Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories Read Online Free Page A

Medium price."
    "Kesslers"
    "Yeah, I think it was."
    "Okay, good. What's your name?"
    "My name? Hey, wait a minute, I don't want to get involved in anything . . ."
    "Don't worry, it's not what you're thinking."
    It took a little more convincing, but he gave me his name finally and I wrote it down in my notebook. And thanked him and hurried out of there.
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    I had something more than an idea now.
    Eberhardt said, "I ought to knock you flat on your ass."
    He had just come out of his bedroom, eyes foggy with sleep, hair standing straight up, wearing a wine-colored bathrobe. Dana stood beside him looking fretful.
    "I'm sorry I woke you up, Eb," I said. "But I didn't think you'd be in bed this early. It's only six o'clock."
    He said something I didn't hear, but that Dana heard. She cracked him on the arm to show her disapproval, then turned and left us alone.
    Eberhardt went over and sat on the couch and glared at me. "I've had about six hours' sleep in the past forty-eight," he said. "I got called out last night after you left, I didn't get home until three A.M., I was up at seven, I worked all goddamn day and knocked off early so I could get some sleep, and what happens? I'm in bed ten minutes and you show up."
    "Eb, it's important."
    "What is?"
    "Colly Babcock."
    "Ah, Christ, you don't give up, do you?"
    "Sometimes I do, but not this time. Not now." I told him what I had learned from the guy at Tay's Liquors.
    "So Babcock bought a bottle there," Eberhardt said. "So what?"
    "If he was planning to burglarize a liquor store, do you think he'd have bothered to buy a bottle fifteen minutes before?"
    "Hell, the job might have been spur-of-the-moment."
    "Colly didn't work that way. When he was pulling them, they were all carefully planned well in advance. Always."
    "He was getting old," Eberhardt said. "People change."
    "You didn't know Colly. Besides, there are a few other things."
    "Such as?"
    "The burglaries themselves. They were all done the same way — back door jimmied, marks on the jamb and lock made with a hand bar or something." I paused. "They didn't find any tool like that on Colly. Or inside the store either."
    "Maybe he got rid of it."
    "When did he have time? They caught him coming out the door,"
    Eberhardt scowled. I had his interest now. "Go ahead," he said.
    "The pattern of the burglaries, like I was saying, is doors jimmied, drawers rifled, papers and things strewn about. No fingerprints, but it smacks of amateurism. Or somebody trying to make it look like amateurism."
    "And Babcock was a professional."
    "He could have done the book," I said. "He used lock picks and glass cutters to get into a place, never anything like a hand bar. He didn't ransack; he always knew exactly what he was after. He never deviated from that, Eb. Not once."
    Eberhardt got to his feet and paced around for a time. Then he stopped in front of me and said, "So what do you think, then?"
    "You figure it."
    "Yeah," he said slowly, "I can figure it, all right. But I don't like it. I don't like it at all."
    "And Colly?' I said. "You think he liked it?"
    Eberhardt turned abruptly, went to the telephone. He spoke to someone at the Hall of Justice, then someone else. When he hung up, he was already shrugging out of his bathrobe.
    He gave me a grim look. "I hope you're wrong, you know that."
    "I hope I'm not," I said.
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    I was sitting in my flat, reading one of the pulps from my collection of several thousand issues, when the telephone rang just before eleven o'clock. It was Eberhardt, and the first thing he said was, "You weren't wrong."
    I didn't say anything, waiting.
    "Avinisi and Carstairs," he said bitterly. "Each of them on the force a little more than two years. The old story: bills, long hours, not enough pay — and greed. They cooked up the idea one night while they were cruising Glen Park, and it worked just fine until two nights ago. Who'd figure the cops for it?"
    "You have any trouble with them?"
    "No. I wish they'd given me