“The food here ain’t as bad as you might think. True, the place needs a little touching up, not to mention a good cleaning, but I don’t get paid for that. I get paid for short-order cooking, and if I say so myself, I make a fair hamburger and a damned good western.” His smile faded completely; he looked Reardon in the eye, even removing the toothpick for emphasis. “As for the information, I ain’t got nothing to hide from the cops. Sure I been in Q. The boss knows it and you knew it the minute you walked in here. But I’m clean. I been clean over eight years, now.”
“I believe you,” Reardon said. “Even the part about the hamburgers.”
He smiled, waved a hand at the man, and walked out the door with Dondero immediately behind him. They climbed into the Charger; the engine turned over and they pulled away from the curb. The lieutenant was smiling in self-satisfaction.
“You look like the canary that swallowed the cat,” Dondero said in disgust. He patted his pockets for his cigarettes, remembered his pledge, and shook his head. “Stan went back to them, but he’s got no guts,” he said, apropos of nothing, and then returned to the subject at hand. “And just what did you think you discovered back there that takes you anyplace at all?”
“The time,” Reardon said softly, and smiled without humor. “Our friend Crocker tried to set up an alibi based on time. That was the reason he was at that coffeepot — I mean that particular one instead of one over near the market, or another in that general neighborhood. He scouted places until he found one without a clock...”
“Oh, come on, Jim!” Dondero almost snorted; it ended up a half sneeze. He dragged out a handkerchief, used it, and returned to the battle. “So he doesn’t see a clock and he asks about it!”
“Oh, ‘Come on, Jim,’ my foot! How about that television and radio bit?”
“What about them?”
Reardon glanced over at him in surprise and then returned his eyes to the road. He turned back into Third Street.
“Wake up, Don; you’re really not that thick. Crocker wanted a place without a television set or a radio so the counterman couldn’t catch him out when he made up that My-goodness-it’s-eight-thirty-on-the-button-I’ve-got-to-rush-old-pal garbage. Suppose he says it’s eight-thirty and the man is watching TV and it’s in the middle of a program? Or suppose he has a favorite program at eight-thirty he wants to see, and turns it on and finds it’s far from eight-thirty?”
“And suppose the counterman happens to own a watch?” Dondero couldn’t hide the sarcasm in his voice.
“So what? Then we’ve got one man’s word against another as to which watch is accurate. But NBC or CBS are hard to argue with. For Christ’s sake, Don, what other reason could he possibly have for asking if the joint had a TV or radio?”
“Well,” Dondero said easily, “I’ll tell you what I’d say if I was him — or if I was his lawyer. I’d say something like the counterman was a lousy conversationalist — which he admits — so Crocker would like some TV or radio to keep him company while he eats because he’s a lonely guy looking for somebody to listen to. Lots of people can’t eat alone without TV or radio or a book or newspaper or something. I happen to be one of them,” he added, half defiantly.
Reardon shook his head in mock admiration. “Beautiful! So he’s lonely and he wants TV or radio, so he picks the only joint in town without them. Remind me never to have you for my lawyer.”
He turned from Third Street into Nineteenth. Dondero looked at the clock on the dashboard.
“We’re going to be late for our dates.” It was a most deliberate change of subject.
“I want to drive by that accident scene again. I have a feeling that whatever’s bugging me started there. And you ought to see the block, anyway. We’ll only be there a few minutes.” He glanced across at Dondero and smiled. “Don’t look so woeful. All we’re going to be late for is a shower and a change. So we won’t eat anywhere fancy. Maybe we’ll drop into Tommy’s Joynt, or eat at the Wharf.”
“We could always go back to the Mess Hall,” Dondero said with a grin. “If we time it right and get there just before the factory boys, we might even get a decent — or anyway, fresh — cup of coffee. Who knows? Maybe our friend there is a good cook.”
“I’d rather take his word for it,” Reardon said with a smile and became serious again. “Well? You still haven’t answered my argument. Why did Crocker pick the only place without TV or a radio?”
“Who knows?” Dondero said glumly and then brightened. “I know. Maybe he hates TV and radio and wanted to be sure nobody would turn it on while he was eating. There’re people like that too.”
“What it proves,” Reardon said firmly, “is that he lied about the time, and he must have had a damned good reason for doing so. He gave himself an extra fifteen minutes at the minimum before he called that accident in. Why? Where was he during those fifteen minutes? What was he doing? It’s about four minutes from the Mess Hall to where we’re going.” He looked at Dondero sardonically. “You’re so good at finding excuses for everything Crocker did and said, find one for that.”
“Easy,” Dondero was not easily cowed. “He stopped for gas, and—”
“The gas gauge was at a quarter full,” Reardon said, remembering, scotching that argument in its infancy.
“Then he stopped at a gas station and used the john. Hell, does he have to explain all that in court? There’s only one pinpointed time in this whole business, and that’s when he called it in. Communications has that fixed. The rest is all guesswork on somebody’s part. You still can’t get around the fact that if he knew his victim you can’t prove it. Or show any reason why he would run him down.”
“He must have known him. And he must have had a reason for killing him. He isn’t a nut.” He frowned. “We just haven’t run across the proof yet.”
He swung the wheel; they turned into Indiana. Reardon pulled to the curb and stopped. His headlights were brought up to high beam; the street lay before them as it had the night before, seen from the opposite direction. The blank-faced warehouses loomed over them, fronting the pavement. They seemed even deeper in shadow because of the bright lights reflected over their roofs from the Central Basin docks. Reardon turned to Dondero.
“Here’s where it happened. That’s the phone booth he called from. Do want to get out and look?”
“Not me.” Dondero shook his head emphatically. “If Frank Wilkins checked this area a few minutes after it happened, I’m not going to waste time trying to be Columbus a day later.” He looked at his superior sympathetically; the stocky lieutenant was staring around him in the rapidly growing dusk. There was an almost desperate intensity to his concentration. “Do you see anything that helps you scratch that itch of yours, Jim?”
Reardon gave up the search in despair.
“No. Forget it.” He suddenly swung around on the seat, staring at Dondero intensely, almost fiercely. “Don, you heard that youngster at the used-car lot. You heard that counterman a few minutes ago. What do you think? What do you honest-to-God think? Am I really making up stories to suit myself?”
Dondero hesitated a moment before answering, but when he did answer it was to give as straight an answer as he knew how to give. Jim Reardon was more than a higher grade he happened to be assigned to work with that day; he was also a very close friend.
“Jim,” he said slowly, “if you are, you have a reason for it. You always have had reasons for everything you did, and I’m sure you have now. At least in your own mind. I’ll admit there are various interpretations for everything we heard, and I know that one of those interpretations could easily support your arguments. I’ve been playing the devil’s advocate, in a way, and I honestly don’t know if it was because I was just trying to anticipate what a defense attorney would say, or because I really think you’re off base on this one. I’ve seen you wrong before, but never so sure.”