Deadline, 2 A.M.

Chapter 8

Sunday — 12:10 P.M.

The night was a huge black box with no bottom, top, nor sides, and Reardon was surprised that he was no longer frightened to be back aboard the mysterious liner. He looked around for Mike Holland, but the deck was deserted. Beneath his feet he could feel the steady pulsing of the ship’s engines. There was something faintly familiar about the even, rhythmic bumping, like a background soundtrack to something he was acquainted with; but he did not dwell on the thought. Far more important exploration lay before him. This was a new life, totally separated from the small bridge over the narrow channel, and the party and the band and his friends there. This was adventure!

He turned from a view of the endless ocean, stretching to the same neutral sky hung like a drape in the background, and found himself looking with pleased excitement into the depths of the ship’s hold, and was surprised and pleased at hearing voices and seeing men and knowing he was not alone on the ship. He leaned over the hatch coaming, peering down. On the deck far below, wreathed in vapors and spotlighted with huge klieg lights, barebacked sweating figures were working swiftly over a large form hidden in the steam and the shadows, and Reardon suddenly realized he was on a whaler, watching the long sharp pole knives stabbing away, expertly slicing the wide strips of blubber from the inert shape.

He suddenly wanted to be with the others, all those fine men, friends, fellow crewmen, brother whalers! — and then he was down in the hold, bare-chested, sweating in the steam, reaching out eagerly like the others with his long pole knife at the shapeless form on the floor, but then he saw with shock that it was Mike Holland spread-eagled there, and the men were jabbing at his outstretched hand while Mike tried to avoid them by turning and twisting his wrist. Reardon found himself struggling to get through the crowd of men to reach Mike’s side, but the harder he fought, the farther back in the crowd he found himself, until he wasn’t in the ship at all but in a subway train, one of the Bart cars, plunging through a black tunnel, full of people, and he was trying to break his way through to the car ahead, where he knew he’d find Mike, and then just as he managed to get the door between the cars open, he saw that there were no cars ahead, just the endless tunnel, and there on the tracks he thought he saw a man up ahead, tied across the rails, and he could see, as if with zoom vision, one hand spread on the rail the same way Gentry had demonstrated, one finger along the edge, the others at right angles, and he turned to the motorman to make him stop the car, but hands pulled him back from the small door until he tore himself loose with a final wrench and was rolling across a varnished floor, bumping his elbow painfully.

“Man!” Lundahl said admiringly. “When you sleep, you really sleep, don’t you, Lieutenant!”

“Ghaaa!” Reardon sat up groggily, rubbing his elbow, aware of the bare floor beneath him and the pile of gym mats he had been sleeping on, off to one side. If I keep up like this, he thought sourly, I’m going to have to sleep in a crib, with railings all around. He yawned deeply and shook his head violently, trying to work off the horror of the dream enough to enable him to look at Lundahl with a modicum of intelligence.

“What time is it?”

Lundahl checked his watch, then verified it with the big gym clock on one wall. “A little after noon.”

Reardon sat more erect. “What!” He looked around. “Where the hell was that recruit class that works out here at eight o’clock? I figured they’d wake me.”

“It’s Sunday, Lieutenant,” Lundahl said gently. “September fifth.” He smiled faintly. “I’m scared to tell you the year, because you’ll accuse me of swiping your beard and your bowling ball and maybe even your little dog...”

Reardon grunted, unamused, and came to his feet stiffly. He rubbed his face, trying to bring some life to the rubbery, inert skin, and then looked around the deserted gymnasium while he stretched. If there was anything in the world more deserted-looking than a gymnasium with only the smell of old socks for company, he couldn’t imagine what it was. He put the pointless thought away and tried to bring his mind back to business.

“What about the board meeting on Mike Holland?”

“They’re still at it, hot and heavy,” Lundahl said. “They’ve been at it since a little after nine this morning. They just sent out for some sandwiches, so maybe Mike has a chance, at that.”

