The Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 15 Classic Crime & Mystery Stories

Nice Guy

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1969.

We got the case instead of the Robbery Squad, because when somebody gets hurt or killed during a holdup, it’s Homicide’s baby. The place was a small jewelry store in the eight hundred block of Franklin Avenue. All the shops in that area are small, mostly one- or two-man businesses. The jewelry store was bracketed by a pawnshop on one side of it and a one-man barbershop on the other.

Gilt lettering on the plate-glass window read: Bruer and Benjamin, Jewelers. A squad car was parked in front and a muscular young cop in uniform stood on the sidewalk before the shop door. A few bystanders were clustered before the pawnshop and barbershop, but the area in front of the jewelry store had been cleared.

I didn’t recognize the cop, but he knew me. He touched his cap, said, “Hi, Sergeant,” and moved aside to let me pass.

Inside, the store was long and narrow, with display cases on either side and with only about a six-foot-wide aisle between them. There was another short display case at the rear of the room, with an open door beyond it.

Another uniformed cop, this one of about my vintage, was inside the store. I knew him. He was a twenty-year veteran named Phil Ritter, and also a sergeant.

I said, “Morning, Phil.”

He said, “How are you, Sod?” then jerked his thumb toward the rear display ease. “Victim’s lying back there.”

I nodded, then looked at the other occupant of the place, a mousy little man of about sixty who stood nearby with an expression of numbed shock on his face.

“Witness,” Ritter said briefly.

I nodded again and continued on back to the rear of the place. There was a space on either side of the rear counter. I walked behind it to look down at the still figure on the floor. The man lay on his left side with his knees drawn up in a fetal position. He was lean and thin-faced, with long sideburns and a hairline mustache which made him resemble the villain of some mid-Victorian melodrama. I guessed he had been in his late forties.

His right arm blocked the view of his chest, but a thin trickle of blood running from beneath the arm indicated that he had a hole in it. There wasn’t much blood, suggesting he had died almost instantly.

I came back around the counter and asked Sergeant Ritter, “Doctor look at him?”

“Just enough to verify he was dead. A Dr. Vaughan in the next block. Mr. Bruer here called him.” He nodded toward the little man. “He had to go back to his office, but he said you could contact him there if you want. He also said to tell you he didn’t move the body.”

“Good.”

I looked at the little man. He was only about five feet six and weighed possibly a hundred and twenty-five pounds. He had thinning gray hair, wore steel-rimmed glasses and the expression of a frightened rabbit.

I’ve been accused of intimidating witnesses with my sour manner. This one looked so easily intimidated that I deliberately made my voice as pleasant as possible when I said, “I’m Sergeant Sod Harris of the Homicide Squad. Your name is Bruer?”

“Yes, sir,” he said in a shaky voice. “Fred Bruer. I’m one of the partners in the jewelry store.”

“He was the other one?” I asked, nodding toward the rear.

“Yes, sir. Andrew Benjamin. This is awful. We’ve been business partners for ten years.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “I know this has been a shock to you, Mr. Bruer, but we’ll do the best we can to get the person who killed your partner. You were here when it happened?”

“Yes, sir. It was me he held up. I was out front here and Andy was back in the workshop. I had just made up our weekly bank deposit — I always go to the bank on Friday morning — and was just drawing the strings of the leather bag I carry the deposit in, when this fellow came in and pulled a gun on me. I guess he must have been watching us for some time and knew our routine. Casing, they call it, don’t they?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “What makes you think he had cased you?”

“He seemed to know what was in the bag, because he said, ‘I’ll take that, mister.’ I gave it to him without argument. Then he came behind the counter where I was, emptied the register there into the bag, then went behind the other counter and did the same with that register.”

I glanced both ways and saw identical cash registers centered against the walls behind each counter. “Which counter were you behind?” I asked.

He pointed to the one to the right as you faced the door. “I can tell you exactly how much he got, Sergeant.”

“Oh?” I said. “How?”

“I have a duplicate deposit slip for the cash and checks that were in the bag, and there was exactly fifty dollars in each register in addition to that. That’s the change we start off with in each register, and we hadn’t yet had a customer. We’d only been open for business about thirty seconds when the bandit walked in. I always make up the deposit before we unlock the door Friday mornings.”

“I see. Well, you can hold the figure for the moment. First, get on with what happened. How’d he happen to shoot your partner?”

“I think he just got rattled. He was backing toward the door with the deposit bag in his hand when Andy suddenly appeared from the back room. Andy didn’t even know a holdup was in progress. I imagine he came out to take over the front because he knew I would be leaving for the bank at any minute. But he opened the workshop door and stepped out so abruptly, he startled the bandit. The man shot him and fled.”

