Too Soon Dead by Michael Kurland Page A

Manhattan: Homicide South and Homicide North. Homicide South is in the Police Headquarters Building downtown on Centre Street, and Homicide North takes up most of the third floor of the 23rd Precinct building on Seventy-seventh between Lexington and Third. Fifty-seventh Street is the dividing line for their jurisdiction. There is a possibly apocryphal story about a man who was found dead on an uptown bus. The investigation into his demise was delayed for a week while the two squads squabbled over whether he died above or below Fifty-seventh Street.
    The desk sergeant at the 23rd Precinct—or the two-three, as the cops call it—beamed at us as we came in. “Mr. Brass,” he said. “Good to see you.”
    “And you, Kelly,” Brass said.
    “You’ll be wanting to go upstairs. You know the way.”
    “Indeed I do,” Brass agreed. We took the wide staircase up to the second floor, and then the narrower staircase up to the third. The homicide squad room was empty, except for Alan Shine, who was sitting on a wooden bench that ran along the wall and absently folding his hat into a variety of shapes it had never been intended to assume. He looked up when we came in. “You got here quick,” he said. “I just called it in.”
    I took his hat out of his hand, punched some shape into it, and stuck it on his head. “Called what in?”
    “They’ve got someone for the Fox killing. They’re in there talking to him now.”
    “What have they got on him?” Brass asked.
    “They haven’t told me,” Shine said. “Say, you hear the one about the guy at the soup kitchen who says, ‘Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup,’ and the waiter leans forward and says, ‘Keep it quiet, we don’t have enough flies to go around’?”
    “They don’t have waiters in soup kitchens,” I said.
    “Shaddup,” Shine explained, grinning at me. He took his hat off and twisted it into a shape that looked like what a butterfly would look like if a butterfly looked like a hat.
    Brass sat on the bench next to the
World
’s ace crime reporter. “What’s been happening?”
    “You tell me,” Shine said. “They brought this guy in about—what?—two hours ago. I just found out from a source that he’s being held for Billy’s murder. But they won’t release so much as his name, and they won’t let me talk to him.
    “What source?” I asked.
    Shine rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “A five-dollar source,” he said. That meant it was one of the patrolmen. A sergeant or one of the detectives would be a ten-dollar source. “None of the other boys have it yet, so with any luck I’ll have an exclusive. If any of the homicide dicks will come out here to talk to me.”
    “I have a little for you,” Brass told him. “His name is Max von Pilath. He’s the president, or whatever, of the Verein für Wahrheit und Freiheit, which is the group renting the room William’s body was found in.”
    A notebook and pencil appeared in Shine’s hand. “Spell that,” he said. Brass did so, and translated it. “Also, he lives in the apartment across the hall,” he added. “Why the police think he killed Fox, I don’t know.”
    Shine jumped up. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll phone this in.” He trotted over to one of the empty desks and picked up the phone.
    Inspector Raab and two of his flunkies came out of an office across the room. They started toward the interrogation rooms, but when Raab saw us he turned and headed straight for Brass. “Well, well,” he said, stopping two feet short of Brass and glaring at him. “What brings you here?”
    “Max von Pilath,” Brass said.
    “And just how the hell did you know that? Can’t they keep anything secret for at least an hour or two around here?”
    “DeWitt and I went to Eighty-second Street. A group of German pamphlet-writers are there trying to decide whether to hire an attorney for von Pilath, who is their titular head, or disown him.”
    “Yeah?” Raab pulled a pack of cigarettes