon clubs. He—

His phone rang. He frowned at it. A good secretary ought to know better than to interrupt her chief when he was thinking.

But he picked up the phone and the girl’s voice said, “Chief Latson, Mr. Corday.”

“Put Mr. Latson on.”

“He’s not on the phone. He’s out here.”

“Send him in.” Well, she’d been right not to use the box; he didn’t want Jim Latson hearing everything he had to say.

He didn’t get up as the policeman ambled in. He waved a hand at the straight chair next to his desk that he used to interview witnesses, defendants.

But Latson picked up one of the heavy side chairs that sat by the couch and carried it across the room with one hand, no easy feat. He slouched down in it and shoved his hands deep in his pants pockets, his suit coat and topcoat open over an immaculate white shirt. “We’re in the soup, Dave.”

Dave Corday split his lips in a polite smile. “You are, Jim.”

“We, boy, we. Your frame never got off the ground. If I’m in, you’re in.”

“Don’t growl at me, Latson. What’s your trouble?”

Jim Latson got up, his coat bunched over the clenched fists in his pockets. He walked to the west window, stood looking down at the river and the traffic that ran alongside it. “That Martin,” he said. “He’s got it established that a man brought Hogan home.”

Dave Corday laughed. “Of course. A man did.” The laugh faded. “But he hasn’t said anything to me. After all, I’m the one supposed to be working up a case on this.” He took the folded handkerchief out of his breast pocket and dried his hands.

Jim Latson’s grin was ghoulish. “Hot, boy? You might be… That Martin doesn’t miss much. Cap Martin. I should have put him out in the sticks years ago. He’s the best cop in the city. Maybe one of the best in the country.”

Dave Corday’s voice was a full octave higher, to his own ears. “Why did you let him take the case?”

Jim Latson shrugged. “Routine. It seemed to me that the more natural I let this thing be, the better it would look. Matter of fact, it still seems that way.” He put a foot on the window sill, continued to stare down. “What this city needs is half as many people and twice as many streets.”

Corday said, “I’ll send for Martin, talk to him.”

Jim Latson turned and faced the attorney squarely. “Do that. And right away.”

Corday shoved the swivel chair back with his thighs, jumped to his feet. He leveled a finger at the police chief in his best courtroom manner. “Don’t bark orders at me! I’m practically acting district attorney from now on; the boss is going to campaign for governor. You’ll mind your manners in this office.”

Latson walked over to the desk. At the last minute he swerved and went around it, came behind Corday’s symbol of office, until he was facing the district attorney. Only then did he take his hands out of his pockets. The right hand shot up with ferocious speed and caught Corday’s nose; Latson twisted it with all his force.

Then he let go, and put his hands back in his pockets. He strolled with his back to the desk to the door. Then he turned, smiling. Corday was dabbing at his nose with the white handkerchief that had formerly cut such a nice line across his left breast. “Try putting a cold key on the back of your neck,” Jim Latson said. “I’m giving a cocktail party at the Zebra House this afternoon,” he added. “Six o’clock on. If you’re swinging for the D.A.’s place on the ballot, you could pick up a little help there.”

After Latson had gone, Corday crossed the room quickly and locked the door. By lying down on the floor and stuffing paper under his lip, he managed to stop the nosebleed without any of his staff knowing he had it.

There was a little mirror in the center drawer of his big desk. He examined himself in it, and decided he looked like a man with a touch of hay fever, nothing more. After he had thrown the bloody handkerchief out the window and replaced it with another from his desk, he felt himself able to go on with the day’s business.

But he didn’t continue writing his speech. Instead, he had his secretary get Captain Martin on the line. Corday’s joviality—he was aware of it himself—was a pale imitation of Jim Latson’s habitual manner, but it would have to do. “Marty, how’s my big case coming?”

“Which one?”

“Guild, of course.”

“Was going to call you,” Cap Martin said. “Complications. Guy from the U.S. Immigration Service was just here. Guild’s an illegal entrant.”

“But he’s naturalized.”

“Illegally. He bought another Czech’s quota number and entered under the other man’s name. Makes his naturalization illegal, too.”

Dave Corday said, “Now, wait a minute. I wasn’t aware that you had a lawyer’s degree, that you were admitted to the bar, Captain.”

Apparently Cap Martin didn’t think that was worthwhile answering. The phone remained completely silent, and Corday had to carry on the conversation himself. “Immigration would have to prove all this,” he said. “At any rate, I have no intention of releasing Guild to a federal court. He’s ours, and we are going to try him—that is, if you work up a good case for me.”