“Let’s hope.” Reardon yawned. He still felt groggy, still felt the edge of his dream. What he needed was a hot cup of coffee, or a cold glass of beer, or both. He started to dust himself off, and then paused, frowning. “So if nothing’s new, why the rush to wake me up?” Not, he had to admit, that he was unhappy to be rid of his dream; he was sure he didn’t want to be riding on that subway car when it ran over that hand!

“Oh, yeah,” Lundahl said, suddenly remembering. “I didn’t want to wake you up at all, at first, not just for some nut call, but then I figured, what the hell, if it happened to be important, which I’m sure it isn’t, then I’m in the doghouse for not telling you.”

“Whenever you get through with the self-analysis...”

“Yeah. Like I said, it was a nut call for you. Some character calls up on the phone and wants to tell you he was Mo House, the First.”

Reardon stared. “What?”

“That’s it, Lieutenant. Like I said, a nut. He even spelled it. M. O. House, the First. He wanted us to pass it on to you as soon as possible. And that was the entire message.” He frowned as a sudden thought struck him. “Hey! That M.O. — could that be, like, modus operandi?”

Reardon suddenly laughed. Mo House, the First, eh? The message was clear enough, now; Porky Frank wanted to meet him at Marty’s Oyster House at one o’clock. The wild code he and Porky employed from time to time may have had something to do with security at one time, but that time had long passed. Now the code was reinvented constantly, used as a form of one-upmanship on the part of the two, and Reardon had to give Porky credit for brevity with this one, if nothing else.

Lundahl was watching him closely. “It didn’t mean modus operandi, huh, Lieutenant? And it wasn’t a nut call, either, was it?”

“Just a code,” Reardon said, coming back to life from his nap. “It was my broker telling me that Mohouses are going up on the first.” He glanced over his shoulder and dropped his voice. “Don’t blab it all over the place. We don’t want it to get around.”

Lundahl looked hurt. “You mean, if you wanted me to know what it was all about, you’d tell me, right?”

“Right,” Reardon said, pleased with Lundahl’s ready intelligence, and led the way from the gymnasium, not unhappy to leave his dream behind in the large vaulted room, keeping company with the dust and the odor of stale socks.

Sunday — 1:05 P.M.

Marty’s Oyster House, in common with most bars and restaurants in that section of San Francisco, was far from being overly busy on an early Sunday afternoon, but that in no way tended to improve its notoriously terrible service. Porky Frank, sitting in a booth to the rear, saw Reardon begin to push through the etched-glass doors and put out a hand, catching a waiter on the wing. Porky’s surprise was even greater than that of his bagged quarry; the waiters at Marty’s were usually more elusive. Still, Porky had one and he did not intend to free him until he had put him to good use.

“An extra dry martini, up, and a large beer,” he said, disregarding the hurt look on the face of the waiter. “The martini with a olive.”

The waiter nodded, unsurprised at the order. Anyone impolite enough to snatch at waiters instead of letting them come to you at their own pace was quite apt to be the type to use a beer chaser for a martini. Still, one of the rules of the house was that once you were pressed into service whether against your will or not, you actually had to serve the customer. It was a rule the waiters at Marty’s intended to fight bitterly at their next contract negotiations, but for the moment it was in effect.

“Dry olive and beer,” he said into his drooping mustache, and headed for the bar.

Reardon dropped into the booth across from Porky and nodded. Porky returned the greeting and considered the lieutenant gravely for a moment before coming to the conclusion that enough preliminaries had been observed and that it was time to move on.

“You look rested, Mr. R,” he said equably. “Tell me, what’s new on the case?”

Reardon looked around for a waiter and saw with astonishment that one was approaching their table laden with martini and beer, and seemed intent upon serving them. He turned back to Porky with a frown of curiosity.

“It was nothing,” Porky said modestly. “I caught him when he wasn’t looking.”

