Dead Street

New York newspapers do a heavy business in Florida. With a big percentage of the population wintering there, visiting another big chunk of their citizens who have already moved to the Sunshine State, the papers keep them well supplied with news from home. On page four of the issue I picked up was a two-column article that I could have skipped over if the name Credentials hadn’t popped right out of the text.

Ray Burnwald, the owner of the business, had been shot twice and his personal office and adjacent files had been ransacked along with others that went back some twenty-five years. Others were pulled out of the racks, but hadn’t been opened because someone had heard the shots and notified the police. No computers had been taken, possibly because approaching sirens had warned the intruder off. No one seemed to know what he was after. Ray Burnwald was expected to be hospitalized for some time.

Crimes like this are committed for one reason only: money, or some other type of financial gain. Those files were full of paperwork, not valuable artifacts of gold or jewelry that can be cashed out anywhere, but hard copy that dated to when computers were backed up on paper. All those files contained was information and the data couldn’t be too critical because it was stored in an easily accessed area.

But was it worth enough to chance getting a murder charge wrapped around someone’s neck? That shooting was meant to be a killing one.

I got hold of Sergeant Davy Ross at his new precinct number and asked him to look into the hit on Credentials and find out if Burnwald would be able to talk to me shortly. I sat by the phone for three hours, saw Bettie get picked up by a Sunset Lodge station wagon filled with a half dozen older women, had two pots of coffee and watched an old movie on TV before the call came in.

Davy Ross had worked through the investigating officers on the case and all they had for evidence were the slugs they took out of Ray Burnwald’s body. Luckily, he was not in critical condition and would be glad to talk to me at any time. So would the investigating officers. They smelled something interesting going on, even though they had no fingerprints or incidental evidence from the crime scene. Two of Burnwald’s current employees, one of whom was in charge of the filing system, had no idea what the intruder was after, though he did mention that three of the folders seemed to have been more thoroughly perused than all the others. But on a check with duplicate information, nothing was missing.

I asked Davy if he had the dates covered by those three folders and when he checked his notes he gave me the year, month and weeks of my requests.

Over the phone Davy asked, “Watcha got on this deal, Jack?”

“Nothing yet.”

“But you’re thinking something.”

“Damn right, Davy, but let me check it out a little further. I don’t want to drop any problems on the guys processing this. Let me know if you get a make on those slugs they took out of Burnwald.”

“You got it, buddy. Anything else I can do?”

“Not yet. Soon, maybe.”

“The guys want to know how you’re doing.”

“I’m hanging in there. How’s the street?”

“The old lady’s still hanging out the window on her pillow.”

“She was supposed to go to Elizabeth.”

“Her daughter got sick. She’s due to come today, they tell me.”

“Won’t they ever let that street die a decent death?”

“Crazy. You take care, Jack. By the way, you need any mo... .45 ammo?”

“We get it all for free down here. Besides, nobody’s around to shoot.”

Davy let out a chuckle, said so long and hung up.

I looked at the notes I had scratched on my lap pad. The dates of the most “perused” files were right before Bettie had been abducted.

And there was that word again. Abducted. Killing her would have been easier.

And what were they looking for in the old Credentials files? Nothing seemed to be missing.

Three folders had been given more than a casual inspection.

And those three folders were dated just before the hit on Bettie.

Had something alerted Bettie to information in those files?

Had Bettie removed the pertinent items herself, most likely to give to me?

If so, Bettie had no memory at all about the event.

Damn!

Psychiatrists probe minds. They don’t operate. They don’t give physical therapy. They probe minds and try to make sense out of what’s there. Sometimes it works. They say bartenders are great at that too because their “patients” get bent out of shape with booze and hand the guy behind the bar all kinds of gibberish he has to sort out to keep the gibberish from turning into a bar brawl. Cops have to play the same game to keep a lot of loudmouths from doing jail time and for being able to recognize the little mental slips and omissions the bad guys fabricate to ease out of an arrest.

This job was not something we really studied at the Academy. It was strictly street smarts.