A NEW DAWNING BROUGHT the need to answer a critical question: should I contact the police and tell them what I knew?
If so, when?
If so, what?
But at eight-fifteen the decision was taken out of my hands. The police, in the form of Jerry Miller, called me. He said, “Al, there's something I'd like to talk to you about. Do you think you could come down and see me?”
“What, you mean like lunch?”
“Before lunch. This morning. Now.”
“Has something happened, Jerry?”
“No, no,” he said without conviction. “I would just like to have a little talk. What time do you think you can get down here?”
A little after ten-thirty his secretary waved me straight through to his office.
“O.K., sport,” I said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Sit down,” he said.
He had the same air of reserve that he'd had on the phone and I thought about battling him all the way down the line. But I didn't have a clue what it was about. It might be personal. It might be that he had decided to leave Janie at last and he wanted help with his farewell letter.
I sat down.
He said, “We have briefings first thing these days.”
I waited.
“Scum Front,” he said.
I waited silently again, but this time because I couldn't have said anything if I'd wanted to.
He said, “Reviewing. You know. What guys did yesterday on the case. Latest pronouncements from on high. And this morning, Al, you can imagine what I felt when I caught your name.”
I nodded and swallowed and tried to locate my voice. “I . . . I had a couple of guys come around.”
“So I read,” Miller said. He picked up some papers from his desk. But he didn't look at them. He looked at me. “Anyhow, so when I heard the name I asked Ryder for his report.”
I went for “injured innocent.”“What's the problem?”
Miller didn't answer the question. He waved the papers slowly. “You made a call from a public phone, right?”
“Right.”
“To—”
“Only she was out. What is the problem, Jerry?”
“Well, I don't know if you know, there's a new gadget available on phones.”
“Is this going to take long? Because I've got a young daughter and I don't want to miss her fiftieth birthday party.”
“When we get a call in the department, this gadget automatically gives us the source telephone number and the location of the phone the call is being made from.”
I waited.
“The information goes on a rolling computer thing so we keep records for thirty-six hours before they get wiped to be replaced by the new calls. The same equipment can be put on other phones and because of the importance of the Scum Front case we've got all the pay phones in central Indianapolis hooked up. The Scummies use them to call Cab-Co.”
“Jerry, I know about that. I saw it in action. I was sitting in my car dealing with some serious calories and I saw cops coming out of the woodwork to get at that phone in the shopping center.”
“Yeah, but maybe you didn't know that the equipment also records the time the calls are made.”
“Yeah? So?”
“Well, when I looked at Ryder's file on you it included a copy of the calls made at the phone in question.”
“Jerry, the point!”
He sighed and said, “Two things bothered me, Al. I can't quite believe what I'm thinking, but I can't shake them either.”
“What, for Christ's sake?”
“First, there's the call you said you made.”
“It's there, isn't it?”
“Oh yeah. It's here. But the problem is the time.” He looked at me. “It's nineteen minutes before the Scum Front call to Cab-Co.”
“So?”
“So you told Ryder—and me just now—that you saw patrol officers come into the shopping center and seal off the phone. You watched them from your car while you ate a chocolate bar.”
“Yeah. So?”
“But it also says here that you didn't see anybody use the phone.”
“Your reading's come on a lot. Soon they'll let you start the Dick and Jane book where Spot does dirty things with his ball.”
“See, the picture I get,” he persisted, “is that you're in your car able to watch our guys around the phone a few minutes after a Scummie uses it, but somehow you didn't see anybody at the phone or near it before then.”
“What am I supposed to do? Make it up? If you'd told me I was supposed to devote my attention to a phone booth I would have done it.”
“Could you do me a favor, Al? Could you draw me a little sketch of the parking lot and where you were parked and where the phone was and where you got the candy from?”
“Yeah, I could do that. But why should I? All you're doing is saying you don't believe me when I say I can notice cops screaming into a mall but I can fail to notice somebody putting a quarter in a slot.”
“You're a trained observer, Al.”
“I guess I forgot to take my field glasses. But am I supposed to make it up? O.K. I saw a seven-foot guy in a Pacers uniform dribbling something round that had wires sticking out and ticked.”
“No, of course you aren't supposed to make things up.”
“Well, what's your problem, then? Do you think I'm a Scum Fronter?”
“Nooo,” he said, like with two-percent “maybe” in it. “But you're not the most contented member of our community.”
“I'll moo for you.”
“It's not a joke, Al.”
“O.K. It's not a joke. So tell me this. Suppose I am involved with the Scum Front. Do you think I would be so stupid as to make a call for them and leave my fingerprints?”
He shrugged.
“I do know about fingerprints, Jerry. They've been around for a long time. Even Mark Twain knew about fingerprints.”
“And there's this other thing,” he said.
“You better say it quick, before I get into trouble for assaulting a police officer.”
“You don't like being pushed around like this, do you?”
“No, I don't.”
“Well, Ryder has this rep,” Miller said.
“Congratulate him for me.”
“He's abrasive. He's not polite. We get complaints on him. Everybody knows about Ryder. There are jokes. There's a break-in at a church where the minister is ninety years old, people say, ‘Send Ryder. He’ll get a confession.’ ”
“So?”
“In his report,” Miller said, “Ryder said how cooperative you'd been with him, Al. And I asked him myself, and he said the same. 'All please and thank you' was how he described you.
Miller and I looked at each other.
Miller said, “A cop comes to your door. This is a cop who thinks he's too important for routine work. This is a cop who once broke the skull of a drunk who didn't call him 'Sir.' He comes to your door and he interrupts whatever you are doing and he takes up your time asking about a phone call you made that is none of his business. Undoubtedly he shouts at you to put you under stress to see if you act like a terrorist. Maybe he roughs you up a little.
Probably he noses around your place. And you, Al, you do not take his badge number. You do not make sarcastic cracks that show him up for the asshole he most certainly is. You do not refuse to answer his questions. You talk to the guy and play it his way and nod and smile and say how you know he's just doing his job. And that, Albert, is just not like you. You eat situations like this with a brown-sugar topping. The better mood you're in, the more of a meal you make out of it. It's fun to guys like you. But, for some reason, not this time. This time you're smiles and sunshine and 'all please and thank you.' So I ask myself why. And I ask you, why, Al? Why?