He paused and glanced down at Tommy Gibson. “There have always been some bad cops, and I guess there always will be. That just means the rest of us have to work a lot harder. Maybe we can just pretend the whole year is Christmas, and go about righting those wrongs. Anyway, I’ve talked so long already I’ve grown a bit thirsty. Let’s get back to the beer and the singing, and make it good and loud!”
Leopold jumped off the platform and shook more hands. He’d meant to speak longer, to give them something a bit meatier to chew on, but far at the back of the crowd some of the younger cops were already growing restless. And, after all, they’d come here to enjoy themselves, not to listen to a lecture. He couldn’t really blame them.
Herb Clarke was gathering everyone around the piano for songs, but Leopold noticed that Tommy Gibson had suddenly disappeared. The Captain threaded his way through the crowd, searching the familiar faces for the man he wanted. “Great talk, Captain,” Fletcher said, coming up by his side.
“Did he tell you any more?”
“Only that he had to hide the tape near the Christmas tree. He said the other guy was here.”
“Who do you make it, Captain?”
Leopold bit his lower lip. “I make it that Tommy Gibson is one smart cookie. I think he’s playing for time, maybe waiting for Freese to get him off the hook somehow.”
“You don’t think there’s another crooked cop in the Detective Bureau?”
“I don’t know, Fletcher. I guess I don’t want to think so.”
The door to the Men‘s Room sprang open with a suddenness that surprised them both. Sergeant Riker, his usually placid face full of alarm, stood motioning to them. Leopold quickly covered the ground to his side. “What is it, Riker?”
“In there! My God, Captain—in there! It’s Gibson!”
“What?”
“Tommy Gibson. He’s been stabbed. I think he’s dead.”
* * *
Leopold pushed past him, into the tiled Men’s Room with its scrubbed look and disinfectant odor. Tommy Gibson was there, all right, crumpled between two of the wash basins, his eyes glazed and open. A long pair of scissors protruded from his chest.
“Lock all the outside doors, Fletcher,” Leopold barked. “Don’t let anyone leave.”
“Is he dead, Captain?”
“As dead as he’ll ever be. What a mess!”
“You think one of our men did it?”
“Who else? Call in and report it, and get the squad on duty over here. Everyone else is a suspect.” He stood up from examining the body and turned to Riker. “Now tell me everything you know, Sergeant.”
Riker was a Vice Squad detective, a middle-aged man with a placid disposition and friendly manner. There were those who said he could even make a street-walker, like him while he was arresting her. Just now he looked sick and pale. “I walked in and there he was. Captain. My God! I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. I thought he was faking, playing some sort of a trick.”
“Notice anyone leaving before you went in?”
“No, nobody.”
“But he’s only been dead a few minutes. That makes you a suspect, Sergeant.”
Riker’s pale complexion seemed to shade into green at Leopold’s words. “You can’t think I killed him! He was a friend of mine! Why in hell would I kill Tommy Gibson?”
“We’ll see,” Leopold said, motioning him out of the Men’s Room. The other detectives and officers were clustered around, trying to see. There was a low somber hum of conversation. “All right, everyone!” the Captain ordered. “Keep down at the other end of the room, away from the tree! That’s right, move away from it.”
“Captain!” It was little Herb Clarke, pushing his way through. “Captain, what’s happened?”
“Someone killed Tommy Gibson.”
“Tommy!”
“One of us. That’s why nobody leaves here.”
“You can’t be serious, Captain. Murder at the police Christmas party— the newspapers will crucify us.”
“Probably,” Leopold pushed past him. “Nobody enters the Men’s Room,” he bellowed. “Fletcher, Williams—come with me.” They were the only two lieutenants present, and he had to trust them. Fletcher he’d trust with his life. He only hoped he could rely on Williams too.
“I can’t believe it,” the bony young Narcotics lieutenant said. “Why would anyone kill Tommy?”
