“And then?”
“I fixed supper, we ate, and he went downstairs and down Blake Street towards this deli’ to get a six-pack and cigarettes. The next I knew was hearing him moaning from half a flight down. He doesn’t weigh but a hundred and fifteen. I got him up here and ran for Mendez.”
“Could he tell you anything?”
“Mendez?”
“Hinsch.”
“Pretty delirious. Came to, passed out, and so on. Said your name, ‘Seal,’ and then ‘dark’ over and over again. That really scared me, that ‘dark.’ Said ‘room,’ and then ‘dark’ again. And said another thing — I had to bend down to make it out. Said ‘Bullfrog.’ ”
“Bullfrog?”
“That’s all,” she said. “Here’s these things for you.” From beneath a soiled sofa cushion she withdrew certain sheets of paper, seemingly a mimeographed list. She handed him two mounted film slides. “Here’s something else. The bullet Mendez dug out of him. Says it’s from a .32 pistol.”
The feel of it was .32, but Seal could not adjust his eyes to it or to the print on the mimeographed pages. He rose and walked back to the man’s bedside and leaned to hear his labored breathing. “He was helping me,” he said, “but I never wanted him going into that school.”
“Yeah, but you know Hinsch. Show him a door with a fool-proof lock on it and give him enough reason — and always talking about owing you so much.”
“Not that much,” Seal said, and pocketed what she had given him. “I’ll look into it. I’ll straighten it out.”
“We might have to move him. Someone around that school must have seen him. I can’t have the police here.”
“Call me. Don’t say anything. Just say he was on his way for cigarettes and got shot.”
He picked at a filet off the warmer and, eyes functionless, went to bed. Visions of Hinschelman followed him. He’d gone scrambling off at the critical moment, leaving Fingers to do his dirty work. How long might the man have waited for him, or how many times had he telephoned? And he was unreachable, of course — seeing the optometrist, shopping about for exotic viands for the strange Miss Springer. While he awaited her, cocktail apparatus ready, Hinschelman, in his misguided fervor, got into and out of the Peter Pan School, bringing booty of questionable importance. While Seal and Miss Springer sipped drinks and crossed conversational hatpins, someone found Hinsch with two rounds of a .32.
And Miss Springer? Where did the shoots of her belligerence lead? Or her almost paranoiac defensiveness? Love of Grivas, fear of Grivas, loathing of Seal as an ex-cop?
And what about Grivas carrying an antique box camera around?
Working the night shift at headquarters was one Lieutenant Gibbet, a close-mouthed young officer whom Seal had trained. From his bedside telephone he called him, asking any information on anyone in the files known as “Bullfrog.” Gibbet did not recognize the name, he’d ring him back.
The caption, in urgent boldface, was under the touching photo of a potbellied, hollow-eyed African child. Following was the quarter-page advertisement on a page of Family Way, one of a half ton of female magazines left in a storeroom by Aunt Grace. There ensued (translated from the Swahili) this letter:
“Before you, dear Mrs. Bernice Borkey of Trestle Glen, Idaho, USA, I could not went to school. Here is picture. Wind blow hut away and flood take mealie plot and I every day find grubworms and lizard for sick sister eat and boil posho — our only sheep die heart water. Find berries and wart-hog curds. Wear leaves and no doctor for sister dying, baya sana! (Very bad). Then you have adopt us now new hut and littles barley meal for eat and scabs better since you send money.”
A plea from Foster Children International followed. Would you turn your back on the tens of thousands of Bebo Ogologos dying of malnutrition and hopelessness in every land? Twenty-five dollars monthly (less than you now spent for cigarettes or a ‘night on the town’) offered you the rewarding knowledge that you kept a Bebo alive. Your orphan would write personal letters and send snapshots, as did Bebo… WILL YOU HELP?”
Seal tossed the magazine aside, tested his improved vision on the city skyline, and picked up the ringing phone. Respectfully a man asked if he would hold the line for Captain Stout of Detectives. “Certainly,” Seal answered and, once on the “hold” button, hung up. A worn gag of Stout’s, prefatory to a jocular harpoon. The phone rang again. He let it ring while he thought. He knew now who “Bullfrog” was but he couldn’t tell them. Pull in Bullfrog and they’d nail Hinschelman with a housebreaking — five years in any courtroom with his past. On the twelfth or sixteenth ring he answered.
“Ah, Inspector,” Stout said, buoyant as an airline ticket girl.
“Stout.”
“Thought you might have a comment on your boy Hinschelman, who’s just made the charts again.”
“Bad connection. Can hardly hear you.”
“Aaron. Fingers. Little excitement around here; we had a pool running on how long he’d keep out of trouble effective the date you soft-hearted him out of the pen.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“We voted to ask you. You were seen coming in and then going out, by taxi number, last night.”
“Wonder who saw that?”
“Didn’t give name. Called us around midnight. Spoke of you and said Hinschelman got himself shot.”
“So what’s this, your quarter-hourly coffee break?”
“Boys took a second vote, decided you might know where he is. We got there, nobody home. Pretty sloppy job of swabbing blood off that stairway and clearing out the medic smells. Ex-Doctor Mendez came to mind. Fancy Mendez being missing, too.”
“Unbelievable,” Seal said. “So someone shot Fingers, you say. That’s your charge, his getting shot? Or is it ‘not being home at night?’ ”
“Charge is being good old Hinschelman with a record as long as New Year’s morning. Boys wanted me to call you. They’re having trouble picturing someone just walking up and shooting Hinschelman without provocation.”
“Then you need some new boys. Everybody down there knows he dropped me information.” Seal laughed. “Provocation? Without Hinsch you’d have a dozen unsolved jewelry heists on your hands.”
“They asked me when he last dropped you information.”
“Tell them I don’t know. I had drops in my eyes yesterday and they clouded my memory. Tell the boys this: ever since Bagwell State he’s been working as timekeeper on the midnight shift at Plynx Automotive. Call his super if you don’t think he’s straight.”
“Straight as the pool cue of a hustler’s mark. We’ll know when we pick up the guy that shot him.”
“Yes, don’t forget him in your hilarity. While you’re laughing he might be gunning down someone else. Funny thing about that nameless phone call when you come to think about it. I got word around nine and went out for the straight story, which is that Hinsch was on the way to a store for some cigarettes. Someone, your party, went to all the trouble of writing down my cab number. Odd hobby, wouldn’t you think? Or maybe he just likes to collect cab numbers. Makes phone calls, too. Along about midnight he got around to phoning you.”
Stout answered less jovially. “More than you did.”
“Yes, but three long hours later. Think it might be they held off until they learned the assassination had aborted and Hinsch was out of range? Pretend — you and the boys — that they knew of his parolee status and were settling for his reconsignment to the pen.”