Sergeant Isadore inhaled and coughed. He was trying to give up cigarettes by smoking small cigars, but he kept forgetting. As he pounded himself on the chest, he wondered whether his son was going to keep his student deferment. Perhaps if he keeled over in Captain Frank’s office, they’d let Morris stay home as a hardship case. That was a hell of a price to pay to keep a son home.
‘You ought to give up smoking,’ Frank suggested balefully.
‘I know,’ Isadore said. He stubbed out the cigar in the stand-up ashtray the city provided.
‘Now tell me again. Is it Roman Grey or Romano Gry? Which one is the alias?’
‘Both,’ Isadore said. ‘I mean they’re both his real names. Gry is his name with other Gypsies. Grey is for gaja, non-Gypsies.’
‘This is a simple case, Sergeant. But I’m beginning to see what makes it complicated.’ Frank had the almost hairless head of a newborn bird, and it lolled from side to side as he spoke. ‘If I remember correctly, we’ve spoken about him before.’
‘He’s cooperated with the department before, Captain.’
‘Sergeant, I’d call donating some chairs for the Policemen’s Ball swell, but I wouldn’t call it cooperation.’
‘Yes,’ lsadore agreed. ‘Well, we don’t have enough information to make a charge stick. He can account for his whereabouts for the past four days, we can’t get any complaints from his customers, and actually we haven’t established any provable link between Pulneshti and Grey.’
Frank squinted at the one-by-two-inch photo of Grey stapled to his file. ‘Looks like some kind of mulatto to me.’
‘The Grys are famous for being dark,’ Isadore pointed out. ‘They’re Lovari Gypsies like Pulneshti. Grey has quite an interesting background. Orphaned and brought up by a judge in New York. That’s where he got the money to start his store.’
‘How about that? Can you tell me anything about the girl or Pulneshti? Something dull like the murder?’
Isadore swallowed a cough. ‘Nothing positive. The FBI can’t match her prints, and it takes some time to check all the runaways and missing persons. The lab tests verified no hard drugs, so we’re hitting the missing persons harder. Pulneshti has a record of grand and petty larceny, mostly cars, but we don’t have any record of next of kin.’
Frank snapped his middle finger on the Grey file. ‘No help here?’
‘No. He says he’s sure we’ll catch the guilty party.’
For a man whose avocation was sarcasm, Frank was not alert to the possibility in others. He merely grunted.
‘We’re trying to cut down the area of search,’ Isadore continued. ‘We sent a description of the car around the national wire, and we have a zoologist looking at it tomorrow to check out the bugs on the car and the radiator. That could help us determine where the car’s been, and it certainly looks as if it’s been everywhere.’
Frank’s face was starting to screw up with an inner pain.
‘It’s a little unorthodox, I know,’ Isadore said, ‘but it’s not like tracing an ordinary person. Gypsies don’t carry credit cards, they don’t stay at motels, they don’t have bank accounts, and they don’t talk to the police. Even when they do talk, it’s in their own language. None of the usual techniques work.’
Frank looked at Isadore for a long time. They’d started out in the Police Academy together, and Isadore had always gotten the better marks; he was the one who was expected to rise to inspector. Instead, Frank had followed orders, never hounded a case too long, always remembered St. Patrick’s Day, and now he was ahead by two grades and a few thousand dollars. Still, they had an understanding.
‘Harry, we’ve got to wrap this case up fast. It’s practically done for us. Pulneshti was probably the killer, and he’s dead. But the commissioner is resigning. The Irishman at the Central Investigation Department wants the job. So does the Jew at the Detective Bureau. The district attorneys and the captains are lining up with their boys, and I’ve got to jump soon. I thought I could lay low until this girl and the Gypsy came along in Jersey. Now someone transferred this homicide to you and me and don’t know who. It sounds like that college boy at the bureau, but CID is closer to the Jersey patrol. If you handle this right one of them is going to take the credit. Unless they expect you to blow it and then they can pin it on the other.’
‘Why don’t you call one of them and find out?’
‘The phone’s tapped, that’s why. I tried to get messages through, but they’re both traveling all over town with their flying squads. Do you understand? You have to wrap this up fast and neat, and if it means putting this other Gypsy in the can for a while, I’ll back you up. Until we find out who comes out on top.’
Frank pushed the files across the desk to Isadore.
‘You’re the man with the imagination, think up something,’ Frank said. ‘Anyway, from what you tell me, we’re dealing with born criminals.’