Typical, I thought sourly. It’s that kind of skittishness that makes cops regard armed robbers as the most dangerous of all criminals. They’re all potential murderers.

I asked, “What did this jerk look like?”

“He was about forty years old and kind of long and lanky. I would guess about six feet tall and a hundred and seventy-five pounds. He had a thin white scar running from the left corner of his mouth clear to the lobe of his left ear, and he had a large, hairy mole here.” He touched the center of his right cheek. “His complexion was dark, like a gypsy’s, he had straight, black, rather greasy hair and a rather large hooked nose. I would know him again anywhere.”

“I guess you would,” I said, surprised by the detail of the description. Witnesses are seldom so observant. “How was he dressed?”

“In tan slacks, a tan leather jacket and a tan felt hat with the brim turned down in front and up in back. And oh, yes, on the back of the hand he held the gun in—” He paused to consider, then said with an air of surprised recollection, “His left hand, now that I think of it — there was the tattoo of a blue snake coiled around a red heart.”

“You are observant,” I said, then gave Phil Ritter an inquiring glance.

“We put the description on the air soon as we got here,” Ritter said. “Mr. Bruer didn’t mention the tattoo or that the bandit was left-handed before, though.”

“Better go radio in a supplementary report,” I suggested. “Maybe this one will be easier than the run-of-the-mill. The guy certainly ought to be easy to identify.”

I was beginning to feel a lot more enthusiastic about this case than I had when the lieutenant sent me out on it. Generally you find almost nothing to work on, but here we had Fred Bruer’s excellent description of the bandit.

According to figures compiled by the FBI, eighty percent of the homicides in the United States are committed by relatives, friends or acquaintances of the victims, which gives you something to work on, but in a typical stickup kill, some trigger-happy punk puts a bullet in a store clerk or customer he never saw before in his life. Most times your only clue is a physical description, usually vague and, if there is more than one witness, maybe contradictory. Too, you can almost bank on it that the killer was smart enough to drop the gun off some bridge into deep water.

While Phil Ritter was outside radioing in the additions to the bandit’s description, I asked Bruer if he had noticed what kind of gun the robber used. He said it was a blue steel revolver, but he couldn’t judge what caliber because he wasn’t very familiar with guns.

I asked him if the bandit had touched anything which might have left fingerprints.

“The two cash registers,” Bruer said. “He punched the no-sale button on each.”

Ritter came back in, trailed by Art Ward of the crime lab, who was carrying his field kit and a camera.

“Morning, Sod,” Ward greeted me. “What sort of gruesome chore do you have for me this time?”

“Behind the rear counter,” I said, jerking a thumb that way. “Then dust the two cash registers for prints, with particular attention to the no-sale buttons.”

“Sure,” Art said.

He set down his field lab kit and carried his camera to the rear of the store. While he was taking pictures of the corpse from various angles, I checked the back room. It was a small workshop for watch and jewelry repairing. Beyond it was a bolted and locked rear door with a key in the inside lock. I unbolted it, unlocked it, pushed open the door and peered out into an alley lined with trash cans behind the various small businesses facing Franklin Avenue.

I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular. Over the years I had just gotten in the habit of being thoroughly nosy. I closed the door again and relocked and re-bolted it.

Back in the main room I asked Sergeant Ritter if he had turned up any other witnesses from among nearby merchants or clerks before I got there.

“The barber just west of here and the pawnbroker on the other side both think they heard the shot,” Ritter said. “As usual, they thought it was just a backfire, and didn’t even look outdoors. Nobody came to investigate until our squad car got here, but that brought out a curious crowd. Nobody we talked to but the two I mentioned heard or saw anything, but we didn’t go door-to-door. We just talked to people who gathered around.”

I said, “While I’m checking out this barber and pawnbroker, how about you hitting all the places on both sides of the street in this block to see if anyone spotted the bandit either arriving or leaving here?”

Ritter shrugged. “Sure, Sod.”

I called to Art Ward that I would be back shortly and walked out with Sergeant Ritter. Ritter paused to talk to his young partner for a moment, and I went to the pawnshop next door.

The proprietor, who was alone, was a benign looking man of about seventy named Max Jacobs. He couldn’t add anything to what he had already told Phil Ritter except that he placed the time he had heard what he took to be a truck backfire at exactly a minute after nine. He explained that his twenty-year-old nephew, who worked for him, hadn’t showed up for work, and the old man kept checking the clock to see how late he was. It was now nearly ten, and the boy still had neither appeared nor phoned in, and his home phone didn’t answer.

“What’s your nephew’s name?” I asked.

