Reardon was floundering. “I meant, like if he’d had an oil change lately, maybe they might have marked the mileage...”
Wilkins shrugged and walked around to raise the hood. A stained tag on the air filter gave him the mileage of the last oil change; he walked back and stared in at the odometer, then shook his head.
“A difference of over two thousand miles, and I’m sure they don’t have Mike stashed in some dump in Acapulco.” He smiled at Reardon. “Really scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren’t you, Jim?”
“Just about,” Reardon said, and smiled ruefully. He walked to the front of the car and studied the partially dented hood, the bent license plate. “Any doubt that this was the car that killed that wino?”
“None,” Wilkins said promptly. “Green suede shreds on the corner of the license plate, some of the victim’s hair caught in the channel between the fender and the hood panel — he must have come over the top and slammed into the fender — same paint on the jacket and the skull as the car paint. Not a shadow of a doubt.”
“That sounds definite enough.” Reardon studied the car and then looked up. “Frank, do you think the car can really tell us anything useful? Anything that would help us trace the bastard who pulled this job?”
Wilkins shrugged. He fished out another cigarette, lit it, and inhaled deeply.
“No idea,” he said at last. “I have a hunch everything connected with a crime could tell us a lot more than it does, if we only had the brains to read the signs. Oh, we read some of them, but I often wonder how much we miss. For example” — he waved a hand at the car — “I would make an educated guess that the job was pulled by two men, and the man who was the boss of the operation sat in the back seat while the other man drove. That guess is based on the pattern of the bloodstain on the back of the front seat. If the driver had leaned over from his position back of the wheel to make the cut, the blood would have been more central on the seat cover, but from the blood pattern, I’d say the cut was made from behind. And if the man in the back seat was doing the cutting, then it’s an educated guess that he was the boss of the show. Besides,” he added, “the driver was a little fellow — approximately five-foot-four — so you’d naturally figure the bigger guy was the boss.”
“Unless they were both midgets,” Reardon said, and then suddenly realized what he had heard. He stared at Wilkins. “Man, I’m running into a lot of Sherlock Holmes stuff lately! How do you figure the driver’s height?”
Wilkins smiled. “Easy. From the setting of the front seat to the wheel; from the placement of the rear-view mirror in relation to the seat; in the angle of the side-view mirror.” He dropped his cigarette and crushed it out beneath his shoe. “You remember the book Hotel?”
“I remember the picture,” Reardon said, and wondered what Wilkins was driving at.
“Same thing. I saw the picture, too, and they made the same mistake. Remember where the Countess, or whatever she was, said she was driving the hit-run car instead of her husband, the Earl, or the Duke, or something? Where it made such a big difference who was driving, and they hired the hotel dick to drive the car away, or something? Well, nobody even bothered to check the position of the front seat when it was down in the garage, after they drove it in after the hit-run. Not even the hotel dick! Sure, maybe the dame would have remembered to change the seat to the proper placement for her size, together with the rear-view mirror, the side-view mirror, the length of the seat-belt straps, and all, but I doubt it like hell. Anyway, in the book, and the movie, too, they didn’t even check. Well, we do. We check out little things like that.” He shrugged and smiled faintly. “Books — movies!”
It was a long speech for Lieutenant Wilkins, and he might even have amplified on the things his department had the sense to do that books and movies overlooked, if the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps hadn’t interrupted him. The two men looked down the dim aisle between the rows of parked cars to see Captain Clark approaching. The Accident Prevention Bureau reported to Traffic, not that they wouldn’t have greatly preferred being responsible to any other department.
“Reardon,” Clark said briefly, his cold eyes passing over the Homicide lieutenant without interest. “Wilkins.” He gestured toward the car. “What do you have so far?”
“I’ll have a report on your desk in an hour or so, Captain.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Clark said coldly. “What I meant was, have you found anything immediately useful?”
Wilkins would have liked to ask if the captain meant did the men leave calling cards tucked under the sun visor, or a map with an arrow indicating their hideout, but it wouldn’t have been advisable. Captain Clark had a short sense of humor and a long memory.
“No, sir.”
“Well, keep after it, but don’t take all day.” Clark turned to consider Reardon. “How about that what’s-his-name upstairs? Did you get a chance to talk to him yet? The wop?”
“His name is Lazaretti. He’s Italian,” Reardon said. He was sure that Clark would have used the word “wop” if he had been addressing his question to Dondero. One day, possibly, Clark would pull a line like that with Captain Giordano of the Loft Squad and get his thick head handed to him. With Lieutenant Reardon’s lousy luck, though, he wouldn’t be there to see it. On the other hand, maybe he’d make captain himself, one day, and take on the job of cutting Clark down to size himself. Or maybe someday he wouldn’t wait until he made captain. “Dondero’s talking to the man now,” he said, and thought that one way or the other Don ought to be finished with the little man by now.
“Yeah,” Clark said unenthusiastically, almost as if it were his own instructions being carried out, and not too well, either. “Wilkins, I’ll be waiting for your report. Soon. Don’t take all day with it, hear? I’ve got plenty of other work for you.”
“Yes, sir,” Wilkins said, and watched the stumpy figure march away toward the elevator. “Someday...!” he said under his breath, and then looked at Reardon, smiling ruefully. “How it goes!”
“I know what you mean,” Reardon said, smiling back, and followed Clark toward the elevator, although with every intention of waiting for the following car before going up to his office.
Saturday — 3:20 P.M.
Lieutenant Reardon came into his office to find Dondero slumped dispiritedly in a chair, staring down at his folded hands, his rugged face expressionless. The lieutenant dropped into his chair and waited. When Dondero made no attempt to look up, Reardon picked up the telephone book from the corner of his desk, held it out at arm level, and let it drop. Dondero’s head came up at the noise.
“Well,” Reardon said with satisfaction, “it’s alive, at least.” He bent to retrieve the phone book, replaced it, and leaned back. “All right, what did our friend Lazaretti have to say?”
“Not much,” Dondero said, and shook his head. There was a touch of admiration in his tone. “You wouldn’t think a guy the size of a Crackerjack prize would have that much moxie, would you? He’s a tough little monkey.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Oh, his cousin in Brooklyn’s name is Anthony Lazaretti, and I just got through talking to him and he’s got a small fruit store and the last time he saw Guillermo was when they were kids, and he swears he didn’t know his cousin was in the States, and for what it’s worth, I believe him. If we have to, we can have the New York cops check him out, but I don’t think it’s necessary. And our friend also admits that Patrone isn’t quite as much a stranger to him as he made out before, but other than those two bits of jeweled knowledge, we’re where we were before. What he’s doing here, what Patrone is doing here, what this whole case is all about — those things still rank as mysteries.”