“Good enough,” Reardon said. “And thanks.”
“A pleasure. Any time,” Thompson said heartily and hung up.
Reardon placed the receiver back on the hook with a grin. Thompson, despite his long-windedness, seemed like a right guy. Then he remembered the basic reason for the chief purser’s call. He rang the morgue, gave them the necessary information, was informed the body would go out within an hour as there had been a tenement fire and they needed all the file cabinets they could use. The pleasure he had felt in listening to Thompson’s exaggerations disappeared instantly; in addition to automobile accidents, Reardon also hated fires, especially in tenements. He hung up and pulled his In-basket closer; Dondero and the girl walked in the door just as he did so. He looked at his watch in surprise; he hadn’t known he — or rather, Thompson had talked so long.
His eyes went up to Penny’s face. She shook her head dismally.
“She never saw the character before,” Dondero said. He sounded a bit angry, as if just seeing the man who killed Bob Cooke was an ordeal Penny should have been spared. “And I’m taking her home now. She looks beat.”
“All right,” Reardon said calmly. “Just don’t forget to come back.”
“He was awfully upset,” Penny said softly. She made it sound like a complete non sequitur.
“Don? He’s always awfully upset. It’s his—”
“Not me,” Dondero said disdainfully. “She means Crocker. He says he needs his car and he wants it. He says it was an accident. He says—”
“He says the man stepped off the curb in front of him and he couldn’t stop in time.” Reardon finished it for him. “I know what he says. He’ll get his car after we get a chance to go over it and not before.” He looked up. “We did get our continuance, didn’t we?”
“We got it — or rather, you got it — but old Judge Jorgensen wasn’t very happy about it.”
“What did Crocker’s lawyer say?”
“He didn’t have a lawyer,” Dondero said flatly. “He said he was innocent and what did an innocent man need a lawyer for? Jorgensen had read Frank Wilkins’ report and he was in agreement with Crocker. Personally,” he added, “so am I. But Jorgensen went along with the two-day continuance as a favor to Merkel.” He stared at Reardon. “Jim, I know you were mad at this guy for lousing up your evening last night, and I know you’d love to see it as something for us, instead of Traffic, but right now I think you’re just being stubborn.”
“That’s me — stubborn,” Reardon said equably and looked at Penny. “I’m sorry I dragged you down here for nothing, Penny. Don will see that you get home okay.”
“All right,” she said emotionlessly.
“By the way,” Reardon added, “that chief purser of yours — Thompson — called. He saw an article in the paper. He said they’ll take the body and bury it at sea on their next trip.”
She looked at him a moment, her eyes wide, and then suddenly collapsed in a chair beside his desk, trying to control herself but finally succumbing to tears. She forced herself to stop, looking at the two embarrassed men almost defiantly.
“I don’t cry.” She dabbed at her eyes viciously with a wisp of handkerchief to prove it. “I’m not going on that trip. I don’t want to see Bob—” She bit her trembling lip and changed the subject. “I’ll ask to stay off a trip. I have the time coming anyway. I’m sure they’ll understand.”
She came to her feet and put her handkerchief away with a gesture that also put aside any possible future need for it. She looked at Reardon as if searching for some way to end the conversation and get away from his office and the entire Hall of Justice. He understood and nodded to Dondero.
“Let’s go, Penny,” Dondero said and took her arm almost tenderly. He looked over at Reardon. “I’ll be right back.”
“There’s no rush,” Reardon said softly and waited until the two had left the office. Then he reached for In-basket for the third time that day, together with its constantly increasing mountain of reports. As Mr. Harry Thompson of the S.S. Mandarin had put it so succinctly, it wouldn’t be a bad world if it weren’t for people.
Chapter 9
Wednesday — 3:20 P.M.
The telephone rang sharply. Reardon sighed and put aside a report he had been reading covering a series of muggings in the streets leading from the Panhandle up to Haight in the Park District, which had led to a death the previous evening. Peace and Love! he thought sourly, and raised the instrument. It was a sergeant on the switchboard in Communications.
“Hey, Lieutenant — Captain Tower wants to see you on the double. He says he’s been trying to call your extension all afternoon. Finally got tired and turned the job over to us.”
“Well, it’s one of the things you’re there for,” Reardon said a trifle unkindly. “And anyway, I’ve been off the phone for at least five minutes.”
“Yeah, but you must have been on it for over an hour straight. Anyway, you better get over to his office. He sounded like he had a hair across his butt.” The sergeant added hastily, “That’s just an expression, you understand.”
“I understand.”
Reardon came to his feet, rubbed the back of his neck for luck, picked up his jacket on the way, and left the room. In the corridor he slid into his jacket, brushed his hair back with his fingers, and walked around the corridor bend to the captain’s office. He took a deep breath, tapped on the door, and entered without awaiting an invitation. Captain Tower had his telephone in his hand; the receiver was almost lost in the huge grip. At sight of the young lieutenant he set it down gently in the cradle and studied his subordinate coldly.
“Well, well! Look who’s here.”
“You wanted to see me, Captain?”
“Now, that’s a real bright question,” Tower said sardonically and then dropped the light tone. His fist formed and hovered over the desk, preparatory to pounding it, but then he forced himself to open his hand and lay it down on the blotter. “You know damned well I wanted to see you. But you’ve been glued to that damned telephone for the past hour.”
“It was that Cooke case—”
“I thought I told you to drop that Cooke case; to turn it over to Traffic.”
“I was talking to the purser of his ship, arranging for the body to go back there,” Reardon said quietly. “He’ll be buried at sea.”
“And it took you an hour to arrange it? Well, never mind. Sit down.”
Reardon pulled up a chair and obediently sat down. He had a fair idea of what was coming, but decided to hear it out before making up his mind as to the best defense. Captain Tower swiveled his chair a moment to stare out of the window without appreciation for the lovely distant view of the Oakland hills, and then swiveled back. When he spoke his voice was deceptively plaintive, as if he had been dealt with unfairly and undeservedly, and simply wanted a reasonable explanation.
“Why do you do these things to me, Jim?”
“What things, Captain?”
“As if you didn’t know.” The big man leaned forward, his elbows on his desk, ticking off his points on his thick fingers, his dark eyes fixed on the gray ones facing him.
“One: I told you to drop that traffic accident, but did you? Well, let’s see. To begin with, Captain Clark in Traffic calls me up to say his technical squad started to go over that Buick in the garage — as you asked them to, although I told you not to, and I still don’t see any sense in wasting time going over that car beyond what Wilkins did — and then you call the garage and pull them off the job and tell them to hold off until tomorrow. Now, that gives Clark a chance to squawk that we’re interfering in his business, and he loves to squawk; and it also gives him a chance to say we’re disrupting his schedule and so forth and so on — and it puts me in a position of having to defend one of my men for something I told him not to do. And I’m damned if I know why he’s doing it.”