Leopold cleared his throat. “I’ll tell you why, though you may not want to believe it. Gibson was implicated in the District Attorney’s investigation of Carl Freese’s gambling empire. He had a tape recording of a conversation between Freese, himself, and another detective, apparently concerning bribery. The other detective had a dandy motive for killing him.”
“Did he say who it was?” Williams asked.
“No. Only that it was someone who got here fairly early today. Who was here before Fletcher and I arrived?”
Williams creased his brow in thought. “Riker was here, and Jim Turner. And a few uniformed men.”
“No, just detectives.”
“Well, I guess Riker and Turner were the only ones. And Herb Clarke, of course. He was here all day with the ladies, arranging for the food and the beer.”
“Those three,” Leopold mused. “And you, of course.”
Lieutenant Williams grinned. “Yeah, and me.”
Leopold turned toward the big Christmas tree. “Gibson told me he hid the tape recording near the tree. Start looking, and don’t miss anything. It might even be in the branches.”
The investigating officers were arriving now, and Leopold turned his attention to them. There was something decidedly bizarre in the entire situation, a fact which was emphasized as the doctor and morgue attendants and police photographers exchanged muted greetings with the milling party guests. One of the young investigating detectives who’d known Tommy Gibson turned pale at the sight of the body and had to go outside.
When the photographers had finished, one of the morgue men started to lift the body. He paused and called to Leopold. “Captain, here’s something. A cigarette lighter on the floor under him.”
Leopold bent close to examine it without disturbing possible prints. “Initials. C.F.”
Lieutenant Williams had come in behind him, standing at the door of the Men’s Room. “Carl Freese?” he suggested.
Leopold used a handkerchief to pick it up carefully by the corners. “Are we supposed to believe that Freese entered this place in the midst of sixty cops and killed Gibson without anybody seeing him?”
“There’s a window in the wall over there.”
Leopold walked to the frosted pane and examined it. “Locked from the inside. Gibson might have been stabbed from outside, but he couldn’t have locked the window and gotten across this room without leaving a trail of blood.”
Fletcher had come in while they were talking. “No dice on that, Captain. My wife just identified the scissors as a pair she was using earlier with the decorations. It’s an inside job, all right.”
Leopold showed the lighter. “C.F. Could be Carl Freese.”
Fletcher frowned and licked his lips. “Yeah.” He turned away.
“Nothing,” Williams reported.
“Nothing in the tree? It could be a fairly small reel.”
“Nothing.”
Leopold sighed and motioned Fletcher and Williams to one side. He didn’t want the others to hear. “Look, I think Gibson was probably lying, too. But he’s dead, and that very fact indicates he might have been telling the truth. I have to figure all the angles. Now that you two have searched the tree I want you to go into the kitchen, close the door, and search each other. Carefully.”
“But—” Williams began. “All right, Captain.”
“Then line everybody up and do a search of them. You know what you’re looking for—a reel of recording tape.”
“What about the wives, Captain?”
“Get a matron down for them. I’m sorry to have to do it, but if that tape is he
re we have to find it.”
He walked to the center of the hall and stood looking at the tree. Lights and tinsel, holiday wreaths and sprigs of mistletoe. All the trappings. He tried to imagine Tommy Gibson helping to decorate the place, helping with the tree. Where would he have hidden the tape?
Herb Clarke came over and said, “They’re searching everybody.”
“Yes. I’m sorry to spoil the party this way, but I guess it was spoiled for Gibson already.”
“Captain, do you have to go on with this? Isn’t one dishonest man in the Bureau enough?”
“One is too many, Herb. But the man we’re looking for is more than a dishonest cop now. He’s a murderer.”
Fletcher came over to them. “We’ve searched all the detectives, Captain. They’re clean. We’re working on the uniformed men now.”
Leopold grunted unhappily. He was sure they’d find nothing. “Suppose,” he said slowly. “Suppose Gibson unreeled the tape. Suppose he strung it on the tree like tinsel.”
“You see any brown tinsel hanging anywhere, Captain? See any tinsel of any color long enough to be a taped message?”
“No, I don’t,” Leopold said.
