Джо Горес - Dead Man

“Stocks and bonds?”

“Chicago Board of Trade all the way, baby.” She stopped in front of a run-down brick apartment building. “You walked me home after all. It’s six floors straight up unless they fixed the elevator, but if you want a cup of coffee and ain’t afraid of heights—”

“You don’t want to know me, Cindy,” said Dain. “I’m bad news. Even my cat won’t purr.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and leaned forward and up to kiss him on the cheek.

“Goodbye, Mr. Sad Man,” she said.

Before starting through the newspaper, Dain called Farnsworth, Fechheimer and Farnsworth. The receptionist sounded bored enough to be doing her nails behind the switchboard. He told her, “I’d like to make an appointment with Mr. Farnsworth to discuss setting up a rather substantial investment account.”

“Mr. Farnsworth Senior or Junior?”

“Junior.”

“Mr. Farnsworth Junior is in our San Francisco office for three months’ training. If anyone else—”

“No. But his San Francisco home phone number might help.”

He wrote it down, hung up. San Francisco. Could Zimmer and the woman, Broussard, also be in San Francisco? No. They would be hiding in Broussard’s life, not Zimmer’s. But a good coincidence for Dain just the same. When the time came, Farnsworth would be Zimmer’s best bet for moving the bonds.

But first, Broussard. Cracking the Chicago police computer with his laptop would take longer than direct action, so he quickly scanned the morning newspaper, finally stopping at an item on the local news page.

When he got off-shift this morning at 4:00 a.m., plainclothes detective Seth “Andy” Anderson of Central Station made the mistake of stopping off at a coffee...

Dain’s ballpoint pen underlined Seth “Andy” Anderson and Central Station, then hand-scrawled a letter on a sheet of hotel stationery cut in half so it was memo size. Dain used the half without the letterhead, dating it five days earlier.

Andy:

I don’t want to go through channels on this one, since it’s about Vangie Broussard, that black-haired “exotic dancer” I been humping since she left Chicago. I think she was involved in a 187PC out here a couple nights ago, and if she was, I wanta bust it myself. I’ll be in Chi on the 14th, can you pull her package to give me a look when 1 get there? Thanks, pal.

He scrawled Solly below the note as a signature, then added a handwritten postscript:

P.S. I need a sweetener in the Department since you-know-what.

Dain addressed an envelope to Andy Anderson at Central Police Station, Chicago, then paused to run a mental check. It was okay. Randy Solomon wasn’t due back from vacation for two more days, so he put Solomon’s SFPD return address in the upper left corner, stamped it, set the date on a self-inking rubber stamp for five days previously, and canceled the stamp.

Finally, he put in the letter, sealed it, opened it again raggedly with his finger under the flap. He stuck the letter and an SFPD lieutenant’s shield in a leather carrying case into the side pocket of the cheap, rather shabby suitcoat he had bought at the Salvation Army, and left the hotel.

Chicago’s Central Police Station was old, ill-kept, angry-looking, as if it never got enough sleep and took a lot of Turns. At a booking desk from the days when Al Capone ran the city, Dain flashed his SFPD shield. In his off-the-rack suit and unshined shoes, an old-fashioned fedora mashed down on his head and an unlit cigar screwed into one corner of his mouth, he looked like fifteen years on the force.

“Yeah, welcome to Chicago,” said the booking sergeant. “How are things out there in fruit and nut land?”

“That’s L.A. We’re the cool gray city by the bay.”

“Yeah, Herb Caen. What can we do for you, Lieutenant?”

“Anybody awake in Vice at this hour?”

“Prob’ly ain’t gone home yet.” The sergeant grinned and handed him a visitor’s badge that he clipped to the breast pocket of his suitcoat. “Elevator to the third floor, turn left.”

Dain thanked him and rode the elevator up, not to Vice, but to the Detective Squadroom. Various plainclothesmen were at the battered desks, typing reports, interviewing complainants, witnesses, suspects. Off in a corner a black youth with dreadlocks was being fingerprinted by a Hispanic woman in a crisp blue uniform. Smoke blued the room. Dain’s eyes found an empty desk with a DET. ANDERSON name block on it.

Going down the room drew Dain no more than a casual brush of eyes from the busy cops. He hooked a hip over the corner of the desk, in the same movement slipped his letter, envelope clipped to the back, underneath the top folder in Anderson’s In box. He then leaned toward the man typing at the next desk. His nameplate read DET. KALER.

“Hey, pal.”

The cop kept on typing. Unlike the stereotype, he was good at it. Dain leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder. Kaler swung toward him, angry, pale eyes flashing.

“Andy, he’s out for coffee ‘r somethin’?”

Kaler began, “Listen, asshole, when—” then his cop eyes took in the policeman ID included on Dain’s visitor’s badge. He shrugged in wry apology, swiveled to face Dain. “Tough morning. You know Andy?”

“Y’know.” Dain shrugged in turn. “I wrote I’d be in town, he was supposed to be pullin’ a file for me to look at.”

Kaler leaned back and locked his hands behind his head in a lazy manner. “Well, I got some good news and some bad news. Andy’s in the hospital. Seems he stuck that hard fucking Swede head of his into something wasn’t any of his business, and somebody tried to knock it off.”

“What’s the bad news?” asked Dain, deadpan.

Kaler gave a short hard bark of laughter.

“Yeah, you know our Andy, all right. Bad news is he’ll live.” He came forward in his chair, the unoiled swivel creaking when he did. “I can snoop Andy’s desk for your note, and—”

Dain said very quickly, “No need to do that...” Then he seemed to catch himself. He seemed to make himself relax visibly. He shrugged. “Sure,” he said.

Kaler checked the In box, found the note, read it standing over Dain. “I like it,” he said finally, “especially all that you-know-what stuff. Tell me about that, and maybe I can...”

His voice trailed off. There was a $50 bill on the corner of the desk that had not been there before. He turned away, the trailing fingers of one hand sliding over the bill, palming it.

“I think I can find that file for you, Lieutenant Solomon.”

Kaler returned with the BROUSSARD, EVANGELINE file: every stripper passed through police hands a time or two. On top were the Broussard mug shots, front and side, her fingerprint cards, a thin sheaf of report forms. They leafed through it together. When Dain carelessly flipped the file closed, his fingernail flicked off the paper clip holding her mug shots in place.

“Shit, nothing here. Couple soliciting busts...”

“Yeah,” said Kaler, “couple indecent exposures when we hit a joint where she was dancing, couple of priors for the same thing down in New Orleans...” He gave a hearty laugh. “This chick has a hard time keeping her clothes on, don’t she?”

“You’ve no idea,” said Dain. He sighed. “Hell, it was worth a shot.” He stood up. When he did, his hand hit the file and knocked it off the edge of the desk. “Shit.”

Bending to retrieve it, he grunted slightly as if with effort. With his left hand he palmed the mug shots that had slid from the folder, stuck out his right to Kaler. They shook.