Night Cover, page 4
“So?” said Powder. “Problem?”
“Yes,” said the boy. Twenty, give or take a year. He put the paper teacup on the edge of Powder’s desk, folded his hands in his lap and began. “I’m a student at a private high school called the University School.”
Powder nodded in a vague way; he knew the name in a vague way.
“There are about a hundred and eighty of us in the four years, though some are in one year in one subject and in another in others.”
“Could you spare me the background? If your problem is a police matter, there’ll be time enough for all that.”
The boy stopped and rubbed his chin. The chin was reddened and a little rashy. Could he have shaved a ragged teenage beard just to come in to talk tonight?
“I’ll try and say it as briefly as I can. But I need you to know how important it is.” Intent stare.
Powder raised an eyebrow.
“In this school,” said the boy, “they have two-way speakers in every room. From the office they can talk to any room or listen in to any room whenever they like. Like Big Brother.”
“Oh yes?”
“Well, without commenting on the moral position about such two-way speakers, not only for the students but for the teachers, last week I was working late in one of these rooms—”
“A classroom?”
“A classroom. And in the office a teacher was having a meeting with the owner.”
“Yes?”
The kid smiled, unable to control it. “And someone had left the intercom thing on.”
“Very titillating for you, I’m sure.” It didn’t quite wipe off the juvenile grin.
“Well, he, the owner, was telling the teacher about grades at the end of the semester.”
“Look, son, if you got a grade you don’t like, that’s no business of mine.” Powder’s patience decreased with the coffee in his cup.
“My name is Rex,” said the kid. “Rex, not ‘son’.”
And touchy with it. Powder pulled a piece of paper out of his drawer. “Rex what?”
“Rex Funkhouser.”
“Where do you live?”
“Fourteen Alberta Street, Eagledale.”
Eagledale; worth two eyebrows. “They let you live around there?” asked Powder, more than half serious.
“My parents and their neighbors are not the subject of this visit,” said Rex Funkhouser seriously. “We coexist.”
“Oh,” said Powder.
Rex Funkhouser rubbed his chin.
“Go on,” said Powder.
“Well.” Tight-lipped now. “I overheard about grades.”
“Delivery, Lieutenant!” Schleutter passed a small collection of paper over the half-wall. “Medical report from last night.” Schleutter looked down at the back of Rex’s head, up at Powder’s face, which appeared to frown even in repose. Schleutter winked and left.
“Go on,” Powder said.
Rex squirmed slightly in his chair. “I heard the school owner change the grades that the teacher wanted to give some of his students. I heard him fail one boy because his parents won’t send him to the school next year if he passes. And I heard him pass another kid because his parents won’t send him back if he fails again.”
“I’m sure there was more to it.”
“On my life,” Rex said, breathing heavily. “It was as coldblooded as that. There just wasn’t any question.”
“Well,” said Powder, and took a breath. “And which one were you? The one who failed?”
Rex grunted; he was emotionally worked up. “No, I’m one of their ‘good’ students. I work hard. They’re not used to it, which is why they didn’t expect anybody to be studying in the school that late.”
“I see,” said Powder.
“You don’t understand what that cruddy school means to those kids. For most of them it’s their last chance. And that … fat … bastard just plays with their lives for the profit motive!”
Feeling scorched by Rex’s fired-up passion, looking at the medical report he wanted to read, Powder tried to cool the kid down. “I’m afraid, son—Rex—that I still don’t see what all this has to do with me. With the police.”
“I thought if a school which purports to be, you know, a school gives out grades which are supposed to be, you know, grades, but which aren’t true grades … I mean, isn’t that like fraud? You people are concerned about money and buying goods and services. If you send your kid to a school and pay for it and then the school owner gives out grades in order to get more money out of you, isn’t that extortion or fraud or something?”
Breath. Over Rex’s shoulder Powder saw Schleutter lifting eyes to the heavens. “You’ve got to appreciate my position. However unfortunate the situation you describe may be, morally, it’s not a crime. It doesn’t seem to be something I can do anything about.”
“OK,” Rex said abruptly. “I tried. He says to try, so I tried.” He rose, with difficulty, to leave.
“Who said to try?” asked Powder.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you wouldn’t understand. It means you wouldn’t like it. It means you’d foam at the mouth. I should have known what kind of answer I’d get here. I did know. But he says to try, so I tried.”
“Someone advised you to consult the police about the problem you’ve described.”
“As a first step. In a kind of way. Yes.” Rex standing, with Powder sitting. Rex no longer wanting something, feeling more belligerent.
“Who?” Powder asked.
“You wouldn’t like it,” said Rex.
“How do you come to know what the hell I like, kid? Don’t you come in here and tell me. I’m perfectly capable of doing my thinking for myself. Now, who told you to come in here with a problem like that?”
Rex Funkhouser sat down again. “Mao Tse-tung.”
Powder leaned on the palm of his left hand, not quite believing.
“I told you you wouldn’t like it.”