Two of the sergeants, Riker and Turner, came over to join them. “Could he have done it to himself?” Turner asked. “The word is you were going to link him with the Freese investigation.”
“Stabbing yourself in the chest with a pair of scissors isn’t exactly common as a suicide method,” Leopold pointed out. “Besides, it would be out of character for a man like Gibson.”
One of the investigating officers came over with the lighter. “Only smudges on it, Captain. Nothing we could identify.”
“Thanks.” Leopold took it, turning it over between his fingers.
C.F. Carl Freese.
He flicked the lever a couple of times but it didn’t light. Finally, on the fourth try, a flame appeared. “All right,” he said quietly. Now he knew.
“Captain—” Fletcher began.
“Damn it, Fletcher, it’s your wife’s lighter and you know it! C.F. Not Carl Freese but Carol Fletcher!”
“Captain, I—” Fletcher stopped.
Leopold felt suddenly very tired. The colored lights of the tree seemed to blur, and he wished he was far away, in a land where all cops were honest and everyone died of old age.
Sergeant Riker moved in. “Captain, are you trying to say that Fletcher’s wife stabbed Tommy Gibson ?”
“Of course not, Riker. That would have been quite a trick for her to follow him into the Men’s Room unnoticed. Besides, I had to give her a match at one point this evening, because she didn’t have this lighter.”
“Then who?”
“When I first arrived, you were helping Carol Fletcher with a balky lighter. Yes, you, Riker! You dropped it into your pocket, unthinking, and that’s why she didn’t have it later. It fell out while you were struggling with Gibson. While you were killing him, Riker.”
Riker uttered a single obscenity and his hand went for the service revolver on his belt. Leopold had expected it. He moved in fast and threw two quick punches, one to the stomach and one to the jaw. Riker went down and it was over.
* * *
Carol Fletcher heard what had happened and she came over to Leopold. “Thanks for recovering my lighter,” she said. “I hope you didn’t suspect me.”
He shook his head, eyeing Fletcher. “Of course not. But I sure as hell wish your husband had told me it was yours.”
“I had to find out what it was doing there,” Fletcher mumbled. “God, it’s not every day your wife’s lighter, that you gave her two Christmases ago, turns up as a clue in a murder.”
Leopold handed it back to her. “Maybe this’ll teach you to stop smoking.”
“You knew it was Riker anyway?”
“I was pretty sure. With sixty men drinking beer all around here, no murderer could take a chance of walking out of that Men’s Room unseen. His best bet was to pretend finding the body, which is just what he did. Besides that, of the four detectives on the scene early, Riker’s Vice Squad position was the most logical for Freese’s bribery.”
“Was there a tape recording?” Fletcher asked.
Leopold was staring at the Christmas tree. “I think Gibson was telling the truth on that one. Except that he never called it a tape. I did that. I jumped to a conclusion. He simply told me it was an old machine, purchased after the war. In those early days tape recorders weren’t the only kind. For a while wire recorders were almost as popular.”
“Wire!”
Leopold nodded and started toward the Christmas tree. “We know that Gibson helped you put up the tree, Carol. I’m betting that one of those wires holding it in place is none other than the recorded conversation of Carl Freese, Tommy Gibson, and Sergeant Riker.”
The Thieves who Couldn’t Help Sneezing - Thomas Hardy
The name Thomas Hardy has meant surefire gloom and doom for a century. To students of his craft, a Hardy work, set amid the wild midlands of Wessex, promises fatalism and man struggling unsuccessfully against nature. To the dedicated undergraduate embarking on a course in English literature, a comprehensive assignment on Hardy becomes like an extended holiday with a religious martyr. First depression sets in. Later only electroshock therapy can restore the will to live. No one has ever gone to Thomas Hardy for light reading.
Some of this grimness surely reflects Hardy’s own frustrations with life. He had always hoped to become a writer and poet but a strong-willed father dictated a career in architecture. Only after his literary success was assured did he devote himself entirely to the work he loved.
