LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER 2

      A sergeant showed up from Homicide, with two technicians, and while they got to work, the sergeant asked Miss Farnum and me what had happened. Miss Farnum didn’t say much. The sergeant was gentle with her and showed his frustration only by a slight tensing of the muscles in his face.

      “You mean you can’t remember what you were talking about with Joe Flannery, just before he started up the stairs?”

      “No—I—it’s sort of blanked out in my mind.”

      “Were you arguing?”

      “Not exactly.”

      “Well, miss, if you can, will you tell me what you were doing in the building so long after your father and his party had left?”

      “Well—nothing special—we just didn’t get started—”

      “Don’t you usually accompany your father when he leaves after making a speech or something?”

      “If my mother isn’t with him, yes.”

      “Was your mother with him tonight?”

      “No. She’s in a hospital back home. She’s—ill.”

      “But you didn’t leave with your father this evening?”

      “No. Obviously I didn’t.”

      “That’s what I’m asking, miss. Why not?”

      She shrugged.

      “I don’t know. There was so much confusion and all that crowd—I couldn’t push through—”

      “How long has Joe Flannery been your bodyguard?” the sergeant asked.

      She put her head back, closed her eyes and counted silently with her lips.

      “Three—two and a half months,” she said. “Off and on.”

      “Off and on?”

      “I don’t need a bodyguard twenty-four hours a day, naturally. I spend some time sleeping.”

      “You needed the bodyguard only for such times as these speaking trips with your father?”

      “Yes.”

      “Was it your idea, or your father’s—hiring a bodyguard?”

      “My father’s.”

      “Was there any specific reason for it? I mean, had you been threatened?”

      “Not that I know of.”

      “As far as you know, your father was just playing it safe?”

      “Yes. As far as I know.”

      The muscles jumped in the sergeant’s face. Weaver came in from the stage area and the sergeant asked him to take Miss Farnum some place where she could sit down. Two more technicians had come in and were working quietly up and down the stairs. They had finished, for the time being, with Flannery’s body and had covered it with a plastic sheet.

      Weaver started to lead Miss Farnum away and she held back, looking at me.

      “He’s going to take me home—to the hotel,” she said.

      “All right, miss,” the sergeant said.

      “You won’t take him away somewhere?”

      “No, miss, I won’t take him away.”

      Weaver gave me a look and I shrugged. The sergeant watched them go, then looked at me and spread his hands.

      “Mac—what in the hell has happened here?” he said.

      “I don’t know,” I said. “I told you everything I saw and did. That’s all I know.”

      The sergeant looked over his shoulder.

      “Is the lieutenant on his way, Harry?” he called.

      “Yes, sir,” Harry said, looking up.

      “Good,” the sergeant muttered. “Listen,” he asked in a low voice, “you think this girl, Miss Farnum, is all there?”

      “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “She doesn’t react much.”

      Weaver’s two men, Collins and Sprague, appeared on the landing and started carefully down the stairs.

      “Well?” the sergeant said.

      “We checked to the roof and back,” Collins said. “Nothing.”

      “Okay. Your boss is in there.”

      The sergeant nodded curtly toward the stage, dismissing them. Outside, a car ground to a stop, the door opened and Lieutenant Donovan came in.

      Donovan is a bulky man, somewhat muscle-bound. He moves like a man whose job it is to open a gate against which a million impatient devils are pressing, as if his judgment and responsibility were hopelessly at odds. He never misses a step.

      Nor do his eyes miss anything. My gun was still lying on the ramp where I had dropped it and I saw him take it in, glance up and find me, as he climbed to meet the sergeant. He paid no more attention to me then for some time. One of the technicians pulled the plastic sheet back from Flannery’s face and Donovan looked down at him.

      “Who?” he said.

      The sergeant told him.

      “Local man?”

      “No, from New York. The Congressman hired him in New York.”

      “Was he married? Does he have a widow?”

      The sergeant and the technicians looked at one another blankly.

      “Find out,” Donovan said. “Write down her name and phone number.”

      The technicians got busy.

      “How did he get it?” Donovan asked.

      The sergeant began to tell him. I glanced over my shoulder and found Weaver looking at me through the window of one of those double doors. I shrugged at him. He looked at Donovan, turned away and disappeared. I wondered how he was faring in the vigil with Miss Farnum.

      What the hell does she want with me? I wondered.

      I heard Donovan say incredulously, “Who checked it out?”

      “Weaver’s men,” the sergeant said. “They were already checking when we got here.”

      “Well, that’s friendly of them,” Donovan said, “but maybe we better check it out ourselves.”

      One of the patrolmen who had arrived early on the scene was standing near the alley door. Donovan aimed a finger at him.

      “You,” he said, “go with the sergeant here upstairs.”

      “Yes, Lieutenant,” the patrolman said.

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