Time to Murder and Create

He didn't know where it was. A few years ago, if you wanted to drive a cab you had to be able to name the nearest hospital or police station or firehouse from any point in the city. I don't know when they dropped the test, but now all you have to do is be alive.

I told him it was on West Tenth, and he got there without too much trouble. I found Eddie Koehler in his office. He was reading something in the News, and it wasn't making him happy.

"Fucking Special Prosecutor," he said. "What's a guy like this accomplish except aggravate people?"

"He gets his name in the papers a lot."

"Yeah. Figure he wants to be governor?"

I thought of Huysendahl. "Everybody wants to be governor."

"That's the fucking truth. Why do you figure that is?"

"You're asking the wrong person, Eddie. I can't figure out why anybody wants to be anything."

His cool eyes appraised me. "Shit, you always wanted to be a cop."

"Since I was a kid. I never wanted to be anything else, as far back as I can remember."

"I was the same way. Always wanted to carry a badge. I wonder why.

Sometimes I think it was how we were brought up, the cop on the corner, everybody respecting him. And the movies we saw as a kid.

The cops were the good guys."

"I don't know. They always shot Cagney in the last reel."

"Yeah, but the fucker had it coming. You'd watch and you'd be crazy about Cagney but you wanted him to buy the farm at the end. He couldn't fucking get away with it. Sit down, Matt. I don't see you much lately. You want some coffee?"

I shook my head but I sat down. He took a dead cigar from his ashtray and put a match to it. I took two tens and a five from my wallet and put them on his desk.

"I just earned a hat?"

"You will in a minute."

"Just so the Special Prosecutor don't get wind of it."

"You don't have anything to worry about, do you?"

"Who knows? You get a maniac like that and everybody's got something to worry about." He folded the bills and put them in his shirt pocket. "What can I do for you?"

I got out the slip of paper I'd written on before going to bed. "I've got part of a license number," I said.

"Don't you know anybody at Twenty-sixth Street?"

That was where the Motor Vehicle people had their offices. I said, "I do, but it's a Jersey plate. I'm guessing the car was stolen and that you can turn it up on the G.T.A. sheet. The three letters are either LKJ or LJK. I only got a piece of the three numbers. There's a nine and a four, possibly a nine and two fours, but I don't even know the order."

"That should be plenty, if it's on the sheet. All this towing, sometimes people don't report thefts. They just assume we towed it, and they don't go down to the pound if they don't happen to have the fifty bucks, and then it turns out it was stolen. Or by then the thief dumped it and we did tow it away, and they wind up paying for a tow, but not from where they parked it. Hang on, I'll get the sheet."

He left his cigar in the ashtray, and it was out again by the time he got back.

"Grand Theft Auto," he said.

"Give me those letters again."

"LKJ or LJK."

"Uh-huh. You got a make and model on it?"

"Nineteen forty-nine Kaiser-Frazer."

"Huh?"

"Late-model sedan, dark. That's about as much as I got. They all look about the same."

"Yeah. Nothing on the main sheet. Let's see what came in last night. Oh, hello, LJK nine one four."

"That sounds like it."

"Seventy-two Impala two-door, dark green."

"I didn't count the doors, but that's got to be it."

"Belongs to a Mrs. William Raiken from Upper Montclair. She a friend of yours?"

"I don't think so. When did she report it?"

"Let's see. Two in the morning, it says here."

I had left Armstrong's around twelve thirty, so Mrs. Raiken hadn't missed her car right away. They could have put it back and she never would have known it was gone.

"Where did it come from, Eddie?"

"Upper Montclair, I suppose."

"I mean where did she have it parked when they swiped it?"

"Oh." He had closed the list; now he flipped it open to the last page.

"Broadway and a Hundred Fourteenth. Hey, that leads to an interesting question."

It damn well did, but how did he know that? I asked him what question it led to.

"What was Mrs. Raiken doing on Upper Broadway at two in the morning?

And did Mr. Raiken know about it?"

"You've got a dirty mind."

"I shoulda been a Special Prosecutor. What's Mrs. Raiken got to do with your missing husband?"

I looked blank, then remembered the case I'd invented to explain my interest in Spinner's corpse. "Oh," I said. "Nothing. I wound up telling his wife to forget it.

I got a couple days' work out of it."

"Uh-huh. Who took the car and what did they do with it last night?"

"Destroyed public property."

"Huh?"

"They knocked over a parking meter on Ninth Avenue, then got the hell away in a hurry."

"And you just happened to be there, and so you just happened to catch the license number, and naturally you figured the car was stolen but you wanted to check because you're a public-spirited citizen."

"That's close."

"It's crap. Sit down, Matt. What are you into that I oughta know about?"