What a surprise then, to discover this almost frivolous adventure of a juvenile detective among so much adversity and pessimism. “The Thieves Who Couldn’t Help Sneezing” is startling proof that man cannot live on misery alone. Not even Thomas Hardy.
Many years ago, when oak-trees now past their prime were about as large as elderly gentlemen’s walking-sticks, there lived in Wessex a yeoman’s son, whose name was Hubert. He was about fourteen years of age, and was as remarkable for his candor and lightness of heart as for his physical courage, of which, indeed, he was a little vain.
One cold Christmas Eve his father, having no other help at hand, sent him on an important errand to a small town several miles from home. He travelled on horseback, and was detained by the business till a late hour that evening. At last, however, it was completed; he returned to the inn, the horse was saddled, and he started on his way. His journey homeward lay through the Vale of Blackmore, a fertile but somewhat lonely district, with heavy clay roads and crooked lanes. In those days, too, a great part of it was thickly wooded.
It must have been about nine o’clock when, riding along amid the overhanging trees upon his stout-legged cob, Jerry, and singing a Christmas carol, to be in harmony with the season, Hubert fancied that he heard a noise among the boughs. This recalled to his mind that the spot he was traversing bore an evil name. Men had been waylaid there. He looked at Jerry, and wished he had been of any other color than light gray; for on this account the docile animal’s form was visible even here in the dense shade. “What do I care?” he said aloud, after a few minutes of reflection. “Jerry’s legs are too nimble to allow any highwayman to come near me.”
“Ha! ha! indeed,” was said in a deep voice; and the next moment a man darted from the thicket on his right hand, another man from the thicket on his left hand, and another from a tree-trunk a few yards ahead. Hubert’s bridle. was seized, he was pulled from his horse, and although he struck out with all his might, as a brave boy would naturally do, he was overpowered. His arms were tied behind him, his legs bound tightly together, and he was thrown into the ditch. The robbers, whose faces he could now dimly perceive to be artificially blackened, at once departed, leading off the horse.
As soon as Hubert had a little recovered himself, he found that by great exertion he was able to extricate his legs from the cord; but, in spite of every endeavor,
his arms remained bound as fast as before. All, therefore, that he could do was to rise to his feet and proceed on his way with his arms behind him, and trust to chance for getting them unfastened. He knew that it would be impossible to reach home on foot that night, and in such a condition; but he walked on. Owing to the confusion which this attack caused in his brain, he lost his way, and would have been inclined to lie down and rest till morning among the dead leaves had he not known the danger of sleeping without wrappers in a frost so severe. So he wandered further onwards, his arms wrung and numbed by the cord which pinioned him, and his heart aching for the loss of poor Jerry, who never had been known to kick, or bite, or show a single vicious habit. He was not a little glad when he discerned through the trees a distant light. Towards this he made his way, and presently found himself in front of a large mansion with flanking wings, gables, and towers, the battlements and chimneys showing their shapes against the stars.
All was silent; but the door stood wide open, it being from this door that the light shone which had attracted him. On entering he found himself in a vast apartment arranged as a dining-hall, and brilliantly illuminated. The walls were covered with a great deal of dark wainscoting, formed into moulded panels, carvings, closet-doors, and the usual fittings of a house of that kind. But what drew his attention most was the large table in the midst of the hall, upon which was spread a sumptuous supper, as yet untouched. Chairs were placed around, and it appeared as if something had occurred to interrupt the meal just at the time when all were ready to begin.
Even had Hubert been so inclined, he could not have eaten in his helpless state, unless by dipping his mouth into the dishes, like a pig or cow. He wished first to obtain assistance: and was about to penetrate further into the house for that purpose when he heard hasty footsteps in the porch and the words, “Be quick!” uttered in the deep voice which had reached him when he was dragged from the horse. There was only just time for him to dart under the table before three men entered the dining-hall. Peeping from beneath the hanging edges of the tablecloth, he perceived that their faces, too, were blackened, which at once removed any remaining doubts he may have felt that these were the same thieves.
Thomas Godfrey (Ed) Page 45
