The Book of 21 (9 page)

The receptionist gave him an annoyed look, and oozed out the words, “Dial nine to call out.”

John picked up the phone and dialed Harry’s cell.

The phone rang twice before Harry answered, “What’s up, Kim?”

“No, it’s John.”

“Oh, sorry. I saw the ME Office on caller ID and figured it was Kim.”

“I know,” John said. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Hallman’s; I’ll be here a while. I have to tell you, John, doing three freaking scenes in one day, well, sucks. There’s no hope that I will actually analyze anything until tomorrow. I hope you don’t make a habit of this.”

“Yeah, how insensitive of me.” John rolled his eyes. “Did you check Dunglison’s computer at the university?”

“There’s another team over there now. They said they only found the hidden text file of the manuscript. The other file was gone, like you expected. I’ll have them take the university machine back to the CSA offices.”

“OK, did you find anything else at the house or the apartment?”

Harry exhaled heavily into the phone, and said, “No, we just got here. Dunglison’s house isn’t tiny, you know.”

“OK, but you didn’t find anything else at the house, did you? Given that both Hallman and Dunglison squirreled papers away, I wondered if you found anything hidden anywhere.”

“I was looking for hairs, skin flakes, and blood at the time. If there were papers hidden there, they’re still there.”

“Fine, I’m going to put someone on the house tonight just to make sure nothing walks out the door.”

“Good, I can go back there tomorrow if I have to,” replied Harry. “We should be able to go over the office at the university and Hallman’s apartment with a fine tooth comb, though, they’re small spaces. The roof on Logan might need to wait until tomorrow.”

John had left the story of the mysterious Detective Fullman out of his earlier call to Harry, since he had little time to explain it. He realized, though, that he had the time now and Harry needed to know. John failed to think of any clever way to break the news, so he decided just to blurt out the facts he had.

“Harry, both Hallman and Dunglison left notes that said they talked with a Detective Fullman, who isn’t in the department directory.”

John waited for the message to soak in, and for the necessary cogs to turn in Harry’s brain.

Harry finally replied, “Do you think someone…”

After a few seconds of waiting for Harry to finish the sentence, John decided to fill the gap and said, “I’m going back to the Roundhouse to check for Fullman in the main system, but I just told Kim that I don’t like what I’ve seen. According to their notes, it looks like they contacted the department and were assigned a cop who may have given a false name.”

“Great,” Harry groaned, catching the point. After a short pause, Harry asked, “What if there is a dirty cop, and he
conveniently
happens to wind up on the stakeout tonight?”

“I thought about that,” John said, with a grin that Harry could not see. “We’ll need Fanelli or Moore; they were the ones that pointed out something wasn’t right at the scene last night. By the way, Harry, you’ll find a hollowed out copy of
Hamlet
on Hallman’s bookshelf. It held the papers I was talking about—the ones Hallman hid. I have them with me right now.”

“John, are you
trying
to irritate me?”

“Nah, it just comes naturally. By the way, if you have a date tonight, you might want to check out his copy of
Crime and Punishment
. I have to go; I’ll get Hallman’s papers to you tomorrow. Do you think you’ll have anything to tell me by then?”

“You can’t rush genius,” Harry said calmly.

A click came across the phone, signifying that Harry had hung up.

John looked at the receptionist. “Do you have a government book? I need a number for a station house.”

The receptionist rolled her eyes. With a labored effort, she pulled a document from a mail-slot in front of her and flung it at John. She then turned back to her magazine with a gurgling sigh.

“Thanks,” John grunted.

As John listened to the ring of the station-house phone, he watched the receptionist scratch the forest of hairs in her armpit. He realized those same armpit-scratching fingers constantly touched her phone, which he currently pressed to the side of his head. A sudden urge to retch overtook him.

He resolved that he would get a new cell phone before the end of the day.

Chapter 8:
The Roundhouse

The Roundhouse sat at Seventh and Race Streets, and overlooked the plush green trees of Franklin Square. Its name was a slight misnomer; it was not round, but a large building consisting of two cement-colored cylinders joined by a curved section. It held the department’s homicide division and the department’s top brass.

