Хал Эллсон - Masters of Noir - Volume 3

“Yeah,” Parker said. “And then, when he had this appointment with Sandra, and he wouldn’t pay...”

“She called me, and she knew whom to call, because she was in it from the beginning, and they had picked me. She called me...”

“But he’d followed her home, and when he heard what she was up to, he finished her off. Cleared the last loose remnant.”

I shook it off. “Precise moment,” I said.

“What the devil is this ‘precise moment’ pitch you’re on?”

“A fragment of time in connection with a fragment of space... creates the precise moment.”

Parker scratched a stubby finger against his crew-cut. “How’s that?”

“I came here with the little black book. It undoubtedly contains nothing more than the names of her boyfriends, but that doesn’t matter now. I came at that fragment of time that Abner Reed was here, occupying this fragment of space.”

“Meaning?”

“If both wouldn’t have coincided, perfectly, this guy’d be off for a year in Europe, and by then, that voice would no longer be fresh in my memory, and your Abner Reed snatch would have gone down in the books as another unsolved crime. Ecstatic and catastrophic.”

“Wha’...? What’s that last?”

“From my Greek philosopher. Ecstatic for us, catastrophic for him. Bye, now. I’ve got a date.”

“That good, huh? Who’s the date?”

“The Greek philosopher.”

His forehead creased into many wrinkles. “Greek philosopher? Not you. You’re a guy for dames.”

“Bye, Lieutenant.”

As I went for the door, and he bent to the stricken Abner Reed, I could hear him mumble: “Oh, that Peter Chambers, go figure that guy, unpredictable Peter...”

Dozing in front of the microphone in the radio dispatcher’s office, Joe Crestone blinked groggily when one of the heavy side doors downstairs whushed open and then started rocking back to center. Since midnight the building had been dead still.

The footsteps swung out briskly on the tiles of the lobby. They made quick taps on the steel steps leading up towards the dispatcher’s room. Crestone was wide awake. The clock on the radio reeled up another minute. It was 2:17. He swung his chair to face the counter.

She was close to six feet. Her hair was dark, her eyes soft brown: She wore a fur jacket and under that a green woolen dress caught high at her neck with a silver clasp. Her smile was timid. “I–I thought Mr. Walters would be here again.” She studied the work schedule of the Midway police department on the board.

“He’s got the flu. It was my day off so I’m sitting in for him.”

“I see.” She stared at the maps on the wall. “I–I just don’t know exactly how to start it.”

She was white and scared. Crestone let her make up her mind. On the model side, he thought, the kind who pose in two thousand dollar dresses. Plenty of neck above the silver clasp, more gauntness in her face than he had observed at first.

“Hit and run deal?” he asked, eyeing her sharply.

Before she could answer, state patrol car 55 checked in from Middleton, eighteen miles north on Highway 315. A woman dispatcher in Steel City read a CAA flight plan to Bristol for relay to Cosslett. Webster came in with a pickup-and-hold on a 1949 blue Chev with three men. Crestone sent out the information on the pickup-and-hold.

When he swung to the log sheet in the typewriter at his left, she asked, “Do the state cars patrol the old highway from the boarded-up brick works east toward Steel City?”

“State 7? No, not unless there’s a crash out there.” He wrote a line on the log. “Did you have a wreck?”

She hesitated. “In a way.”

He turned back to the desk and pulled a pad to him. “Name?”

“Judith Barrows.”

“Address?”

When she did not answer he twisted his head to look at her. He looked into a snub-nosed .38. For one fractured moment the bore was big enough to shoot a golf ball. Crestone sucked in his breath.

“Give me the log sheet,” she said. “Don’t even brush your arm near the mike or you’ll get it in the liver.”

He stripped the log sheet from the machine and put it up on the counter. She drew it to her with long, thin fingers that bent into carmine-tipped hooks. “Now, a copy of the code sheet, and not the old one with blanks behind some of the numbers.”

Crestone took a code sheet from a folder. When he put it on the counter he saw that she had shrugged out of her fur jacket. He heard the power hum and then Bud Moore said in his bored after-midnight voice, “Seven fifty.” Crestone started to reach toward the microphone and then he stopped.

“Acknowledge it,” she said softly.

He stared at the .38. She was resting her hand on the counter. The gun looked down at his midsection. He gripped the long bar of the mike switch on the stem of the instrument. Under Transmit on the face of the radio a purple button lit up like an evil eye glaring at him. “Seven fifty,” he said, then automatically released his grip on the switch.

“Going 10–10 at Circle 7365,” Moore said, which meant that he and Jerry Windoff were going out of service temporarily to get a cup of coffee at the Mowhawk Diner out on Sterling Pike.

Crestone’s mind froze on 10–10: report back to this office. But then she would read it on the code sheet and— His head rocked sidewise. His left elbow jammed against the typewriter. There was a thin crack of tension in her voice when she said, “Answer the car, Buster.”

He was still half stunned from the crack on his head when he said, “Seven fifty, 10-4.” Okay, 750.

“Give me the local code sheet now, Crestone.”

He gave that to her. It held sixteen messages for local use, and then there were four blanks. She said, “Don’t get any ideas about using Code 17 or any other blank.”

Code 17 was unlisted, strictly a private deal between Bill Walters and all cruiser cops: bring me a hamburger and a jug of coffee. She had found out plenty from old Bill, a friendly, trusting guy who liked to talk about his work.

“Face the radio, Crestone. Don’t worry about me.”

He turned around, staring at a transmitter which controlled all law enforcement in the area. It was worthless unless he had the brains and guts to figure out something.

“Where’s state patrol 54?” she asked.

“After a 10–47 on State 219.” It was on the log; there was no use to lie. He heard papers rustle.

“That’s right,” she said. “Chasing a possible drunk. Keep everything you say right, Crestone, especially when you talk into that microphone.”

The right-hand reel of the clock put up three more minutes. Now it was 2:25. She made no sound behind him. After another minute he could not stand it any longer. He had to look around. She was still there. The gun was still there too, slanted over the edge of the counter.

“Face the radio.”

He hesitated, and then while he was turning, the gun bounced off his head again. He sucked air between his teeth and cursed. For a tick of time his anger was almost enough to make him try to lunge up and reach her; but his sanity was greater. She struck him again, sweeping the barrel of the gun on the slope of his skull.

“Don’t curse me!” she said.

After a foggy interval Crestone was aware of the messages coming from both channels. Two stolen cars from Bristol. He added them to a list of twenty others stolen that day. Steel City sent a car to investigate a prowler complaint. Seventy miles away state patrol car 86 stopped to pull a dead pig off the highway. The dispatcher in Shannon sent a car to a disturbance at Puddler’s Casino. York asked Webster for a weather report on Highway 27.