Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

“This is Loomis, the Mayor’s secretary, Captain.”

“Hello, Mr. Loomis,” McDermott said with forced heartiness. He didn’t like Loomis, and when it came right down to it, he didn’t like the Mayor either. Lots of people didn’t. One of the two daily local newspapers had been blasting the Mayor for months.

Loomis had a nasty edge to his voice. “Do you know a boy named Jason Palmer?”

“Oh, my gosh, don’t tell me...”

“He’s here and the Mayor is raising the roof. The boy got in to see him and — well, I’ll explain when you get down here.”

“When I get down there?”

“You heard me. And get here fast. Take this kid off our hands. He won’t budge. He says he’s got certain rights or... something. Anyway, come over here and get him. Take him back to school, turn him over to the truant officer — do something!”

“I’ll be right over,” McDermott said.

“You’d better. I don’t like your friends, Captain. This one especially. He bites.”

“Now, listen,” McDermott roared, “if you pushed that boy around...”

“Will you get over here? Can’t you get it through your head that the Mayor is your Commander-in-Chief?”

McDermott snorted, but he hung up and buttoned his uniform jacket and got his cap from the locker in his office. It was a short walk to City Hall.

Loomis was a rotund man with a red complexion, but now his face was fiery with rage. Seated beside the secretary’s desk, swinging his feet nonchalantly, sat Jason. He managed a sickly smile for McDermott’s benefit. Spread on Loomis’ desk was another cause for his anger. An early edition of the Globe-Dispatch called the Mayor “a perfection of inefficiency” — part of their long-running campaign against him.

“You get this boy out of here, Captain, and if you ever send anyone like him here again...”

“He didn’t send me,” Jason said mildly.

“You keep out of it. You’ve had your say.” The secretary transferred his attention and fury to McDermott. “I tell you, the Mayor is really upset. This boy walked in and sat down beside a ward heeler — I mean,” he hastily corrected himself, “an aspirant for alderman in next month’s election. This man had an appointment with His Honor and when he was called into the office, this boy simply walked in with him. I thought they were father and son—”

“No-o-o,” McDermott said smoothly. “His father’s a naval officer, not a ward heeler. Big difference.”

“No matter. Now take this boy home and lecture his parents. Then notify the principal of his school about what has happened. He really should be arrested.”

“The principal?”

“No, damn it, the boy!”

“What for, Mr. Loomis? Isn’t the Mayor the servant of the people?”

“He is far too busy a man to be bothered with... what was it? Some funeral?”

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand,” McDermott said. As he spoke, he folded the newspaper idly and held it in his hand. “I doubt the Mayor would and, as you say, he’s too important to talk to a boy. Jason, we’ll be leaving now.”

“Yes, sir,” Jason said. They walked out into the cool, marble-walled corridor. “I guess I didn’t do very good, did I?”

“No, it seems you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll go home now. Boy, mom’s gonna make a fuss. I played hookey.”

“Well, you did have legitimate business with the Mayor.”

“I sure didn’t get far. I had to tell him three times what I wanted because he couldn’t understand me. I wouldn’t vote for him. He’s kinda dumb.”

“Some call him worse names than that. I can’t give you a ride home, Jason. I walked over from the office.”

“Aw, that’s all right Boy, I got myself into a mess this time all right. And it didn’t do any good. Nobody listens. Nobody cares about Officer Cameron and honest, the cops just gotta march at his funeral They gotta tell everybody he was a fine cop.”

“If things get too rough, let me know, Jason. I’m your friend.”

“Yeah, I know that all right But we can’t do much, can we?”

“Not a great deal sometimes, and then again, sometimes we can. You see, it’s hard for people to understand why an ordinary policeman, who does his job for forty-odd years and does it well, isn’t a hero. As you say, everyone seems to think heroes are made only in a hail of bullets.”

“Nothing more I can do,” Jason said, biting his lips.

“Not unless you can shout it from the rooftops, Jason.”

Jason kicked at a politicians fat cigar butt on the marble floor. “Gosh, how’s a guy to do that? Heck, nobody’d even hear me.”

“Well, when I say rooftops, I’m being — well, symbolic, sort of. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“If people hear about it, read about it... well... if I try to help, I’ll be in trouble. So we have to part company, Jason.”

They went down the wide red-brick stairs outside City Hall. At the bottom McDermott handed Jason the folded newspaper he’d taken from the Mayor’s office.

“You can read this on your way home,” he said. “You ought to enjoy what they say about the Mayor. This newspaper doesn’t like him. They don’t like him so much they’re very friendly with anyone else who doesn’t like him. Now me, I’m a public official and I can’t take sides, but a newspaper can. So long, Jason... and Jason?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Don’t stop fighting.”

“Yes, sir,” Jason said.

The boy walked down the street — a small, apparently unimportant little figure of what some day would be a man. He was stopped by a red traffic light and he unfolded the newspaper and scanned it. Then he forgot about crossing the street and turned the corner instead. He was moving fast.

McDermott sighed deeply and went back to the police station. He had a notion that it might be an interesting afternoon.

When Captain McDermott, in his best uniform, rang the bell of Jason’s home the next day, it was Jason who let him in, somewhat wide-eyed.

“Oh, boy,” he said, “I guess I’m gonna be arrested.”

Jason’s mother invited McDermott in. On the living-room table lay the late evening edition of yesterday’s Globe-Dispatch. The front page had temporarily omitted the international headlines. There were no photographs of car crashes, no studio shots of movie stars announcing another divorce, nothing from Washington, Paris, London, or Moscow.

There were three pictures. The middle one was a fine shot of Jason; it was flanked by a photograph of his father in Navy uniform and of Patrolman Clarence Cameron, also in uniform.

The story, told in large type, was the one Jason had related to a sympathetic editor who had a political bone to pick with the incumbent administration. But there was more than mere political badgering in this story. McDermott had read it four times and it was easy to tell that someone else had understood Jason.

“Did this get you into trouble, Captain?” Mrs. Palmer asked. “I’m dreadfully sorry if it did.”

“No, ma’am,” McDermott said. “No trouble. I’m here on official business. I’m here to tell you that Patrolman Clarence Cameron has been cited for meritorious duty as befits a man who guarded thousands of school kids in his career and always had a kindly word for each one of them — and most of whom are grown up now and hollering their heads off.”

“They’re going to give him a — an Inspector’s funeral?”

“You might call it that, ma’am. Of course the Chief of Police, the Mayor — everybody had ideas about honoring Cameron all along and it was only the fault of subordinates that Jason never got to see the big shots — I’m sorry, I refer to the Mayor mostly. This is known as passing the buck and I’m grateful I had nothing to do with it.”