It was half past one, and John’s empty stomach gurgled as he stood in the building’s shadow. On the corner, a line of officers and businessmen led to Pat Leone’s silver lunch cart. After placing his order and sipping on a can of cola for about ten minutes, he stepped forward and received a torpedo-shaped tube of warm aluminum foil from Leone’s age-wrinkled hands.

John strode into the building and made his way up to his office. The building was immaculate, which was a result of having the top leadership there. It was both a blessing and a curse to have his office in such close proximity to the department brass. While the arrangement gave him quick access to the department’s decision-makers, he loathed dealing with the Inspectors and the Commissioner constantly stopping by to see “how things were going.”

He opened his office door and flipped the light switch. The overhead lights flickered to illuminate a room that was about the size of a janitor’s closet. Pushing some papers off to the side of his desk, he put his lunch, Dunglison’s disk, and Hallman’s papers in the clearing. He tapped a key on his keyboard and logged on to his computer.

While the machine booted up, he decided to start by addressing the constant growling of his stomach; John unrolled the aluminum torpedo to expose a glistening cheesesteak. Biting off a large mouthful of the sandwich, he found the cheesesteak just the way he liked it: paper-thin rib eye, provolone cheese, and fried onions. It was like heaven in his mouth. Whenever he left Philadelphia, he was always amazed that chefs in other cities failed to replicate something so simple. Whenever he came back to Philadelphia, it was the first thing he sought.

As he chewed, his nose began to hurt. It was a grim reminder of the smack he had received earlier. It would probably continue to hurt for quite a while, so he was not going to let it keep him from lunch right now. He took a sip of cola to let the acidic sugar-water cleanse the grease from his palette.

“Sublime,” John sighed in a fit of pleasure.

Now that nourishment was starting to ooze into his system, he ran a quick department-wide search for Fullman. There were two people in the entire department with that last name; both were female, and neither was a detective. The name was either wrong or bogus.

He did a quick search for open cases associated with either Hallman or Dunglison. That search came back empty.

He picked up the desk phone and punched in five digits. He knew another source that might tell him who took the assignment. As the phone chimed in his ear, he took another bite of his grease-torpedo and leaned back in his chair.

An abrupt click put an end to the ringing.

“Dispatch, Nancy speaking.”

John recognized the nasal tone of Nancy Coltrane, the manager in dispatch. He swallowed hard, and the grease in the sandwich helped it slide down his gullet. “Nancy, this is John McDonough.”

“Hi, John. How are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m fine, but I need to find a detective who took a call from a man named Richard Dunglison.” John spelled out the name for her, “D-U-N-G-L-I-S-O-N. It seems that he spoke to a detective a few days ago, but he must have had the name of the cop wrong.”

He heard Nancy clicking away at her keyboard.

“I don’t have any call logged here, John. Are you sure he gave his name when he called?”

John knew that dispatch refused to do anything until they had a name of the caller to stick in the log. He took a deep breath. “How about under Hallman?”

“H-A-L-L-M-A-N?” Nancy recited as she typed the letters.

“Yep.”

“I have a call listed from a Judy Hallman in Northeast. It looks like her husband was smacking her around.”

“No, this would be a Ted, or Theodore.”

There was a pause on Nancy’s end. “Hmmm. No, nothing.”

“Could you ask around and see if anyone might have taken the call, and if they remember who the detective was?”

“I can ask, but I doubt it will get us anywhere. We take tons of calls every day, and I doubt anyone will remember a call from last week.”

“I’d appreciate it anyway. It’s really important. He would have been calling about a stalking situation.”

She sighed in frustration. “I’ll ask and let you know if anyone remembers.”

“Thanks, Nancy.”

“No problem, talk to you later.”

He listened as she hung up and wondered if she would really bother. Even if she did, it might take a few days until she was able to talk to all her people. If someone was dirty on the inside, he wanted to know as soon as possible.

