Deadline, 2 A.M.

Chapter 6

Saturday — 11:30 A.M.

Dondero sat with one knee shoved tightly against the edge of his desk, looking at Reardon with a vicious glower. He had his fingers tented and he pressed them together tightly, then suddenly released the pressure, only to repeat the gesture again and again. It looked as if he were practicing isometric exercises and he was, but Reardon knew it was more than that; it was one of the few indications Dondero ever gave of being deeply concerned about something. He finally gave up the finger exercises, flexed his fingers into fists several times, and then slammed one hand down on the desk top with a bang.

“Jeez! So Pop gets thrown to the wolves, huh? Just for some zero character who got picked up in a street fight!”

“With a shiv in his hand and a gun in his kick,” Reardon reminded him.

“With a shiv in his hand and a gun in his kick,” Dondero repeated disgustedly. “Man, that’s rare, that is! Almost as rare in this town as fog!”

Reardon sighed helplessly.

“Look, Don. It was talked over and the decision was made. I’ve tried to tell you why six times, but you just don’t want to listen. Any maybe it was the right decision. I don’t know.”

“It was talked over! The way you told it, Boynton talked it over with himself, asked himself to vote, and surprise, surprise! Unanimous!” Dondero snorted. “Talked over!”

“Everybody had a chance to speak his piece. Vinocur let go loud and clear.”

“With what result?” Reardon remained silent. Dondero nodded. “Yeah. And what was your contribution?”

Reardon reddened.

“Look, let’s not waste all day sitting around here discussing it. I want to go up and talk to this Lazaretti with you, and then I want to go over Pop’s car down in the garage—” He suddenly paused, frowning. “I told them you speak Italian. Do you?”

“And how would you know if I didn’t?” Dondero shoved his swivel chair away from his desk abruptly and came to his feet, jamming his fists angrily into his jacket pockets. “I still say we ought to deliver the bastard and get Pop back; but all right, let’s go up and have our little chat. Let’s see how good his Italian is!”

They walked out of the office and down the wide hallway to the stairwell. The detention cells were only two floors above them and neither man was in the mood to stand waiting for the elevators. Reardon glanced sideways at Dondero’s rigid jaw and then looked away. He could understand the other man’s resentment at the decision, but he could also understand the attitude of Chief Boynton. Even though the majority of men in the department knew it was only a fantasy, most of them always had secret dreams of arriving at the exalted position of top man, and now for a moment Reardon honestly wondered if it was worth it. There were a lot of tough decisions to be made up there, and like the man said, if you can’t stand the heat, you ought to stay out of the kitchen. Or out of that big fourth-floor office with the Chief of Police medallion on the door.

They shoved through the swinging doors leading from the stairwell to the detention-cell section, paused to unclip their belt holsters and deposit them with the security guard in his cage there, and then waited while the automatic main cell door to the inner prison corridor was activated and slid open.

“Lazaretti,” Reardon said to the inside guard.

“Sure, Lieutenant. What’s his number?”

“No idea. He’s the man only speaks Italian. Brought in for fighting. Or he’s one of them, anyway.”

“Oh, yeah. I know the one,” the guard said. “He’s the little guy. You want to see him in his cell, or in the conference room?”

The “conference room” was one of the cells built for recalcitrant prisoners who had to be put into solitary for any one of many reasons. The cot and its hardware had been removed, and only the lidless toilet broke the austerity of its solid-wall interior. It had the advantage of being soundproofed, which offered privacy to both the prisoner and his interrogator during an interview, without the necessity of leaving the cell-block area. Unfortunately, it also had the distinct disadvantage of giving the interrogator the feeling of what solitary confinement at the Hall of Justice was like; and most of them didn’t like it.

“Conference room,” Dondero said without hesitation, and looked at Reardon as the guard left to get the prisoner. “It might get a little noisy, and there’s no sense in disturbing the neighbors.”

