God Save the Child

Trask was at the desk. I didn’t like that. The chief shouldn’t do desk duty. He looked up as I came in. “Well, Spenser,” he said, “solve everything?”

I said, “Where’s Croft?”

Trask jerked his head toward a door behind the desk. “Down there in a cell, safe and sound.”

“I want to see him.”

Trask was friendly, positively jolly. My stomach felt tight. I didn’t want to go down and see Croft. “Sure,” Trask said. He swiveled his chair around and snapped the bolt back on the door. “Third cell,” he said. And opened the door.

There was a short corridor with three barred cells along the left side and a blank cinder block wall along the right. The first two cells were empty. In the third one Dr. Croft was hanging from the highest bar with his swollen tongue sticking out and his blank eyes popped way out. He was dead. I felt the nausea start up my throat, and it took me about thirty seconds to swallow it back. His red and silver rep striped necktie was knotted around his neck and around the top cross member in the barred door. I knew he was dead even before I reached my hand through to feel his pulse. I also knew I had something to do with it. I went back down the corridor and closed the door behind me. Trask had his feet up on an open desk drawer and was reading a mimeographed sheet of paper. He was wearing glasses. His thick red neck was smoothly shaved where his crew cut ended. He looked up as I closed the door.

“Everything okay down there?” he said. The glasses distorted his small pale eyes when he looked at me.

I said, “How come you’re doing desk duty, Chief?”

“Aw, hell, you know how a small department is. I mean, we only got twelve men. I like to give some of the kids a break. You know. I mean it ain’t like I’m commissioner in Boston or something.” He smiled at me, a big friendly hick smile. He’d never liked me this well before.

There was a table along the wall to the left of the cell block door. It had chrome legs and a maple-colored Formica top. There was a coffee percolator plugged in on it and a half-empty box of paper cups. I took one and poured myself some coffee. Then I sat on the table facing Trask. The silent partner.

“Trask,” I said, “I know you murdered Croft.”

He never blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

“No crap now, there’s just the two of us here. You went down that corridor and tied that tie around his neck and hoisted him up there and let him strangle because he was the only link between you and Harroway and with him dead no one would have any way of finding out what you were into.”

Trask looked straight at me and said, “What was I into?”

“You were into prostitution and narcotics and sex shows and probably can be arraigned for abusing a goat.”

“You can’t prove any of that.”

“Not right now, I can’t. But I know some things and I’m going to tell them to Healy and he’s going to prove it.”

“What do you know?”

“I know that you know that Croft is wanted in Tacoma, and that you knew it six years ago. Now that’s not much for starters. But I bet if we start pulling on that little loose end, after a while there may be a whole weave we can ravel out. You learned that little bit of business, and you used it to blackmail Croft. Maybe you got suspicious of the way he just drifted in here; maybe he confided in you; I don’t know. But I’ll bet you had the whole cesspool all worked out in your head and were just waiting for a middleman. And plop, into your lap dropped Croft. So he dealt with Harroway and you dealt with him. And nobody else knew anything about it. Until Harroway got a crush on a goddamned runaway and screwed up the whole thing.”

Trask was still looking straight at me.

“And then you get Croft right in your own jail. Merry Christmas, from me and Healy. And you figured, okay, this is the only way they can get me. If he’s gone, I’m safe. Did it bother you to strangle him like that with the necktie? Did he croak and kick trying to breathe? How you going to explain not taking his tie away from him?”

Trask kept looking without a word.

“I feel mean about it. I think Croft wasn’t that bad a guy and he made a mistake that was motivated by a decent impulse and it destroyed him, and you used it to make him a goddamned pimp and then you killed him. I feel really mean about that part, you cold-blooded sonova bitch. Because I delivered him to you. And Healy will feel mean about it because he did too. And we will nail your ass for it. You can believe that. We only know a little, and we’ll have to guess a lot, but we will have you for it.”

Trask said, “Not if you don’t tell anybody. It’s a sweet setup. Or it was. I could pass on a few of the profits to you. Maybe you could even recruit a new manager for the girls and take Croft’s job yourself. Or maybe we could cut out the middleman; you could combine the jobs. Maybe you don’t have the drug contacts, but the girls are better revenue in this town anyway.”