"No," Lucille said. "He just liked to walk. He was gone for a couple of hours sometimes."
"He never told you where he'd been?"
"Just here and there in the neighborhood."
Here and there in the neighborhood, I thought. The alley where Colly had been shot was eleven blocks from this apartment. He could have walked in a straight line, or he could have gone roundabout in any direction.
I asked, "Colly liked to have a nightcap when he came back from these walks, didn't he?"
"He did, yes."
"He kept liquor here, then?"
"One bottle of bourbon. That's all."
I rotated my hat in my hands. "I wonder if I could have a small drink, Lucille. I know it's early, but…"
She nodded and got up and went to a squat cabinet near the kitchen door. She bent, slid the panel open in front, looked inside. Then she straightened. "I'm sorry," she said. "We… I seem to be out."
I stood. "It's okay. I should be going anyway."
"Where will you go now?"
"To see some people." I paused. "Would you happen to have a photograph of Colly? A snapshot, something like that?"
"I think so. Why do you want it?"
"I might need to show it around," I said. "Here in the neighborhood."
She seemed satisfied with that. "I'll see if I can find one for you."
I waited while she went into the bedroom. A couple of minutes later she returned with a black-and-white snap of Colly, head and shoulders, that had been taken in a park somewhere. He was smiling, one eyebrow raised in mock raffishness.
I put the snap into my pocket and thanked Lucille and told her I would be in touch again pretty soon. Then I went to the door and let myself out.
The skies seemed to have parted like the Red Sea. Drops of rain as big as hail pellets lashed the sidewalk. Thunder rumbled in the distance, edging closer. I pulled the collar of my overcoat tight around my neck and made a run for my car.
It was after four o'clock when I came inside a place called Tay's Liquors on Whitney Street and stood dripping water on the floor. There was a heater on a shelf just inside the door, and I allowed myself the luxury of its warmth for a few seconds. Then I crossed to the counter.
A young guy wearing a white shirt and a Hitler mustache got up from a stool near the cash register and walked over to me. He smiled, letting me see crooked teeth that weren't very clean. "Wet enough for you?" he said.
No, I thought, I want it to get a lot wetter so I can drown. Dumb question, dumb answer. But all I said was, "Maybe you can help me."
"Sure," he said. "Name your poison."
He was brimming with originality. I took the snapshot of Colly Babcock from my pocket, extended it across the counter and asked, "Did you see this man two nights ago, sometime around eleven o'clock?" It was the same thing I had done and the same question I had asked at least twenty times already. I had been driving and walking the streets of Glen Park for four hours now, and I had been to four liquor stores, five corner groceries, two large chain markets, a delicatessen and half a dozen bars that sold off-sale liquor. So far I had come up with nothing except possibly a head cold.
The young guy gave me a slanted look. "Cop?" he asked, but his voice was still cheerful.
I showed him the photostat of my investigator's license. He shrugged, then studied the photograph. "Yeah," he said finally, "I did see this fellow a couple of nights ago. Nice old duck. We talked a little about the Forty-niners."
I stopped feeling cold and I stopped feeling frustrated. I said, "About what time did he come in?"
"Let's see. Eleven-thirty or so, I think."
Fifteen minutes before Colly had been shot in an alley three and a half blocks away. "Do you remember what he bought?"
"Bourbon — a pint. Medium price."
"Kesslers"
"Yeah, I think it was."
"Okay, good. What's your name?"
"My name? Hey, wait a minute, I don't want to get involved in anything…"
"Don't worry, it's not what you're thinking."
It took a little more convincing, but he gave me his name finally and I wrote it down in my notebook. And thanked him and hurried out of there.
I had something more than an idea now.
Eberhardt said, "I ought to knock you flat on your ass."
He had just come out of his bedroom, eyes foggy with sleep, hair standing straight up, wearing a wine-colored bathrobe. Dana stood beside him looking fretful.
"I'm sorry I woke you up, Eb," I said. "But I didn't think you'd be in bed this early. It's only six o'clock."
He said something I didn't hear, but that Dana heard. She cracked him on the arm to show her disapproval, then turned and left us alone.
Eberhardt went over and sat on the couch and glared at me. "I've had about six hours' sleep in the past forty-eight," he said. "I got called out last night after you left, I didn't get home until three A.M., I was up at seven, I worked all goddamn day and knocked off early so I could get some sleep, and what happens? I'm in bed ten minutes and you show up."
"Eb, it's important."
"What is?"
"Colly Babcock."
"Ah, Christ, you don't give up, do you?"
"Sometimes I do, but not this time. Not now." I told him what I had learned from the guy at Tay's Liquors.
"So Babcock bought a bottle there," Eberhardt said. "So what?"
"If he was planning to burglarize a liquor store, do you think he'd have bothered to buy a bottle fifteen minutes before?"
"Hell, the job might have been spur-of-the-moment."
"Colly didn't work that way. When he was pulling them, they were all carefully planned well in advance. Always."
"He was getting old," Eberhardt said. "People change."
"You didn't know Colly. Besides, there are a few other things."
"Such as?"
"The burglaries themselves. They were all done the same way — back door jimmied, marks on the jamb and lock made with a hand bar or something." I paused. "They didn't find any tool like that on Colly. Or inside the store either."
"Maybe he got rid of it."
"When did he have time? They caught him coming out the door,"
Eberhardt scowled. I had his interest now. "Go ahead," he said.
"The pattern of the burglaries, like I was saying, is doors jimmied, drawers rifled, papers and things strewn about. No fingerprints, but it smacks of amateurism. Or somebody trying to make it look like amateurism."
"And Babcock was a professional."
"He could have done the book," I said. "He used lock picks and glass cutters to get into a place, never anything like a hand bar. He didn't ransack; he always knew exactly what he was after. He never deviated from that, Eb. Not once."
Eberhardt got to his feet and paced around for a time. Then he stopped in front of me and said, "So what do you think, then?"
"You figure it."
"Yeah," he said slowly, "I can figure it, all right. But I don't like it. I don't like it at all."
"And Colly?' I said. "You think he liked it?"
Eberhardt turned abruptly, went to the telephone. He spoke to someone at the Hall of Justice, then someone else. When he hung up, he was already shrugging out of his bathrobe.
He gave me a grim look. "I hope you're wrong, you know that."
"I hope I'm not," I said.
I was sitting in my flat, reading one of the pulps from my collection of several thousand issues, when the telephone rang just before eleven o'clock. It was Eberhardt, and the first thing he said was, "You weren't wrong."
I didn't say anything, waiting.
"Avinisi and Carstairs," he said bitterly. "Each of them on the force a little more than two years. The old story: bills, long hours, not enough pay — and greed. They cooked up the idea one night while they were cruising Glen Park, and it worked just fine until two nights ago. Who'd figure the cops for it?"