So I told the three homicide detectives how Ogden had died on the bed in my room. One of the detectives was a weary fifty, a stocky man with spiky inch-long gray hair that formed a kind of a dull halo around his face. It was the face of a disappointed listener who had grown tired of waiting for punch lines that never came.
“Start with last night this time, Mr. St. Ives,” he said. “When Ogden approached you in your hotel in New York.”
After I told it for the fourth time they removed the body of Ogden on a wheeled stretcher. Technicians and blue coats had been in and out of the room, poking into the medicine cabinet, counting my socks in the bureau, and making themselves generally useful. Somebody took some pictures of Ogden’s body, but no one bothered about fingerprints. The assistant manager had been in and out twice, looking mortified the first time and despondent the second. The third time he showed up while they were wheeling the body out and this time he looked alarmed. “Down the service elevator, please, down the service elevator,” he said, turning to Demeter. “Can’t you tell them to take it down the service elevator?”
“We’re parked out front,” one of the ambulance attendants said.
“The service elevator,” Demeter said, and I thought the assistant manager might kiss his hand.
“It’s awful,” the assistant manager said to no one in particular. “It’s just God-awful.”
“Tell you what you do,” Demeter said.
“Yes, yes,” the assistant manager said. “What? What?” He was very nervous and he ran a thin pale hand through his ample black hair, which looked as if it had been cut by a razor, teased, and sprayed.
“Get him another room,” Demeter said, and jerked a thumb at me.
“He’s going to stay?” and there was shock and disapproval and even a touch of horror in the question. “You’re not taking him with you?”
“No, he’s not coming with us. He likes it here, don’t you, St. Ives?”
“Because it’s so homey,” I said.
The assistant manager shook his head and this time he registered despair. He had an extremely mobile face. “I’ll send a man up with a key,” he said, and left.
Demeter turned to the detective with the spiky gray hair. “You got what you need from St. Ives?” he said.
“Such as it is.”
“I like the part where Ogden wanted in on the $250,000,” Demeter said.
“They’re going to like that up in New York, too,” the homicide detective said. “Oh, they’re going to like it all just real fine. What they’re really going to like though is Ogden’s wanting to zing the thieves after he got the money and the shield. They’re going to eat that right up.” He got up from the chair he’d been sitting in, walked over to me, and stood there for a few moments. “Anything else you’d like to add, Mr. St. Ives?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“We’re going to need a formal statement from you.”
“All right,” I said. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“When?”
“Oh, say ten o’clock? Or is that too early for you?”
“That’s fine.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, and turned to Demeter. “You knew Ogden, you say?”
“I knew him,” Demeter said, and his tone was flat and careful.
“Well?”
“We went through the FBI Academy together, back in the fifties.”
“What do you think?”
“Nothing,” Demeter said. “I think absolutely nothing.”
“That’s a big help,” the homicide detective said. “If you get around to thinking something, let me know.” He made a brusque wave with his hand at the other two homicide detectives who were younger and taller and not quite so tired-looking. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go down to the lobby and find out how many eyewitnesses we got.” He turned to Demeter once again. “You know how many we’re going to have?”
“How many?”
“Less than one. Zero.” He moved to the door, opened it, and let the two other detectives through. Then he turned and looked at the bed with its blood-soaked pillows and spread. “God, the paperwork,” he said. “You know something?” he said to Demeter.
“What?”
“A cop should get killed in his own home town.”
A bellhop arrived shortly after the homicide detectives left, ogled the blood, picked up my overnight bag which I had repacked, and led Demeter, Fastnaught, and me past the uniformed cop stationed outside the door, down the hall, into the elevator, up two floors and into another room. “Lot of blood,” he said as he unlocked the door. No one seemed to want to contradict him so he stood around until I remembered to give him a tip. Fastnaught walked over to the window and resumed his inspection of the rain. Demeter selected a chair and eased himself into it as if the dampness made his joints stiff. I opened the overnight case and took out the bottle of Scotch.
“You want a drink?” I said.
“Water,” Fastnaught said.
“Just water or Scotch and water?”
“Scotch and water.”
“Lieutenant?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
I mixed three drinks and handed them around. Fastnaught turned from the window and rested his rear on the sill. Demeter produced one of his cigars and ritualistically lighted it. I sank into an arm chair opposite Demeter.
“Well, what do you think, Sergeant Fastnaught?” Demeter said.
Fastnaught took a swallow of his drink before answering. “I think,” he said slowly, “that we got ourselves a whole new ball game.”
“What makes you say that, Sergeant Fastnaught?” Demeter said, and wiped some of his drink from his Ronald Colman mustache.
“Your friend Ogden,” Fastnaught said.
“My friend Ogden,” Demeter said softly. “I wonder what happened to my friend Ogden. When I first met him more than fifteen years ago all he wanted to do was show you pictures of his baby daughter. He was enthused about the whole thing then, a hell of a lot more than I was. I wonder how he felt the first time he got hold of some of that easy money. When you’re on the vice squad it’s always floating around. Just stick out your hand and somebody will lay a couple of hundred in it. And around Christmas, I suppose, with a wife and a baby daughter, a couple of hundred can make a lot of difference. Maybe it was around Christmas that my friend Ogden stuck his hand out for the first time. What do you think, St. Ives?”
“He was a crook,” I said. “He was a crook who for a slice of $250,000 wouldn’t mind becoming a murderer.”
“Is that a moral judgment, St. Ives?”
“It’s only what he told me he was.”
“And were you shocked, maybe a little surprised?”
“No,” I said. “Not particularly.”
“Why not, St. Ives? Didn’t you have even a bit of what the editorials call ‘moral indignation’ or outraged sensibility? Why didn’t you report him? Why didn’t you go down and see his superior and say, ‘By the way, this Ogden that works for you. I’m afraid he’s something of a wrong one, a shade dishonest, you might say.’”
I found a cigarette and lit it. “How much do you pay for your suits, Lieutenant?”
“Seventy-five tops, and that’s the one I wear to Mass.”
“How about you, Sergeant Fastnaught?”
He smiled a little. “I paid one twenty-five once, but then I’m not married.”
“Ogden paid at least $300 for his suits. He drove a Lincoln Continental. His wife had a Buick. He played table-stakes poker and could drop $500 without a blink. He lived in a co-op apartment that cost God knows how much, but not less than $80,000 and that doesn’t include maintenance. I knew this and I didn’t see Ogden but maybe a dozen times a year when we played poker. Now if I knew this, then the people he worked for knew it, so why should I play Morally Outraged Citizen? And just who the hell do I tell about it? His superior, you say. For all I know his superior had cut himself in for twenty-five percent.”