“Got it solved, Daly?” he asked, neither sarcastic nor hopeful as he leaned against the desk, hands in the pockets of his topcoat.
Daly poked a thick finger in a cigarette pack that looked as though it had been sat on. “It’s like tracking down a miss in a car. I’ve found out where it can’t be from.”
“I know what you mean,” said Whitehead. He waited. Daly carefully straightened out a bent cigarette, then thumbnailed a wooden match. He waited too. Whitehead sighed, and smiled. “All right, I’ll tel] you. We know where it couldn’t have come from too but, being police, we had to cheek it out anyway. The shot couldn’t have come from the apartments or stores. They’ve all been occupied a long time. No stick-up artist is going to have friends living in the vicinity of every place he plans to knock over. He wouldn’t be on a roof either. Couldn’t watch his victim at the phone. We know that from other jobs that have been pulled where he mentioned what the victim was doing while being warned.”
Daly blew smoke toward the door. “You don’t have to be a cop to figure that out.”
Whitehead looked at the No Smoking sign, glanced at the locked gasoline pumps, then got out his own cigarettes.
“And it doesn’t take a police officer to figure it took two of them to pull these jobs. One to make the phone call, the other to watch from a dark parked car.”
Daly took a long drag, then gestured with his thumb toward the side street. “My guess is the car was parked up there.”
Whitehead’s partner shifted to peer in that direction, then turned to look where the kid’s body had been. Whitehead just leaned against the desk.
“Police officers have one advantage over citizens who think we’re not doing our job. Take the chip off your shoulder and listen, Daly. We looked up records. When the kid tried to hold you up, it wasn’t the first job he’d pulled, nor the last.”
Daly closed his eyes and took another long drag. “I wish you hadn’t told me.” He looked up suddenly. “You think he was in on these sniper jobs?”
Whitehead nodded. “And he wanted a larger split. That’s why he was shot.”
Daly frowned “But they tried to hold me up.”
“That’s what doesn’t fit,” said Whitehead. “They hit only stations doing a good business. We’ve checked on gasoline purchases with the wholesaler. You haven’t been doing so well here since the freeway pulled traffic away. A lot of nights it’s not even been worth staying open.”
“It was a phony stick-up then,” Daly growled. “Just to get the kid.”
“A phony, sure,” Whitehead agreed, “because we figure the kid was shot in the back, dying out there while he staggered, running to get away from you!”
Daly straightened. Whitehead’s partner suddenly had a gun in his hand. Whitehead took his hands out of his pockets. One of them held handcuffs.
“You overplayed it, Daly. Too positive we were going to be dumb cops. Too dumb to wonder what happened to the supposed customer who made the kid swerve so you couldn’t tell where the shot came from. Too dumb to thoroughly check everything out, records of all kinds, the possible and the impossible. We were even so dumb we tried the phone company, even though we figured the call couldn’t be traced. It couldn’t, because the kid forgot to tell you — or didn’t have time to — that he’d reported earlier this evening the phone was out of order.”
Daly expelled smoke. “What does that prove? I might have been confused by the shock of his being killed. I guess he took the call on the outside phone.”
“The same as you were so confused,” Whitehead suggested, “you forgot to rub grease on your thumbnails when we arrived. So confused you told us yourself that we had killers, not just one man, to run down on these hold-ups. You also thought we were too dumb to have men watching you while you pretended to begin tracking down the kid’s killer. There’s a crew opening the sewer now to retrieve your silenced gun.”
He put the cuffs on Daly and guided him toward the car.
“You know,” he said, “it doesn’t bother us that people think we’re dumb. It takes time, but we find in the long run that we meet plenty who are dumber. You’ll have a lot in common with them, Daly... in prison.”
Private and Confidential
by Diane Frazer
Honesty, especially in banking circles, is generally taken for granted, but in just such an environment suspicions multiply and their effect can be irretractable.
Henry Duvernois, president of the Merchants Bank, was standing at the window of his office, which overlooked the busy Boulevard Haussman. He was thinking morosely of the letter which that morning’s mail had brought to his desk for just one reason... to spoil what had promised to be a perfect day.
He looked again at the letter in his hand, read it over and sighed. It was very, very annoying, mainly because something had to be done about it, and right away, which meant that he wouldn’t be able to take his aperitif as usual at Fouquet’s.
The envelope in which the letter had arrived was marked, he noted wrathfully, PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL: FOR M. DUVERNOIS PERSONALLY, which, of course, was the reason that he was now personally bothered with this distressing matter. He went back to his desk and buzzed his secretary to come in.
Mlle. Arlette entered, the radiant morning smile firmly entrenched on her lovely face. “Yes, Monsieur,” she said throatily. “You want me, sir?”
He thought it over for a moment. If the occasion weren’t so earnest, demanding his undivided attention, he might have responded jovially and perhaps even equivocally. Henry Duvernois was a democratic man and Mlle. Arlette the prettiest secretary he had had in years. But this was no time for frivolities. “How did this get to my desk?” he asked, pointing with disgust to the envelope which lay there.
Mlle. Arlette came a step nearer to inspect the object in question at closer range. She uses Miss Dior, he thought automatically. I wonder how she can afford it. Probably takes it out of petty cash. You can t trust anyone any more.
Mlle. Arlette finished her inspection. “This, Monsieur?” she asked, modestly stepping back again. “Why, it came in the morning mail and as it was marked private and confidential I thought...”
“You are my private and confidential secretary,” he reminded her. “Are you not? Why do I have to be bothered with every detail?”
“But you told me only last week, Monsieur, that private letters addressed to you should not be opened by me,” she said, hurt. “I was merely following your instructions.”
She knew, of course, what kind of private letters he had meant. You could smell them a mile. The letter on M. Duvernois’ desk was obviously not one of ‘those’ letters. “Tell M. Bourdely to come in,” he ordered. “That is, if he has arrived by now. We are keeping strange working hours around here.”
“M. Bourdely is in his office,” she said stiffly. “I’ll tell him you wish to see him.”
“I would appreciate that very much indeed,” he said sarcastically and Mlle. Arlette left in a huff. Duvernois looked at his watch. Already eleven o’clock. He wouldn’t make it for aperitifs and it was such a beautiful day. The Champs Elysées at noon hour would be filled with pretty women.
“You wanted to see me?” Edmonde Bourdely, treasurer of the Merchants Bank, had come in, silently, as was his irritating habit.
“Yes, Edmonde, something extremely annoying has come up. Look at this.’’ He pushed the envelope over to Bourdely, who extracted the letter and began to read. “No signature,” he said, when he had finished. “Anonymous. I wouldn’t pay any attention to this kind of thing.”
“You wouldn’t, eh?” Duvernois said. “Just ignore the whole business. And let this man go on robbing us?”