“But if they hadn’t killed him, he would have had a face.”
“A face wouldn’t do him much good if it wasn’t a cop’s face.”
“Bingo!”
“It’s an opening. Not ‘Bingo.’”
“We’re talking about a white face here, by the way. She said it was a white guy she saw shoot him.”
“Interesting.”
“It could be a light-skinned Cuban or something.”
“Not Cuban. The white doesn’t fit, but not Cuban. Very few Muslims, make-believe or otherwise, among the Cubans. Or for that matter, Latinos.”
Both Washington and Harris fell silent for what seemed like a very long time, but was probably no more than sixty seconds.
Finally Washington raised his head and looked at Officer Foster H. Lewis.
“What are you thinking?” Harris asked.
“I am thinking I have a task for Officer Lewis.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I want you to check with the corporal. Get his sheets on unmarked cars for yesterday. Check the incoming mileage against the outgoing today.”
Tiny Lewis realized he had absolutely no idea what Washington wanted. As he was trying to frame a reply that might just possibly make him look like less of an ignorant asshole than he felt himself to be, Washington correctly read the expression on his face.
“What I’m looking for, Foster,” he said patiently, “is a discrepancy between the mileage recorded when the driver of the unmarked car turned it in yesterday, and the mileage recorded when the car was taken out today.”
“Unscrew the speedometer cable. Takes ten seconds,” Harris said.
“Do you understand now, Foster?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tiny, then contact everybody who took an unmarked RPC out of here this morning,” Harris said. “Ask them if there was any indication that it hadn’t sat out there in the snow and ice all night.”
“Unless somebody here is driving the car he took to Goldblatt’s.”
“Sergeant,” Tiny said hesitantly.
“Come on, Foster, pay attention!”
“I went out to warm up my car when I got here. Did either of you drive it last night?”
“I gather somebody had?” Jason Washington asked softly.
“Bingo!” Harris said.
Washington reached for the telephone.
“Lieutenant Lomax, please,” he said when his party answered. “Sergeant Washington is calling.”
Tiny Lewis understood enough of the one side of the conversation he heard to know that Lieutenant Lomax had told Sergeant Washington that it would be best to leave the car where it was; that if that was going to be impossible, that next best was to have it towed to the nearest police garage; and that in no event should the car be driven or entered again.
Sergeant Washington returned the phone to its cradle.