She looked flustered.
“Oh yes, I’m sorry. Tommy, Robert, these gentlemen are police officers, so you just cooperate and answer their questions now, or you know what’ll happen to you.” She backed out the door. “I’ll be in the kitchen, officers, just call me if you need me.”
The two boys regarded us without much awe.
“‘You know what will happen to you!’” The younger one laughed, a little high-pitched snarl that reminded me of von Leeb. “She must think we still believe in the bogeyman. What a dimmie.” The close-set little eyes regarded us directly for the first time. “What do you want to talk to us about?”
“Do you remember that skull in the park you found…”
“You see!” the older boy cut in, darting a triumphant look at his brother. “I told you there was more to that, I told you somebody would come around.” His voice grew a trifle more respectful. “How can we help you?”
Kohler smiled benignly on them.
“First of all, that was damned good police work, son. We may arrange a special citation for you.”
The older kid smirked, and his brother turned to the hamster in disgust and started to drive in another nail. It was surprising how much noise such a little animal could make.
“But,” Kohler continued meaningfully, “first we need some more information. Did you actually see the man who buried it?”
“Oh, sure,” the older kid said, and I could feel an electric thrill of tension along my spine. “He was an old guy with gray hair, we saw him around the park a lot. In fact, he buried the thing in a hole Bob and I dug for one of our hamsters. He had it under his coat and all of a sudden he shoved it in and covered it up with dirt. We were finishing the hamster off behind a tree, I guess he didn’t see us, there was nobody else around.”
“You say you saw him around a lot.” Kohler’s voice stayed even. “Did you ever talk to him?”
“Oh sure, he used to give us candy, those peppermint things, you know, in balls. He used to give all die kids candy. Probably wanted to take us behind the bushes and stuff chicken.”
“Did this man ever actually make any advances toward you?”
“Nah, he was an old creep, probably couldn’t even cut it no more.” One grimy finger tunnelled into his nostril and extracted a greenish glob of mucous which he contemplated briefly before wiping it off on his shirt. “He just wanted to talk a lot, dumb stuff, tell us stories, that kind of shit. A real weirdo. We just told him to fuck off, especially after he tried to give us a hard time.”
“What did he do?”
“Oh some of the kids and us had been having some fun with a puppy, we had Ma’s shearing scissors, and he stopped us right in the middle and killed the thing off with a stone. What a drag. He had this crazy thing about animals, he thought we shouldn’t have no fun with ’em. A real nut case. We was just foolin, around, it wasn’t even crying loud enough to bother nobody at the tables.”
“What tables?”
“The chess tables, those stone chess tables where all those old creeps go and play. That old tod plays there all the time.”
Kohler glanced at me, his eyes elated. God, this could be it.
“You say he plays there all the time,” Ed said, deliberately sounding a bit bored so the kid wouldn’t sense his interest and try to exploit it. “Is he out there today?”
“Nah, he hasn’t been around for a couple of weeks. Maybe he croaked, who knows. Let’s hope so.”
Shit. Two weeks since he’d visited Penny, two weeks since the kids had seen him in the park. The bastard must know we were on to him, he must be hiding out somewhere. Kohler looked just as disappointed but he kept on trying.
“He hasn’t been back even once in that time?”
“Well, we haven’t seen him and we’re out there most every day unless it rains. His friend’s still around though.”
“His friend?” Ed couldn’t help himself, he spat out the words, and the kid looked up at him with an appraising look in his eyes.
“This is pretty important, hah?”
Kohler just nodded, probably fighting back the urge to take the little brat by the neck and wring the truth out of him.
“So if I tell you about his friend, and maybe where to find him, I’ll get that citation, right?”
“That’s right, son,” Kohler said with saintlike patience.
“And maybe a thousand marks reward, too, hah?”
Kohler must have been gritting his teeth by now, but he nodded. The kid was quiet for a minute, apparently considering the offer, and then he jumped to his feet.
“All right, buddy, you got yourself a deal. Just follow me and I’ll take you right to him, he was out there at the chess tables an hour ago, he should still be there.”
His younger brother looked up from the wriggling hamster.
“Hey, how about me, I saw him too.”
“Fuck you, Bob, this is my operation.”
The other boy spat after us and, for nothing better to do, drove a nail through the pulsing pink belly of the hamster.
The chess tables were over on the eastern edge of the park off MacDougal, shaded by a row of leafy old elms. “He’s still there.” The kid whispered it, even though we were fifty feet away. “The second table. The guy with the dirty blue shirt.”
“You’re sure?” Kohler asked.
“’Course I am,” he sneered. “You think I’d take any chances with a thousand marks?”
“All right, you wait for us here. Come on, Bill.”
We ambled over, looking like two guys out for a pleasant dinnertime stroll, and stopped by the table beside a cluster of kibbitzers. I didn’t know anything about chess, but I could tell our boy was winning by the number of pieces of a different color he’d cleared off the board. Kohler and I positioned ourselves on either side of him, casually, keeping-our eyes on the board like true aficionados. He was a guy of medium build, in his late sixties or early seventies, with white hair that looked like it’d been cut by a lawnmower and a scraggly goatee. He wore an old sweat-stained blue denim work shirt over khaki slacks, and his bare feet were thonged into those cheap leather sandals you find in the artsy-craftsy shops along Eighth Street. They could have used a good washing, too, but then so could the rest of him. I was downwind, in a position to know.
“I’m afraid your rooks are forked,” he said, pushing a piece across the board, and then Ed and I each had him by an arm and were dragging him to his feet.
“Police,” I said, loudly, pulling the Schmeisser out with my free hand and waving it melodramatically in the air. If the Japs were around and waiting to make a play, now was the time, and I hoped our invisible tails were really out there and not holed up in an air-conditioned bar somewhere. But all that happened was that the little knot of onlookers broke and eddied as we shoved through, swinging the old guy along between us, his feet scraping the ground. He didn’t say anything throughout, no protest, nothing, and we got him into the car with no trouble outside of a few surprised exclamations from passersby. The kid ran along after us, and when I’d prodded the old man into the back seat and angled in after him, the gun cocked all the time and trained squarely on his belly, the little snot tried to squeeze into the front seat. Ed shoved him out into the street unceremoniously, but he kept at it.
“Hey you guys, when am I gonna get my thousand marks, we made a deal. I want it now, just like ya promised…”
Ed leaned lazily out the driver’s window and backhanded him across the face, hard. The kid sprawled into the gutter, blood spurting out of his mouth.
“Never try to con a con man,” Kohler told him equably. “There was no citation, and there isn’t going to be any thousand marks.”