He picked up his phone and called Janice Gruver at the phone company. Janice was hot. Janice was hot for John. The only thing that kept John from marrying Janice was that she was a bit shallow, a bit dumb, a bit annoying, and too easily excited by material objects.

They had met a year ago, when he presented a warrant to look up some phone records. He was impressed with her, or at least, with her body. After he was fairly sure that she was coming on to him, he decided to go for it and ask her out. While the allure of Janice’s personality failed to equal the beauty of her person, he decided to keep it casual and active. They dated about once a month. She got dinner out of the deal, and he got information when he needed it.

Occasionally, one of them did some sexual favors for the other. Though he enjoyed the warmth of her lithe physique, the cold of her self-centered disposition repeatedly destroyed any hope of their relationship growing into anything meaningful. After she left his apartment, he was often more depressed and dejected over his sad excuse for a life than he was before she came.

John stuffed another bite of cheesesteak into his mouth as he listened to her line ring. His aching nose was starting to feel worse.

“John, how are you?” Janice’s voice lilted across the wire.

John hated when she did that. He knew that she worked for the phone company and had caller ID—everyone else in the western hemisphere had that technology as well. She could refrain from reminding him of it at least every now and then, but she never did. He swallowed hard and feigned excitement with the words, “Janice! How’s my favorite raven-haired beauty?”

“I’m fine. It’s about time you called me. I was starting to wonder if I’d been replaced.”

“Never,” he said with a feigned smile, even though he knew she could not see him. “How could you say that? Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to do a Sixers game next week.”

“Sure I do. That would be great.”

“Super! I’m buying the tickets from a friend, so he has to tell me the exact date. I’ll let you know. By the way, I need you to look something up for me.”

“John, you know I’m not supposed to do that without the proper paperwork from the court.”

“I know, but this could be life-or-death. By the time I get this through a court, the guy could be gone. Can you run a few numbers to see what calls were made from them? Just email them to me at the usual address.” He knew that she would recognize that the words “usual address” meant his home account.

“I’m not sure,” Janice said, rolling her voice in a playful tone.

John knew this meant that the tickets were not enough—she wanted dinner as well.

“Look, I’ll get the court order, so you’ll have to run them anyway,” he counter-offered. “If you get it done now, then you’ll look like a whiz kid when I put in the request. Let me find the numbers.” He read off Hallman’s and Dunglison’s numbers and waited for a reply.

Silence.

“What was that restaurant you liked so much?” he asked, as he closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Ooh, you mean Kazuki’s? Basketball and sushi? You rock my world, John McDonough. I’ll run these numbers today. Fax me the court order, and I’ll send them to your office. Bye, sweetie.”

Janice hung up.

John knew she was saying the numbers would be in his email inbox tonight, without revealing her misconduct to a supervisor that might be listening in. He conjectured that she would milk as much wealth as she could out of this job, and when they fired her for doing something inappropriate, she would seduce some rich guy. Then, she would start her new job as a cuckolding socialite. He told himself that the girl had no morals, for what must have been the thousandth time.

He leaned back in his chair and wished he really did have a friend with Sixers tickets. Within the next few days, he would need to call the box office to buy the tickets. Then he would make a reservation at Kazuki’s. The whole shebang would cost him a few hundred dollars, but it was better than letting a dirty cop kill him when his back was turned. The one gratification was that sushi made Janice horny, so sex would definitely be part of the deal. He wondered if he could expense the tickets and dinner.

It was then that John felt a trickle of snot run out his nose and sit on his lip. He grabbed a napkin from his lunch bag and wiped his sniffle, but found blood instead of the clear mucous he had expected. It was now evident that the pain in his nose was a warning that he should not have ignored. He decided that he had done enough chewing for now and figured it was a good time to check in with Lieutenant Murphy. If nothing else, it would give his nostril time to stop bleeding.

Murphy’s office was just down the hall. John found the well-built, well-spoken, African American man in an office that looked just like his own. Murphy broke his stare at the papers on his desk and looked up at John.