she knew fine gentlemen.”
Sands was snorting through his broad nose. “Money don’t do a guy much good in bed,” he said. “And after the rich gents went home, there was a nice young waiter, looking for a good tip. A fifty-buck tip.”
Jim Latson was thinking that Sands would make a good captain. Put him on the Vice Squad, and he’d work for nothing.
The half dozen reporters present were breaking for the door. They could now tell their desks that it was safe to say that a sex angle had been turned up in the DeLisle case.
Harry Weber of the News-Journal remained behind. “You got a robbery motive,” he said, “why search around for rape, too? The papers haven’t been that good to you.” The News-Journal was the biggest paper in town; it always had two men on a big story, one to ask fool questions.
But the police are public servants. They should be polite to the press. “Get him into court,” Captain Martin said, “and we can’t prove the beads weren’t a tip. Tip for doing what?”
Dave Corday strolled in, followed by the reporters returning from their phone. “Nice work, boys,” he said. “That was a quick catch. This the defendant?”
Jim Latson laughed. “That’s up to you, Dave. If you don’t like him for it, we will be happy to catch you another one. A happy district attorney’s office, that’s the slogan of my department.”
Corday said, “Jim, that’s the way to talk. After all, arrests without convictions don’t do either of us any good.”
You smug bastard, Jim Latson was thinking. You size six feet in number twelve shoes. You sure stepped out of your league when you tried to frame me.
But a sneaking, lonely thought remained: the graceful figure, the laughing face of a girl who called herself Hogan DeLisle. He missed her, and he had never thought another woman would get under his skin.
For that, some day, Dave Corday would end up in the gutter.
Corday was asking Martin what the situation added up to; Captain Martin was telling him in his curt way.
Corday nodded. “Okay. I like the sex angle better than the robbery. It makes more sense. He was her lover, and she either broke off with him or refused to give him any more money—we’ll find out which. I’ll put the D.A.’s officers on Guild: his background, his financial position. From your men, I’d like to get a tie-in on the gun, on his relations with his wife, and, of course, anything else you get.”
“Can do,” Captain Martin said.
“Particularly the gun,” Dave Corday said. He was talking directly to Jim Latson now; but his eyes were not on the chief’s eyes but on his left armpit, where the gun bulged the carefully tailored suit not at all. “By now ballistics will have a good deal on the slugs that came out of the corpse; and I want the gun that fired them. I want that gun, Chief. If you have to drag every river, open every manhole in the state, we’ll need that gun. Without it, there’s no case.”
Jim Latson grinned and bowed deeply. “Mr. Prosecutor, you have but to command and us lowly cops’ll break our tired bones for you. You want a gun, we’ll get you a gun.” He reached in his armpit, came out with his own weapon, butt first. “Take mine, counselor. Anything to keep you happy, as I said before.”
“I never owned a gun in my life,” Ralph Guild said. But none of the policemen were listening to him.
Chapter 7
EVENING PAPERS UNDER HIS ARM, Dave Corday went past the bowing doorman and into the Zebra House Bar. This was not the regular nightclub but a big anteroom off it; at night it was mostly used by people waiting for tables, but from five to seven it was a prosperous cocktail lounge.
The cocktail maitre d’ bowed low. “A table, Mr. Corday? We don’t often get honored this way.”
“Yes, I’d like a table, Ernest. Small one will do. I’m not expecting anyone.”
Palmer was not in sight, neither was Jim Latson. Dave Corday, a man not given to public drinking, had not
Damien Broderick, Paul di Filippo