“Herman. Herman Jacobs. He’s my brother’s boy.”

“Mr. Bruer next door know him?”

Jacobs looked puzzled. “Of course. Herman’s worked for me ever since he got out of high school.”

That was a silly tack to take anyway, I realized. The jeweler had described the bandit as around forty, and Jacobs’ nephew was only half that age.

“Following the shot, you didn’t see or hear anything at all?” I asked. “Like somebody running past your front window, for instance?”

The elderly pawnbroker shook his head. “I wasn’t looking that way. When I wasn’t watching the clock, I was trying to phone Herman, that good-for-nothing bum.” There didn’t seem to be any more I could get out of him. I thanked him and headed for the door.

“How’s poor Fred taking it?” he asked to my back.

Pausing, I turned around. “Mr. Bruer, you mean? He’s still a bit shaken up.”

Jacobs sighed. “Such a nice man. Always doing good for people. Ask anybody in the neighborhood, nobody will tell you a thing against Fred Bruer. A man with a real heart.”

“That so?” I said.

“Only thing is, he’s such an easy touch. Gives credit to anybody. Now, Mr. Benjamin was another proposition entirely. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but there was a cold fish.”

It intrigued me that he was on a first-name basis with the surviving jewelry-store proprietor, but referred to the deceased younger partner as Mr. Benjamin. Perhaps he hadn’t known the younger man as long. I decided to ask. “Have you known Mr. Bruer longer than Mr. Benjamin?”

He looked surprised. “No, of course not. They opened for business together next door about ten years back. I met them both the same day.”

“But you were on friendlier terms with Mr. Bruer, was that it?”

“Now how did you know that?” he inquired with rather flattering admiration for my deductive ability. “Yes, as a matter of fact. But everybody’s a friend of Fred. Nobody liked Mr. Benjamin very much.”

“What was the matter with him?” I asked.

“He was a vindictive man. When he had a little spat with somebody, he was never satisfied just to forget it afterward. He had to have his revenge — like his trouble with Amelio Lapaglia, the barber on the other side of the jewelry shop. Last time haircut prices went up, Mr. Benjamin refused to pay, they had an argument and Amelio threatened to have him arrested. Mr. Benjamin finally paid, but he wasn’t content just to stop going there for haircuts after that. He did things like phoning the police that Amelio was over-parked, and the health department to complain that he had no lid on his garbage can out back. Actually I think Mr. Benjamin stole the lid, but Amelio got fined for violating the health laws.”

I made a face. “One of those. I’ve had that kind of neighbor.”

“I don’t think even Fred really liked him, although he was always making excuses for him. I doubt their partnership would have lasted so long if they hadn’t been brothers-in-law,” he added matter-of-factly.

I gave him a surprised look. “They were brothers-in-law?”

“Sure. Mr. Benjamin is — was married to Fred’s baby sister. She’s not a baby now, of course. She’s about forty, but she’s twenty-one years younger than Fred. She was just an infant when their parents died, and he raised her. She’s more like a daughter to him than a sister. He never married himself, so Paula and her two kids are all the family he has. He’s absolutely crazy about the baby.”

“The baby?”

“Paula had another baby just a couple of years ago. She also has a boy around twenty in the army.” The phone at the rear of the pawnshop rang. As Mr. Jacobs went to answer it, I wondered if anyone had bothered to phone the widow that she was a widow.

The pawnbroker lifted the phone and said, “Jacobs’ Small Loans.” After a pause his voice raised in pitch and he said, “Where are you, and what’s your excuse this time?” There was another pause, then, “That’s supposed to be an excuse? You get here fast as you can! You hear?”

He slammed down the phone and came back to where I stood near the door. “My nephew,” he said in an indignant tone. “He stayed overnight with a friend and overslept, he says. More likely he was in an all-night poker game and just got home. Good for nothing, he’ll be, all day.”

I made a sympathetic noise, thanked him again and left.

The young cop was still guarding the entrance to the jewelry store when I went by, but the crowd of curious onlookers had thinned considerably. It wouldn’t disperse completely until the body was carried away, though, I knew. There are always a few morbid people in every crowd who will hang around forever on the chance of seeing a corpse.

Down near the end of the block on this side of the street I spotted Phil Ritter coming from one shop and entering another. At his apparent rate of progress it looked as though it wouldn’t take him long to finish both sides.

Amelio Lapaglia was cutting a man’s hair all the time I talked to him. He had been cutting hair when he heard what he assumed was a backfire too, he said. He hadn’t noticed the time, but it had to be just after nine, because he had just opened for business and had just started on his first customer.

His customer must have heard the shot too, he said in answer to my question, but neither of them had mentioned it.

