The copper spat.
“I was a mug not to have rubbed you two punks out,” he said in disgust. “If they had found me with four stiffs maybe they would have made me a sergeant.”
“What a charming little mind you have,” Kerman said and backed away.
III
We started hack to Orchid City at five o’clock after a couple of awkward hours in Detective District Commander Dunnigan’s office. He had done his best to dig into a case that kept snapping shut every time he thought he had worked the lid off, but he hadn’t succeeded.
My story was straightforward, and more or less true. I said Freedlander’s daughter had been missing for a couple of years. This he was able to check by calling the Missing People’s Bureau in Orchid City. I told him I had found her wandering the streets suffering from loss of memory, and, having taken her to my secretary’s apartment, had immediately got in my car to come to ‘Frisco to take Freedlander to her.
He wanted to know how I knew she was Freedlander’s daughter, and I said I read the Missing People’s Bulletin the police circulated and remembered her description.
He stared bleakly at me for some minutes, wondering whether to believe me or not, and I stared right back at him.
“Should have thought you had better things to do,” was his final comment.
I went on to tell him how I had arrived at Freedlander’s apartment, heard a shot, broke in, found Freedlander dead and the Wop trying to get away. I said he fired at us and we fired at him and handed Dunnigan our gun permits. I said maybe the Wop was a burglar. No, I didn’t think I had seen him before, although I might have. All Wops looked alike to me.