I asked for Sergeant Staziak, and the man at the desk pointed the way, not that I didn’t know where it was, but the last time I’d set about finding Pete myself, I’d felt the full weight of the law descend on my shoulder. When I walked into that small metallic alcove, he was sitting there with a cigarette dangling from his thin lips. A reddish stubble on his chin caught the light coming in off the parking lot.
“Thanks, Ben. I appreciate this. Here’s what we’ve got.” He picked up a report from the blotter in front of him and began ad libbing from it. “Sunday morning, around noon, a farmer and his wife from out of the township thought they saw something suspicious on their drive home from church. Up on the escarpment, the Old Stone Road takes a sharp left in front of an abandoned quarry. They saw that the fence had been shattered, and when they stopped to investigate, they saw a car thirty feet below lying on its back. They phoned the police at, at, at,” he shifted through the report, “twelve thirty-two, and the initial report from the two investigating officers said that the body of a man was found wedged behind the wheel. So, we were called in. To make a long story short, Ward didn’t die in the crash. The coroner is certain that he was dead when the car took the fall. In fact, Ward died of carbon monoxide poisoning. We went out to the golf course and asked a few questions. Eventually, we brought in two of Ward’s bodyguards. These bodyguards, to wit Bruno Marchetti and Thomas Pacifico, have been grilling most of the night, and their stories are now so far apart that we don’t know which one to book. Ward was carrying a bundle of bucks with him, so we don’t suspect any of the usual scam. Likewise the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning are easy enough to recognize. Whoever pushed Ward over was either not on the bright side, or didn’t care much about being found out. How’m I doing?”
“Just fine. I still can’t see why you got me up, though.” Pete looked at me for a moment, and then lifted his report again. He had long ago stopped taking his cigarette out of his mouth to flick the ashes off. Even at school, I had admired the way he could blow the ash off the end without bothering to use his fingers.
“One of these bimbos says he heard you and Ward having a violent argument late last week out at his golf club. He’s trying to get us to lock you up for popping Ward, so that he and his pal can get back to weeding the fairway. Now I don’t put too much stock in what Bruno Marchetti has in his deposition, but I don’t think he made up the part about you seeing Ward like that. I’m not likely to read into his statement what he wants me to read, but I’d like to hear from you how much of this is up and up. Did you see Ward late last week?”
“I saw him Thursday night for over an hour around ten o’clock. He sent three of his boys to grab me, and they caught up to me after I’d done my best to give them the slip. If I’d known it was Ward who wanted to see me, I could have saved a lot of running.”
“You were talking generalities? The fluctuation of the dollar, the position of the French franc compared with the Deutschmark. Come on, Benny, don’t ration it.”
“We discussed the deaths of Chester Yates and Andrew Zekerman, both of whom he knew. I asked him some questions about Core Two, and about the disappearance of a girl he used to know. When we finished talking, one of his boys drove me back to my car. It was around midnight, as close as I can remember.”
“Okay. You saw him Thursday night, and maybe these are two of the three that set fire to you. You didn’t want Ward dead, neither did they. Ben, I can’t figure it.”
“How are they taking all your questions?”
“Nervous as a child bride. Only Marchetti has mentioned you.”
“Do you know when he died?”
“Yeah, as close as the Doc can put it, around twelve-thirty Sunday morning, about twelve hours before he was found. Figure that one out.”
“What are you talking about? What’s to figure? You don’t think these galoots killed Ward? Okay. Then somebody else did, unless he did it himself. He didn’t have any more reason to kill himself than you do. Overlooking the fact that he had to face waking up in the morning as William Allen Ward. Now why would these two tough guys want to pop Ward? He was their boss, and I guess he looked after them. Is it likely they got a notion to freelance? The only muscle they have listed down at the labour exchange is the kind they’ve been avoiding all their lives. The way I see it …”
I was just about to wax poetic on my private views concerning this unfortunate state of affairs when Harrow thrust his big face in the doorway.
“Well, we finally got something on you, did we, cheapie? Good for us. I just had my day made for me.” He was grinning with his stained teeth. I don’t know where you can get teeth like that.
“You not working tonight, Joe?” Pete Staziak asked. His way of saying “push off” to a fellow officer. But Harrow kept his face in the doorway until he’d smoked his current butt down to his cuticle.
“It’s not work when we get a chance to see justice done around here. Couldn’t leave it alone, could you, peeper? You knew better than the whole department. Had a little fight with Ward, and decided to even the score. So you set up this amateur-hour accident and expect us to buy it. It stinks, Cooperman, and so do you.” He left his butt, such as it was, in a Styrofoam cup, and walked away only moments before Pete slammed the door in his face.
“I’m going to slam my door on his fingers, next chance I get. I’d love to throw him an electric toaster when he’s in the shower.”
“Take it easy, Pete. I don’t chip easy.”
“To hell with you. Where does he get the idea he can stick his snout into my investigation?”
“Has he found out who killed Zekerman yet?”
“Stop it, Benny. I don’t want to feel sorry for the no-good crud.”
“Right, where were we? Yeah. I was about to tell you that I think I have this thing figured out. I think I have, but you’re going to have to get the story out of them, because I can’t prove a word of what I’m going to say.”
“You think you know what happened, Ben? That’s great. Let’s have it, and if it doesn’t leak all over us, we’ll have the horse collar on Harrow for sure. You want coffee?” He ducked out into the hall for a minute, and put the arm on a constable who didn’t walk with sufficient concentration to avoid Pete’s instructions. When he got back, I pulled out a fresh package of smokes and stripped it of the wrapper.
“Friday night,” I began, “I got a call late at night, ten-thirty, eleven o’clock from Ward. Wait a minute. I’m trying to keep it simple, so right away I’m telling lies. At the time I said I came back to my office, I phoned my answering service. There was a message to call Ward. Before I got to him, I had to go through two deep male voices. Ward wanted me to know that he had had a call from a woman he used to see. She disappeared from the scene a couple of months ago. Really disappeared, although nothing was reported. Ward knew that I’d been looking for her. I thought that Ward would have known more than he did about where she’d gone. Anyway, on Friday night, out of the blue, he got this call from her asking him to meet her. I warned him that such a meeting might be dangerous, but he just laughed off the suggestion. I think he met the girl and by half-past twelve Saturday night, Sunday morning he was dead, with his boys sitting on their hands parked outside not knowing a thing about it. They see nothing suspicious, and do nothing until early next morning, when they come across the body, an apparent suicide.”
“Another apparent suicide. We’re collecting a matched set.” Pete intercepted the fresh-face constable with the coffee, and handed me a warm Styrofoam cup. “I used to try to drink tea out of these things, but the lemon melts the plastic and wets my trousers. Cheers.” I pried the cap off my cup and looked for a place to drop it. I followed Pete’s lead, and left it on his desk where they became emergency ashtrays.