The Autumn Dead

Chapter 12

The fourth precinct was built back in the 1930s, when the then-Mayor had an architect for a son-in-law. A bad architect for a sonin-law. Which explains why Number Four looks like a cheesy papier-mâché set for a film set in mythical Baghdad. Built of concrete, it seems to be all minarets and spires and gargoyles- fanciful touches indeed for people named Mike O'Reilly and Milo Czmchek and Rufus Washington.

The interior of the Fourth resembles a big metro newspaper; desks butted up against each other, people running up and down the corridors between the desks, machines for coffee, sandwiches, pop, cigarettes, and newspapers lining the walls of the corridor leading to the rest rooms and the holding cells. Oh, yes, I should mention the para-bookmaking activities, too. At any given time, half the people in the Fourth, men and women alike, are laying down money on events of various descriptions, from the Cubs, Sox, Bears, to which local pols are finally going to get busted for (a) graft, (b) bestiality, or (c) general stupidity.

Somewhere in the welter of all this-the windows open wide to the spring and the cops daydreaming like fourth graders anxious to be outdoors-sat six-two Martin Edelman, my best friend and former partner. Today he was modeling one of his four Sears suits, the blue number, and one of the white shirts whose collar was blood-spattered from his shave this morning. (Even with a safety razor, he can commit atrocities Jack the Ripper could not have even conceived.) He has the sad blue eyes of a rabbi who has seen far too much of the world's nonsense and pettiness and cruelty, but then there is his smile, which is curiously innocent and open, if only occasionally on view. His brown toupee was on slightly crooked, but I saw no point in telling him. It is always on crooked.

A cop named Manning leaned in just as I started to put my hand on Edelman's shoulder. "You in for the Cubs?"

"How much?" Edelman said.

"Ten."

"Jeeze."

"Ten, Edelman. You won twenty last week. Maybe you'll win forty this week.

Edelman, taking out his wallet, said, "The way you hustle people, Manning, you should be an insurance salesman."

Manning said, "You forget, Martin. I was an insurance salesman."

"Oh, yeah."

"You got the Cubbies and two points," Manning said, and vanished.

Edelman started to go back to his typewriter-he does very well with two fingers, very well-when I said, "Someday one of the TV stations is going to do a story on all the betting cops do."

He turned around and showed me his smile. He always manages to make me feel as if seeing me is the most special thing that's happened to him in a week. And I always hope it is.

"Dwyer, hey."

"Hey, Martin."

We shook hands and I just looked at him. In some odd way he's my brother, and I knew this the day we first met years ago back at the Academy when neither of us could shinny up a rope worth a damn. These days, we even share the same problems-we both need to do exactly the same things: lose ten to fifteen pounds, use a few more quarts of Visine a week, and try to convince ourselves that the sky is not going to fall in within the next twenty minutes.

"You hear Manning? I won forty last week." He sounded young saying it and it made me feel good.

"So what did you do with it?"

"You really want to know?"

"Yeah."

"Bought Parkhurst from Number Three a lunch I've owed him for a while, got some new Odor Eaters, bought a new band for my Timex, and then gave the rest of it to my son for a ball glove."

"Nothing's changed."

"Huh?"

"All the excitement."

He laughed. "Asshole." Then he picked up a pink phone slip and said, "I got a note this morning that you were going to be calling me about an autopsy."

"Right."

"Well, I've got some preliminary results." His fingers searched through several layers of paper and then he came up with it. "This is just what I took over the phone. You read my writing okay?"

"I'll try." Edelman's handwriting is a form of communication that would stump even the people who translate cuneiform.

So I looked at it and said, "Natural causes?"

"Yeah. You think it was going to be something else."

"I had some suspicions along those lines."

"Sorry."

"Librium and alcohol."

"Kills a lot of people."

"They going to rule it a suicide?"

He shrugged. "You know how it goes. Most of the time they try to spare the families and just say 'natural causes.' From what I gather, there was no note and the officer's report said you didn't find her particularly upset or depressed."

"I guess not."

"Sorry."

"Yeah."

"You don't believe it?"

"I'm not sure yet." Then I remembered the tablet in my back pocket. "How about running a number for me?"

"This got anything to do with Karen Lane?"

"Probably."

"Probably." He smiled. "Probably." He held out his hand and tore off the sheet of paper with the number on it and then turned around and picked up the phone.

While we were waiting, he said, "I assume if there's anything of interest in this for the police, you'll let us know right away."

"Of course."

"Why don't I believe you?" he said and started doodling on a lined pad. The phone still cupped to his ear, he said, "You and Donna set a date yet?"

"Not yet."

"I read this article on stress the other day. In the paper."

"I read it, too." Edelman wants me to get married.

"Married people have less stress," he said. And then into the phone, "Okay, ready."

He wrote it down, name and address, and then hung up and handed me the paper. "So how about it?"

"How about what?"

"She's a wonderful woman and I can tell just by looking at her that she wants to get married."

I straightened his toupee for him and said, "We'll call you the minute we decide, Edelman. The minute."

I turned to leave and he said, "That license number I ran through for you. You into anything I should know about?"

"Not yet, Martin. Not yet."

Then I left the station and went to look up a Mrs. Patti Slater.