The Stiff in the Five Hundred Dollar Suit

Chapter 1:

The sun beat down mercilessly on the two concentric half circles around the prone body on the sidewalk, outlined in chalk. The outer circle consisted of people wearing shorts and T-shirts, jockeying for a better position to see what was going on in the inner circle but being restrained by blue-clad officers. The inner circle was made up of four men loosely clustered around the dead body on the sidewalk, all wearing ties over white shirts spotted with sweat. The one bending over inspecting the body was the medical examiner, Samuel Goldstein: white male, 5 feet 10 inches, 200 pounds, mid-fifties, a bald top fringed with white hair, brown eyes, a little overweight, and normal features. The man standing over him on the opposite side of the body was Chief Detective, Harvey Halloway: white male, 5 feet 11 inches, 185 pounds, early forties, brown hair with a few streaks of grey, brown eyes, muscular build with slight mid-life paunch, bullet scar over right eye, and ruggedly handsome features. Standing about six feet behind Harvey taking everything in was rooky Detective, Jack D. Delany, ‘JD’: white male, 6 feet 1 inches, 195 pounds, mid twenties, blond hair, blue eyes, sinewy build, attractive features, and looks younger than actual age. The fourth man fluttered around the scene snapping photos of anything interesting was the police photographer, John Kiley: white male, 5 feet 6 inches, 155 pounds, mid-thirties, black hair, brown eyes, medium build, and normal features.

Harvey asked, How long’s he been dead, Sammy?

Sam: I’d say about 8 hours give or take a half hour. I’ll give you a better answer once we get him back to the morgue.

That means he died between 11:30 PM and 12:30 AM last night. Let’s roll him over. JD, help us here. The three men grabbed the stiff body and rolled it face up.

Anyone recognize him?

JD: Nope.

I don’t either, but I’m not surprised…. Nice suit.

JD: Yeah, musta cost at least $500 bucks.

Any ID?

JD: No wallet. Maybe someone rolled him.

Then why didn’t they take the diamond ring and that watch, they’re not cheap. He looks pretty well off…hhhummm…that’s funny. Sammy, look at this.

The medical examiner looked at the corpse’s waxy hand as Harvey held it up.

Sam: What?

JD bends over to see, Whadaya see, Harv?

Well, the hand is well manicured, but they’re covered with calluses. These’re the hands of someone that didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth.

JD: Maybe he came into money recently or he has a rough hobby.

I guess. Sammy, how long did he last before he died?

The ME opens the shirt and inspects the wound. It looks like he was stabbed with something like a stiletto and the wound’s deep. I’d say it took about 10 minutes to bleed out.

That makes sense, the blood trail is only about 100 feet. This was done by someone he knew; it was up close and personal…Wait…Hhhhummm…Do you smell that? Harvey bent closer to the body sniffing. The ME mimicked his actions. That smells like lavender. Do you smell it?

Sam: Yes, I do. You have a good nose.

My ex-wife used to love the smell and had cologne with that odor.

JD: Maybe he was a poof?

I doubt that, more likely from a woman he came into contact with. He seems pretty muscular under that suit. This guy was no desk jockey. I want to see him with it off.

JD: Hey, maybe you’re a poof, Harv?

Very funny. Why don’t you make yourself useful and start questioning those people in the crowd? Hell, the murderer may be among ‘em. Also get some uniforms to start canvasing these brownstones to see if they’d heard or seen anything.

Geez, I was just kidding. JD turned toward the crowd.

Sammy, I’d say from the angle, the killer was right handed and facing the victim. Also the angle is slightly up, which would indicate an assailant slightly shorter.

Sammy: Yeah, that looks about right.

Hey, John, get some photos of the face and get me some copies ASAP.

John: Don’t I always, boss?

Don’t call me ‘boss.’

A uniformed officer walked up to Harvey, The meat wagon’s here.

I guess we’d better get this body someplace cool before it starts to bloat. Sammy, is it okay to move it?

