‘Dedrick, the man in the fawn suit. The man Joy Dreadon saw with Grace Lehrnann.’
‘That’s a pretty tale. The Lehmann woman committed suicide. Your only witness is a streetwalker. Do you think I’d take her word? None of your witnesses are worth a damn, anyway.’
I lifted my shoulders.
‘How do you know the man in the fawn suit is Dedrick?’ he demanded.
‘I recognized his voice. He spoke to me over the phone, if you remember, when he staged the faked kidnapping. He has a voice you don’t forget.’
‘Tell that to the jury and see where you get,’ Brandon sneered. ‘All you’ve got is that Barratt ran a smuggling ring. I’ll give you that, but nothing else. The rest of the stuff is a pipe-dream.’
I looked across at Francon, who shook his head.
‘Well, all right, then I guess we can all go to bed,’ I said to Brandon. ‘I didn’t ask to come here, and if you don’t want to believe the story, it’s okay with me.’
‘We’ll go over it again,’ Brandon said, beginning to enjoy himself, ‘and we’ll have it down in writing.’ He nodded to Mifflin, who opened the door and bawled for Sergeant MacGraw.
After a while MacGraw came in, a placid expression on his white, flabby face. He sat down at a table, a pad of paper in front of him and waited.