“Aroun’ here trucks go by all day long,” he said. “You hear bang like a gun maybe two, three times a day.”

He hadn’t noticed anyone pass his window immediately after the shot, he said, but then he had been concentrating on cutting hair.

I didn’t bother to ask him about his feud with the dead man, because it had no bearing on the case. He certainly hadn’t been the bandit.

When I got back to the jewelry store, Art Ward had finished both his picture taking and his dusting of the cash registers. He reported there were no fingerprints on either register good enough to lift, which didn’t surprise me.

I told the lab technician he could go, then went back to give the corpse a more detailed examination than I had before. Aside from discovering that the bullet hole was squarely in the center of his chest, I didn’t learn anything new from my examination.

Then I asked Bruer for the duplicate of his bank deposit slip. After adding the hundred dollars which had been in the registers to the amount shown on the slip, the sum stolen came to seven hundred and forty dollars in cash and two hundred and thirty-three in checks. The jeweler said this represented a full week’s gross receipts.

From Fred Bruer I got the phone number of the doctor who had examined the body and phoned to ask him to mail a report to Dr. Swartz, the coroner’s physician. After that I had nothing to do but wait for someone to come for the body and for Phil Ritter to finish.

While waiting I asked Bruer if he had phoned his sister.

He looked startled. “I... I never even thought of it.”

“Probably just as well,” I said. “The phone isn’t a very satisfactory way to break news like this. She should be told personally. I’ll handle it for you, if you want. I have to see her anyway.”

“You do?” he asked in surprise. “It’s routine in homicide cases to contact the next of kin, even when it’s open-and-shut like this one. What’s her address?”

He hesitated for a moment before saying, “She lives down on the south side, but she’s staying with me in my apartment on North Twentieth at the moment. This is going to hit her awful hard, Sergeant, because she and Andy were having a little squabble. It’s terrible to have somebody close to you die when things aren’t quite right. You have trouble forgiving yourself for having a fight at that particular time.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “I understand.”

I asked for his address and wrote it in my notebook.

A couple of morgue attendants came for the body before Phil Ritter completed his survey, but he returned only minutes later.

“Nothing,” he reported. “Nobody saw the bandit come in here, leave here, or walking or running along the street. If anyone aside from the two next-door neighbors heard the shot, he paid no attention to it and can’t remember it.”

There was nothing more to be done at the scene of the crime. I dismissed Sergeant Ritter and his partner, and took off myself.

The apartment on North Twentieth was on the first floor of a neat, modern brick building. A slim, attractive brunette of about forty answered the door.

I took off my hat. “Mrs. Benjamin?”

“Yes.”

I showed my badge. “Sergeant Sod Harris of the police, ma’am. May I come in?”

She looked startled. “Police? What—” Then she stepped aside and said, “Certainly. Please do.”

I moved into a comfortably furnished front room and she closed the door behind me. A plump, pretty little girl about two years old sat in the center of the floor playing with a doll. A red-haired man in his mid-forties, with wide shoulders and a homely but cheerful face, sat on a sofa making himself at home. He had his shoes off, his suitcoat was draped over the back of the sofa, his tie was loosened and his collar was open. A glass with some beer in it and a half-empty bottle of beer sat on the cocktail table before the sofa.

The man rose to his feet. The little girl gave me a sunny smile and said, “Hi, man.”

I smiled back. “Hi, honey.”

The woman said, “Robert Craig, Sergeant—”

“Harris,” I said. “Sod Harris.” Robert Craig held out his hand. He had a firm grip.

“And this is my daughter, Cindy,” Mrs. Benjamin said proudly, looking at the child almost with adoration.

I smiled at the little girl again and got a big return smile. I could understand how her uncle would be crazy about her. I was a little crazy about her myself, and I had just met her.

Mrs. Benjamin said, “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news, ma’am.” I glanced at the child. “Maybe she’d better not hear it.”

Paula Benjamin paled. The red-haired man said, “Let’s go see if your other dolls are asleep yet, Cindy.” He scooped up the little girl and carried her from the room.

Mrs. Benjamin said, “My — it isn’t my brother, is it?”

“No,” I replied. “Your husband.”

Her color returned and I got the curious impression that she was relieved. “Oh. What happened?”

Her reaction was hardly what Fred Bruer had led me to expect. She sounded as though she didn’t particularly care what had happened. I saw no point in trying to break it gently, so I let her have it in a lump.

I said, “The jewelry store was held up this morning. Your brother is unharmed, but the bandit shot your husband. He’s dead.”

She blinked, but she didn’t turn pale again. She merely said, “Oh,” then lapsed into silence.

