Читать книгу The Narrow Cell - Ronal Kayser - Страница 7

Grandfather had a simple rule . . . He said you could always tell a man’s character by what he laughed at.— THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CATHERINE HOPE.

CAPTAIN HARRY WHIPPLE, special duty division commander, stood nearest the desk and picked up the phone.

“Halloa,” said he in a voice ripened by several highballs. “What? . . . Yeah, he’s here. John!”

Lieutenant John Kenmore came over from the group of plain clothes men who were toasting the departure of police chemist Earle Ames, lately commissioned into the United States Army Chemical Warfare Corps. The lieutenant was a tall man of spare and athletic figure. His grey eyes looked out of a face full of competence. It was a longish and rather angular face that coupled the chin of a stubborn fighter with the keen, reasoning glance of a strategist. As commanding officer in the Bureau of Internal Security of the San Diego Police Department, he ran the homicide detail and missing persons’ office, and, since Pearl Harbor, the war duty office as well.

“Yes. Kenmore speaking.”

“This is Henry Bowling—in La Jolla.” (Pronounced, of course, La Hoya.) “I suppose you remember me.”

Kenmore did; but it was a feat of trained memory. As war duty officer, he had come into contact with a host of civilian defense volunteers. But among the hundreds who had attended the police schools of instruction, Bowling stood out very slightly . . . A short, thick, red-faced man of pompous and self-important manner—Kenmore’s recollection placed him beside Dr. Lauren Wallace, the La Jolla incident officer.

The voice in the receiver said something about an “UXB lecture.” And that was it. Bowling had brought up some question about excavating a bombproof shelter in his backyard.

“You’re an air raid warden out there, aren’t you?” This was the sum and total of Lieutenant Kenmore’s recollection of Henry Bowling.

“Senior sector warden,” emphasized the voice.

Kenmore grinned. He recognized the pompous, the self-important manner. But it disappeared; the voice lowered to a pitch of sly, confiding, wheedling urgency.

“Look here, lieutenant . . . like to see you tonight. Say, if you could make it after the drill . . . eight o’clock. I want to introduce you . . . somebody you’ve been wanting to meet . . . long, long time . . .”

“Speech! Speech!” Across the room, Earle Ames had been hoisted to the top of another desk.

“What?” said Kenmore. “Just a minute.”

He looked around.

“Pipe down, you mugs, hold it.”

And then again, “What?”

Henry Bowling (if in fact it was he) did a surprising thing. He chuckled. And a moist, heavy, definitely unpleasant sound he made of it.

It was almost as if Kenmore were being kidded; but not quite that, either. It was a confidential chuckle, the lieutenant thought. He wasn’t being laughed at; he was invited to join in the jest.

Heh. Heh-heh.

“To hell with Hitler-hito,” declaimed the departing Ames, “is all I got to say.”

“I want to introduce you,” the voice in the phone confided, “to a murderer.”

“The murdering sons of bitches!” shouted Earle Ames.

“What’s that? Hello? Damn it!” cried Kenmore—into a dead wire.

His caller had hung up in the middle of a second, lumbrously risible chuckle.

Lieutenant Kenmore clenched the telephone in his fist, scowling.

It had certainly sounded like murderer.

Kenmore hesitated; reached for the desk directory; opened this to the suburban pages, and ran a forefinger down La Jolla’s B’s.

Bowling, Henry R. 222 Laguna Terrace. Seaview 3-3609.

He dialed.

No one at Seaview 3-3609 answered.

Now, he thought, what kind of a gag was that?

And answered himself: It was no gag at all.

How did he know?

He thought it sounded like Henry Bowling’s voice; or rather (since he had heard Bowling’s voice but once, and then not on the telephone), he thought it sounded like Henry Bowling . . . judged by those nuances of speech through which a detective does judge anyone’s relative education, social status, personality. Kenmore was no babe in the woods at this sort of thing. He had got tips via the phone before. Sometimes the informant preferred to be anonymous. Sometimes the tipster chose to borrow a name for the occasion. Kenmore had never found it hard to see through these deceptions, largely because most people do not know what their own voices sound like, and so don’t know which features to disguise.

There was something else.

Kenmore thought the inveterate telephone jokester would not have hung up so quickly, without having had his fun out. Would not have let a suspicion of levity into the matter, either. Would not have chuckled.

The chuckle clinched conviction.

He looked up at the wall clock. Its minute hand had just slipped past 7:16. The call, therefore, had been made at about 7:15.

“Speech! Speech!”

Captain Whipple had the floor, as Kenmore turned his back and walked out, and down the hall from the detective division headquarters to the B.I.S.

“There was just a call for you,” said Sergeant Lyon, the uniformed officer assigned to the Bureau. “I told them to switch it—”

“Yes. I’m going to try to trace that.”

“You’re kind of late, aren’t you?”

“It was from La Jolla . . . Most phones out there aren’t on extended service. You can’t dial a downtown number direct. You call operator, she puts you through, and puts the toll charge on your account. If it wasn’t an extended service call I can trace it.”

Lieutenant Kenmore called operator and asked for the supervisor.

“I would have to check the ticket,” said she.

“All right. Ring me back here. Franklin 1101, extension 6.”

“Okay if I go down the hall, then?” said Sergeant Lyon thirstily.

“Go ahead.” Kenmore shook his head. “I had one drink too many already. Earle Ames has joined the Army. This makes Harry Whipple a great guy and the plain clothes department’s choice for Chief of Police. I must be befuddled with booze, because that doesn’t add up in my book.”

Kenmore sat down facing the telephone. His thoughts were not very important. He wished he knew more about Henry Bowling. He also wished he knew where Captain Whipple got the free bourbon to celebrate Earle Ames’ departure. He wondered how long it would be before the department found another chemist to replace Ames. And he wished the supervisor would hurry.

“Franklin 1101,” said the supervisor’s voice presently, “was called from Seaview 3-2119.”

“Where’s that?”

“222 Laguna Terrace, rear.”

“Name?”

“The subscriber is listed as Air Raid Warden Post B. As in Boston.”

Kenmore dialed Seaview 3-2119.

No one answered.

He bent an elbow and stared at his strapwatch. Fourteen minutes had elapsed; the time was now 7:31.

He walked down the hall. He might have learned, had he listened to Harry Whipple, how the understaffed police department proposed to carry on nobly in war-swollen San Diego. He stood in the doorway, gestured to Lyon:

“Sergeant, I’m running out to La Jolla tonight. Now.”