The Collection (53 page)

The newspapers and videocasts the next morning carried the
story of the finding of a body of an unidentified man in a certain alley. By
afternoon they reported that it had been identified as the body of Martin Blue,
a small-time crook who had lived on Lake Shore Drive, in the heart of the
Tenderloin. And by evening a rumor had gone out through the underworld to the
effect that the police suspected Joe Zatelli, for whom Blue had worked, and
might pick him up for questioning.

And plainclothesmen watched Zatelli's place, front and back,
to see where he'd go if he went out. Watching the front was a small man about
the build of Bela Joad or Martin Blue. Unfortunately, Zatelli happened to leave
by the back and he succeeded in shaking off the detectives on his trail.

They picked him up the next morning, though, and took him to
headquarters. They put the lie-detector on him, and asked him about Martin
Blue. He admitted Blue had worked for him but said he'd last seen Blue when the
latter had left his place after work the night of the murder. The lie-detector
said he wasn't lying.

Then they pulled a tough one on him. Martin Blue walked into
the room where Zatelli was being questioned. And the trick fizzled. The gauges
of the detector didn't jump a fraction of a millimeter and Zatelli looked at
Blue and then at his interrogators with complete indignation. "What's the
idea?" he demanded. "The guy ain't even dead, and you're asking me if
I bumped him off?"

They asked Zatelli, while they had him there, about some
other crimes he might have committed, but obviously—according to his answers
and the lie-detector—he hadn't done any of them. They let him go.

Of course that was the end of Martin Blue. After showing up
before Zatelli at headquarters, he might as well have been dead in an alley for
all the good he was going to do.

Bela Joad told Chief Rand, "Well, anyway, now we
know."

"What do we know?"

"We know for sure the detector is being beaten. You
might conceivably have been making a series of wrong arrests before. Even the
evidence I gave you against Girard might have been misleading. But we know that
Zatelli beat the machine. Only I wish Zatelli had come out the front way so I
could have tailed him; we might have the whole thing now instead of part of
it."

"You're going back? Going to do it all over
again?"

"Not the same way. This time I've got to be on the
other end of a murder, and I'll need your help on that."

"Of course. But won't you tell me what's on your
mind?"

"I'm afraid I can't, Dyer. I've got a hunch within a
hunch. In fact, I've had it ever since I started on this business. But will
you do one other thing for me?"

"Sure. What?"

“Have one of your men keep track of Zatelli, of everything
he does from now on. Put another one on Gyp Girard. In fact, take as many men
as you can spare and put one on each of the men you're fairly sure has beaten
the detector within the last year or two. And always from a distance; don't let
the boys know they're being checked on. Will you?"

"I don't know what you're after, but I'll do it. Won't
you tell me
anything
? Joad, this is important. Don't forget it's not
just a case; it's something that can lead to the breakdown of law
enforcement."

Bela Joad smiled. "Not quite that bad, Dyer. Law
enforcement as it applies to the underworld, yes. But you're getting your usual
percentage of convictions on non-professional crimes."

Dyer Rand looked puzzled. "What's that got to do with
it?"

"Maybe everything. It's why I can't tell you anything
yet. But don't worry." Joad reached across the desk and patted the chief's
shoulder, looking—although he didn't know it—like a fox terrier giving his paw
to an airedale. "Don't worry, Dyer. I'll promise to bring you the answer.
Maybe I won't be able to let you keep it."

"Do you really know what you're looking for?"

"Yes. I'm looking for a criminologist who disappeared
well over two years ago. Dr. Ernst Chappel."

"You think—?"

"Yes; I think. That's why I'm looking for Dr.
Chappel."

But that was all Dyer could get out of him. Bela Joad left Dyer
Rand's office and returned to the underworld.

And in the underworld of Chicago a new star arose. Perhaps
one should call him a nova rather than merely a star, so rapidly did he become
famous—or notorious. Physically, he was rather a small man, no larger than
Bela Joad or Martin Blue, but he wasn't a mild little man like Joad or a weak
jackal like Blue. He had what it took, and he parlayed what he had. He ran a
small night club, but that was just a front. Behind that front things happened,
things that the police couldn't pin on him, and—for that matter —didn't seem to
know about, although the underworld knew.