Powder raised his voice. “When I don’t like something, it’s not ambiguous, damn it. I shout and swear and stamp my fucking feet.” He stamped a foot, and kept shouting. “God damn it, I don’t like people telling me what I think!” Pause. Then quietly, “But I don’t mind your coming to see me because Mao Tse-tung told you to. Why should I mind that. In fact, I like it, I like it.”
Rex had to smile. And whatever else he’d done, Powder had given this kid what he didn’t expect.
“And how is Mr. Tung these days? Lumbago not acting up again, I hope?”
“It would be Mr. Mao,” said Rex, eager to impart knowledge. “His last name is Mao even though it’s said first.”
“I see,” said Powder. “And just when did he tell you to come to me?”
“When you are faced with a problem,” said Rex Funkhouser formally, “you must try to use all the resources available. It’s called pragmatism.”
“Oh yes?”
“That’s the essence of one of Mao’s thoughts. You see, the police can be thought of as one of the resources that might be available for solving my problem. However reactionary much of your other function may be. You see?”
“I see,” said Powder, his interest fading again.
“But you only deal with crimes. Ruining people’s lives isn’t a crime for you. I understand now. I tried. So now I must try something else.”
“Anything particular in mind?”
Funkhouser spread his hands, palms down. Powder thought he was saying, Mind your own business. But he wasn’t. “May I tell you the famous story of the Foolish Old Man Who Removed Mountains?”
Over Rex’s shoulder Powder saw Schleutter collapse in his chair in silent laughter. It was enough to make Powder listen to the kid again and say loudly, contrarily, “Sergeant Schleutter, no work to do?”
Schleutter didn’t like being called in front of the kid; he stopped laughing.
Powder nodded to Rex.
“It’s about an old man in ancient times whose house faced south, but whose view was obstructed by two great mountains.”
“Oh yes?”
“Together with his sons he began to dig the mountains away. A so-called wise man saw them and he laughed at them for attempting the impossible. But the old man was not daunted.”
Perversely, Schleutter began to act out the parable in mime.
“He replied to the wise man: ‘When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons and then their sons and grandsons and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains can never grow any higher. Every bit we dig away will make them that much lower. So why can’t we dig them away?’” Rex stopped.
“That’s the end?”
“Yes.”
“Did they dig them away?”
Rex sighed. “That’s not the point.”
Shrug. “I just like to know how things come out,” said Powder. “Seems like a lot of trouble for a better view. Even so, I don’t quite understand how this applies to the problem of your friend getting failed when he might not deserve it.”
“He’s not my friend. I don’t even know the person involved. But Mao’s story applies in two senses.”
“Oh yes?”
“If we keep chipping away at injustice we can conquer it, and—”
“But,” interrupted Powder, “the mountains can’t grow any bigger. Injustice can.”
“But the principle applies,” said Rex pedagogically. “And it applies to the specific case in the sense that one must not be afraid to tackle a problem just because it seems to be impossible.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Powder said.
“And now that you won’t help, I just have to try something else.” Rex rose again. Again with difficulty. “But thank you for listening to me.”
The acknowledgment took Powder a little by surprise. He said, “If you ever have a crime …”
Rex pivoted on his better foot. Limped out of the room. Powder watched him go. It took quite awhile.
Schleutter watched, too, then got up and came over to Powder’s desk. “Did I ever tell you the famous story of the Senile Lieutenant Who Listened to Fools?”
“Don’t make fun of Mao,” said Powder crankily. “If you’d listened to him, you’d have been a lieutenant by now yourself.”
Schleutter smiled. “Why ain’t you that patient with me?”
“You’re not a member of the public; I expect you to be moderately sensible.”
“Roy, you got anything special against Sid Smith? You don’t like his beard or something?”
“What is this, the Heart Line? What’s the matter, he think I have a down on him?”
“I was just thinking about patience.”
Powder took up the medical report. “He needs humanizing.”
The medical story on the new body sounded much like what Miller had told him about the previous body. Strangled elsewhere, dumped. And the fingers mutilated again, but this time not so well. Done with a brick, but one whole finger had been left intact and bits of others.
The face was ruined this time, though. The battering brick was left on the scene. Rather than a hammer taken away. Fingerprints on a brick? No, but, ugh, gruesome, the print pieces of fingers. Bit of luck to have a whole finger left. Powder looked for identification details. Nothing. Another department.
Still, how many women forty to forty-five years old, five feet four inches, 210 pounds, would there be around who were likely to get themselves murdered? Identification wasn’t likely to be difficult.
No sexual assault. Just a plain, vicious, violent murder which had taken place the same night.
Still pretty warm, Johnny had said. Warm.
You occasionally get people putting corpses in freezers, which could slow decay processes enough to confuse time of death. Wonder if anybody ever heats bodies up a little to make a death look more recent? Full of good ideas, Powder thought.
A sluice of break-ins, robberies, and armed robberies. They all come the same night; television shows must be bad. At 2:15 the phone rang again and Powder was alone in the office.
“A break-in, Lieutenant,” said the officer from Uniform.
“What happened?”