Robert Craig came back into the room alone. The woman looked at him and said, “Andy’s dead.”

A startled expression crossed the redhead’s face, then he actually smiled. “Well, well,” he said. “That solves the Cindy problem.”

Paula Benjamin stared at him. “How can you think of that now?”

“You expect me to burst into tears?” he asked. He looked at me. “Sorry if I seem callous, Sergeant, but Andy Benjamin was hardly a friend of mine. He had me named correspondent in a divorce suit. What did he die of?”

“A holdup man shot him,” I said and glanced at the woman.

Her face had turned fire red. “Did you have to announce that?” she said to Craig. “Sergeant Harris isn’t interested in our personal affairs.”

Craig shrugged. “You and your brother! Never let the neighbors see your dirty linen. Everybody was going to know after it broke in the papers anyway.”

“It won’t break in the papers now!” she snapped at him.

Then her attention was distracted by little Cindy toddling back into the room, carrying two dolls. Her mother swept her up into her arms.

“Oh, honey!” she said, kissing her. “You’re going to get to stay with Mommie forever and ever!”

I thought it was a good time to excuse myself. I told both Craig and Mrs. Benjamin it was nice to have met them, traded a final smile with Cindy, and left.

By now it was noon. I stopped for lunch, then afterward, instead of checking in at headquarters, I went to the courthouse and looked up the divorce case of Benjamin vs Benjamin.

Andrew Benjamin’s complaint was on file, but as yet an answer hadn’t been filed by Paula Benjamin. The disagreement between the two was more than the “little squabble” Fred Bruer had mentioned, and Andrew Benjamin’s reaction had been characteristically vindictive.

The dead man’s affidavit was in the usual legal jargon, but what it boiled down to was that he and a private detective had surprised his wife and Robert Craig together in a motel room and had gotten camera evidence. Divorce was asked on the ground of adultery, with no alimony to be paid the defendant, and with a request for sole custody of little Cindy to be granted the father. Benjamin’s vindictiveness showed in his further request that the mother be barred from even having visitation rights on the ground that she was of unfit moral character to be trusted in her daughter’s presence. As evidence, he alleged previous adulteries with a whole series of unnamed men and charged that Paula was an incurable nymphomaniac.

When I left the courthouse, I sat in my car and brooded for some time. Fred Bruer’s remarkable powers of observation took on a different significance in the light of what I had just learned. Maybe his detailed description of the bandit hadn’t been from observation after all, but merely from imagination.

I drove back to the ten hundred block of Franklin Avenue. The jewelry store was locked and there was a Closed sign on the front door.

I went into the pawnshop. A pale, fat boy of about twenty who looked as though he were suffering from a hangover was waiting on a customer. The elderly Mr. Jacobs glanced out from the back room as I entered, then moved forward to meet me. I waited for him just inside the front door, so that we would be far enough from the other two to avoid being overheard.

I said, “Mr. Jacobs, do you happen to know if the partners next door ever kept a gun around the place?”

He first looked surprised by the question, then his expression became merely thoughtful. “Hmm,” he said after ruminating. “Mr. Benjamin it was. Yes, it was a long time ago, but I’m sure it was Mr. Benjamin, not Fred. Right after they opened for business Mr. Benjamin bought a gun from me. To keep in the store in case of robbery, he said. Yes, it was Mr. Benjamin, I’m sure.”

“Wouldn’t you still have a record?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said in a tone of mild exasperation at himself. “It won’t even be very far back in the gun book. We don’t sell more than a dozen guns a year.”

He went behind the counter and took a ledger from beneath it. I moved over to the other side of the counter as he leafed through it. The fat young man, whom I took to be nephew Herman, was examining a diamond ring through a jeweler’s loupe for the customer.

Max Jacobs kept running his index finger down a column of names on each page, flipping to the next page and repeating the process. Finally the finger came to a halt.

“Here it is,” he said. “September 10, ten years ago. Andrew J. Benjamin, 1726 Eichelberger Street. A 38 caliber Colt revolver, serial number 231840.”

I took out my notebook and copied this information down.

“Why did you want to know?” the old man asked curiously.

I gave my standard vague answer. “Just routine.”

I thanked him and left before he could ask any more questions. The customer was counting bills as I walked out, and nephew Herman was sealing the ring in a small envelope.

Amateur murderers usually don’t know enough to dispose of murder weapons, but just in case, when I got back to headquarters I arranged for a detail to go sift all the trash in the cans in the alley behind the jewelry store. They didn’t find anything.

There was nothing more I could do until I got the report on what caliber bullet had killed Andrew Benjamin. I tabled the case until the next day.

