“Because for the moment I’ve interceded with Loew and Chief Parker. Any other questions?”
“Yeah, where’s the tape recorder and the steno?”
“I didn’t want them here.”
Jack pulled his chair up. “Captain, what _do_ you want?”
“I’ll throw that back at you. Do you want to flush your career down the toilet or would you like to skate for a few months and cash Out your twenty?”
Easy: Karen’s face when he told her. “Okay, I’ll play. Now what do you want?”
Exley leaned close. “In the spring of ’53 your friend and business associate Sid Hudgens was murdered and two detectives who worked the case under Russ Millard told me you referred to Hudgens as ‘scum’ and were visibly agitated on the morning his body was discovered. During this time frame Dudley Smith asked you to tail Bud White, and you agreed. During this time frame the Nite Owl case was active and you worked a pornography investigation with Ad Vice and repeatedly submitted no-lead reports, when your long-standing procedure was to jam every report you wrote full of filler. During this time two men, Peter and Barter Englekling, came forward to offer state’s evidence on an alleged pornography link to the Nite Owl. Russ Millard queried you on it, you went along with your ‘no leads’ routine. Throughout the smut investigation you repeatedly urged that the job be dropped. Those same two detectives, Sergeants Fisk and Kieckner, overheard you urging Ellis Loew to soft-pedal the Hudgens investigation, and one of your fellow Ad Vice officers recalls you as being atypically nervous throughout the smut job and absent from the squadroom for unusually long periods of time. Put it all together for me, would you, Jack?”
Ten counts guilty–he knew he was gawking, blinking, twitching. “How . . . the . . . fuck did you . . .”
“It doesn’t matter. Now let’s hear your interpretation of what I want.”
Jack caught some breath. “Okay, so I tailed Bud White. Dud was afraid he’d go apeshit over some hooker snuff, ’cause White had that tendency where young stuff was concerned. Okay, so I tailed him and didn’t pick up anything worth a damn. You and White hate each other, everyone knows it. You figure someday he’ll try to get you for your job on Dick Stensland and you’ll cut me slack with Loew and Parker in exchange for some dirt on him. _Is that what you want?_”
“Call that twenty percent of it and give me something you learned about White.”
“Such as?”
“How about him and women?”
“White likes women, but that’s no news flash.”
“IAD ran a personal on White after he passed the sergeant’s exam. The report had him seeing a woman named Lynn Bracken. Did White know her back in ’53?”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. I never heard that name.”
“Vincennes, your face says you’re a liar, but put the Bracken woman aside, she doesn’t interest me. Was White seeing Inez Soto during the time you were tailing him?”
He almost laughed. “No, not while I had my tail on him. Is that what you’re so worked up on? You think White and your–”
Exley raised a hand. “I’m not going to ask you if you killed Hudgens, I’m not going to make you put that spring together for me, not yet and maybe never. Just give me your opinion on something. You were up to your ears on the smut job _and_ you worked the Nite Owl. Do you make the three Negroes for the killings?”
Jack inched back–get away from those eyes. “There’s loose ends out there, I knew it then. If it wasn’t the three you got, maybe it was some other spooks, maybe they knew where Coates hid his car and planted the shotguns. Maybe it’s tied to the smut. Do you care? Those niggers raped your woman, so what you did was right. What’s this about, Captain?”
Exley smiled. Jack pegged it: a man sticking one foot off a cliff, hopping on one leg. “Captain, what’s this–”
“No, my motives are my business, and here’s my first guess. Hudgens was connected to the smut somehow, and he had a file on you. That’s why you were all over that mess.”