Sam: Yeah, let’s get it out of this heat. I’ll start the autopsy as soon as I get it back to the morgue.

Let me know when you have the results.

Sam: Will do.

Two men in white smocks approached with a stretcher, casually rolled the corpse onto it, and headed back to the truck with their load. Sammy headed back to the police station, but Harvey stuck around to inspect the murder scene for another half hour before heading to the nearest call box to phone in a report.

When he got back, JD was standing, talking to individuals in a crowd that had begun to scatter as soon as JD had walked up to them.

JD, I called in the report. Keep trying to find someone who saw or heard something and meet me back at the station.

JD: Why do I get the crappy job?

Because you’re the junior partner, remember?

Harvey turned away and started walking along the cars abutting the sidewalk, only stopping when he’d reached a red Studebaker covered from bumper to bumper with scraps, dents, and scratches, not to mention dirt. He pulled hard to open the door and was greeted with the loud annoying screech of metal on metal. The interior was littered with empty beer cans, Chinese food boxes, napkins, used tissues, etc. as if someone had dumped a trash can into it. Harvey brushed about half the food crumbs off the seat before depositing his posterior onto the well-worn fabric. He inserted the key and then started the car. A sound similar to dog growling came out from under the hood, going up and down rhythmically while Harvey yelled, Com’on, com’on, com’on in cadence. After a few more cycles and a few expletives like You piece of crap, the engine caught and started to run fittingly. Harvey ignored the large plume of black smoke that shot out of the tail pipe and pulled out without checking traffic.

Reaching under his car seat, Harvey brought up a bottle of Old Southern whiskey containing about one swig, which quickly disappeared down his throat.

Crap, now I gotta make a stop at the liquor store. He lit up a Lucky Strike.

In spite of his attempts to hide it, it was an open secret at the station that Harvey drank almost constantly, and that he kept a pint of whiskey in the bottom left drawer of his desk. He’d pour it into his coffee and take a drink periodically when he thought no one was watching. No one mentioned it, even Captain Patrick Dawly didn’t mind as long as he did his job and didn’t appear drunk. Harvey was a maintenance drinker; he had to have a certain level of alcohol in his blood to function properly, to face the daily grind. Plus, he was far from being the only nearly drunk officer at the station.

After stopping at the liquor store, he went by his favorite deli at the corner of 6th and Washington Avenue for a corned beef on rye with mustard and a slice of cheese. This culinary repast would join the collection of previous half-eaten sandwiches scattered around the station house where Harvey laid’em and forgot’em. The other officers were always afraid to throw them away because they were never sure Harvey was done with them; sometimes he’d absentmindedly pick one up and take a bite thinking he had just laid it down. Harvey’s reaction would vary depending on the age of the sandwich.

As Harvey was driving back to the station, he realized he was approaching his 10th anniversary with the police force. He had resigned his commission as a captain in the Army right after the War, and, after a break, had signed on as a police cadet even though he was older-than-the-norm recruit. During the War, he had wanted nothing more than to get back to his wife, Maggie, and settle down with a brood of kids. Returning home, he’d been happy for a while, but although he’d left the War, it’d not left him. He still dreamed of the men close to him who’d been killed, and not just killed, but mutilated by artillery, machine guns, and mortars. Over and over again, he’d see the faces of his friends and those he’d sent to their deaths. With time, he turned moody and depressed. It only took two years before Maggie couldn’t take it anymore; she wanted kids, but he kept thinking of the kids that died under his watch. She left him and was now married, living a couple states way. He hates himself for losing her, and her face was added to the demons that haunted his nights.

He also thought of all the human depravity he’d seen as an officer. Luckily because of his service, he was promoted very quickly to detective and was now the chief homicide detective. He had worked on many types of cases and luckily he’d managed to keep a certain amount of detachment from the victims and sometimes the perps. That kept them from being added to his cadre of demons. Only when children were involved did it ever get to him.

