Where There’s Smoke

22

This city is divided into eight different sections, each with a telephone directory of its own. I checked the books for all eight, and came up with a total of twenty-seven Arthur Wylies scattered north, south, east, and west. With a little luck, if I started a door-to-door search that very minute, I figured I could visit all twenty-seven of them by next Saint Swithin’s Day. I decided to call the Motor Vehicle Bureau instead. There are four police clerks attached to a special unit at the MVB, and their job is to provide information to any police officer, uniformed or plainclothes, investigating a case involving a motor vehicle. The girl who answered the phone sounded nineteen, and made me feel a hundred and four. I identified myself as Detective-Lieutenant Benjamin Smoke.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” she said, “would you mind letting me have your shield number, please?”

“83-074-26,” I said.

“Yes, and what squad is that, Lieutenant?”

“The Nine-One,” I said, giving her the number of the squad I’d commanded in the dear dead days.

“And the telephone number there?”

“Aldon 7-6140.”

“Is this a registration search?” she asked.

“It is.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Arthur Wylie, no middle initial, suspect vehicle a red-and-white Volkswagen bus.”

“What year, sir?”

“I don’t have one. I’m looking for the man’s address.”

“I’ll have to get back to you on this, sir.”

“This is a homicide case,” I said.

“Ah, yes,” she said, “aren’t they all?”

“Victim’s name is Peter Greer,” I said, “employee of Haskins Mortuary on Sixth and Stilson. Check with Lower Homicide, if you like.”

“One moment, sir,” she said.

I waited one moment, and then another, and then deposited a dime when the operator told me my three minutes were up. I was beginning to believe the girl was actually checking with Homicide, and that she’d come back on the line to tell me I was a fraud. Instead, when she did come back, she said, “I’ve got that information for you, sir. We have a 1969 Volkswagen bus, red-and-white, registered to an Arthur J. Wylie at 574 Waverly Street. Did you want the registration number?”

“Yes, please.”

“S22 dash 9438.”

“Thank you,” I said, and hung up. I looked at my watch. It was now twenty minutes past four. Waverly Street was crosstown and all the way uptown, approximately a half-hour’s traveling time from where I’d parked Maria’s Pinto. I hurried back to the garage, paid and tipped the attendant, and drove off with a rising sense of gloom.