Beigler leaned forward.
‘Are you calling me a punk, Lepski?’
In spite of his excitement, Lepski realised he had slid onto thin ice. After all, Beigler was the Top Shot at Headquarters when the Chief wasn’t there. A slip like that could delay his promotion.
‘Listen, Sarg, when I talk about punks, I mean the rest of this dim crew like him.’ Lepski pointed to Jacoby. He was on safe ground here. Jacoby was only 3rd Grade. ‘Chiefs and Sergeants are always excluded. I’ve found Riccard’s car!’
Beigler scowled at him.
‘Well, don’t set it to music. Write a report.’
‘If the Chief is at home, I’d better go down and see him,’ Lepski said. He hated writing reports. ‘He’ll want to know about this, Sarg, pronto.’
Beigler decided Young Hopeful at 18 to I could be a slight risk but a fair chance and he wrote the name down on his blotter. He looked at the wall clock, saw he had another half hour before laying his bet and switched his mind back to police business.
‘Stop jumping about like you have a stoppage,’ he said. ‘Where did you find the car?’
‘Look, Sarg, we’re wasting time. I’d better talk to the Chief.’
‘I’m the Chief,’ Beigler said in an awful voice. ‘Right now I’m in charge of this goddamn force. Where did you find it?’
‘Look, Sarg, this is important to me...’
‘Where did you find it?’ Beigler roared, banging his fists on his desk.
Lepski saw it was hopeless.
‘I’ll write a report.’ He started towards his desk.
‘Come back here! You’ll write the report later. Where did you find it?’
‘It was found in the car park behind Mear’s Self-Service Store,’ Lepski said reluctantly.
‘It was found? Does that mean you didn’t find it personally?’
‘A patrolman found it,’ Lepski said sullenly. ‘I had the bright idea of calling Miami... so in actual fact I did find it.’
‘Go write the report,’ Beigler said. He dropped his big freckled hand on the telephone receiver, talked to Miami’s police headquarters as Lepski, his face sullen, began hammering away at his typewriter.
Beigler asked questions, grunted, asked more questions, then said, ‘Okay, Jack. We’ll want the full coverage. I’ll get Hess over to you. There’s talk around that Baldy has been knocked off... Yeah... okay,’ and he hung up.
He dialled Terrell’s home number. There was a little delay before Captain of Police Terrell came to the phone.
‘Riccard’s car has been found, Chief,’ Beigler said.
Lepski stopped typing and pointed frantically to himself, but Beigler ignored him.
‘The Miami police are checking it for fingerprints. I’m sending Hess there. Okay, Chief, I’ll keep in touch,’ and he hung up.
‘I didn’t hear you mention my name,’ Lepski said bitterly.
‘I didn’t,’ Beigler returned. ‘Get that report written!’ He swung his eyes to where Jacoby was still mouthing sentences. ‘Max! Take a car, go to Fred’s place, pick him up and take him to Mear’s Self-Service Store.’
‘Okay, Sarg.’ Jacoby put his books away hurriedly and charged out of the room.
‘Hess at home cutting his lawn too?’ Lepski asked bitterly.
‘His boy is sick. He’s taken the afternoon off.’
‘That two headed little monster? Sick? That’s a laugh? That little horror couldn’t be sick if he wanted to. It’s my bet Hess is snoring his head off in the sun.’
Beigler grinned.
‘You could be right... get on with that report.’
Ten minutes later, Lepski ripped the sheet out of the typewriter, read through what he had written, signed it with a flourish and laid it on Beigler’s desk.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said. ‘Danny O’Brien served five years with Baldy and Dominico. Suppose I go along and twist his arm a little? He might know what Baldy was doing when he was here for three days.’
Beigler read the report, then looked up at Lepski.
‘You think Solo is lying?’
‘Of course he’s lying, but he’s too big and smart for us to twist his arm. I’m as sure as I’m standing here Baldy called on him and I want to know why. If anyone can tell me it’s Danny.’
Beigler rubbed his thick nose.
‘Well, okay. Go talk to him.’
Lepski eyed him.
‘If I were a Sergeant and read that report, do you know what I would think?’
‘Sure,’ Beigler said promptly. ‘You’d think it was written by a mental defective who had got to 2nd Grade by nepotism.’
Lepski gaped at him.
‘What was that again... nepot... what?’
Beigler was a great reader of paperbacks. When he came across a word he didn’t understand — and there were many of them — he looked them up in a dictionary and filed them away in his memory to use to impress. He savoured his triumph now by looking insufferably superior as he repeated, ‘Nepotism... favouritism to relatives in bestowing office.’
He was on safe ground here because Lepski’s wife happened to be a second cousin of Carrie, Captain Terrell’s wife. Beigler never ceased to pull Lepski’s leg about this knowing full well that the only difference the relationship made was to make Lepski mad.
‘When I become Chief of Police in this goddamn City,’ Lepski said heatedly, ‘I’ll have you retired. Don’t forget that!’
‘When you become Chief of Police of this City, Lepski, I’ll be the tenth man on the moon! Get the hell out of here and get working!’
Lepski drove to Seacombe, a suburb of Paradise City where the workers lived: a small, shabby colony of bungalows and tenement buildings, which spoilt the approach to the opulent, flower-laden millionaire’s playground.
Danny O’Brien lived in a two-room cold-water apartment on the sixth floor of a sordid tenement block overlooking the sea. At one time he had been a thriving coiner, specialising in making coins of the Romanera B.C. He had made considerable sums of money, selling these fakes to art collectors: his sales talk had been as impressive and as convincing as his forgeries. But he had become overambitious in his old age and had attempted to sell a Caesar gold piece to the Washington Museum who had unkindly handed him over to the police. Now, Danny made lead soldiers which he painted in exquisite colours and sold to a speciality toyshop that catered for elderly clients wishing to fight great battles of the previous century.
Danny O’Brien was seventy-three years of age. His only extravagance was a harmless Sunday night orgy when he hired two girls to mime the sexual act while he watched, beer in hand and projected his mind back to the time when he had been the participant and not the spectator.
Lepski found him at his workbench, a watchmaker’s glass in his eye, lovingly applying a coat of scarlet to the trappings of a cavalry officer, made perfectly in lead.
Lepski kicked the door open and breezed in, his thin, tanned face set in a cop scowl, determined to stand no nonsense from this old coot and to rip his arm off if he had to.
Danny looked up, then removed the watchmaker’s glass. He was frail looking, balding with a high dome of a forehead. His green eyes were misty and his smile kindly, but vacant. He looked harmless; a nice old man, slightly senile who could be trusted with children. Lepski knew otherwise. Behind the domed forehead was a needle-sharp, cunning brain that might just possibly be now losing some of its edge, but this Lepski doubted.
‘Mr. Lepski!’ Danny laid down his model soldier and smiled the smile of an old man who has been given an unexpected and expensive present. ‘How nice! How are you, Mr. Lepski, and how is Mrs. Lepski? Can I congratulate you yet on your promotion?’
Lepski pulled up a straight-back chair and sat astride it.