His name was Willie Ecks, and nobody in the underworld had
ever made friends and enemies faster. He had plenty of each; the former were
powerful and the latter were dangerous. In other words, they were both the same
type of people.

His brief career was truly—if I may scramble my star-nova
metaphor but keep it celestial—a meteoric matter. And for once that hackneyed
and inaccurate metaphor is used correctly. Meteors do not rise—as anybody who
has ever studied meteorology, which has no connection with meteors, knows.
Meteors fall, with a dull thud. And that is what happened to Willie Ecks, when
he got high enough.

Three days before, Willie Ecks's worst enemy had vanished.
Two of his henchmen spread the rumor that it was because the cops had come and
taken him away, but that was obviously malarkey designed to cover the fact that
they intended to avenge him. That became obvious when, the very next morning,
the news broke that the gangster's body had been found, neatly weighted, in the
Blue Lagoon at Washington Park.

And by dusk of that very day rumor had gone from bistro to
bistro of the underworld that the police had pretty good proof who had killed
the deceased—and with a forbidden atomic at that—and that they planned to
arrest Willie Ecks and question him. Things like that get around even when it's
not intended that they should.

And it was on the second day of Willie Ecks's hiding out in
a cheap little hotel on North Clark Street, an old-fashioned hotel with
elevators and windows, his whereabouts known only to a trusted few, that one of
those trusted few gave a certain knock on his door and was admitted.

The trusted one's name was Mike Leary and he'd been a close
friend of Willie's and a close enemy of the gentleman who, according to the
papers, had been found in the Blue Lagoon.

He said, "Looks like you're in a jam, Willie."

“—, yes," said Willie Ecks. He hadn't used facial depilatory
for two days; his face was blue with beard and bluer with fear.

Mike said, "There's a way out, Willie. It'll cost you
ten grand. Can you raise it?"

"I've got it. What's the way out?"

"There's a guy. I know how to get in touch with him; I
ain't used him myself, but I would if I got in a jam like yours. He can fix you
up, Willie."

"How?"

"He can show you how to beat the lie-detector. I can
have him come around to see you and fix you up. Then you let the cops pick you
up and question you, see? They'll drop the charge—or if they bring it to trial,
they can't make it stick."

"What if they ask me about—well, never mind what—other
things I may have done?"

"He'll take care of that, too. For five grand he'll fix
you so you Can go under that detector clean as—as clean as hell."

"You said ten grand."

Mike Leary grinned. "I got to live too, don't I,
Willie? And you said you got ten grand, so it ought to be worth that much to
you, huh?"

Willie Ecks argued, but in vain. He had to give Mike Leary
five thousand-dollar bills. Not that it really mattered, because those were
pretty special thousand-dollar bills. The green ink on them would turn purple
within a few days. Even in 1999 you couldn't spend a purple thousand-dollar
bill, so when it happened Mike Leary would probably turn purple too, but by
that time it would be too late for him to do anything about it.

It was late that evening when there was a knock on Willie
Ecks's hotel room door. He pressed the button that made the main panel of the
door transparent from his side.

He studied the nondescript-looking man outside the door very
carefully. He didn't pay any attention to facial contours or to the shabby
yellow suit the man wore. He studied the eyes somewhat, but mostly he studied
the shape and conformation of the ears and compared them mentally with the cars
of photographs he had once studied exhaustively.

And then Willie Ecks put his gun back into his pocket and
opened the door. He said, "Come in."

The man in the yellow suit entered the room and Willie Ecks
shut the door very carefully and locked it.

He said, "I'm proud to meet you, Dr. Chappel."

He sounded as though he meant it, and he did mean it.

It was four o'clock in the morning when Bela Joad stood
outside the door of Dyer Rand's apartment. He had to wait, there in the dimly
luminous hallway, for as long as it took the chief to get out of bed and reach
the door, then activate the one-way-transparent panel to examine his visitor.