Reardon frowned. “Now, see here, Don. We don’t have a thing on this man, other than the weapons charge and the assault thing. We don’t have a thing to connect him with—”

Dondero held up a hand, cutting off the flow of words.

“You look, Jim. I’m quite sure they read him all his rights, probably in two languages, when they booked him, and you know I’d never do anything that wasn’t in the book. But what you don’t know is that us Italians, see, we get pretty emotional at times, and when I hug him he’s liable to start crying for joy—”

He paused as the guard came up leading the prisoner. Lazaretti was a small man with fine delicate features, dressed in a wrinkled suit of Italian silk, with smooth Italian handmade shoes, and with an expensive silk white-on-white shirt that may have been clean at one time, but which showed the effects of being worn for more than four days in a row, even though it was evident an attempt had been made by the prisoner to maintain it as much as possible. Dondero knew the man had been given his choice of clean prison clothes, so he scarcely felt much pity for him. The necktie had been removed, of course, together with the belt and shoelaces, and the absence of the tie made the neck appear even more scrawny. Lazaretti’s hair was long, dark, and wavy, and had been cut in the latest style; the days in prison had allowed the edges to become shaggy, but otherwise it was neat. Dondero would have bet a week’s pay that when Lazaretti had been searched, they had found in addition to the shiv and the gun, a comb probably treasured more by the prisoner than the weapons. Still, despite the lack of size, there was a look of cold determination on the frozen features.

Dondero’s expression remained fixed, but inwardly he was smiling. He knew the type all too well; the small tough guy. They were the kind he liked.

“In here,” he said to the prisoner in Italian, and waited with exaggerated politeness until Lazaretti had preceded him into the small confinement cell. Reardon crowded in and closed the door behind them. It was instantly pitch dark. The lieutenant opened the door, switched on the light from outside, and then closed the door after him once again. The fact that now there was light, coming from a small bulb set in the ceiling, made the tiny cell bearable, but just. Reardon leaned back against the door, watching.

“Real cozy,” Dondero said in English, and then switched to fluent Italian. Reardon’s eyebrows raised in surprise. He didn’t understand a word, but the speed and effortlessness of the demonstration impressed him. “All right, friend,” Dondero said. “Let’s start at the beginning. What brings you to the United States?”

There was silence. The prisoner stared at the wall, only inches from his face, quite as if he had not heard the question. Dondero suddenly raised his hand and slapped the frozen face open-handedly. The long hair flew; the small head bounced against the wall. The little man turned to stare at Dondero with a dazed expression slowly hardening to hate, and then brought up a small hand to rub the side of his head.

Reardon straightened up instantly, reaching out a hand. “Hey, Don!”

“Man’s deaf,” Dondero said lightly. “You’d be surprised how sometimes something like that clears the ears.”

Reardon’s jaw tightened. “Look, Don, I don’t want to pull rank, but—”

Dondero dropped the light tone, glaring at the lieutenant savagely.

“You don’t want to pull rank, then don’t! If you’ve suddenly gotten a weak stomach, why don’t you wait for me downstairs? This character has a connection with the goon who’s holding Pop Holland, and he’s going to tell me what it is, and in great detail, before he walks out of here. If he walks out of here!” he added grimly.

“But not that way!”

“Then what way? You wanted me to question him, didn’t you? What did you want me to ask him? How you get from Market Street to the Colosseum? His momma’s recipe for pizza? Good Christ! There’s only one way a character like this is going to answer questions, and that’s if he knows he’ll be picking his teeth off the floor if he doesn’t!” He saw the hard look on Reardon’s face and added more quietly, but just as insistently, “Jim, Jim! Listen to what I’m saying! This man has some connection with the guy who’s holding Pop. I’m going to get it out of him. Because if you make me leave him alone, I’ll just wait until Judge Melchor lets him go in a couple of days and then I’ll be a lot rougher with him than I can be here. Here, I’ll try not to mark him; outside I’ll rip both his arms off and beat him black and blue with the bloody stumps if I have to!” He shrugged. “So take your choice.”