“But you caught him, which is what counts.” Reardon’s tone was properly congratulatory. He looked around and realized he was hungry. He accepted his beer, held the waiter by the arm while he ordered a hot roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes. The waiter shrugged philosophically, and wrote it on his pad. What people did with their stomachs was no concern of his. Reardon released the waiter and turned to Porky. “Well?”

“I asked you first,” Porky said a bit reprovingly. He saw the look that crossed Reardon’s face but was not intimidated. “I repeat, I asked you first. Mainly because there is nothing new from my end. I wanted to meet with you to see if you had anything. Maybe it would tie in with the nothing I’ve got. You understand?”

“Roughly.” Reardon took a large draught of his beer and set the glass down. He wiped his lips and considered Porky. “We received the tape, the way the man said on the telephone. Somebody had bumped into a mailman and slipped the package into the mailbag while he was helping the mailman pick up the junk. You were right on that...”

Porky looked modest.

“We even found the wino who’d put the package in the mail-bag,” Reardon added. “Only he was dead...”

Porky’s look of modesty disappeared. Reardon related the events of the past few days while Porky listened closely, taking a sip every now and then of his martini. The waiter brought the food, placed it on the table with an air of refusing any responsibility for it, and escaped before these exigent customers could demand anything else, like water, or toothpicks, or even dessert. Reardon took a mouthful, found it delicious, and spoke around it.

“And that’s where we are,” he said. “Nowhere. This bastard is cutting Pop into little squares and the brains are trying to make up their minds whether to trade this Lazaretti for him or not.” He dug another large forkful of food from his plate and sighed. “Not that I’m so damned sure the brains are wrong. It’s just that it makes it a little rough on Pop.” He put the food in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and looked at Porky somberly. “And you say there’s nothing from your end? Does anything I just told you tie into anything you’ve heard? In any way?”

Porky shook his head. “Not that I can see.”

“Anything about any Italian connection?”

Porky’s eyebrows rose. “Italian?”

Reardon finished the last bit, looked at the plate as if he might well have liked to lick it, and put down his fork regretfully. He picked up his beer.

“That’s right. Italian. Lazaretti is from Italy, and Lazaretti is the guy this maniac wants to trade for Pop. And we can’t figure out why.”

“Nor can I.”

“Great,” Reardon said with irritation. “You must have done some great listening!”

“Oh, I listened very well, and I heard quite a lot,” Porky said easily. “It’s just that I fail to see any connection with what I heard and what you would like to hear. For example, I hear there’s apt to be a change in gambling bosses in town — not that the Organization exists, you understand, or if it exists it certainly has no tentacles planted in our fair city, and even if by some odd coincidence it did have a tentacle or two around, certainly nothing to do with gambling. Still, the rumor persists.”

Reardon was listening. Porky went on.

“Then, too, I hear that the price of Turkish horse is on the rise, due to a temporary shortage, such as occurs from time to time. I also hear there’s a lot of heat on a few parties because it seems a three-hundred-grand shipment of grass from Mexico turned out to be just that. Grass. Like on your front lawn. Although, from my experience, real grass in Mexico is rarer than Mary Jane. Theoretically, that should make it more valuable, shouldn’t it?”

“Depends on the going market for Mexican lawns,” Reardon suggested.

“Probably. Let’s see — what else did I hear? Oh, yes! Speaking of Mary Jane, the real big talk around is that there’s a chemist in Monterey who has been working on the development of an essence that smells just like grade-A pot. Now that I think about it,” Porky said, “I wonder why nobody ever did that before?”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?” Reardon asked, astonished.

“Come, come, Mr. R!” Porky said reprovingly. “You can’t be as obtuse as all that! Can you imagine the frustration of all the dogs the Federal Bureau of Narcotics has trained to sniff out marijuana, when just about everything that comes through customs has the same smell?” He laughed. “Can you picture the scene at customs, say when four or five planes come in at the same time from our sister republic to the south, and those poor mutts start going absolutely berserk over everyone’s luggage? It’ll look like a dog-food ad.”

