Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

James Holding Still a Cop

Lieutenant Randall telephoned me on Tuesday, catching me in my cell-sized office at the public library just after I’d finished lunch.

“Hal?” he said. “How come you’re not out playing patty-cake with the book borrowers?” Randall still resents my leaving the police department to become a library detective — what he calls a “sissy cop.” Nowadays my assignments involve nothing more dangerous than tracing stolen and overdue books for the public library.

I said, “Even a library cop has to eat, Lieutenant. What’s on your mind?”

“Same old thing. Murder.”

“I haven’t killed anyone for over a week,” I said.

His voice took on a definite chill. “Somebody killed a young fellow we took out of the river this morning. Shot him through the head. And tortured him beforehand.”

“Sorry,” I said. I’d forgotten how grim it was to be a Homicide cop. “Tortured, did you say?”

“Yeah. Cigar burns all over him. I need information, Hal.”

“About what?”

“You ever heard of The Damion Complex?”

“Sure. It’s the title of a spy novel published last year.”

“I thought it might be a book.” There was satisfaction in Randall’s voice now. “Next question: you have that book in the public library?”

“Of course. Couple of copies probably.”

“Do they have different numbers or something to tell them apart?”

“Yes, they do. Why?”

“Find out for me if one of your library copies of The Damion Complex has this number on it, will you?” He paused and I could hear paper rustling. “ES4187.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll get back to you in ten minutes.” Then, struck by something familiar about the number, I said, “No, wait, hold it a minute, Lieutenant.”

I pulled out of my desk drawer the list of overdue library books I’d received the previous morning and checked it hurriedly. “Bingo,” I said into the phone. “I picked up that book with that very number yesterday morning. How about that? Do you want it?”

“I want it.”

“For what?”

“Evidence, maybe.”

“In your torture-murder case?”

He lost patience. “Look, just get hold of the book for me, Hal. I’ll tell you about it when I pick it up, okay?”

“Okay, Lieutenant. When?”

“Ten minutes.” He sounded eager.

I hung up and called Ellen on the checkout desk. “Listen, sweetheart,” I said to her because it makes her mad to be called sweetheart and she s extremely attractive when she’s mad, “can you find me The Damion Complex, copy number ES4187? I brought it in yesterday among the overdues.”

“The Damion Complex?” She took down the number. “I’ll call you back, Hal.” She didn’t sound a bit mad. Maybe she was softening up at last. I’d asked her to marry me seventeen times in the last six months, but she was still making up her mind.

In two minutes she called me back. “It’s out again,” she reported. “It went out on card number 3888 yesterday after you brought it in.”

Lieutenant Randall was going to love that. “Who is card number 3888?”

“A Miss Oradell Murphy.”

“Address?”

She gave it to me, an apartment on Leigh Street.

“Telephone number?”

“I thought you might be able to look that up yourself.” She was tart. “I’m busy out here.”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said. “Will you marry me?”

“Not now. I told you I’m busy.” She hung up. But she did it more gently than usual, it seemed to me. She was softening up. My spirits lifted.

Lieutenant Randall arrived in less than the promised ten minutes. “Where is it?” he asked, fixing me with his cat stare. He seemed too big to fit into my office. “You got it for me?”

I shook my head. “It went out again yesterday. Sorry.”

He grunted in disappointment, took a look at my spindly visitor’s chair, and decided to remain standing. “Who borrowed it?”

I told him Miss Oradell Murphy, Apartment 3A at the Harrington Arms on Leigh Street.

“Thanks.” He tipped a hand and turned to leave.

“Wait a minute. Where you going, Lieutenant?”

“To get the book.”

“Those apartments at Harrington Arms are efficiencies,” I said. “Mostly occupied by single working women. So maybe Miss Murphy won’t be home right now. Why not call first?”

He nodded. I picked up my phone and gave our switchboard girl Miss Murphy’s telephone number. Randall fidgeted nervously.

“No answer,” the switchboard reported.

I grinned at Randall. “See? Nobody home.”

“I need that book.” Randall sank into the spindly visitor’s chair and sighed in frustration.

“You were going to tell me why.”

“Here’s why.” He fished a damp crumpled bit of paper out of an envelope he took from his pocket. I reached for it. He held it away. “Don’t touch it,” he said. “We found it on the kid we pulled from the river this morning. It’s the only damn thing we did find on him. No wallet, no money, no identification, no clothing labels, no nothing. Except for this he was plucked as clean as a chicken. We figure it was overlooked. It was in the bottom of his shirt pocket.”

“What’s it say?” I could see water-smeared writing.