He waited a moment. Reardon was silent. Dondero nodded and returned to the prisoner, changing back to Italian.

“A little disagreement between me and my friend. You lost. Now, let’s start all over. What brings you to the United States? And silence is not considered an answer.”

The small man looked from face to face, apparently read his fate in the expressionless look on the face of the lieutenant and the triumphant glitter in the other detective’s face. Then he said, sullenly, “To visit my cousin.”

Dondero indicated no particular triumph in having broken the ice, but continued evenly. “Oh? And just where does your cousin live?”

“In New York. In Brooklyn.”

“I’ve got news for you, friend,” Dondero said. “You missed Brooklyn by three thousand miles. What I meant to say was, what brings you to California? Specifically, what brings you to San Francisco?”

There was silence. The little man jammed his jaw tight, and then shut his eyes, squeezing them tightly shut as Dondero raised his hand. Reardon bit his lip as Dondero’s hand came down, changing direction, and chopped viciously at the small man’s stomach.

“No marks, like I said,” he said in Italian, probably thinking he was addressing Reardon, or maybe just talking to himself, or even possibly to advise the little man what to expect in the future. He shook the little man until the eyes opened, and then shook him a few more times for luck; the long hair flew. “You must like getting shoved around,” Dondero said evenly. “Well, you got the right guy, because I’m willing to work out on you all day long. You’ll wish you were home. Now, what brings you to San Francisco?”

The little man massaged his stomach. His face was gray with pain. He stared at Dondero’s pleasant look of comradeship a moment and then shivered involuntarily. That look of false friendship was one he had seen before; it was a look he had employed himself in the past when he had the upper hand and was prepared to use his advantage. It was not a good look to see on the face of a tough opponent.

“I — to see it. They all said San Francisco was worth seeing. They said it was beautiful...”

“They did, huh? Who are all these boosters?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, who told you about San Francisco?”

“People in Italy,” Lazaretti said vaguely. He saw the hardness that twitched Dondero’s jaw and added hastily, “And my cousin in New York. He said so, too.”

“Yes,” Dondero said, relaxing, “it is, indeed, a beautiful city. Now, how did you manage to enjoy this beautiful city of ours, when hardly anyone you run into on the street happens to speak Italian?”

“Pardon?”

“I said, who was your interpreter?” There was silence. Dondero reached out and took the small man by the arm, slowly tightening his grip on the thin biceps. “Am I speaking too fast for you? Did you understand the question?”

Lazaretti swallowed and said, still in Italian, “I had no interpreter. I... I... you see, I have a little English...”

“You have? Great!” Dondero accommodatingly switched to English. “Then tell me in English, which portion or neighborhood of our delightful metropolis did you particularly relish?”

Lazaretti stared at him, his eyes hopeless. Reardon was sure he could not understand.

“Ah, well, the hell with it,” Dondero said, dropping the matter as well as the small man’s arm. He went back to Italian. “We’re not here to give you lessons in English. We’re here to get answers to questions. Let’s skip the preliminaries and get down to the nitty-gritty. Who in this town do you know who is so interested in getting you sprung from jail?”

The little man looked up, surprised. Dondero frowned. Either the little character was honestly startled by the question, or he had to be the best actor to come out of the old country since Vittorio De Sica.

“Pardon?”

“You heard me,” Dondero said. “Somebody in the town wants you out of jail, and he isn’t being subtle about it, either.” He frowned and looked at Reardon, returning to English. “Which brings up an interesting question — how come this little monkey isn’t out on bail? Or if he couldn’t raise it, how come the character who’s got Pop Holland didn’t spring for the bail and take Tiny Tim, here, home under his arm?”

“He’s up for extradition when, as, and if he gets out of here after his trial,” Reardon said, surmising. “They seldom set bail for foreigners up for extradition because they probably figure a large number of them wouldn’t show up at the dock.”