“Very comical, I’m sure,” Reardon said dryly. “But it doesn’t get us anywhere.”

“No,” Porky admitted, and sobered up. “Still, it’s all I can offer at the moment. You’re sure that this Lazaretti, or Sergeant Holland, never raised dogs for the Narcotics Bureau? It would give us a tie-in.” He seemed to accept Reardon’s silence as denial. “Too bad. Well, I shall return to keeping my ear to the ground. Pray it doesn’t rain. The one thing I hate is moldy ear, as we call it. Incidentally,” he added curiously, “what did you ever do about that newspaperman?”

“Who?”

“You remember — that columnist you read so assiduously. The one who does that ‘View from the Top of the Mark’ or something.”

“‘View from Nob Hill,’” Reardon said. “What about it?”

Porky sighed disappointedly.

“Do you, or do you not, recall that at our last meeting I suggested to you to contact this scrivener, place hot needles under his fingernails, if necessary, and extract from him a statement as to whether or not he mentioned in his column that you were in charge of the dinner arrangements for Mike Holland’s testimonial dinner? And also, if not, how anyone could have learned of this vital fact? I believe I even labeled this a clue, hoping that with that nomenclature it would remain indelibly printed upon your policeman’s brain.”

“I remember.”

“Good. I should hope so. I even wrote it on a piece of paper and placed it in your pocket.”

“I remember.”

“And you followed it up, of course?”

“No, I didn’t,” Reardon said, and fished in the breast pocket of his jacket. He withdrew the paper, studied it a moment, and crumpled it, tossing it into an ashtray. “If we start to waste time checking out dumb things like that, we’ll really be in trouble. For a starter, we’d have half the people in town to check out, and we’ve got a lot more important things to work on.”

“Such as?” Porky asked softly.

“Such as lots of things,” Reardon said shortly, and reached into his pocket for money.

“My treat,” Porky said, and put out a restraining hand. He smiled. “It’ll be on your eventual bill, don’t worry — properly inflated, but that’s the modern way.”

“Bill for what?” Reardon said dourly. “For the information you’ve delivered so far?”

Porky sighed. “Patience, Mr. R, patience...”

“Yeah,” Reardon said brusquely, and came to his feet. “Patience, while Pop Holland gets chopped into little pieces!”

Sunday — 2:30 P.M.

Detective Stan Lundahl came out of the elevator at the lobby floor of the Hall of Justice, paused to light a cigarette, turned in the direction of the large front doors, and almost bumped into his superior.

“Hi, Lieutenant,” Lundahl said, pleased to see a familiar face on a dull Sunday afternoon. “Any decent information from your pigeon?” He saw the startled look on Reardon’s face and laughed. “Well, hell, Lieutenant — any guy named Mo, ten to one he’s a pigeon, right?”

“Stan,” Reardon said, relieved, “you’ll be a detective, yet. By the way, where are you off to?”

“Home,” Lundahl said. “You got something for me to do? Connected with the Holland case,” he added hastily. “Otherwise I’m supposed to be off duty right now. I’m on the graveyard shift for the next week, starting tonight.”

Reardon tried to think of anything he wanted Lundahl to do on the Pop Holland case, but couldn’t. His brain felt fogged. Too much sleep, he thought, or too much good living in the form of an occasional meal. Or maybe it was just that the effects of gym-sock miasma took a long time to wear off. He looked into Lundahl’s waiting face.

“No, I guess not. Where’s Don?”

“Home, too, I guess,” Lundahl said. He looked around for a place to get rid of his cigarette stub and decided the lobby floor was the closest. He dropped it, and stood on it, ostrich-style. “After the board meeting, Don stormed out of the joint breathing fire and swearing like only Don can swear. Half Italian, half Fisherman’s Wharf. He—” He saw the startled look that crossed Reardon’s face. “Hey, that’s right. You didn’t know, did you?”

“No. But it was bad news, huh?”