He grinned unexpectedly, although his yellow eyes didn’t seem to realize that the rest of his face was smiling. “It says: PL Damion Complex ES4187.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Great bit of deduction, Lieutenant,” I said. “You figured the PL for Public Library?”

“All by myself.”

“So what’s it mean?”

“How do I know till I get the damn book?” He sat erect and went on briskly, “Who had the book before Miss Murphy?”

I consulted my overdue list from the day before. “Gregory Hazzard. Desk clerk at the Starlight Motel on City Line. I picked up seven books and fines from him yesterday.”

The Lieutenant was silent for a moment. Then, “Give Miss Murphy another try, will you?”

She still didn’t answer her phone.

Randall stood up. My chair creaked when he removed his weight. “Let’s go see this guy Hazzard.”

“Me, too?”

“You, too.” He gave me the fleeting grin again. “You’re mixed up in this, son.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Your library owns the book. And you belong to the library. So move your tail.”

Gregory Hazzard was surprised to see me again so soon. He was a middle-aged skeleton, with a couple of pounds of skin and gristle fitted over his bones so tightly that he looked like the object of an anatomy lesson. His clothes hung on him — snappy men’s wear on a scarecrow. “You got all my overdue books yesterday,” he greeted me.

”I know, Mr. Hazzard. But my friend here wants to ask you about one of them.”

“Who’s your friend?” He squinted at Randall.

“Lieutenant Randall, City Police.”

Hazzard blinked. “Another cop? We went all through that with the boys from your robbery detail day before yesterday.”

Randall’s eyes flickered. Otherwise he didn’t change expression. “I’m not here about that. I’m interested in one of your library books.”

“Which one?”

“The Damion Complex.”

Hazzard bobbed his skull on his pipestem neck. “That one. Just a so-so yam. You can find better spy stories in your newspaper.”

Randall ignored that. “You live here in the motel, Mr. Hazzard?”

“No. With my sister down the street a ways, in a duplex.”

“This is your address on the library records, I broke in. The Starlight Motel.”

“Sure. Because this is where I read all the books I borrow. And where I work.”

“Don’t you ever take library books home?” Randall asked.

“No. I leave ’em here, right at this end of the desk, out of the way. I read ’em during slack times, you know? When I finish them I take em back to the library and get another batch. I’m a fast reader.”

“But your library books were overdue. If you’re such a fast reader, how come?”

“He was sick for three weeks,” I told Randall. “Only got back to work Saturday.”

The Lieutenant’s lips tightened and I knew from old experience that he wanted me to shut up. “That right?” he asked Hazzard. “You were sick?”

“As a dog. Thought I was dying. So’d my sister. That’s why my books were overdue.”

“They were here on the desk all the time you were sick?”

“Right. Cost me a pretty penny in fines, too, I must say. Hey, Mr. Johnson?” I laughed. “Big deal. Two ninety-four, wasn’t it?”

He chuckled so hard I thought I could hear his bones rattle. “Cheapest pleasure we got left, free books from the public library.” He sobered suddenly. “What’s so important about The Damion Complex, Lieutenant?”

“Wish I knew.” Randall signaled me with his eyes. “Thanks, Mr. Hazzard, you’ve been helpful. We’ll be in touch.” He led the way out to the police car.

On the way back to town he turned aside ten blocks and drove to the Harrington Arms Apartments on Leigh Street. “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” he said as he pulled up at the curb. “If Murphy’s home, get the book from her, Hal, okay? No need to mention the police.”

A comely young lady, half out of a nurse’s white uniform and evidently just home from work, answered my ring at Apartment 3A. “Yes?” she said, hiding her dishabille by standing behind the door and peering around its edge.

“Miss Oradell Murphy?”

“Yes.” She had a fetching way of raising her eyebrows.

I showed her my ID card and gave her a cock-and-bull story about The Damion Complex having been issued to her yesterday by mistake. “The book should have been destroyed,” I said, “because the previous borrower read it while she was ill with an infectious disease.”

“Oh,” Miss Murphy said. She gave me the book without further questions.

When I returned to the police car Lieutenant Randall said, “Gimme,” and took the book from me, handling it with a finicky delicacy that seemed odd in such a big man. By his tightening lips I could follow his growing frustration as he examined The Damion Complex. For it certainly seemed to be just an ordinary copy of another ordinary book from the public library. The library name was stamped on it in the proper places. Identification number ES4187. Card pocket, with regulation date card, inside the front cover. Nothing concealed between its pages, not even a pressed forget-me-not.

“What the hell?” the Lieutenant grunted.

“Code message?” I suggested.

He was contemptuous. “Code message? You mean certain words off certain pages? In that case why was this particular copy specified — number ES4187? Any copy would do.”