“True,” Dondero conceded, and went back to Italian. “Like I was saying, somebody wants you out of jail very badly. Who? Take a guess if you honestly don’t know.” Dondero had a feeling he was whipping a dead horse, but he had to keep trying. He reached for the small man’s arm again and squeezed. “Try talking.”

Lazaretti looked bewildered. For the first time he became almost voluble.

“I don’t know a soul in this town. Nobody—”

“No? How about your friend? The guy you were trying to carve up with your shiv when you got picked up?”

“He... I... I don’t know him...”

“Oh, come on,” Dondero said disbelievingly. “You come over on the same plane from Rome, you come out here in the same plane” — it was a guess, but Dondero was suddenly sure — “you leave New York the same day, holding hands, and you don’t even know the guy?”

“I... I don’t know anyone out here.” The prisoner looked up, convinced Dondero had done his worst. “Anyway,” he added bluntly, “they cannot hold me for what I did. What did I do? A fight! Americans do not take such things seriously. I will be free very soon.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Dondero said, and smiled wolfishly.

“What do you mean?” The prisoner thought he might see an answer and it was an answer he did not like. “What did he do? This man, to get me out of prison?” His hands came up expressively, palms out. “I am not responsible! I am not responsible!” He frowned at Dondero. “What did he do, this man?”

“I’ll ask the questions. Let’s start over. Why are you here in San Francisco?”

“I told you!”

“What did you tell me?”

“I... I came to visit. Just to visit. Many people come to visit, do they not?”

Dondero looked at Reardon. “Jim, don’t you have something else to do? This looks like it may take some time.”

“Don,” Reardon said coldly, “you’re going to get in one hell of a jam if you rough up this prisoner. You—”

“You ought to be getting hungry around now,” Dondero said, quite as if Reardon had not spoken. He sounded quite concerned. “Why don’t you run down for a sandwich? Or, wait a second — Pop’s Chevy ought to be in the garage by now. Didn’t you say you wanted to see it as soon as it came in?”

Reardon looked at him a long moment and then sighed.

“All right, Don. Just don’t get your butt in a sling. None of these characters are worth it.”

“I’ll be as careful as a mother with her first-born.”

Reardon looked at him and then shook his head. “All right. I’ll be down in the garage when you’re done. Or back in the office.”

“I’ll try not to keep you waiting,” Dondero said with satisfaction, and turned back to the prisoner as Reardon closed the solid door behind him. Lazaretti stared at the closed door with widening eyes and then turned to stare at Dondero’s hard, smiling face.

“Now,” Dondero said pleasantly, “where were we?”

Saturday — 2:15 P.M.

The sandwich Reardon had sent out for — or, rather, the portion of it he had eaten — lay in his stomach like sautéed concrete; the waxy cardboard taste of the coffee remained with him even though most of the indescribably terrible liquid had been assigned, together with its leaky container, to his wastebasket. The awful excuse for a meal had only one redeeming grace; it made him look forward even more anxiously to whatever restaurant Jan would choose for their evening repast. After which—

He brought his mind back to business and punched the button for the elevator at the fourth floor. As if it had been waiting for him, the doors slid back and he walked in, pressing the button for the basement garage. He rode down in silence, got out at the lower floor, and walked the long distance to the large caged area at one end of the huge underground room, his footsteps echoing hollowly from the concrete floor. The cage was the storage area for the cars awaiting or undergoing inspection from any one of the Accident Prevention Bureau teams. Lieutenant Frank Wilkins, of the APB, was there beside the old Chevrolet, busily taking notes, a cigarette hanging from one lip, its ash dribbling on his lapel. His men were all over the car, calling out their findings; the trunk was open and a man was bent inside carefully passing a hand vacuum cleaner over all surfaces. The side door on the driver’s side was also open and a man there was shoving the rear seat cushion back in place; to one side on the floor of the garage were two small, carefully marked bags with material the vacuum cleaner had picked up in both the front and rear seats.