Chapter 2:

Harvey drove up to the stone monstrosity that served as the 12th District’s police HQ; he’s said that if Russia every hit their city with a nuke, he wanted to be in the basement of this building, because it’ll be the last one standing. He pulled his piece of crap into a parking space with his name stenciled on the building over it. He was as proud of getting his own parking space as he was about getting his detective’s badge; you know you’ve made it when you have a designated parking space.

His desk was in a large open area containing another dozen that served as the squad room. The detective squad had twelve members divided into B&E, Vice, Assault, and Homicide, but everyone was expected to do double duty depending on the workload. A pall of blue cigarette smoke hung over the room creating an atmosphere similar to the one that hung over the city on hot days. JD’s desk was pushed up against Harvey’s so as they would face each other. Harvey wasn’t too happy about that, but it made communications easier, though the small talk was irritating. He pulled out his sandwich and coffee and quickly supplemented the latter with alcohol, then ate while going through the mail and files on his desk. JD showed up about an hour later and sat opposite him.

Did you get anything useful?

JD: Yeah, I did. A woman named Arleen Gibbs said it sounds like her neighbor; a man called Victor Palenski, but she couldn’t be sure without a photo. I told her we’d be back to ask more questions.

Harvey picked up the phone and dialed three numbers. Hi, Debbie, I need you to see if you have any info on a Victor Palenski. Just guess at the spelling for now. Thanks.

JD: Hey, Harv, whadaya think about this case?

JD, I’m going to give some excellent advice on homicides. The majority falls into two very general categories. The most common is the instantaneous, reactionary, emotional type. Husband and wife fight, then the husband grabs something and bludgeons his wife to death; or maybe a bar fight escalates into a death match; or a man catches his wife cheating on him and kills her and her lover; and so on. These are easy to solve, because the perp doesn’t have a pat story ready and is easy to break under interrogation. We usually get a quick confession. The other is the carefully planned and executed murder: businessman kills his partner, a husband hires a professional to kill his wife, a son kills a parent over money, etc. This is the type that’s always challenging. These take mental footwork as well as the physical footwork. I’ve worked on several that took me months to finally crack; a few still remain open. There were even some that we weren’t allowed to pursue further due to people in high places telling us to back off.

I’ve always liked the murderers that thought themselves so much smarter than us, and the funny thing is that they were probably right. But they had forgotten one very important thing: experience can trump smarts. We’ve seen dozens if not hundreds of murders and have developed an innate instinct for clues and body language. It’s referred to as a ‘hunch’ or a ‘gut feeling.’ During the war, there were people in England who could recognize a plane overhead as friend or foe at pretty much 100% accuracy. When they tried to teach this to another person, it couldn’t be done. The new person just had to keeping guessing until he got it right and then repeated the process over and over, hundreds of time until he could guess right 90% of the time. It’s like one’s subconscious takes in all the inputs, makes these calculations to get the answer, and then sends it to the conscious mind. You don’t know how you got the answer, but it’s right. I think that’s true of detectives once they’ve worked on dozens of cases. So even if the perp is smart, the detective usually has the edge.

JD: I was looking for a short answer, but that’s pretty informative. I think you just told me I won’t be good at this until I have many cases under my belt.

See, you’re getting smarter already.

JD: Uhoh, Vicki is approaching on your five o’clock."

Harvey looked over his right shoulder to see Vicki zeroed in on him. She was wearing the police civilian’s light blue blouse and dark blue skirt with two beautiful gams coming out the bottom. Vicki Newsome: white female, 5 feet 8 inches, 135 pounds, late thirties, black hair, brown eyes, 34C-27-39, and, though not beautiful, way above average in looks.

Hi, Vicki, what brings you up here?

Vicki: John asked me to drop the photos off to you. Plus I wanted to see if you were going to take me out to paint the town like you promised? You owe me big. She dropped the large manila envelop on his desk.

I know I do, but I just started this case, and I need to get my hands around it before I can take some time for myself.

She puts her hands on the desk and leans forward, giving Harvey a clear view of her décolletage. Why don’t you get your hands around me? I’d think that’d be more rewarding.