Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

“I’m sure we could find out, sir,” the city editor said. “If that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“Goddamn right,” Nelson said. “Get somebody on it. It’s news, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, sir, of course it is. I’ll get right on it.”

“I think that would be a good idea,” Nelson said.

“I was about to go to Composing, Mr. Nelson,” the city editor said. “We’re just about pasted up. Would you like to go with me?”

“Why not?” Nelson said. “Have you got somebody around here you could send to the cafeteria for me?”

“What would you like?”

“I’d like a hamburger and french fries,” Nelson said. “Hamburger with onions. Fried, not raw. And a cup of black coffee.”

“Coming right up,” the city editor said.

Nelson walked across the city room to Composing. The Ledger had, the year before, gone to a cold-type process, replacing the Linotype system. The upcoming One Star edition was spread out on slanting boards, in “camera-ready” form. Here and there, compositors were pasting up. ‘

Nelson went to the front page. The lead story, under the headline “Man Sought In Police Murder Killed Eluding Capture” caught his eye, and he read it with interest.

If all the goddamned cops in the goddamned city hadn’t all been looking for that guy, they probably could have caught the bastards who killed my Jerome. They don’t give a shit about me, or any other ordinary citizen, but when one of their own gets it, that’s a horse of a different color. That sonofabitch Wohl wouldn’t ‘t even tell me where Jerome ‘s car was found.

The city editor appeared.

“Now that the cops have found that pathetic sonofabitch,” Arthur J. Nelson said, “maybe, just maybe, they’ll have time to look for the murderer of my son.”

“Yes, sir,” the city editor said, uncomfortably. “Mr. Nelson, I think you better have a look at this.”

He thrust the Early Bird edition of the Bulletin at him.

“What’s this?” Nelson said. And then his eye fell on the headline, “Police Seek ‘Gay’ Black Lover In Nelson Murder” and the story below it by Michael J. O’Hara.

“I thought O’Hara worked for us,” Arthur J. Nelson said, very calmly.

“We had to let him go about eighteen months ago,” the city editor said.

“Oh?” Arthur J. Nelson asked.

“Yes, sir. He had a bottle problem,” the city editor said.

“And a nice sense of revenge, wouldn’t you say?” Nelson said. He didn’t wait for a reply. He turned and walked down the line of paste-ups until he found the editorial page.

He pointed to it. “Hold this,” he said. “There will be a new editorial.”

“Sir?”

“I’m not going to let the goddamned cops get away with this,” Arthur J. Nelson said. “Not on your goddamned life.”

****

Louise Dutton slipped out of her robe, draped it over the water closet, and then slid open the glass door to her shower stall. She giggled at what she saw.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

Peter Wohl, who had been shaving with Louise’s pink, long-handled ladies’ razor, heard her voice, but not what she had said, and opened his eyes and looked at her.

“What?”