Suspects by Thomas Berger Read Free Book Online

hired Moody to do, and this effort could be hindered by not knowing whom you were dealing with. However, you had to be careful not to drive away what might be the unique source of information that would break the case.
    â€œYes, sir, and what kind of work do you do?”
    â€œProduce manager in a supermarket. It belongs to a well-known chain.”
    â€œYou can’t tell me where?”
    â€œIn town,” said the man. “I don’t want to lose my job. I know it’s not the store’s fault if this person is a criminal, but it sure won’t please the front office to get this kind of publicity.”
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” Moody said. “Business picked up after that holdup last year at the big Greenleaf over on Three-oh-one. You remember, I’m sure, being in the same trade. Guy came in with an Uzi?”
    â€œI didn’t realize that.”
    â€œTell me more about your Howland,” Moody asked. “Like his first name and where he lives, if you got that at hand.”
    â€œAfter the knife attack, I took the trouble to go upstairs to Personnel and take a look at his records. I was seriously considering preferring charges. I committed his address to memory. I didn’t have to write it down. Would you believe he didn’t have a phone of his own? Since our regulations insist on it, he gave one where a message could be left for him.”
    â€œOkay, give it to me.”
    â€œGot your pen or pencil?” the produce manager asked pedantically. He gave the street address. “Now, that I’m sure of. I’ll give you what I think is the phone for messages. I could be off on one of the digits, but the address is absolutely correct. I’ve got pretty nearly a photographic memory unless something distracts me, and that—”
    â€œGot a first name for him?” Moody demanded.
    â€œLloyd. Lloyd Howland.”
    â€œLook, sir. If it turns out something comes of your information both you and your store’s name are sure to be known—and you won’t regret it, neither you nor the store, because you’ll get a lot of credit for your help—so why not give your name to me right now.”
    â€œI’ve reconsidered,” said the produce manager. “I’m Jack Duncan, and my store’s the Valmarket on Seventeen East.”
    Moody got Duncan’s private and store numbers, asked him some questions about Lloyd Howland, thanked him, and hung up.
    LeBeau was back on his own telephone, but had finished when Moody returned from the water cooler. “No return call from Howland as yet,” Dennis said.
    â€œWe got something maybe better. This Lloyd: his last name’s Howland, and he’s in his early twenties.” Moody told his partner the rest of what he had learned from Duncan. “What’s he to Lawrence? Brother? Cousin? He’s too old to be a son. He’s got a permanent attitude, according to his boss. But he was extra mad today about the firing, and he drew a knife on the man.” He paused to elevate his right shoulder in a personal gesture of triumph. “Here’s the big one: the phone he gave the store as his was Donna’s: three-oh-three eight-seven-six-eight. Said he didn’t have his own but messages could be left for him there.”
    Lloyd had not gone to his brother’s house since the argument with Donna (if it could be called that) in February. He could not face her again until he had made something of himself or at least held the same job for a whole season and bought a usable car or rented a respectable apartment—anything, really, that he could show as an accomplishment. Yet here he was, three months later, in the familiar situation, or probably worse, if he was now considering stealing some woman’s purse from a shopping cart. He had never before fallen that low.
    All he wanted now was a drink to blunt the edge of a bad day. It wasn’t much to ask, yet he