Murder Among Children by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online

the better.
    Of course, he would have preferred it to have happened much more subtly than I had permitted. But I was tired, I was impatient with his grubby esprit de corps, and I disliked everything about the atmosphere of this building. I didn’t want to play games here, I wanted merely to do what was required of me and then go home.
    The stenographer came in a few minutes later, a skinny uniformed patrolman with thick glasses. He sat at the desk and took my statement, doing his shorthand with crabbed concentration. When I was done, he said, “This won’t take long,” and left.
    Hard on his heels Captain Linther returned. Still looking at me with an expression of repugnance on his face, he said, “Captain Driscoll’s done with you now. You can wait outside.”
    I went out to the bullpen and sat at a handy empty desk. The man who had been typing was still there, but the one who had been on the phone was gone. Two other desks were now occupied, though, the man at one of them filling out forms with a ballpoint pen, the other one eating a sandwich, drinking a container of coffee, and reading the Daily News.
    The feeling of familiarity here was stronger than ever, though the physical similarities between this place and the squadroom of the precinct where I’d been assigned were few. Still, the aura was the same, so much so that when the phone rang I looked around the room to see if it was my turn to catch the squeal. Then, embarrassed, I looked down at my hands in my lap, hoping no one had seen my move or comprehended it. I stayed in that position until the stenographer came back with the typed copies of my new statement. I signed them all, and he took them into the captain’s office. I continued to wait.
    Captain Linther came out of his office and walked over to stand in front of me. Standing, he seemed shorter and bulkier than he had while seated behind his desk. He said, “One thing I want to say to you, Tobin, before you go.”
    I waited.
    “I didn’t know you lived in my precinct,” he said. “Not till now. I don’t like the idea you living in my precinct. If you’re smart, you’ll keep your head down.”
    “I will,” I said.
    “That’s all,” he said. “You can go now.”
    “I was told I’d be driven back.”
    “I can’t spare the men,” he said, and turned away, and walked back to his office. I took a cab.

9
    K ATE MET ME AT the door, saying, “There’s someone here to see you, Mitch.”
    By the expression on her face I knew I wasn’t going to like it and she was going to try to persuade me to do something I didn’t want to do. Not moving any farther into the house, keeping out of range of the living-room doorway, I said, “Who is it?”
    “A boy named Hulmer Fass. He was another partner in the coffee house.”
    “I don’t want to see him, Kate. I’m not having anything to do with any of that.”
    “Mitch—”
    “No,” I said. I went past her, quickly past the living-room doorway, and started up the stairs.
    Behind me, she said, “Mitch, George Padbury is dead.”
    I stopped. I looked back down at her. “How?”
    “Hit and run. Thirty minutes after he called here yesterday. Died in the hospital this morning, without regaining consciousness.”
    I frowned, and gripped the banister. I didn’t want to be involved. “It doesn’t have to connect,” I said.
    “Mitch,” she said.
    “What do the police say?”
    “What you say. No connection.”
    “They’re closer to it than we are,” I said.
    “No, they aren’t,” said another voice, and standing in the living-room doorway was a light-skinned Negro boy of about twenty, tall and slender and economical and neat, narrowly dressed in a dark latest-style suit. “They’re spectators,” he said. “We’re standing in it.”
    “Not me,” I told him. “I have no connection with anything. I don’t know you, I don’t want to know you.”
    “Mitch!”
    I turned back to Kate. “I was just told by a captain of detectives,” I