“Unless the message is in the book itself. In invisible ink? Or indicated by pin pricks over certain words?” I showed my teeth at him. “After all, it’s a spy novel.”

We went over the book carefully twice before we found the negative. And no wonder. It was very small — no more than half an inch or maybe five-eighths — and shoved deep in the pocket inside the front cover, behind the date card.

Randall held it up to the light. “Too small to make out what it is,” I said. “We need a magnifying glass.”

“Hell with that.” Randall threw his car into gear. “I’ll get Jerry to make me a blowup.” Jerry is the police photographer. “I’ll drop you off at the library.”

“Oh, no, Lieutenant, I’m mixed up in this. You said so yourself. I’m sticking until I see what’s on that negative.” He grunted.

Half an hour later I was in Randall’s office at headquarters when the police photographer came in and threw a black-and-white 3½-inch by 4½-inch print on the Lieutenant’s desk. Randall allowed me to look over his shoulder as he examined it.

Its quality was poor. It was grainy from enlargement, and the images were slightly blurred, as though the camera had been moved just as the picture was snapped. But it was plain enough so that you could make out two men sitting facing each other across a desk. One was facing the camera directly; the other showed only as part of a rear-view silhouette — head, right shoulder, right arm.

The right arm, however, extended into the light on the desk top and could be seen quite clearly. It was lifting from an open briefcase on the desk a transparent bag of white powder, about the size of a pound of sugar. The briefcase contained three more similar bags. The man who was full face to the camera was reaching out a hand to accept the bag of white powder.

Lieutenant Randall said nothing for what seemed a long time. Then all he did was grunt noncommittally.

I said, “Heroin, Lieutenant?”

“Could be.”

“Big delivery. Who’s the guy making the buy? Do you know?”

He shrugged. “We’ll find out.”

“When you make him, you’ll have your murderer. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

He shrugged again. “How do you read it, Hal?”

“Easy. The kid you pulled from the river got this picture somehow, decided to cut himself in by a little blackmail, and got killed for his pains.”

“And tortured. Why tortured?” Randall was just using me as a sounding board.

“To force him to tell where the negative was hidden? He wouldn’t have taken the negative with him when he braced the dope peddler.”

“Hell of a funny place to hide a negative,” Randall said. “You got any ideas about that?”

I went around Randall’s desk and sat down. “I can guess. The kid sets up his blackmail meeting with the dope peddler, starts out with both the negative and a print of it, like this one, to keep his date. At the last minute he has second thoughts about carrying the negative with him.”

“Where’s he starting out from?” Randall squeezed his hands together.

“The Starlight Motel. Where else?”

“Go on.”

“So maybe he decides to leave the negative in the motel safe and stops at the desk in the lobby to do so. But Hazzard is in the can, maybe. Or has stepped out to the restaurant for coffee. The kid has no time to waste. So he shoves the little negative into one of Hazzard’s library books temporarily, making a quick note of the book title and library number so he can find it again. You found the note in his shirt pocket. How’s that sound?”

Randall gave me his half grin and said, “So long, Hal. Thanks for helping.”

I stood up. “I need a ride to the library. You’ve wasted my whole afternoon. You going to keep my library book?”

“For a while. But I’ll be in touch.”

“You’d better be. Unless you want to pay a big overdue fine.”

It was the following evening before I heard any more from Lieutenant Randall. He telephoned me at home. “Catch any big bad book thieves today, Hal?” he began in a friendly voice.

“No. You catch any murderers?”

“Not yet. But I’m working on it.”

I laughed. “You’re calling to report progress, is that it?”

“That’s it.” He was as bland as milk.

“Proceed,” I said.

“We found out who the murdered kid was.”

“Who?”

“A reporter named Joel Homer from Cedar Falls. Worked for the Cedar Falls Herald. The editor tells me Homer was working on a special assignment the last few weeks. Trying to crack open a story on dope in the Tri-Cities.”

“Oho. Then it is dope in the picture?”

“Reasonable to think so, anyway.”

“How’d you find out about the kid? The Starlight Motel?”

“Yeah. Your friend Hazzard, the desk clerk, identified him for us. Remembered checking him into Room 18 on Saturday morning. His overnight bag was still in the room and his car in the parking lot.”

“Well, it’s nice to know who got killed,” I said, “but you always told me you’d rather know who did the killing. Find out who the guy in the picture is?”

“He runs a ratty café on the river in Overbrook, just out of town. Name of Williams.”

“Did you tic up the robbery squeal Hazzard mentioned when we were out there yesterday?”

