Death Has a Small Voice Read Online Free Page A

initialed, passed along. Reports passed over Weigand’s desk, found their way to the desk of Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley; went on from there, through channels, to files. Excitement was no part of it; imagination did not enter in. Fingerprints and laundry marks, known associates, known methods, known feuds, most of all informers—these things entered in, made up the routine. These things made it hard to get away with murder.
    It had been a light night. There had been a knifing in Harlem, solved already. There had been a brawl in a Village bar and it had ended in homicide—homicide not intended, hardly realized. And the Hudson had given up a body.
    The last alone awaited solution. The body had not yet been identified. It was that of a small man in his thirties—five-feet-six, one hundred thirty-five, brown hair and eyes, scar (probably old gunshot wound) upper right chest; no recent dental work, and a good deal needed; brown suit from a Broadway clothier, no cleaner’s marks; blue shirt, cuffs frayed, laundry mark being checked; brown shoes, recently half-soled; blue socks. No hat found with body. Fingerprints being checked.
    Bill Weigand initialed the report, consigned it to an out basket. Sergeant Aloysius Mullins came in and said, “Morning, Loot, I mean Captain. Got an identification on the North River one.”
    â€œRight,” Bill said, and reached for the report. Mullins gave it to him, and crossed the room to his own desk.
    The small man with the gunshot scar had been Harry Eaton, burglar by occupation and no master of his trade. He had been thirty-two years old. He had spent seven years of the last ten in jail, and had been on parole when he died. He had been three times convicted of felonies; another conviction would have meant life imprisonment. That, at any rate, no longer hung over the bruised head of little Harry Eaton. He had died of strangulation, having first been knocked unconscious by a blow behind the right ear. He had been throttled. And that was uncharacteristic. Reading it, Bill Weigand said, “Hm-m.”
    â€œYeah,” Mullins said, from his desk. “You’ve got to where somebody used his hands.”
    Bill nodded. They did not need to discuss the minor oddity of that. Men like Eaton were never good life risks; they fell into bad company. They rather often got themselves killed—they went out of their rackets, they held out on a split, they threatened to pass on information. For such misdemeanors they were often beaten, sometimes fatally. They were sometimes shot. But it did not often happen that someone put hands on their throats, and squeezed life out of them. This is an awkward way of murder; a blackjack is handier and, unless circumstances make so noisy a method undesirable, a gun is handier still. Strangulation—except, of course, in the case of “muggers,” where murder is incidental—is a method of amateurs, and violent ones at that.
    However, it was not much to go on. Eaton remained routine. Bill took the first report out of the basket, clipped the identification report to it, and put both back in.
    â€œHe lived down on Sullivan Street,” Mullins said. “Two-room, cold water, fifth floor. The precinct boys have been around.”
    Bill Weigand waited. There was more coming.
    â€œCoupla funny things,” Mullins said. “One, he’d stolen a dictating machine somewhere. Thing you dictate into. Funny thing to steal.”
    Nothing, Bill reminded him, was a funny thing to steal; not for a man like Eaton. Men like Eaton picked up what they could find, and disposed of it where they could. But Mullins did not need to be told this, and Bill Weigand continued to wait.
    â€œWell,” Mullins said, “seems like Eaton had written a book. About how he’d been a burglar.”
    â€œMy God!” Bill said.
    â€œYeah,” Mullins said. “Like that. Seems he sent it to two-three publishers