Read Online Cop Out by Susan Dunlap - Free Book Online Page B

serious tries. Rats.
    Another ten feet, and the alley angled left. The corner was thick with garbage, a compost of garlic, tomato sauce, and urine. A dash of stomach acid, and it could indeed have been an intestine.
    The alley turned again, revealing a third metal door with a yellow sign above it, and once more till it ended abruptly at a brick wall. Instinctively I stepped back and flashed the light down. The stench here was less intense, the garbage had been swept away, and huddled in the corner of this poor man’s cul-de-sac was Charles Edward Kidd.
    He looked up, his face knotted in annoyance. Not anger, or the fear we often see, but the look of a smart guy who’s lost a game he thought he’d won.
    “Oh, it’s you,” he said, brushing off his serape as he eased to his feet. “How’d you find me?”
    I looked up at the windows two floors above us. “I’ve been in Ott’s office too.” But if I hadn’t been a police officer, I’d never have bothered looking out Ott’s dirt-mottled windows. I had, of course, and noted that the hole outside appeared to be an air shaft. Kidd had gone to some effort to discover otherwise. A good little observer, he.
    “I need to talk to you.” I added, “I’ll take you to the station.” His step was jauntier than mine as I followed him out of the alley. He didn’t mind sleeping in garbage, he seemed to be saying. But I minded for him. I cringed at the thought of his taking this misstep into the quicksand of street life, so easy to sink into, so very hard to yank himself out of. I knew the odds, but still, I didn’t want to believe that the open road led to this.
    The first thing Kidd spotted in the squad room was the box of bagels left over from a class. “Those bagels over there…bribe me.”
    “I’m hoping you’ll give me more information than a stale bagel will buy. But help yourself.”
    I seated him by the table where he would see officers rushing through, hear the copy machine’s hum, smell the coffee brewing—the reminders of the normal life that could once again be his. I had run Kidd’s name and birth date through files earlier and been surprised to find no mention of him. Very surprised. Now I poured a cup of coffee for him and one for myself and sat around the end of the table with him. “You saw Herman Ott getting into a dark car last night. What time was that?”
    “Almost dusk.” He opened his mouth like a baby bird and stuffed a prodigious portion of bagel inside.
    Almost dusk? Was that different from the dusk he’d indicated earlier? “But at what time?”
    He shook his head in answer to my question.
    “Think. What time?”
    Still chewing, he pointed to his empty wrist. Finally he swallowed and said, “I don’t do hours and minutes.”
    I gave up. “Well, we’ll start from go, then. I know you want to help Herman Ott. Maybe you know more than you realize. How long were you working for him?”
    He sipped at the weak coffee, scowled, and put the cup down. It made me think better of him. Hands still clasped on the cup like a crystal ball, he said, “ ’Bout three weeks with Herman. But it was hardly full-time. He’d spot me on the street and say there was some errand he wanted me to run.”
    “Where did he send you?”
    “Out for food. To pick up the Daily Cat , and the Express , and once The New York Times . The post office a buncha times. Sounds like nothing, but lemme tell you, you can kill a lot of time in line in the PO. It’s not like they put on an extra clerk if it’s busy.”
    “Did you notice the names on Ott’s letters or packages?”
    “Computer companies mostly. Herman’s thinking of going on-line. He’s not a man to go into a venture unprepared. When those catalogs start coming in, he’ll have to move out his desk to make room.”
    I was amazed by this revelation about Ott. I’d known Herman Ott for nearly a decade, and the only piece of electronic equipment in his office was an answering machine. He used that,