“Could be. One man, masked, held up the night clerk, got him to open the office safe, and cleaned it out. Nothing much in it, matter of fact — hundred bucks or so.”

“Looking for that little negative, you think?”

“Possibly, yeah.”

“Why don’t you nail this Williams and find out?”

“On the strength of that picture?” Randall said. “Uh, uh. That was enough to put him in a killing mood, maybe, but it’s certainly not enough to convict him of murder. He could be buying a pound of sugar. No, I’m going to be sure of him before I take him.”

“How do you figure to make sure of him, for God’s sake?”

I shouldn’t have asked that, because as a result I found myself, two hours later, sitting across that same desk — the one in the snapshot — from Mr. Williams, suspected murderer. We were in a sizable back room in Williams’ café in Overbrook. A window at the side of the room was open, but the cool weed-scented breeze off the river didn’t keep me from sweating.

“You said on the phone you thought I might be interested in a snapshot you found,” Williams said. He was partially bald. Heavy black eyebrows met over his nose. The eyes under them looked like brown agate marbles in milk. He was smoking a fat cigar.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Why?”

“I figured it could get you in trouble in certain quarters, that’s all.”

He blew smoke. “What do you mean by that?”

“It’s actually a picture of you buying heroin across this desk right here. Or maybe selling it.”

“Well, well,” he said, “that’s interesting all right. If true.” He was either calm and cool or trying hard to appear so.

“It’s true,” I said. “You’re very plain in the picture. So’s the heroin.” I gave him the tentative smile of a timid, frightened man. It wasn’t hard to do, because I felt both timid and frightened.

“Where is this picture of yours?” Williams asked.

“Right here.” I handed him the print Lieutenant Randall had given me.

He looked at it without any change of expression I could see. Finally he took another drag on his cigar. “This guy does resemble me a little. But how did you happen to know that?”

I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “I been in your café lots of times. I recognized you.”

He studied the print. “You’re right about one thing. This picture might be misunderstood. So maybe we can deal. What I can’t understand is where you found the damn thing.”

“In a book I borrowed from the public library.”

“A book?” He halted his cigar in midair, startled.

“Yes. A spy novel. I dropped the book accidentally and this picture fell out of the inside card pocket.” I put my hand into my jacket pocket and touched the butt of the pistol that Randall had issued me for the occasion. I needed comfort.

“You found this print in a book?”

“Not this print, no. I made it myself out of curiosity. I’m kind of an amateur photographer, see? When I found what I had, I thought maybe you might be interested, that’s all. Are you?”

“How many prints did you make?”

“Just the one.”

“And where’s the negative?”

“I’ve got it, don’t worry.”

“With you?”

“You think I’m nuts?” I said defensively. I started a hand toward my hip pocket, then jerked it back nervously.

Mr. Williams smiled and blew cigar smoke. “What do you think might be a fair price?” he asked.

I swallowed. “Would twenty thousand dollars be too much?”

His eyes changed from brown marbles to white slits. “That’s pretty steep.”

“But you’ll pay it?” I tried to put a touch of triumph into my expression.

“Fifteen. When you turn over the negative to me.”

“Okay,” I said, sighing with relief. “How long will it take you to get the money?”

“No problem. I’ve got it right here when you’re ready to deal.” His eyes went to a small safe in a corner of the room. Maybe the heroin was there, too, I thought.

“Hey!” I said. “That’s great, Mr. Williams! Because I’ve got the negative here, too. I was only kidding before.” I fitted my right hand around the gun butt in my pocket. With my left I pulled out my wallet and threw it on the desk between us.

“In here?” Williams said, opening the wallet.

“In the little pocket.”

He found the tiny negative at once.

He took a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and used it to look at the negative against the ceiling light. Then he nodded, satisfied. He raised his voice a little and said, “Okay, Otto.”

Otto? I heard a door behind me scrape over the rug as it was thrust open. Turning in my chair, I saw a big man emerge from a closet and step toward me. My eyes went instantly to the gun in his hand. It was fitted with a silencer, and oddly, the man’s right middle finger was curled around the trigger. Then I saw why. The tip of his right index finger was missing. The muzzle of the gun looked as big and dark as Mammoth Cave to me.

“He’s all yours, Otto,” Williams said. “I’ve got the negative. No wonder you couldn’t find it in the motel safe. The crazy kid hid it in a library book.”

“I heard,” Otto said flatly.

I still had my hand in my pocket touching the pistol, but I realized I didn’t have a chance of beating Otto to a shot, even if I shot through my pocket. I stood up very slowly and faced Otto. He stopped far enough away from me to be just out of reach.