Wilkins looked up from his notebook at Reardon’s arrival, dropped his cigarette on the floor, stepped on it, and nodded pleasantly. Lieutenant Wilkins had been Sergeant Wilkins until a few months before, but the change in rank had not changed him in the least. He was a thickset man approaching fifty, with a rather high-pitched voice and a flattened nose that gave his face a permanently sneering look, but which was actually the result of having his face smashed in by a frying pan years before while trying to break up a family fight. The fact was that Frank Wilkins was the mildest and most co-operative of officers, and was also excellent at his job. Reardon smiled at him and glanced at the notebook in Wilkins’ hand.

“Anything of interest?”

“Only fingerprints are those of Pop Holland, which we figured anyway. Stuff in the bags will go to the lab; have a better idea about those when we get through,” Wilkins said. “Right now we have blood on the top of the front seat, passenger side. My guess is they cut Mike. Maybe he was giving them a hard time, or something.”

Reardon looked through the open front car door. The man who had wrestled the back seat cushion back in place was now delicately shaving samples from a brownish stain that covered the top of the front seat back, and which trailed down the seat cover in ragged tailings. As Reardon watched, the man neatly tipped the shavings into an envelope, closed it, and began to write on it. Reardon looked at Wilkins.

“A lot of blood?”

“No. Nowhere near enough to indicate anything serious.”

“What about the mileage?”

Wilkins frowned. “What about it?”

“I mean — anything to indicate how far he’d gone?” Even as he asked the question he realized how stupid it was.

Wilkins smiled. “You tell me what it was before they picked him up, and I’ll give you a rough idea.”

Reardon was floundering. “I meant, like if he’d had an oil change lately, maybe they might have marked the mileage...”

Wilkins shrugged and walked around to raise the hood. A stained tag on the air filter gave him the mileage of the last oil change; he walked back and stared in at the odometer, then shook his head.

“A difference of over two thousand miles, and I’m sure they don’t have Mike stashed in some dump in Acapulco.” He smiled at Reardon. “Really scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren’t you, Jim?”

“Just about,” Reardon said, and smiled ruefully. He walked to the front of the car and studied the partially dented hood, the bent license plate. “Any doubt that this was the car that killed that wino?”

“None,” Wilkins said promptly. “Green suede shreds on the corner of the license plate, some of the victim’s hair caught in the channel between the fender and the hood panel — he must have come over the top and slammed into the fender — same paint on the jacket and the skull as the car paint. Not a shadow of a doubt.”

“That sounds definite enough.” Reardon studied the car and then looked up. “Frank, do you think the car can really tell us anything useful? Anything that would help us trace the bastard who pulled this job?”

Wilkins shrugged. He fished out another cigarette, lit it, and inhaled deeply.

“No idea,” he said at last. “I have a hunch everything connected with a crime could tell us a lot more than it does, if we only had the brains to read the signs. Oh, we read some of them, but I often wonder how much we miss. For example” — he waved a hand at the car — “I would make an educated guess that the job was pulled by two men, and the man who was the boss of the operation sat in the back seat while the other man drove. That guess is based on the pattern of the bloodstain on the back of the front seat. If the driver had leaned over from his position back of the wheel to make the cut, the blood would have been more central on the seat cover, but from the blood pattern, I’d say the cut was made from behind. And if the man in the back seat was doing the cutting, then it’s an educated guess that he was the boss of the show. Besides,” he added, “the driver was a little fellow — approximately five-foot-four — so you’d naturally figure the bigger guy was the boss.”

“Unless they were both midgets,” Reardon said, and then suddenly realized what he had heard. He stared at Wilkins. “Man, I’m running into a lot of Sherlock Holmes stuff lately! How do you figure the driver’s height?”

Wilkins smiled. “Easy. From the setting of the front seat to the wheel; from the placement of the rear-view mirror in relation to the seat; in the angle of the side-view mirror.” He dropped his cigarette and crushed it out beneath his shoe. “You remember the book Hotel?”

“I remember the picture,” Reardon said, and wondered what Wilkins was driving at.