The following morning I found on my desk the photographs Art Ward had taken, a preliminary postmortem report and a memo from the lab that the bullet recovered from the victim’s body was a 38 caliber lead slug and was in good enough shape for comparison purposes if I could turn up the gun from which it was fired. There was also a leather bag with a drawstring and an attached note from the local postmaster explaining that it had turned up in a mailbox two blocks from the jewelry store. The bag contained the original of the deposit slip of which I already had the duplicate, two hundred and thirty-three dollars in checks, and no cash.

I had a conference with the lieutenant, then together we went across the street to the third floor of the Municipal Courts Building and had another conference with the circuit attorney. As a result of this conference, all three of us went to see the judge of the Circuit Court for Criminal Causes. When we left there, I had three search warrants in my pocket.

Back in the squad room I tried to phone the Bruer and Benjamin jewelry store, but got no answer. I tried Fred Bruer’s apartment number and caught him there. He said he didn’t plan to open for business again until after his partner’s funeral.

“I want to take another look at your store,” I told him. “Can you meet me there?”

“Of course,” he said. “Right now?”

“Uh-huh.”

He said he would leave at once. As Police Headquarters was closer to the store than his apartment, I arrived first, though. He kept me waiting about five minutes.

After he had unlocked the door and led me inside, I got right to the point. I said, “I want to see the.38 revolver you keep here.”

Fred Bruer looked at me with what I suspected was simulated puzzlement. “There’s no gun here, Sergeant.”

“Your brother-in-law bought one next door right after you opened for business, Mr. Bruer. Fie told Mr. Jacobs it was for protection against robbers.”

“Oh, that,” Bruer said with an air of enlightenment. “He took that home with him years ago. I objected to it being around. Guns make me nervous.”

I gave him the fishy eye. “Mind if I look?”

“I don’t see why it’s necessary,” he said haughtily. “I told you there’s no gun here.”

Regretfully I produced the search warrant. He didn’t like it, but there was nothing he could do about it. I went over the place thoroughly. There was no gun there.

“I told you he took the gun home,” Bruer said in a miffed voice.

“We’ll look there if we don’t find it at your apartment,” I assured him. “We’ll try your place first.”

“Do you have a search warrant for there, too?” he challenged.

I showed it to him.

I followed his car back to his place. Paula Benjamin and Cindy were no longer there. Bruer said they had returned home last night. I searched the apartment thoroughly, too. There was no gun there.

“Let’s take a ride down to your sister’s,” I suggested. “You can leave your car here and we’ll go in mine.”

“I suppose you have a warrant for there, too,” he said sourly.

“Uh-huh,” I admitted.

Paula Benjamin still lived at the same address recorded in the pawnshop gun log, 1726 Eichelberger Street, which is far down in South St. Louis. It was a small frame house of five rooms.

Mrs. Benjamin claimed she knew nothing of any gun her husband had ever owned, and if he had ever brought a revolver home, she had never seen it.

I didn’t have to produce my third warrant, because she made no objection to a search. I did just as thorough a job as I had at the other two places. Little Cindy followed me around and helped me look, but neither of us found the gun. It wasn’t there.

Paula Benjamin naturally wanted to know what it was all about. Until then, her brother had shown no such curiosity, which led me to believe he already knew. Belatedly, he now added his demand for enlightenment. I suggested that Cindy be excluded from the discussion.

By now it was pushing noon, so Mrs. Benjamin solved that by taking Cindy to the kitchen and giving the girl her lunch. When she returned to the front room alone, I bluntly explained things to both her and her brother.

After carefully giving Fred Bruer the standard spiel about his constitutional rights, I said, “I reconstruct it this way, Mr. Bruer. You got down to the store early yesterday morning and made out the weekly bank deposit. Only you didn’t put any cash in that leather bag; just the deposit slip and the checks. And you didn’t put any money in the cash registers. You simply pocketed it. Then you drove two blocks away, dropped the bag into a mailbox, and got back to the store before your brother-in-law arrived for work. I rather suspect you didn’t unlock the front door until after you shot him and had hidden the gun, because you wouldn’t want to risk having a customer walk in on you. Then you unlocked the door and phoned the police.”

Paula Benjamin was staring at me with her mouth open. “You must be crazy,” she whispered. “Fred couldn’t kill anyone. He’s the most softhearted man in the world.”

“Particularly about you and Cindy,” I agreed. “You would be surprised what tigers softhearted men can turn into when their loved ones are threatened. None of your brother’s fellow merchants on Franklin, and probably none of your neighbors around here knew what your husband was trying to do to you, because both of you believe in keeping your troubles secret. But I’ve read your deceased husband’s divorce affidavit, Mrs. Benjamin.”