“Someone broke into a hardware store and stole fifteen clocks.”
“Fifteen clocks?”
“That’s it.”
“Cover it yourselves. Good opportunity for one of your youngsters to crack a big case and make a name.”
“Thanks a lot, Powder,” said the voice. “I have to tell you about all of them even if you don’t want them.”
“Yeah. Nothing but fifteen clocks?”
“All wind-up. Didn’t even take electric ones.”
“And nothing else stolen?”
“Not that the guy noticed. He was on the scene and reported it himself. He’ll check stock thoroughly in the morning.”
“How does he happen to come to the store at this time of night?”
“Fight with his wife, he says.”
Speaking of fights with the wife …, thought Powder as he hung up.
4
Powder woke up not long after one. He had a shower, got dressed and gathered a selection of freshly laundered heavy work clothes. He loaded them into a paper shopping bag.
Then he went downtown. Curiosity. Also to get some gas from the police pump.
He was looking for Brindell. And found him eating a sandwich on the second floor, surrounded by vending machines.
“I’ve been looking for you,” said Powder.
Brindell made a meal of swallowing the bite in his mouth.
“Have you made the two mashed-finger bodies yet?” Powder swung into a seat across the table from Brindell, oblivious to the conversation with two other young sergeants he had interrupted.
It took a few moments for Brindell to find his voice. “Not both, not yet.”
“But you found one?”
“Yeah, the second one. She’s called Hilda Chaney. Was.”
“Should I have known her?”
“Thought you might have,” said Brindell. “She was in the shake-out in drug arrests twice in the last five years and she had quite a history before that.”
“Who’s the other one?”
“No idea. Yet. We’re liaising with the Drug Squad, though.”
Powder nodded. Similar murders suggest victims with something in common. “Let me know how it comes out.”
“What’s it to you, if I may ask, Lieutenant?” asked Brindell, who was no fonder than most cops of being questioned himself.
“Look, sonny,” said Powder. “You may think of night people just being there to hold cases for you guys, but if we didn’t do it right, your arrest record would drop through your drawers.”
“I’m not talking about that,” said Brindell. “Nobody said you didn’t do a job. But once you’re finished the first night, I mean, what do you care who we’ve identified? I mean, to make a special thing of it?”
“You’ve never worked with me, have you, Brindell?”
“No.”
“I think I’m going to try and have you spend a month on my shift. Help you be a better cop. Hey, I’ll teach you something now. How many hours a day do you work?”
“Eight hours a day, five days a week. A shift like anybody else.”
“Not twenty-four hours? Not seven days a week?”
“What’s the point?”
“The point is what happens to your goddamn cases while you’re home trying to talk your wife into it.”
“There’s an overlap system and a case sheet.”
“But suppose I pick up someone for shooting rabbits in the city limits and I find he’s got a bloody sledgehammer in his trunk. You figure it’s better for me to go through a stack of paper looking for ‘hammer, sledge, bloody’? Or should I know because you told me that Janice Bloggs had her hands done with a hammer? It doesn’t cost you anything to keep me up to date if I’m cop enough to want to know. If I come down here out of time to ask you, or if I was to call you up, does that hurt you? Christ, you should be happy. Because if I do come up with anything that might help you, you get it, it makes your job easier. You—”
“All right! All right! I get the idea, Powder.”
“Lieutenant Powder to you.”
“Yeah. All right. I’m sorry I called you on it. You got every right to ask questions.”
“All right. Keep me informed. You got egg salad in your lap, you know that?” Powder walked away.
Brindell looked down. He couldn’t see any egg salad.
Anyhow, Powder thought as he walked along the second-floor corridor, I like to know how things come out. And as long as he was on second, he’d decided to stop at Rosters.
Nobody was at the desk. He banged on it, half expecting the roster kid to crawl out from under. Or maybe appear in a puff of smoke to do the master’s bidding.
He started to write a note.
“Looking for me, Lieutenant?” said the young officer, coming through the door behind Powder.
“Yeah,” said Powder. “Chairman Mao wouldn’t approve of you being out of the office when you’re wanted.”
“What?”
Powder crumpled up his note. “Doesn’t occur to you to leave some indication of where you’re going?”
“I just went to the can, Lieutenant. Sorry if you were inconvenienced.”
“You got the next roster set up?”
“Yessir, you want to look at it?”
“Not if it’s right. You’re in the statistical department, aren’t you, son?”
“The statistical side of Planning. Yessir.”
“Working in pretty well now?”
“It’s getting better.”
“Keep trying, it will come.”
“Yessir.”
“One thing I wondered if you would do for me.”
“Yes?”
“There’s an officer I would like to have with me on the roster you just finished. Sergeant Brindell. Howard.”
The kid wrote it down. “I’ll do my best, sir. Unless he’s on reserve.”
“Thanks,” said Powder. “Good luck.” You’ll damn well need it, you stupid …
“Thank you, sir.”
Forgot to give Brindell a little phone call last night, Powder realized as he went to the stairs. Make up for it when I have him for four straight weeks.
