1:52 a.m.

His favorite nightcap—coffee and Benzedrine.

Dudley cigarette-chased them. The squadroom was empty. Dr. Ashida and Miss Lake left the place disarrayed. It kept the nightwatch lads out.

His cubicle was spotless. He remained untapped. He made his dicey calls from pay phones. A Jew locksmith sold him slugs.

His desk phone blinked. Aaaaaah—the photo lab.

The night-shift man pledged a rush job on his snapshots. The man was a pervert parolee. He would not reveal the dead Jap in the pix.

Dudley twirled thoughts. One thought persistently twirled. He missed something at the house. It was something very simple. The killer might have missed it himself.

He twirled thoughts. One thought niggled. Call-Me-Jack burdened him with a stray job.

The draft would deplete the Department. Cops would be conscripted willy-nilly. It would mandate emergency hires. He had to scan recent reject files for men fit to serve.

It was niggling work. It cramped his brain waves. The Watanabe case ran full-time. It was his brain-broiler.

He missed something at the house. He should consult bright Dr. Ashida.

Dudley restudied the book. It was Ray Pinker’s knife-wound text. It included photographs.

Yes—multiple blade marks. Yes—the central puncture and starburst effect. Yes—the same incision perspective.

The photos matched the stab points on Hikaru Tachibana. He was almost certain. The lab pix would cinch it.

Two phone lights blinked. Dudley strolled to the doorway tube chute and stuck his hand out. That whoosh whooshed. He grabbed the canister and strolled back to his desk.

Next—the comparison test.

Ray Pinker’s knife photos. His own knife-wound photos. Twelve text photos and seven flashbulb shots.

He studied both sets. He went back and forth. Identical? Yes.

Pix confirmed. Go to Pinker’s historical text.

A Jap war knife caused the wounds. The knife derived from eighteenth-century Japan. Feudal warlords dipped the blades in slow-acting poison. Superficial wounds rarely proved lethal. Warlords superficially wounded their men to test their courage under duress.

Deep stab wounds always proved fatal. Deep stab wounds and the poison caused slow and tortuous death. Warlords often stabbed the arms of their victims. This ensured that no pierced organs would cause instant death. Warlords often pierced their victims’ abdomens. This transmitted poison to the lower intestines. This brought about slow and horrid death.

Dudley closed the book and stashed the photos. His brain twirled. He should study the Deutsches Haus ledger. His brain retwirled. Buzz Meeks caught the Whalen’s job. That case aspect perplexed him. Meeks might have items desk-stashed.

It was 2:12 a.m. Robbery would be dead. Dr. Ashida’s photo gizmo snapped evidence pix. Meeks might have duplicates.

Dudley walked over to Robbery. The squadroom was tombsville. Meeks had a horseshoe paperweight on his desk.

The top drawer was open. Pencils, paper clips, erasers. One roll of evidence film, with a note attached.

“T.M.: Sorry, but it wouldn’t develop.”

Dudley crossed out the note. Dudley wrote below it, “Try again. Return the photos to me. Try harder. You’re a lazy fiend son of a bitch.”

He walked to the tube chute and stuffed the film and note in. He hit the photo-lab switch and heard the whoosh. He walked back to his desk and studied the ledger.

The Deutsches Haus. Sedition as pratfall. Illegal weaponry sales. Buyers would use pseudonyms. It was a long shot.

Yes—block-printed columns. Dates and ordnance lists. Pseudonyms, as predicted.

H. Himmler, J. Goebbels, H. Göring. “A. Hitler”—that’s rich.

Dudley scanned pages. There’s Hirohito, Tojo, Mussolini. There’s more puerile humor, up to—

A real name.

Huey Cressmeyer.

Ruth Mildred’s perv son. Ruth Mildred, Dot Rothstein’s lez frau. Ruth Mildred fucked a man to have a child that she and Dot could pervert.

Dudley skimmed the rest of the ledger. It starred Field Marshal Rommel and A. Hitler’s squeeze, Eva Braun. He locked up the ledger. His brain Geiger-counter clicked. Two desk-phone lights blinked.

He walked to the tube and snatched up the goodies. He walked back to his desk and unloaded them.

The lazy fiend delivers. It’s prompt. It’s wildly serendipitous.

Dudley examined the photos. He hypothesized the fuckups that gave him these shots.

Dr. Ashida’s wizardly gizmo. It’s applied to the task of photographing license plates. A malfunction occurs. Car wheels hit the wire and make the shutter trip. Something jams the lens upward. Four blurred images of Huey C. result.

It’s Huey. He’s about to heist Whalen’s Drugstore. They’re blurred images. They’re courtroom invalid. It’s Huey—but only if you know him.

He heard foot scuffs. Bill Parker and Nort Layman walked up.

Layman said, “Nancy Watanabe was recently pregnant. She’d had an abortion. I did advanced blood work and found stray tissue cells. The father had AB-negative blood.”

Dudley said, “A delightful surprise.”

Parker said, “It explains the morphine paregoric at the house. It’s prescribed for cramps in early pregnancies.”

Layman said, “The Whalen’s guy pawed around in the paregoric. It’s in Buzz Meeks’ report.”