Paula Benjamin blinked. She gazed at her brother for reassurance and he managed a smile.

“You know I wouldn’t do anything like that, sis,” he said. “The sergeant has simply made a terribly wrong guess.” He looked at me challengingly. “Where’s the gun I used, Sergeant?”

“Probably in the Mississippi River now,” I said. “Unfortunately I didn’t tumble soon enough to search for it before you had a chance to get rid of it. We can establish by Max Jacob’s gun log that your brother-in-law purchased such a gun, though.”

“And took it home years ago. Sergeant. Or took it somewhere. Maybe he sold it to another pawn shop.”

“I doubt that,” I said.

“Prove he didn’t.”

That was the rub. I couldn’t. I took him downtown and a team of three of us questioned him for the rest of the day, but we couldn’t shake his story. We had him repeat his detailed description of the imaginary bandit a dozen times, and he never varied it by a single detail.

Finally we had to release him. I drove him home, but the next morning I picked him up again and we started the inquisition all over. About noon, he decided he wanted to call a lawyer, and under the new rules stemming from recent Supreme Court decisions, we either had to let him or release him again.

I knew what would happen in the former event. The lawyer would accuse us of harassing his client and would insist we either file a formal charge or leave him alone. We didn’t have sufficient evidence to file a formal charge, and if we refused to leave him alone, his lawyer undoubtedly would get a court injunction to make us.

With all the current talk about police brutality, we didn’t need any publicity about harassing a sixty-year-old, undersized, widely esteemed small businessman. We let him go.

I’m in the habit of talking over cases which particularly disturb me with my wife. That evening I unloaded all my frustrations about the Andrew Benjamin case on Maggie.

After listening to the whole story, she said, “I don’t see why you’re so upset, Sod. Why do you want to see the man convicted of murder anyway?”

I stared at her. “Because he’s a murderer.”

“But according to your own testimony, the dead man was a thoroughgoing beast,” Maggie said reasonably. “What he was attempting to do to that innocent little girl just to obtain vengeance on his wife was criminally vindictive. This Fred Bruer, on the other hand, you characterize as a thoroughly nice guy who, in general, devotes his life to helping people, and never before harmed a soul.”

“You would make a lousy cop,” I said disgustedly. “We don’t happen to have two sets of laws, one for nice guys and the other for beasts. Sure, Fred Bruer’s a nice guy, but do you suggest we give all nice guys a license to kill?”

After thinking this over, she said reluctantly, “I guess not.” She sat musing for a time, then finally said, “If he’s really as nice a guy as you say, there’s one technique you might try. Why don’t you shame him into a confession?”

I started to frown at her, then something suddenly clicked in my mind and the frown came out a grin instead. Getting up from my easy chair, I went over and gave her a solid kiss.

“I take back what I said about you being a lousy cop,” I told her. “You’re a better cop than I am.”

At ten the next morning I phoned Fred Bruer. “I have an apology to make, Mr. Bruer,” I said. “We’ve caught the bandit who killed your brother-in-law.”

“You what?”

“He hasn’t confessed yet, but we’re sure he’s the man. Can you come down here to make an identification?”

There was a long silence before he said, “I’ll be right there, Sergeant.”

As soon as the little jeweler arrived at headquarters, I took him to the show-up room. It was already darkened and the stage lights were on. Lieutenant Wilkins was waiting at the microphone at the rear of the room. I led Bruer close to the stage, where we could see the suspects who would come out at close range. When we were situated, Wilkins called for the lineup to be sent in.

Five men, all of similar lanky build, walked out on the stage. All were dressed in tan slacks and tan leather jackets. When they lined up in a row, you could see by the height markers behind them that they were all within an inch, one way or the other, of six feet.

The first one to walk out on stage was exactly six feet tall. He had straight black, greasy-looking hair, a dark complexion and a prominent hooked nose. A thin white scar ran from the left corner of his mouth to his left ear and there was a hairy mole in the center of his right cheek. He stood with hands at his sides, the backs facing us. On the back of the left hand was the tattoo of a blue snake wound around a red heart.

I glanced at Fred Bruer and saw that his eyes were literally bugging out.

“Don’t try to pick anyone yet,” I said in a low voice. “Wait until you hear all the voices.” Then I called back to Wilkins, “Okay, Lieutenant, let’s hear them.”

Lieutenant Wilkins said over the microphone, “Number one step forward.”

The dark man with the hooked nose stepped to the edge of the stage.

Wilkins said, “What is your name?”

“Manuel Flores,” the man said sullenly.

“Your age?”

“Forty.”