Williams said, “No blood in here this time, Otto. Take him out back. Don’t forget his wallet and labels. And it won’t hurt to spoil his face a little before you put him in the river. He’s local.”

Otto kept his eyes on me. They were paler than his skin. He nodded. “I’ll handle it.”

“Right.” Williams started for the door that led to his café kitchen, giving me an utterly indifferent look as he went by. “So long, smart boy,” he said. He went through the door and closed it behind him.

Otto cut his eyes to the left to make sure Williams had closed the door tight. I used that split second to dive headfirst over Williams’ desk, my hand still in my pocket on my gun. I lit on the floor behind the desk with a painful thump and Williams’ desk chair, which I’d overturned in my plunge, came crashing down on top of me.

From the open window at the side of the room a new voice said conversationally, “Drop the gun, Otto.”

Apparently Otto didn’t drop it fast enough because Lieutenant Randall shot it out of his hand before climbing through the window into the room. Two uniformed cops followed him.

Later, over a pizza and beer in the Trocadero All-Night Diner, Randall said, “We could have taken Williams before. The Narc Squad has known for some time he’s a peddler. But we didn’t know who was supplying him.”

I said stiffly, “I thought I was supposed to be trying to hang a murder on him. How did that Otto character get into the act?”

“After we set up your meeting with Williams, he phoned Otto to come over to his café and take care of another would-be blackmailer.”

“Are you telling me you didn’t think Williams was the killer?”

Randall shook his head, looking slightly sheepish. “I was pretty sure Williams wouldn’t risk Murder One. Not when he had a headlock on somebody who’d do it for him.”

“Like Otto?”

“Like Otto.”

“Well, just who the hell is Otto?”

“He’s the other man in the snapshot with Williams.”

Something in the way he said it made me ask him, “You mean you knew who he was before you asked me to go through that charade tonight?”

“Sure. I recognized him in the picture.”

I stopped chewing my pizza and stared at him. I was dumfounded, as they say. “Are you nuts?” I said with my mouth full. “The picture just showed part of a silhouette. From behind, at that. Unrecognizable.”

“You didn’t look close enough.” Randall gulped beer. “His right hand showed in the picture plain. With the end of his right index finger gone.”

“But how could you recognize a man from that?”

“Easy. Otto Schmidt of our Narcotics Squad is missing the end of his right index finger. Had it shot off by a junkie in a raid.”

“There are maybe a hundred guys around with fingers like that. You must have had more to go on than that, Lieutenant.”

“I did. The heroin.”

“You recognized that, too?” I was sarcastic.

“Sure. It was the talk of the department a week ago, Hal.”

“What was?”

“The heroin. Somebody stole it right out of the Narc Squad’s own safe at headquarters.” He laughed aloud. “Can you believe it? Two kilos, packaged in four bags, just like in the picture.”

I said, “How come it wasn’t in the news?”

“You know why. It would make us look like fools.”

“Anyway, one bag of heroin looks just like every other,” I said, unconvinced.

“You didn’t see the big blowup I had made of that picture,” the lieutenant said. “A little tag on one of the bags came out real clear. You could read it.”

All at once I felt very tired. “Don’t tell me,” I said.

He told me anyway, smiling. “It said: Confiscated, such and such a date, such and such a raid, by the Grandhaven Police Department. That’s us, Hal. Remember?”

I sighed. “So you’ve turned up another crooked cop,” I said. “Believe me, I’m glad I’m out of the business, Lieutenant.”

“You’re not out of it.” Randall’s voice roughened with some emotion I couldn’t put a name to. “You’re still a cop, Hal.”

“I’m an employee of the Grandhaven Public Library.”

“Library fuzz. But still a cop.”

I shook my head.

“You helped me take a killer tonight, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Because you fed me a lot of jazz about needing somebody who didn’t smell of cop. Somebody who knew the score but could act the part of a timid greedy citizen trying his hand at blackmail for the first time.”

“Otto Schmidt’s a city cop. If I’d sent another city cop in there tonight, Otto would have recognized him immediately. That’s why I asked you to go.”

“You could have told me the facts.”

He shook his head. “Why? I thought you’d do better without knowing. And you did. The point is, though, that you did it. Helped me nail a killer at considerable risk to yourself. Even if the killer wasn’t the one you thought. You didn’t do it just for kicks, did you? Or because we found the negative in your library book, for God’s sake?”

I shrugged and stood up to leave.

“So you see what I mean?” Lieutenant Randall said. “You’re still a cop.” He grinned at me. “I’ll get the check, Hal. And thanks for the help.”

I left without even saying good night. I could feel his yellow eyes on my back all the way out of the diner.