Again he waited. This time he said, “Are you still there, Martin?”

Cap Martin said, “Sure.”

“Has anything developed in the case itself?”

Cap Martin’s calm voice said, “No.”

Dave Corday took a deep breath. If Latson had been lying, why? If Cap Martin was lying now, why? He asked, “You mean, nothing you can prove, but some good leads for you to investigate?”

Cap Martin said, “Sure.”

Dave Corday’s voice had its solid, judicial boom back in it. “Well, report to me the moment you have anything.”

“Sure,” Cap Martin said, and then there was a click as the captain hung up.

Dave Corday laid his hands flat on the desk blotter, rested his weight on them. The box said, “The district attorney would like to see you, Mr. Corday. I told him you were on the phone.”

Dave Corday said, “Sure.” He raised his hands, and saw that they had left damp marks on the blotter.

But the district attorney only wanted him on a matter of magistrates; one was resigning, and the mayor wanted advice as to the appointment of a successor. It was just a routine matter.

AFTER HE FINISHED TALKING to Dave Corday on the phone, Cap Martin allowed himself to smile, something he rarely did in office hours. As he saw his duty, his primary function at the moment was to be the conscience of the city’s law-enforcement agencies; and in goading Dave Corday, he had insured his intangible boss, Justice, that the D.A.’s office would not drop the Guild case for another twenty-four hours.

He sighed.

Though the head of no homicide squad can ever be absolutely certain when his day’s work will end, Cap Martin indulged himself in a daydream of leaving the office at five-thirty, getting home at six.

The barb he had sunk in Dave Corday’s rather thin hide would keep on working, festering. Frightened—but not so frightened that they struck back and wiped out one Captain B. Martin—the politicians would turn up his witness for him… He could go home pretty soon now.

His wife would have martini makings laid out, and he would stir two good ones for himself and one for her; with the cocktail he would have—if there were any in the house—some of those little cocktail sausages that Lora broiled under the electric skillet…

Unless the missing witness was a very, very big man indeed, no Dave Corday, no mayor, no politician at all would cover up for him at the risk of his own career. Politicians are not that unselfish.

Renewed by the cocktails, he would suggest that Lora have her brother and his wife over for the evening. Matt was as silent as Cap Martin pretended to be around headquarters; unlike traditional brothers-in-law, Matt’s idea of a big evening was sitting in a deep chair and listening to Cap Martin sound off. On any subject—art, politics, the movies.

Let the wiseacres over at City Hall and the County Building sleep in fear tonight. Tomorrow they’d make a move that would go to Chief Latson and draw utility men to help him and—

At the silent mention of Jim Latson, Cap Martin stopped rubbing his hands together and looking at his wrist watch.

Instead of running for cover—and leaving a trail to that cover—Jim Latson was perfectly capable of doing something so wild and unpredictable that the whole case would disintegrate.

To hell with it. He had earned his pay today.

He got up, put on his hat and coat, moved to the door. Then he stopped, and stood there. From somewhere around his toenails he gathered a sigh, shot it out into the empty room.

Then he went over to the closet, put his hat and coat away again, went back to his desk, sat down, and flipped the intercom. “Jake? Bring me the logs of every cruiser that was working within three miles of Hogan DeLisle’s apartment on the watch when she was killed, and the watch before it.”

He flipped the box shut and picked up the phone, dialed his home and got ready to tell his wife he’d be late for dinner. He didn’t think he’d surprise her.

She had been with him most of the years he had walked his tightrope in the department. She was used to his hours.

He told himself fiercely that it was not civic conscience, the desire to earn all his pay, that made him stay. It was simple self-defense.

Somebody big enough to get personal protection from Jim Latson, who was the big shots’ hatchetman in the department.

Captain Martin did not permit himself to curse Jim Latson. There had been hatchetmen before; there would be others if Latson quit, died, or moved on to higher glories.

But Jim Latson was a smart hatchetman as well as a ruthless one. So long as Latson held the hatchet, it was necessary for Captain Martin to do what he had to do now, not leave it overnight.

If the protected witness was big enough, rich enough and scared enough, it would not be unbelievable for him, Latson, to burn all the departmental files overnight.

Or the department itself.

Captain Martin did not want to do his work in the open air. He was used to his office; he would hate to see it burn down.