“How do you figure to make sure of him, for God’s sake?”
I shouldn’t have asked that, because as a result I found myself, two hours later, sitting across that same desk — the one in the snapshot — from Mr. Williams, suspected murderer. We were in a sizable back room in Williams’ café in Overbrook. A window at the side of the room was open, but the cool weed-scented breeze off the river didn’t keep me from sweating.
“You said on the phone you thought I might be interested in a snapshot you found,” Williams said. He was partially bald. Heavy black eyebrows met over his nose. The eyes under them looked like brown agate marbles in milk. He was smoking a fat cigar.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Why?”
“I figured it could get you in trouble in certain quarters, that’s all.”
He blew smoke. “What do you mean by that?”
“It’s actually a picture of you buying heroin across this desk right here. Or maybe selling it.”
“Well, well,” he said, “that’s interesting all right. If true.” He was either calm and cool or trying hard to appear so.
“It’s true,” I said. “You’re very plain in the picture. So’s the heroin.” I gave him the tentative smile of a timid, frightened man. It wasn’t hard to do, because I felt both timid and frightened.
“Where is this picture of yours?” Williams asked.
“Right here.” I handed him the print Lieutenant Randall had given me.
He looked at it without any change of expression I could see. Finally he took another drag on his cigar. “This guy does resemble me a little. But how did you happen to know that?”
I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “I been in your café lots of times. I recognized you.”
He studied the print. “You’re right about one thing. This picture might be misunderstood. So maybe we can deal. What I can’t understand is where you found the damn thing.”
“In a book I borrowed from the public library.”
“A book?” He halted his cigar in midair, startled.
“Yes. A spy novel. I dropped the book accidentally and this picture fell out of the inside card pocket.” I put my hand into my jacket pocket and touched the butt of the pistol that Randall had issued me for the occasion. I needed comfort.
“You found this print in a book?”
“Not this print, no. I made it myself out of curiosity. I’m kind of an amateur photographer, see? When I found what I had, I thought maybe you might be interested, that’s all. Are you?”
“How many prints did you make?”
“Just the one.”
“And where’s the negative?”
“I’ve got it, don’t worry.”
“With you?”
“You think I’m nuts?” I said defensively. I started a hand toward my hip pocket, then jerked it back nervously.
Mr. Williams smiled and blew cigar smoke. “What do you think might be a fair price?” he asked.
I swallowed. “Would twenty thousand dollars be too much?”
His eyes changed from brown marbles to white slits. “That’s pretty steep.”
“But you’ll pay it?” I tried to put a touch of triumph into my expression.
“Fifteen. When you turn over the negative to me.”
“Okay,” I said, sighing with relief. “How long will it take you to get the money?”
“No problem. I’ve got it right here when you’re ready to deal.” His eyes went to a small safe in a corner of the room. Maybe the heroin was there, too, I thought.
“Hey!” I said. “That’s great, Mr. Williams! Because I’ve got the negative here, too. I was only kidding before.” I fitted my right hand around the gun butt in my pocket. With my left I pulled out my wallet and threw it on the desk between us.
“In here?” Williams said, opening the wallet.
“In the little pocket.”
He found the tiny negative at once.
He took a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and used it to look at the negative against the ceiling light. Then he nodded, satisfied. He raised his voice a little and said, “Okay, Otto.”
Otto? I heard a door behind me scrape over the rug as it was thrust open. Turning in my chair, I saw a big man emerge from a closet and step toward me. My eyes went instantly to the gun in his hand. It was fitted with a silencer, and oddly, the man’s right middle finger was curled around the trigger. Then I saw why. The tip of his right index finger was missing. The muzzle of the gun looked as big and dark as Mammoth Cave to me.
“He’s all yours, Otto,” Williams said. “I’ve got the negative. No wonder you couldn’t find it in the motel safe. The crazy kid hid it in a library book.”
“I heard,” Otto said flatly.
I still had my hand in my pocket touching the pistol, but I realized I didn’t have a chance of beating Otto to a shot, even if I shot through my pocket. I stood up very slowly and faced Otto. He stopped far enough away from me to be just out of reach.
Williams said, “No blood in here this time, Otto. Take him out back. Don’t forget his wallet and labels. And it won’t hurt to spoil his face a little before you put him in the river. He’s local.”
Otto kept his eyes on me. They were paler than his skin. He nodded. “I’ll handle it.”
“Right.” Williams started for the door that led to his café kitchen, giving me an utterly indifferent look as he went by. “So long, smart boy,” he said. He went through the door and closed it behind him.
Otto cut his eyes to the left to make sure Williams had closed the door tight. I used that split second to dive headfirst over Williams’ desk, my hand still in my pocket on my gun. I lit on the floor behind the desk with a painful thump and Williams’ desk chair, which I’d overturned in my plunge, came crashing down on top of me.
From the open window at the side of the room a new voice said conversationally, “Drop the gun, Otto.”
Apparently Otto didn’t drop it fast enough because Lieutenant Randall shot it out of his hand before climbing through the window into the room. Two uniformed cops followed him.
Later, over a pizza and beer in the Trocadero All-Night Diner, Randall said, “We could have taken Williams before. The Narc Squad has known for some time he’s a peddler. But we didn’t know who was supplying him.”
I said stiffly, “I thought I was supposed to be trying to hang a murder on him. How did that Otto character get into the act?”
“After we set up your meeting with Williams, he phoned Otto to come over to his café and take care of another would-be blackmailer.”
“Are you telling me you didn’t think Williams was the killer?”
Randall shook his head, looking slightly sheepish. “I was pretty sure Williams wouldn’t risk Murder One. Not when he had a headlock on somebody who’d do it for him.”
“Like Otto?”
“Like Otto.”
“Well, just who the hell is Otto?”
“He’s the other man in the snapshot with Williams.”
Something in the way he said it made me ask him, “You mean you knew who he was before you asked me to go through that charade tonight?”
“Sure. I recognized him in the picture.”
I stopped chewing my pizza and stared at him. I was dumfounded, as they say. “Are you nuts?” I said with my mouth full. “The picture just showed part of a silhouette. From behind, at that. Unrecognizable.”
“You didn’t look close enough.” Randall gulped beer. “His right hand showed in the picture plain. With the end of his right index finger gone.”
“But how could you recognize a man from that?”
“Easy. Otto Schmidt of our Narcotics Squad is missing the end of his right index finger. Had it shot off by a junkie in a raid.”