Lawrence Block - Even the Wicked

“Not yet,” I said.

“I’m glad you brought him in,” Joe Durkin said. “This is the very mope we’ve been looking high and low for. I’ll ask him a few questions soon as I remember where I put my rubber hose.”

“Bet I know where it’s at,” TJ said. “You want, I help you look for it.”

Durkin grinned and gave him a poke in the arm. “What are you doing with my friend here?” he demanded. “Why aren’t you out on the street selling crack and mugging people?”

“My day off.”

“And here I thought you guys were dedicated. Seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, soothing the emotional pain of the public. Turns out you coast just like everybody else.”

“Hell yes,” TJ said. “I didn’t want to do nothin’ but work all the time, I be joinin’ the po-leese.”

“Say that again for me, will you? Po-leese.”

“Po-leese.”

“Jesus, I love it when you talk dirty. Matt, I don’t know what gives me the idea, but somehow I think you’re here for a reason.”

We were in the squad room at Midtown North, on West Fifty-fourth Street. I took a chair and explained what I wanted while TJ went over to the board and thumbed through a sheaf of Wanted flyers.

“When you find one with your picture on it,” Joe advised him, “bring it over and I’ll get you to autograph it for me. Matt, let me see if I’ve got this straight. You want me to call the Omaha police and ask them to check hotel records for some zip named Johnson.”

“I’d appreciate it,” I said.

“You’d appreciate it. In a tangible way, do you suppose?”

“Tangible. Yes, I suppose I—”

“I like that word,” he said. “Tangible. It means you can touch it. You reach out and it’s there. Which gives rise to a question. Why don’t you reach out and touch someone?”

“Pardon me?”

“You know the hotel, right? The Hilton?”

“That’s the place to start. I’m not positive that’s where he stayed, but—”

“But you’d start there. Why didn’t you? Use their eight hundred number and the call’s free. Can’t beat that for a bargain.”

“I called,” I said. “I didn’t get anywhere.”

“You identify yourself as a police officer?”

“That’s illegal.” He gave me a look. “I may have given that impression,” I admitted. “It didn’t do me any good.”

“Since when did you become incapable of calling a hotel and conning a little information out of a desk clerk?” He looked at the slip of paper in front of him. “Omaha,” he said. “What the hell ever happened in Omaha?” He looked at me. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

“Not Him personally,” TJ put in, “but this dude who said he was real tight with Him.”

“The abortion guy. What was his name?”

“How quickly we forget.”

“Roswell Berry. Will got him right in his hotel room, didn’t he? I forget which hotel, but why is it something tells me it was the Hilton?”

“Why indeed?”

“You have reason to think our boy Will’s a guy named Johnson?”

“It’s a name he may have been using.”

“No wonder the Hilton wouldn’t tell you anything. You wouldn’t have been the first caller trying to get something out of them. All the tabloids, guarding the public’s right to know. The Omaha PD must have slammed the lid shut.”

“That would be my guess.”

“You know how many detectives are working on Will? I can’t tell you the number, but what I do know is I’m not one of them. How do I justify sticking my nose in?”

“Maybe this doesn’t have anything to do with Will,” I said. “Maybe it’s a simple investigation of a robbery suspect who pulled a series of holdups in this precinct and may have fled to Omaha.”

“Where he’s got relatives. But instead of staying with them we think he holed up at the Hilton. We know the dates, and the name he used. That’s some story, Matt.”

“You probably won’t have to tell it,” I said. “You’re a New York police detective with a question that’s easy to answer. Why should they give you a hard time?”

“People have never needed a reason in the past.” He picked up the phone. “Here’s a question that’s not easy to answer. Why the hell am I doing this?”

“Allen W. Johnson,” he said. “That’s Allen with two L’s and an E. I don’t know what the W stands for. I don’t suppose it stands for Will.”

“I’m not sure it stands for anything.”

“Stayed two nights and paid cash. As a matter of fact, the Omaha cops checked on everybody staying at the hotel as part of their investigation of Berry’s murder. Anybody paid cash, that was a red flag. So Mr. Allen Johnson definitely had their attention.”

“Did they have a chance to talk to him?”

“He’d already checked out. Never used the phone or charged anything to his room.”

“I don’t suppose they’ve got a description of him.”

“Yeah, they got a real useful one. He was a man and he was wearing a suit.”

“Narrows it down.”

“He checked out after Will got Berry with the coat hanger, but before the body was discovered. So why take a second look at him?”

“He paid cash.”

He shook his head. “Not when he checked in. He gave them a credit card and they ran a slip. Then when he checked out he gave them cash. Apparently that’s common. The card simplifies checking in, but you’ve got reasons for settling up in cash. Maybe the card’s maxed out, or maybe you don’t want the bill showing up at your house because you don’t want your wife to know you were over at the Hilton humping your secretary.”

“And when you pay in cash—”

“They tear up the slip they took an imprint on. So nobody ever knows if the card’s a phony, because they don’t run it by the credit card company until you check out.”

“So we know he had a credit card,” I said, “whether or not it was a good one. And he had a piece of photo ID in the same name.”

“Did I miss something? How do we know that?”

“He had to show it to get on the plane.”

“If he had the credit card for backup,” he said, “the other could be any damn thing long as it had his picture on it. One of those pieces of shit they print for you on Forty-second Street, says you’re a student at the School of Hard Knox.”

“Like I said,” TJ murmured.

“Tell me about this guy,” Joe said. “Since you got my attention. How’d you get on to him?”

“From the airline records.”

“New York to Omaha?”

“Philadelphia to Omaha.”

“Where did Philadelphia come from?”

“I think the Quakers settled it.”

“I mean—”

“It’s too complicated to go into,” I said, “but I was looking for someone who flew Philly to Omaha and back again. He fit the time frame.”

“You mean he went out before Berry got killed and came back afterward.”

“It was a little tighter fit than that.”

“Uh-huh. Who is he, you want to tell me that?”

“Just a name,” I said. “And a face, if he showed photo ID, but I haven’t seen the face.”

“He’s just a man in a suit, like the girl at the hotel remembered.”

“Right.”

“Help me out here, Matt. What have you got that I should be passing on to somebody?”

“I haven’t got anything.”

“If Will’s out there running around, looking for fresh names for his list—”

“Will’s retired,” I said.

“Oh, right. We got his word for that, don’t we?”

“And nobody’s heard a peep out of him since.”

“Which makes the department look pretty stupid, wasting manpower and resources chasing a perpetrator who no longer represents a danger to the community. How’s this your business, anyway? Who’s your client?”