“Yeah,” Lundahl said. His voice turned bitter. “Can’t make exceptions just because a man is a retired police officer, you know. Got to treat everyone alike — although I’d bet they’d trade Boynton himself if it was the mayor’s wife being held! Same old argument! No cop’s going to be safe on the street, we let Lazaretti go. Start trading convicts for cops, pretty soon the old jail’s empty, and then where we all going to work?” He made a face and said a nasty word.

“Yeah,” Reardon said in sympathy. “Anything else new?”

“That’s the scoop.”

“Well, go home and get some rest.”

“Sure,” Lundahl said. “If my in-laws aren’t over for the day.” He turned and jammed his way through the glass doors to the street.

Reardon stared after the tall detective a moment and then turned back toward the elevators. He took one to the fourth floor, walked along the unusually silent corridor to his office, and dropped into the chair behind his desk, looking around. The place was deserted, the men either on assignment or on Sunday time-off. Reardon sighed and reached for the in-basket.

The report on top was from Laboratory Services; a quick glance proved it to be the report covering the tape, and contained little beyond what Gentry had told them in the early morning meeting. He put it aside and picked up the next one. This report was a compilation of station house replies to a request from Chief Boynton’s office, and indicated that copies had been sent to all departments, including Homicide. Captain Tower had scrawled his initials in one corner and had directed it to Lieutenant Reardon. Reardon settled back to read, but the words kept going past him without pausing long enough to deposit much meaning. He forced himself to go back to the beginning.

It amounted to nothing, but then, he thought, if any of the reports had amounted to anything, the Hall would have been jumping with activity instead of everyone having taken time off, as if the Holland case — not to mention a hundred other cases — had all been solved and filed. The report confirmed that the footmen from the various stations had checked out every possible visible telephone booth in the city without locating a single witness to a man in a booth with a tape recorder. Which was what Reardon had expected, and he marveled at the amount of wasted time that could be devoted to a pointless search for nothing. Which would be the same case if he wasted his time chasing down that newspaperman, the way Porky Frank would like. He tossed the report aside and picked up the next one.

Like the others, this one had been addressed to the chief with copies to Homicide among others, and had again filtered down via Captain Tower. It was from Robbery, and Davidson’s men had gone over the Holland house from top to bottom, had checked the garage and the driveway, had spoken to neighbors in all directions, storekeepers, and even the manager of a nearby movie theater. And, like the previous report, it said nothing.

He tossed it aside, looked at the rest of the papers in his in-basket, drummed his fingers restlessly on the desk for a few moments while making up his mind, and then reached for the telephone. He got an outside line and dialed; there was a brief wait and then Jan was on the line. She sounded hurried.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Jan?”

“Hello, darling.” Reardon felt better at once, just hearing the warmth that entered her voice. “Where are you?”

“At the Hall. Look, sweet, there’s absolutely nothing doing at the moment and I’m about ready to climb a wall. How would you like to do something? There’s a twi-night doubleheader at Candlestick, or we could take in a movie, or rob a bank, or anything. How about it?”

“I can’t, darling.” Jan sounded truly sorry. “I’ve got tons of work. Jake dropped off the plans for the new shopping mall, and I have to have all my comments ready for submittal through Jake tomorrow...”

Reardon felt worse than he had before. He hadn’t realized how much he had been subconsciously looking forward to seeing Jan. He needed her to lift away some of his depression, some of his feeling of growing helplessness in the case of Michael Patrick Holland; some of the feeling of guilt, in fact, that here he was trying to make the momentous decision as to whether to take in a doubleheader or a movie, when Pop was tied up someplace, and undoubtedly in a bad way. Still, when you have one of the town’s upcoming architects for your girl friend, you have to be prepared for moments when she has to work to maintain her upcomingness.

“Not a chance, honey?”