Then the magnetic lock sighed gently and the door opened.
Rand's eyes were bleary and his hair was tousled. His feet were thrust into red
plastic slippers and he wore neonylon sleeping pajamas that looked as though
they had been slept in.

He stepped aside to let Bela Joad in, and Joad walked to the
center of the room and stood looking about curiously. It was the first time
he'd ever been in Rand's private quarters. The apartment was like that of any
other well-to-do bachelor of the day. The furniture was unobtrusive and
functional, each wall a different pastel shade, faintly fluorescent and
emitting gentle radiant heat and the faint but constant caress of ultraviolet
that kept people who could afford such apartments healthily tanned. The rug was
in alternate one-foot squares of cream and gray, the squares separate and
movable so that wear would be equalized. And the ceiling, of course, was the
customary one-piece mirror that gave an illusion of height and spaciousness.

Rand said, "Good news, Joad?"

"Yes. But this is an unofficial interview, Dyer. What
I'm going to tell you is confidential between us."

"What do you mean?"

Joad looked at him. He said, "You still look sleepy,
Dyer. Let's have coffee. It'll wake you up, and I can use some myself."

"Fine," Dyer said. He went into the kitchenette
and pressed the button that would heat the coils of the coffee-tap. "Want
it laced?" he called back.

"Of course."

Within a minute he came back with two cups of steaming
café
royale
. With obvious impatience he waited until they were seated
comfortably and each had taken his first sip of the fragrant beverage before he
asked, "Well, Joad?"

"When I say it's unofficial, Dyer, I mean it. I can
give you the full answer, but only with the understanding that you'll forget it
as soon as I tell you, that you'll never tell another person, and that you
won't act upon it."

Dyer Rand stared at his guest in amazement. He said, "I
can't promise that! I'm chief of police, Joad. I have my duty to my job and to
the people of Chicago."

"That's why I came here, to your apartment, instead of
to your office. You're not working now, Dyer; you're on your own time."

"But—"

"Do you promise?"

"Of course not."

Bela Joad sighed. "Then I'm sorry for waking you,
Dyer." He put down his cup and started to rise.

"Wait! You can't do that. You can't just walk out on
me!"

"Can't I?"

"All right, all right, I'll promise. You must have some
good reason. Have you?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll take your word for it."

Bela Joad smiled. "Good," he said. "Then I'll
be able to report to you on my last case. For this is my last case, Dyer. I'm
going into a new kind of work."

Rand looked at him incredulously. "What?"

"I'm going to teach crooks how to beat the
lie-detector."

Chief Dyer Rand put down his cup slowly and stood up. He
took a step toward the little man, about half his weight, who sat at ease on
the armless, overstuffed chair.

Bela Joad still smiled. He said, "Don't try it, Dyer.
For two reasons. First, you couldn't hurt me and I wouldn't want to hurt you
and I might have to. Second, it's all right; it's on the up and up. Sit
down."

Dyer Rand sat down.

Bela Joad said, "When you said this thing was big, you
didn't know how big. And it's going to be bigger. Chicago is just the starting
point. And thanks, by the way, for those reports I asked you for. They are just
what I expected they'd be."

"The reports? But they're still in my desk at headquarters."

"They were. I've read them and destroyed them. Your
copies, too. Forget about them. And don't pay too much attention to your
current statistics. I've read them, too."

Rand frowned. "And why should I forget them?"

"Because they confirm what Ernie Chappel told me this
evening. Do you know, Dyer, that your number of major crimes-has gone down in
the past year by an even bigger percentage than the percentage by which your convictions
for major crimes has gone down?"

"I noticed that. You mean, there's a connection?"

"Definitely. Most crimes—a very high percentage of
them—are committed by professional criminals, repeaters. And Dyer, it goes even
farther than that. Out of several thousand major crimes a year, ninety percent
of them are committed by
a few hundred professional criminals
. And do
you know that the number of professional criminals in Chicago has been reduced
by almost a third in the last two years? It has. And that's why your number of
major crimes has decreased."