“My colleague reminds me Sportree’s is only a five-minute walk from here. There’s a fire escape out back, so the manager didn’t have to see anything. Any of you guys step out for a leak?”
Lungs said, “Me. I got weak kidneys. I wasn’t gone three minutes.”
“That sound about right?” The other musicians shrugged. “Anyone go to parochial school?” A few nods. “Okay, you can explain it to the rest. We’re checking your nails.”
Canal went without being asked. He was the least likely member of the squad to encounter resistance. After a few minutes he stepped off the bandstand. “Clean, L.T. Of blood and matter, anyways. Some of these boys could use a lesson in hygiene. Boy on vibes chews his to the elbow.” He spoke low.
Zagreb kept his volume down as well. “What about Lungs?”
“Whitest thing about him. He don’t leave his barber’s without a manicure.”
“We can eliminate the slobs. The rest had plenty of time to tidy up.” He stared at the sergeant. “You okay?”
“Fine ’n’ dandy.” It sounded slurred.
Zagreb frowned, then raised his voice to the band. “Leave your names and addresses with Detective McReary, and stick close to home. No show tonight. The place is closed.”
“Hey!” The manager stiffened behind the bar.
The lieutenant had already seen his nails. He wouldn’t ask the man to make him a sandwich, but it was just dirt. “Tell it to the marines. No, wait — they placed the Ruby off limits.”
Red Lot struck another one off the rim. The fat man flushed and left the room.
The uniforms took Dugan down to 1300, Detroit Police Headquarters, with Zagreb’s instructions to book him for suspicion; the trumpeter negotiated the stairs with rubber ankles and an officer holding up each arm. In a little while the medical examiner showed up, humming as he ascended the stairs. The squad repaired to the Chrysler, where the lieutenant touched Burke’s arm behind the wheel. “You dating a meter maid?”
“I’m riding the fidelity train just now. Wife found a cocktail napkin with a phone number in my pocket. Why a meter maid?”
“They aren’t making new cars anymore. You strip those gears, you’ll need a scooter.”
“Be an improvement.” But he worked the clutch gently.
“Sawbuck says it’s Lot,” Canal said. “See how red and sweaty he was? Like he just went ten rounds with a fire escape.”
Zagreb said, “He always looks like that. My dough’s on Lungs. Those hands could throttle a coconut.”
“Nuts,” said McReary. “Famous people don’t do murder.”
“Tell it to John Wilkes Booth.” Burke flashed his Clark Gable grin at a pair of nurses in a crosswalk. One smiled back. Her companion grabbed her wrist and jerked it like a leash.
“He was just famous on account of he bumped Lincoln.”
“He was already boffo box-office in the Raymond Massey picture.” Canal blew cigar exhaust out of his window.
Not enough. The lieutenant rolled down his, preferring the street odor. It was garbage day. “Anybody can duck out of a dive like Sportree’s without being noticed, even a big shot like Lungs. Maybe he objected to Dugan messing with a colored girl.”
Burke said, “So why not kill Dugan?”
“He’d be just as sore at them both. Framing Dugan punished him too and took Lungs off the hook for Simone.”
“Lucky for him Dugan got a snootful,” Burke said.
“It didn’t take much. He’s an amateur drinker.”
“So let’s lean on Lungs,” Canal said.
“Maybe wait to hear from the M.E.” McReary studied law nights. “He’ll get the size of the killer’s hands from the marks on the neck. You don’t have to be Captain Marvel to choke a dame. That midget on trombone could’ve done it if he had time.”
“This dame looked plenty healthy on the bandstand,” Zagreb said. “Let’s drop in on Lungs.”
McReary said, “He might not be home yet.”
“Even better.” The Lieutenant opened the glove compartment and took out a ring of skeleton keys.
Chester “Lungs” Nelson kept an apartment on Erskine, above a rib joint they could smell the moment they turned into the block. When they stepped out of the car, Canal stumbled on the curb and caught himself noisily against a cluster of trash cans. Zagreb stared. “You drunk?”
“Just a slug, Zag, honest.” The sergeant slid the bottle they’d taken from Dugan out of his coat. Zagreb grabbed it, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed at the contents. “Back in the car,” he said.
“What about Lungs?” Burke asked.
“Lungs can wait. We’re going to a drugstore.”
The nearest drugstore happened to be the one where Zagreb had drunk gin rickeys with Shirley Grabowski. The soda jerk in the paper hat wasn’t on duty, but their business was with the pharmacist, a chubby sixty with humorous eyes who heard his request and said, “Don’t you boys have your own chemists?”
“Clear up in Lansing,” Zagreb said. “Two weeks’ minimum. An hour’d be better.”
“Well, I don’t know. There’s so many possibilities, and a different test for each. I’m a little rusty. Mostly I just fill little pill bottles from big ones.”
“Start with all the common stuff. We’re not looking for Fu Manchu.”
The man took the bottle and said he’d do what he could. The Four Horsemen stopped at the counter long enough for Canal to gulp down three cups of coffee, then returned to the squad room and waited for the phone to ring.
“How do you do it? You just yank the handle and the pinball machine does the rest.” Burke shook his head. “Dope in the bottle proves Dugan was set up just like you said.”
“Unless he killed the girl first, then doped himself to make it play that way,” Zagreb said. “But the toilet’s on the ground floor, so where’d he clean his nails without the manager seeing him?”
“In on it?” suggested McReary.
“Or did it all himself, but why?”
“Same reason as Lungs,” Burke said. “He don’t mix his whites with his coloreds. He provided the bottle, didn’t he?”
Zagreb said, “It was waiting in the room for the next customer. Anyone who knew what they were up to could’ve snuck in, spiked the booze, and went back out onto the fire escape to wait for it to work. I’m eliminating Dugan again. No motive.”
“It wasn’t Lungs.”
Everyone looked at Canal, whose voice sounded like a motor trying to start. His broad face was pale and shiny: The cure was worse than the condition. “That’s too long to be away from the band at Sportree’s and still have time to clean up. Somebody would’ve noticed he’d been in the can a long time.”
“Sure, they’d all cover for him,” Burke said. “He’s their star attraction.”
The phone rang. Zagreb took the call, listened, said thanks, and forked the receiver. “Chloral hydrate. Knockout drops. There was enough in the bottle to stun a moose.”
“Lucky it was Canal,” Burke said.
The lieutenant remained seated with the candlestick phone in his lap and his hands resting on it. “What’s good for a search warrant?”
Burke said, “You mean a judge we ain’t ticked off lately? Blake just got back from Canada. He was gone a month hunting bears.”
“Tail, you mean. We gave him a pass on that underage intern last Christmas. Time to collect.” Zagreb started dialing.
Canal rubbed his temples. “What we looking for?”
“I’m not just sure, but it’ll be nasty.”
They tossed the Ruby Lounge from top to bottom, starting with the murder room — minus a corpse now — and finishing in the basement, a dusty monument to Prohibition with what was left of a copper still after the last scrap drive, empty Old Log Cabin crates, and buckets of fusel oil. Canal, recovering now, said he could get up a swell victory party from that alone. But nothing they found was evidence in a homicide investigation.