Murder by the Book

For here I'll trim it down. Leonard Dykes, forty-one, found banging up against a pile in the East River on New Year's Day, had for eight years been a clerk, not a member of the bar, in the office of the law firm of Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin and Briggs. Up to a year ago the firm's name had been O'Malley, Corrigan and Phelps, but O'Malley had been disbarred and there had been a reorganization. Dykes had been unmarried, sober, trustworthy, and competent. He had played cards every Tuesday evening with friends, for small stakes. He had twelve thousand dollars in government bonds and a savings account, and thirty shares of United States Steel, which had been inherited by a married sister who lived in California, his only close relative. No one discoverable had hated or feared him or wished him ill. One sentence in one report said, "No women at all." There was a photograph of him after he had been hauled out of the river, not attractive, and one of him alive that had been taken from his apartment. To be objective, I'll put it that he had been less unattractive before drowning than after. He had had popeyes, and his chin had started backing up about a quarter of an inch below his mouth.

The other thousand or so facts in the file on Dykes had as little discernible bearing on his murder as those I have given for samples.

On Joan Wellman, the Bronx had not been as much in love with the hit-and-run theory as Wellman suspected, but it was just as well that her father did not have access to the police file. They didn't care much for Joan's version of her Friday date in her letter home, especially since they could find no one among her office associates to whom she had mentioned it. I gave them a low mark on that, knowing how full offices are Of petty jealousies and being willing to give our client's daughter credit for enough sense to keep her mouth shut about her private affairs. Aside from the search for the car that had run over her, the Bronx had mostly concentrated on her boy friends. If you want to give the average dick a job he really likes, sit him down with a man who has been seen fairly recently in the company of a pretty girl who has just died a sudden and violent death. Think of the questions he can ask. Look at the ground he can cover, no matter who the man is, with no risk of a comeback that will cost him anything.