“I’m sorry, darling.” Jan had an idea. “But, why don’t you come over here and watch the game on television? Or come over and take a nap? But I really mean a nap. No chasing the virtuous lady around a table.” He could hear the smile in her voice, but he knew she meant it. “I really have to get these notes done tonight.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Reardon said. He tried to keep the hurt from his voice, but he didn’t feel like playing second fiddle that afternoon, not to a bunch of blueprints he couldn’t make head or tail of, while Jan could. It somehow belittled his manliness, and he felt down enough as it was. “Maybe I’ll go to a movie.”

“You do that, darling.” It was apparent from her tone that Jan’s mind was already back on her shopping mall, with her head full of stresses and strains and beams and elevations and a thousand other things she understood that he didn’t.

“Yeah, I’ll do that. Maybe we can have dinner tomorrow night.”

“Fine,” Jan said, and he could tell her mind was not on him.

“Yeah,” he said hopelessly, and hung up. He knew he was being foolish to feel put down by a few pieces of paper with unintelligible markings on them, but that was the way he felt at the moment. You’d think when he was down in the dumps, once in a million years, that Jan could sacrifice one lousy afternoon from her damned blueprints for some stupid buildings, or shopping mall, or something...!

He suddenly grinned, knowing how idiotic he was being. He knew exactly what his reaction would be if Jan asked him to halt in the middle of an important investigation and go over and hold her hand just because some elevation, or some roof line, or sewer plan on a drawing wasn’t exactly what she desired. He’d tell her he was sorry, but the job came first; and that was roughly what she was telling him. And she was right.

Feeling better, he came to his feet and headed for the elevators and freedom. Desk work was out, that afternoon. No sitting in that empty office looking at a bunch of meaningless reports. No, damn it, he would go to the movies! Maybe one of the bright cops up there on the screen would show him where he was slipping up — where they were all slipping up — in their search for Pop Holland and his kidnapper or kidnappers.

He walked from the Hall, descended the steps, crossed the sidewalk, and climbed into his Charger, which was parked as usual, illegally, in front of the Hall. It was not that Lieutenant Reardon always parked there illegally; it was only when some other officer didn’t beat him to it. He was feeling better as he started the engine, making plans. After the movie, he’d go out and have a meal at a restaurant where the waiters didn’t give you ulcers, and then go back to his apartment and watch “Mannix,” or “Kojak,” or another one of those flawless demonstrations of proper police procedure, and if he couldn’t tolerate the tube, he might even read a book, if he hadn’t forgotten how. Sherlock Holmes, maybe.

Whistling a tuneless ditty, he put the car into gear and headed for the center of town, forcing any thought of Mike Holland into the recesses of his mind, at least for the moment.

Monday — 6 A.M.

Lieutenant James Reardon, feeling refreshed for what seemed to him to be the first time, possibly since childhood, opened his eyes, blinked in friendly fashion at the narrow band of sunlight that had managed to squeeze under the edge of the drawn shade, and then sat up in bed, stretching luxuriously in comfort. He swung his feet over the edge, wincing a trifle as they struck the bare floor, and then padded into the kitchen to put up coffee, noting with satisfaction that he had beaten the set alarm clock by a full forty-five minutes.

The evening before had been somewhat of a qualified success. The movie antihero cop had been duly nastier than the bad guys, had used language that would have gotten his mouth washed out with soap in a G-rated film, had taken graft and kicked little children, had sold narcotics to kindergarteners, and was in the process of winning the girl when Reardon had walked out of the theater, feeling that the producers were only trying to make him feel good by comparison.

A decent meal at one of his favorite Japanese restaurants, however, had taken a portion of the bad taste away, and when he got back to his apartment he found that Kojak was not at all like the movie policeman, but even helped old ladies to cross the street, protecting them from vicious gunfire with his own body, and even sucking a lollipop as he did so. Reassured, Reardon had taken a straight two ounces of whiskey, followed it by a glass of milk, and then gone to bed at eleven o’clock to sleep the sleep of the just. Now, wide awake, full of vim and vigor and with his depression far behind, he put coffee into a percolator, filled the bottom portion with the requisite water, assembled the gadget, put the entire contraption on the stove, and sat down to watch the pretty little bubbles, listen to the gentle burping of the unit, and cogitate, once again, on the case of Pop Holland.

