Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison Page B

of the iron.
    “What about this? Prints any good?”
    “Very clear, lieutenant. Thumb and first three fingers of the right hand.”
    “Any chance that the bodyguard or the girl polished the old bastard off?”
    “I’d say one in a thousand, sir. No motive at all—he was the one who kept them both eating. And they seemed to be really broken up, not about him I don’t think, but about losing their meal ticket.”
    Grassioli dropped the jimmy back into the bag and handed it across the desk to Andy. “That’s good enough. We’ll have a messenger going down to BCI next week so send the prints along then and a
short
report on the case. Get the report on the back of the print card—it’s only the tenth of the month and we’re already almost through our paper ration. We should get prints of the bird and the bodyguard to go with it—but the hell with that, there’s not enough time. File and forget it and get back to work.”
    While Andy was making a note on his pad the phone rang; the lieutenant picked it up. Andy wasn’t listening to the conversation and was halfway to the door when Grassioli covered the mouthpiece and snapped, “Come back here, Rusch,” then turned his attention to the phone.
    “Yes, sir, that’s right,” he said. “There seems no doubt that it was a break and entry, the killer used the same jimmy for the job.A filed-down tire iron.” He listened for a moment and his face flushed. “No, sir, no we couldn’t. What else could we do? Yes, that’s SOP. No, sir. Right away, sir. I’ll have someone get on it now, sir.”
    “Son of a bitch,” the lieutenant added, but only after he had hung up the receiver. “You’ve done a lousy job on this case, Rusch. Now get back on it and see if you can do it right. Find out how the killer got into the building—and if it really was break and entry. Fingerprint those two suspects. Get a messenger down to Criminal Identification with the prints and have them run through, I want a make on the killer if he has a record. Get moving.”
    “I didn’t know Big Mike had any friends?”
    “Friends or enemies, I don’t give a damn. But someone is putting the pressure on us for results. So wrap this up as fast as possible.”
    “By myself, lieutenant?”
    Grassioli chewed the end of his stylo. “No, I want the report as soon as possible. Take Kulozik with you.” He belched painfully and reached into the drawer for the pills.
    Detective Steve Kulozik’s fingers were short and thick and looked as though they should be clumsy; instead they were agile and under precise control. He held Shirl’s right thumb with firm pressure and rolled it across the glazed white tile, leaving a clear and unsmudged print inside the square marked RTHMB. Then one by one, he pressed the rest of her fingers to the ink pad and then to the tile until all the squares were full.
    “Could I have your name, miss?”
    “Shirl Greene, that’s spelled with an e on the end.” She stared at the black-stained tips of her fingers. “Does this make me a criminal now, with a record?”
    “Nothing like that at all, Miss Greene.” Kulozik carefully printed her name with a thin grease pencil in the space at the bottom of the tile. “These prints aren’t made public, they’re just used in conjunction with the case. Could I have your date of birth?”
    “October twelfth, 1977.”
    “I think that’s all we need now.” He slid the tile into a plastic case along with the ink pad.
    Shirl went to wash the ink from her hands, and Steve waspacking in the fingerprint equipment when the door announcer buzzed.
    “Do you have her prints?” Andy asked when he came in.
    “All finished.”
    “Fine, then all that’s left is to get the prints from the bodyguard, he’s waiting downstairs in the lobby. And I found a window in the cellar that looks like it was pried open, better check that for latent prints too. The elevator operator will show you where it is.”
    “On my way,” Steve said,