“No,” Jan said curiously. “How does it go?” She laughed. “All right, I’ll let you rest tonight, but I really shouldn’t, since you aren’t my husband.” She pretended to think. “Maybe subconsciously that’s why I don’t want to get married.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Well,” Jan said firmly, “I would. However, we can discuss that when you are less tired. I’m going to brush my teeth. You go to bed.”
“In a minute. Right now I’m too tired to sleep.”
He dropped down onto the sofa, leaning back against the cushions, yawned cavernously and half closed his eyes to slits, letting his thoughts wander where they would. It was a common way he used to relax himself when things built up too tightly. Four murders, each with at least eighty-eight jillion clues — or what should have been clues — and none of them leading anywhere to speak of. Or, rather, leading everywhere to speak of, mostly in opposite directions. Four well-known and well-disliked mobsters killed, with witnesses all over the place, with no attempt made in any case to hide the fact of murder, and with enough motive on each to provide a dozen suspects. That was the trouble, of course; if they had all been preachers of the gospel instead of hoods, it might be easier to narrow the suspects down. Or maybe not, he thought idly; motive, like beauty, is strictly in the eye of the beholder.
Still, there had to be something in common when four men such as Capp, Falcone, Martin and Sekara get killed, even though each was killed by a different method. Were they even killed by the same person? And if so, was it a man or a woman? It was pretty sad at this stage of an investigation when even those simple questions were difficult, if not impossible, to answer. The fact is, he tried to convince himself, that every murder leaves its mark somewhere, if one could only recognize it. The simplicity of each killing in this case was one of the things making it so difficult to solve. Take tonight, for example...
The building where John Sekara had died so few hours before now formed before his half-closed eyes, the shaded windows of the dead man’s apartment strangely making him think of the closed eyes of its ex-occupant, now undoubtedly undergoing the final indignity of an autopsy. Tomorrow Captain Tower might well put him on the carpet for not having more men on Sekara, but disregarding the fact that he didn’t have the men to spare, there was also the fact that unless they had had men staked out front and back of every place Sekara went — including his home — for the period he was there, Mr. John Sekara would have caught it. As he did. Maybe in those pleasant days when man’s sole weapon was a club, or a rock, other men could furnish someone with reliable protection, but today it was foolish to even think of it. About all any protecting agency could do today was to make it a trifle more difficult for the killer to achieve his objective, but they certainly couldn’t guarantee their client’s life, or even well-being.
Especially in a case such as this. What could Stan have done? It was really a rather clever idea, when you stopped to think about it. Anyone could probably get into anyone else’s apartment simply by waiting for a guest to leave and then immediately calling on the house phone saying you were old Uncle Charlie and you’d forgotten your false teeth upstairs. Your voice wouldn’t betray you, that was certain. With the inadequacy of the cheap apparatus they used in today’s apartments, Reardon thought, it’s a holy wonder anyone understands the words, let alone recognizes the voice.
He frowned suddenly, and repeated the last thought to himself, hearing the words in his mind. It’s a holy wonder anyone understands the words, let alone recognizes the voice. It’s a wonder anyone understands the words. It’s a wonder anyone understands the words...
He sat erect, eyes wide, sleep forgotten. The old familiar tingle of his nerve ends, advising him he was on to something hot, came back; he had been waiting for it a long, long time. He hunched over, his hands clasped before him, concentrating fiercely, going over other facts. Was it possible? Everything in this world is possible, he told himself almost harshly; and most of it is probable. And where bad news and crime were concerned, too much of it was certain.
He grimaced at the rug without seeing it, tracing the facts once again. Now, what was it that old man in that bar down on the Embarcadero had said? The one with the scarf wrapped around his jaw five or six times? He had said—
“Jim.”
He held up his hand abruptly and unconsciously to prevent any immediate interruption in his flow of thoughts. The old man with the scarf had said — and now in his fierce concentration he could almost hear the thin, reedy voice — “The guy with the lumber jacket, his shoes were real shiny... I was looking down, like... I seen his shoes. By accident, like... They was real shiny...”
Reardon growled deep in his throat. He could have kicked himself down the stairs and then up again. How had he overlooked that vital statement all this time? Sheer stupidity, that was all. But the girl who had come in, asking directions... Reardon suddenly frowned. No, that wasn’t possible; the time element didn’t permit. Or the witnesses. So suppose she actually was asking directions? The gas station was around the corner; maybe she hadn’t seen it. Or maybe it had been closed; there wasn’t much action for a gas station that hour of the night in that neighborhood... In any event, there wouldn’t have been any need for anyone to finger Capp, so forget the girl...
“Jim!”
He sighed and looked up, aware that he couldn’t put off Jan’s interruption forever, and that it might be better to answer it and get it over with before he went back to figuring out his case.
“Yes, what is it?”
Jan was staring at him. “What is what? I’ve been trying to talk to you for the past five minutes, and you just sit there and look as if you were in a trance. I don’t like it when you go off like that.” Her voice softened. “And leave me behind...”
Reardon smiled grimly. “I had a sudden rush of brains to the head. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does I don’t like to discourage it.” He saw the change of expression on her face and nodded soberly. “Yes, I don’t think there’s much doubt. There’ll be a lot of chasing around to pick up evidence, but I think I finally see what it’s all about.”
“And what’s it all about?”
He stared at her, his mind far away, and then came back to earth. “What?”
“I said, what’s it all about?”
“Did you ever hear of the Esquadrão de Morte in Brazil? The so-called Death Squad?”
“No. Who are they? Jim? Jim?”
But she was talking to the raised hand again. Jan sighed and curled up in her chair again, watching her man across the room frown fiercely at the rug, his hands clenched together again.
And that beard and mustache and sunglasses that had never turned up — well, he would give thirteen to that nine, now, that he could put his fingers on them fairly quickly. That list on Captain Tower’s desk... How long had it been there, and how many times had the newspapers used it as the basis for either an article, or an editorial?
But that wasn’t evidence. What was evidence were things that had happened, or things people had said, like that old man with the scarf. For example, what had that bartender, the other one down at the Cranston Hotel who was always polishing glasses — what was it he had said? Well, among other things, he said — “Mr. Falcone don’t pick up no pigs,” not a vital statement, but he had also said—
“Jim — I’m going to bed...”
“Good night—”
What else had that bartender said? Well, among the other things he had said, “She didn’t barely drink it herself.” They had been speaking of the weird Gremlin’s Grampa. And the glass upstars in Falcone’s apartment with that oddball mixture had been more than half full. Christ! Where had he been when it was raining intelligence? Outside with a fork? Where had his eyes and ears been this past week? Obviously with something called a Gremlin’s Grampa — an idiocy — just as he was meant to be. A smoke screen! Any bartender in town could have told him no such thing existed, or could exist, but he had believed it — had, in fact, even convinced the man behind the bar at the Cranston that the drink existed. And had told Jan it was an important clue. Well, it was — pointing directly to his own stupidity.