It was quite apparent, in the light of day, and with a good night’s rest behind him, that there was no reason to allow depression or lack of self-confidence to interfere with the proper handling of the case. Nor was there time for self-pity. There were hundreds of things that could and should be done, and he wondered at himself for getting into a frame of mind so negative as to prevent himself from handling the case as he would have any other.

That hint of Porky’s about the newspaperman, for example. Of course it was a long shot, and maybe even useless, but it had to be better than sitting at his desk, commiserating with himself, and spending the county’s funds flipping paper clips into a waste-basket. The first thing this morning he’d go down to the paper, find out the name of the author, and ask him how he had known Reardon was in charge of the arrangements for Pop’s dinner. Sure, it was a dumb question, but if there weren’t any smart ones to ask, dumb ones would have to serve.

And while he was at the paper, he’d also ask about any reporters who might have brought in the story of the fight between Lazaretti and Patrone. He’d forgotten all about that. And, in fact, he’d have a talk with Patrone; that was another thing Dondero was supposed to do, but he’d been laying off all the jobs on Dondero with one excuse or another. This time he’d do the interviewing, and Don would just be the translator. And this time he wouldn’t allow any distaste for manhandling stop him from getting information. Dondero was right; while he was being delicate, Pop was getting skinned.

And there was the matter of Interpol, and the Italian Consulate, another two jobs he had ducked off to Dondero when there was no reason he shouldn’t handle them himself. And the matter of the stuff Property was holding of both Lazaretti and Patrone — their wallets and their passports. Those were things he ought to check out himself, not leave to others. And the hotel where the two had been staying, or the friends they had stayed with if they hadn’t been at a hotel. Hell, there was lots of work that had to be done!

He paused. The telephone was ringing in the bedroom. He turned the flame down under the coffee and walked back into the bedroom. This time the telephone hadn’t brought him from any horror dream; this time he’d been awake and ready for it. He picked up the telephone receiver, ready for anything.

“Yes?”

“Lieutenant? This is Lundahl.”

“Good morning, Stan.” Reardon tried not to sound too pleased with life; after all, Detective Lundahl had been on the graveyard shift and was winding up a long night. “How’s it going?”

“Not good, Lieutenant.”

“Anything I can do?”

Lundahl cleared his throat uncomfortably. He hated to disturb lieutenants that early in the morning, especially with bad news.

“Yeah, Lieutenant. You can come down to the morgue. I got a hunch Captain Tower and maybe even the chief will be down pretty soon. They’re calling them now.”

A cold chill wiped away Reardon’s previous ebullience.

“What happened?”

“We just fished a stiff out of the bay—”

“Pop?”

“Not Pop,” Lundahl said, and bit back a yawn. It had been a long miserable graveyard shift. “Another poor bastard.”

Reardon felt ashamed of his relief. After all, life had probably been sweet to whoever the victim was, and his family would feel his loss as much as or more than they would feel Pop’s.

“Murdered?”

“Yeah. He looks bad. Somebody must have tried to get some information out of him using matches, and a candle, too, it looks like, because there were tallow stains, and what all. And then, when they either got what they were looking for, or when they got tired of playing games with him, it looks like they held his face under water until he just quit living.”

Reardon made a face. “Messy, huh?”

“Real messy.”

“Any identification?” Something else Lundahl had said suddenly struck Reardon. “And what’s this about Captain Tower and maybe Chief Boynton coming down at this hour? Just for some stranger fished out of the bay?”

“Well, that’s just the point,” Lundahl said wearily. “He ain’t exactly a stranger. There’re going to be a lot of questions asked, Lieutenant — a lot of questions! Because we just got through checking out the stiff’s identification, and according to the card, he wasn’t supposed to be getting himself drowned out in the bay. He was supposed to be upstairs under our protection. His name was Lazaretti.”