Jitterbug by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online Page B

to look.”
    “Maybe Yegerov left his keys.”
    “Not on the outside of the door, on his way out. Forensics is dusting.”
    “Stamps?”
    “Haven’t found any. If our man knew where to look we won’t.”
    “Doesn’t make sense. If he went to all that trouble he wouldn’t have left the ones on the body. He must’ve been after something else.”
    “Something like what?”
    The lieutenant took a haul, dropped the cigarette, and crushed it out on the tile. He was burning more these days and smoking less. “If this was Prohibition I’d say he was after cleaning fluid. Maybe he left his shirts.”
    “He was probably in a hurry when he tossed the body. Maybe he overlooked the ration book.”
    “It’d be the first one he’s overlooked. Any scribbles by the body or near the shop? Walls, sidewalk? ‘Kilroy Was Here,’ anything like that?”
    “No, and I wouldn’t let that out if I were you. The news-hounds will sniff this one out soon enough without a hook like that.”
    “How long are you suspending the uniform for?”
    Brandon measured out his diplomat’s smile. With the white temples he looked more like an ambassador than the son of a German brewer. “Reprimand. Can’t spare the manpower. There’s a war on, you know? He expected me to boot him up to the squad. I said he must’ve been home sick the day they told his class at the academy it isn’t a uniform’s job to go through a victim’s pockets.”
    “You should’ve booted him up. He’s got a better head on his shoulders than all of Homicide.”
    “We’d’ve got to the store eventually.”
    “After some Four-F burglar found the door open and tossed the place.”
    The inspector stopped smiling. “The M.O.’s Kilroy’s. Right-handed sweep from behind. You want it or not? Wartime priority,” he added, showing his teeth.
    “I’ll tinker with it.” Zagreb looked at Edouard. “Weapon?”
    “Long blade, razor-sharp, no give. At a guess, high-tempered steel, probably double-edged. A fighting weapon.”
    “Bowie?”
    “Too clumsy. This was more like a long incision.”
    “You mentioned a postmortem knife.”
    “Possibly. Probably not. I wouldn’t want to attack a living body with a hiltless knife. The idea is to spill the victim’s blood, not yours.”
    “That eliminates Jack the Ripper.” Brandon put away his notebook. “Have fun with it. I’ve got a nigger killing on Second I ought to poke my nose into. Probably just some hillbilly, but Jack Witherspoon wants brass on the scene. He had his picture taken with Eleanor Roosevelt once.”
    “Once’d do it for me,” Edouard said. “She’s got a face like a Chihuahua’s ass.”
    Zagreb wondered if all the Democrats were in Europe.
    He remained behind to ask the coroner’s man a few questions. Edouard’s answers were brief and desultory; his interest in the lieutenant had vanished when the cut-open corpse had failed to draw the proper reaction. When he was finished Zagreb went back out to the general offices, where he found the rest of the racket squad taking up space in the reception room.
    He was irked by their inactivity. Canal, who had a talent for buttonholing supernumeraries and sending them out on errands, was finishing a bottle of Coke. Two empties were already lined up on the edge of a battleship gray steel desk with a covered typewriter atop it; he averaged two minutes per 6.5-ounce bottle. Baldy McReary stood with his hands in his pockets, studying a chart of the female anatomy on a bulletin board next to the door, all its secrets exposed like the tunnels and chambers of an ant farm pressed between panes of glass. Burke had claimed a chair with square steel legs, sitting with his knees at right angles and his hands, surprisingly small and fragile-looking at the ends of his big wrists, gripping his thighs. He looked like someone determined to hold the position against a couple of regiments of Japanese. In reality he was probably struggling to maintain the flow of oxygen to