There is a standard set of questions asked all suspects at a show-up, designed more to let witnesses hear their voices than for gathering information. But now Lieutenant Wilkins departed from the usual routine.

He said, “Where do you work, Manuel?”

“The Frick Construction Company.”

“As what?”

“Just a laborer.”

“Are you married, Manuel?”

“Yes.”

“Any children?”

“Five.”

“Their ages?”’

“Maria is thirteen, Manuel Jr. is ten, Jose is nine, Miguel is six and Consuelo is two.”

“Have you ever been arrested before, Manuel?”

“No.”

“Ever been in any kind of trouble?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Lieutenant Wilkins said. “Step back. Number two step forward.”

He went through the same routine with the other four men, but I don’t think Fred Bruer was even listening. He kept staring at number one.

When the last of the five had performed, and all of them had been led off the stage, Fred Bruer and I left the show-up room and went down one flight to Homicide. He sank into a chair and stared up at me. I remained standing.

“Well?” I said.

The jeweler licked his lips. “I can understand why you picked up that first man, Sergeant. He certainly fits the description of the bandit. But he isn’t the man, I’m sorry to say.”

After gazing at him expressionlessly for a few moments, I gave my head a disbelieving shake. “Your friends along Franklin Avenue and your sister all warned me you were softhearted, Mr. Bruer, but don’t be softheaded, too. It’s beyond belief that two different men could have such similar appearances, even to that scar, the mole and the tattoo. On top of that, Manuel Flores is left-handed, just like your bandit.”

“But he’s not the man,” he said with a quaver in his voice. “It’s just an incredible coincidence.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So incredible, I don’t believe it. You’re letting his formerly clean record and his five kids throw you. He has no alibi for the time of the robbery. He told his wife he was going to work that day, but he never showed up. The day after the robbery he paid off a whole flock of bills.” I let my voice become sarcastic. “Claims he hit a long-shot horse.”

Fred Bruer’s voice raised in pitch.

“I tell you he really isn’t the man!”

“Oh, come off it,” I said grumpily. “Are you going to protect a killer just because he has five kids?”

The little jeweler slowly rose to his feet. Drawing himself to his full five feet six, he said with dignity, “Sergeant, I told you that is not the man who shot Andy. If you insist on bringing him to trial, I will swear on the stand that he is not the man.”

After studying him moodily, I shrugged. “I think we can make it stick anyway, Mr. Bruer. Once we net the actual culprit in a case like this, we usually manage to get a confession.”

He frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“Manuel Flores isn’t as influential a citizen as you are, Mr. Bruer. He’s just a poor, uneducated slob and not even a United States citizen yet. He’s a Mexican immigrant who only has his first papers. He doesn’t know any lawyers to call. We don’t have to handle him with kid gloves, like we did you.”

“You mean you intend to beat a confession out of him!” Bruer said, outraged.

“Now, who said anything about that?” I inquired. “We never use the third degree around here. We merely use scientific interrogation techniques.”

I took his elbow and steered him to the door. “If you decide to cooperate after all, you can let me know, Mr. Bruer. But I don’t think your testimony is essential. I would thank you for coming down, but under the circumstances, I don’t think you deserve it.”

I ushered him out into the hall, said, “See you around, Mr. Bruer,” and walked off and left him.

He was still staring after me when I mounted the stairs leading up from third to fourth.

I found lanky Sam Wiggens in the men’s room on fourth. He had removed the wig and false nose and was washing off his makeup, including the snake and heart tattoo.

Sam let out the stained water in the bowl and started to draw more. “How’d it go?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t think he suspected anything, but it’s too early to guess. We should find out just how softhearted he is when I increase the pressure tomorrow.”

I let Fred Bruer stew for twenty-four hours and phoned him about eleven the next morning.

“We’re not going to need your testimony after all, Mr. Bruer,” I said. “Manuel Flores has confessed.”

“He didn’t do it!” Bruer almost yelled. “You can’t do that to an innocent man with five kids!”

“Oh, stop being so softhearted,” I told him. “The man’s a killer.” I hung up on him.

Bruer came into the squad room twenty minutes later. His face was pale but his thin shoulders were proudly squared.

“I want to make a statement, Sergeant,” he said in a steady voice. “I wish to confess the murder of my brother-in-law.”

I pointed to a chair and he seated himself with his back stiffly erect. After phoning for a stenographer, I waited for the familiar glow of triumph I usually feel when a case is finally in the bag.

It didn’t come. Over the years, I have trapped suspects into confessions by playing on their greed, their fear, their vindictiveness and every other base emotion you can think of, but this was the first time I had trapped a murderer through his compassion for others. I could only wonder why I was in this business.