Sir Lancelot’s Crime Wave

“Brank come in about midnight. The young fella was in earlier. About nine I’d say. He isn’t around any more. They got another new one. Good thing. The one that left was a smart punk.”

“How did he act that night?”

“He drove in too damn fast as usual. I was all set to give him hell when he came out of the lot.”

“Didn’t you?”

“No. He parked it over in the back corner — heard him whistling back there. Then some damn kids started slinging rocks at the cars over in the front corner there. I don’t get around so good with this leg, captain. I went over to chase the kids. When I came back, that young fella was already through the gate here and over across the street in the shadows.

“He’d tossed the car keys in on the floor of the shack here. Too damn important to put ’em on the table and keep an old man from having to bend over. I yelled after him not to drive in here so fast. But he didn’t hear me, I guess. He was still whistling.”

“So it was Brank or Kiern, eh?”

“That’s his name! Kiern. How come you know it, captain?”

“I checked with the office, pop. Who is your nomination for running the light?”

“I’d say Kiern. Brank is as old as I am and he drives the car like it was full of eggs. But Kiern doesn’t work here any more, I guess. My Lord, you people really run down these traffic cases, don’t you?”

“Routine, pop. Thanks a lot. Did you catch the kids?”

“Me? Hell, I never even got a look at ’em. Instead of messing around with somebody running a light two weeks ago, you ought to haul in these brats denting good cars with rocks and busting them with eggs and such. I told Mr. Gardener about it a hundred times.”

He was still grumbling as Jamison walked back on down to where he’d left his aged coupe. He climbed in behind the wheel, gave Corrine a cigarette, waited for the dash lighter to pop out.

“Did you get anything?” she asked.

“Hard to say, Corrine. How good a business does Ballou and Stark do?”

“Why... I suppose it’s all right. The big drug companies sell direct to the retailer. We handle lines for companies that sell on a national scale, but are too small to have a sales force. Of course, it’s a pretty competitive business. We maintain bulk warehouses at key points for some items, and merely send orders on to the manufacturers for others. It’s a very old firm. Mr. Ballou has been dead for twenty years. Mr. Stark is retired and lives in the south of France. What has that got to do with it?”

“I don’t know yet. There’s a warehouse here?”

“Quite a big one. On Front Street near the docks. Lots of times the local salesmen go down there and pick up small orders and deliver them directly.”

He smoked in silence. Some latent alertness in him had been aroused.

She said, “Lieutenant, you’re looking quite grim, you know.”

“You’ll be calling me that at the wrong time. Make it Jamie.”

“Then Jamie is looking grim.” She touched his arm. “Please tell me if you think I might be right... about Johnny.”

He brushed her question off by saying, “We can’t do any more tonight. I’ll take you home. But first we’d better eat.”

“You’re my guest.”

“Nonsense! I’ll pay.”

“Dutch, Jamie, or I insist on being taken home...”

At ten o’clock Isaac Jamison, alone in the apartment he shared with Carl Case of Homicide, searched through the desk drawers until he found the large-scale city map he was looking for.

He spread it out on the desk top, the phone book beside him. Kiern had checked out of his apartment at seven-thirty. He had left the car at the lot at nine. No suitcases had been found in the car and Charlie, the attendant, would have noticed if Kiern had been carrying any.

With a red pencil, he drew an X where the apartment house was, another at the parking lot. The distance between them was about thirty city blocks and, since it was necessary to angle across town to get from one to the other, he calculated the average driving time between the two as about twenty-five minutes. That gave Kiern sixty-five minutes to dispose of the bags.

Corrine had given him a neatly typed list of all the customers Kiern had been authorized to call on. He checked the addresses in the phone book. The hundred and twenty drugstores were all in the southeast portion of the city. It took him an hour to mark them all with a red dot.

Then he carefully shaded the entire area. Kiern’s territory had been a kidney-shaped area taking in several suburban shopping areas plus what could be called a slum area. It was that portion of the city furthest from the waterfront.

By driving with respectable speed Kiern could have gone from the apartment out to the middle of his territory, spend ten or fifteen minutes there, and then driven back to the parking lot in midtown.