“Same thing. I saw the picture, too, and they made the same mistake. Remember where the Countess, or whatever she was, said she was driving the hit-run car instead of her husband, the Earl, or the Duke, or something? Where it made such a big difference who was driving, and they hired the hotel dick to drive the car away, or something? Well, nobody even bothered to check the position of the front seat when it was down in the garage, after they drove it in after the hit-run. Not even the hotel dick! Sure, maybe the dame would have remembered to change the seat to the proper placement for her size, together with the rear-view mirror, the side-view mirror, the length of the seat-belt straps, and all, but I doubt it like hell. Anyway, in the book, and the movie, too, they didn’t even check. Well, we do. We check out little things like that.” He shrugged and smiled faintly. “Books — movies!”

It was a long speech for Lieutenant Wilkins, and he might even have amplified on the things his department had the sense to do that books and movies overlooked, if the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps hadn’t interrupted him. The two men looked down the dim aisle between the rows of parked cars to see Captain Clark approaching. The Accident Prevention Bureau reported to Traffic, not that they wouldn’t have greatly preferred being responsible to any other department.

“Reardon,” Clark said briefly, his cold eyes passing over the Homicide lieutenant without interest. “Wilkins.” He gestured toward the car. “What do you have so far?”

“I’ll have a report on your desk in an hour or so, Captain.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Clark said coldly. “What I meant was, have you found anything immediately useful?”

Wilkins would have liked to ask if the captain meant did the men leave calling cards tucked under the sun visor, or a map with an arrow indicating their hideout, but it wouldn’t have been advisable. Captain Clark had a short sense of humor and a long memory.

“No, sir.”

“Well, keep after it, but don’t take all day.” Clark turned to consider Reardon. “How about that what’s-his-name upstairs? Did you get a chance to talk to him yet? The wop?”

“His name is Lazaretti. He’s Italian,” Reardon said. He was sure that Clark would have used the word “wop” if he had been addressing his question to Dondero. One day, possibly, Clark would pull a line like that with Captain Giordano of the Loft Squad and get his thick head handed to him. With Lieutenant Reardon’s lousy luck, though, he wouldn’t be there to see it. On the other hand, maybe he’d make captain himself, one day, and take on the job of cutting Clark down to size himself. Or maybe someday he wouldn’t wait until he made captain. “Dondero’s talking to the man now,” he said, and thought that one way or the other Don ought to be finished with the little man by now.

“Yeah,” Clark said unenthusiastically, almost as if it were his own instructions being carried out, and not too well, either. “Wilkins, I’ll be waiting for your report. Soon. Don’t take all day with it, hear? I’ve got plenty of other work for you.”

“Yes, sir,” Wilkins said, and watched the stumpy figure march away toward the elevator. “Someday...!” he said under his breath, and then looked at Reardon, smiling ruefully. “How it goes!”

“I know what you mean,” Reardon said, smiling back, and followed Clark toward the elevator, although with every intention of waiting for the following car before going up to his office.

Saturday — 3:20 P.M.

Lieutenant Reardon came into his office to find Dondero slumped dispiritedly in a chair, staring down at his folded hands, his rugged face expressionless. The lieutenant dropped into his chair and waited. When Dondero made no attempt to look up, Reardon picked up the telephone book from the corner of his desk, held it out at arm level, and let it drop. Dondero’s head came up at the noise.

“Well,” Reardon said with satisfaction, “it’s alive, at least.” He bent to retrieve the phone book, replaced it, and leaned back. “All right, what did our friend Lazaretti have to say?”

“Not much,” Dondero said, and shook his head. There was a touch of admiration in his tone. “You wouldn’t think a guy the size of a Crackerjack prize would have that much moxie, would you? He’s a tough little monkey.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Oh, his cousin in Brooklyn’s name is Anthony Lazaretti, and I just got through talking to him and he’s got a small fruit store and the last time he saw Guillermo was when they were kids, and he swears he didn’t know his cousin was in the States, and for what it’s worth, I believe him. If we have to, we can have the New York cops check him out, but I don’t think it’s necessary. And our friend also admits that Patrone isn’t quite as much a stranger to him as he made out before, but other than those two bits of jeweled knowledge, we’re where we were before. What he’s doing here, what Patrone is doing here, what this whole case is all about — those things still rank as mysteries.”

“What were the two fighting about?”

Dondero shrugged. “The one thing I’m sure of is that the fight was not part of any plan. Whatever the two are doing here, spending time in our jail wasn’t part of the original program. They were probably fighting about the same important things most people fight about. Nothing.”

“And you’re sure he wasn’t here in San Francisco for the reason he gave — just for a visit?”

Dondero sighed. “Anything’s possible. Maybe years ago he pulled a thorn out of some guy’s paw in the Colosseum, and when the guy heard he was in jail here in San Francisco, he kidnapped Pop to spring him in gratitude. Who knows? He may really have come here for a visit. The only thing is, I give twelve to one against, and those are better odds than I give against today being Thursday.”

“Did you mention Pop Holland’s name to him?”

“That I did, in a roundabout way. It rang no bell. I give eleven to six the little man never heard of Pop Holland in his life.”

“Did you get a chance to talk to the other guy? The one Lazaretti was fighting with? Patrone?”

Dondero smiled. “No. I’m saving him for when we get stuck.”

Reardon was not amused. “Did you check their passports?”

“Yeah. Like Zelinski so accurately reported — for him — both passports are fairly old, both men have legal visas, and this is the first time in the life of these passports either one of them was used for entrance into the United States.”

“They came together?”

“That’s one of the big confessions I got, which doesn’t seem much in exchange for a skinned knuckle.” He glanced down at the knuckle. “Just don’t ask me why they came here, together or alone.”

Reardon got up and began pacing up and down the office, or as much as he could in the limited space provided for junior officers at the Hall of Justice. He paused and looked down at Dondero.

“If Lazaretti or Patrone didn’t know anyone here in town, maybe the guy who snatched Pop knew them in Italy?”

“Maybe,” Dondero said. The idea didn’t thrill him. “You want me to go to Rome and start checking? I speak fair Italian.”

“Did you call the Italian Consulate yet? Or Interpol?”

“That comes next. Momma’s only got two hands. But I don’t expect he’s got any big record or he wouldn’t have gotten a passport. Or a visa.” Dondero frowned. He looked up. “Jim, why are we complicating a simple problem? Why the hell don’t we simply kick this Lazaretti character down the front steps and go home and get some rest? Or why don’t we gift-wrap the son-of-a-bitch and deliver him where and when the man wants? And get Pop back and then go home and get some rest?”

“Ask Chief Boynton,” Reardon said wearily. “He’s got a lot of reasons that sounded good at the time, but don’t ask me what they were.” He yawned and stretched. “God, I’m tired! Well, you call the Italian Consulate, and get off some wires to Interpol, and let me see if I can get some work done.”

He stared at the pile of papers in his in-basket, and shook his head disconsolately. The kidnapping of a police officer, like the murder of a police officer, ranked number one on any Hall of Justice priority list, but unfortunately that did not wipe out the hundreds of other cases that dragged themselves across the police blotter daily. He pulled the basket closer, picked up the top report to struggle through, and then became aware that Dondero was addressing him.

“I don’t know about you,” Dondero was saying, his finger holding his place in the telephone book, “but I didn’t have any lunch and it’s after four. Why don’t we give it the old college try for another hour or so and then knock off and go down to the Wharf for a couple beers and a decent meal for a change?”

Reardon smiled. “Sorry, I’ve got a date.” He saw the surprised look on Dondero’s face and added, “It’s with Jan. I forgot to tell you; we’re back together again.”

“Oh!” Dondero raised his eyebrows. He picked up the telephone and started to dial. “That explains a lot of things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the yawning,” Dondero said, and grinned. “And also why you haven’t solved this case yet. You never could keep your mind on two things at the same time.”