Leopold's Way (3 page)

In many respects the Leopold stories mirror the development of American social concerns over the past quarter century. There's a clear line of evolution, for example, from the primitive brutalizing tactics of Mat Slater in the pre-
Miranda
days of “Circus” to the quiet professional interrogations of suspects in the later tales, and another evolution in Leopold's attitude towards women from the early years when he says flat out that their function is to stay home and have babies to the affirmative action decade when he comes to accept the opposite sex not only in his personal life but in the police department. But not every detail in the lives of Leopold and the other continuing characters of the saga is worked out in advance. Indeed the Leopold stories are like virtually every other long-running series—including the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Hopalong Cassidy, Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe, and my own modest creations—in being strewn with inconsistencies that reflect the author's forgetfulness or changes of mind or both. Some of those in the Leopolds can readily be explained away. In the early “Death in the Harbor”
(Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,
December 1962) the captain's office is on the upper floor of a high-rise headquarters building, and in “Reunion”
(The Saint Mystery Magazine,
December 1964) and all subsequent tales it's located on the second floor rear, but this hardly counts as an inconsistency: what career bureaucrat hasn't changed offices on occasion? Then there's the fact that even though Leopold and his first wife are clearly together in “The Tattooed Priest”
(The Saint Mystery Magazine,
British edition, November 1962), he tells several people in later stories that they'd broken up before his move back to Monroe. Again, no huge problem. Many divorced men misremember or lie about the circumstances surrounding the collapse of their marriage, and Leopold in “Circus” and other early tales seems exceptionally sensitive to questions about his marital status and whether he has children. But what are we to make of the remarkable ocular transformations of Connie Trent, who enters the police department with brown eyes which turn green a few months later (in “Captain Leopold Plays a Hunch,”
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,
July 1973) and then go back again to brown? And how do we account for the miraculous move of the entire city of Monroe from upstate New York, where it's firmly situated in “A Place for Bleeding” and “Reunion,” to Connecticut, where it has stayed since “Bag of Tricks”
(Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,
November 1970)? Here's a puzzle by which even Dr. Sam Hawthorne might be stumped!

But these glitches in the continuity are at best of minor importance. What makes the finest Leopold stories outstanding in the Hoch repertoire is their fusion of expert plotting and clueing with the human dimensions characteristic of Simenon and of Hoch's favorite living novelist, Graham Greene. With the help of the checklist at the end of this book, which lists every Leopold story through the end of 1984 and provides data on its original publication and all U.S. re-printings, readers may explore the whole saga. We hope that
Leopold's Way
will entice many to do just that.

T
HE RAIN HAD STOPPED
, and once again the quiet residential street was filled with the laughter of children. Here and there a puddle still remained, but now the sun was out, and that was all that really mattered.

Leopold parked his car behind the other one and walked through the wet grass of the vacant lot to the place near the trees where a small group of men stood silently waiting.

“I'm Leopold, from Homicide. What's the story?”

“A kid got killed, Captain.”

“A kid? How?”

“Strangled.”

“Lift the blanket and let's have a look.”

He couldn't have been more than ten, a good-looking boy with sandy hair and blue eyes. There was a blue rope-mark on his throat. Leopold sighed and looked away. Sometimes it still bothered him when he saw them like that. Even after six years on Homicide it still bothered him.

“Who is he?”

“We think his name's Tommy Cranston. Lives in that brown house over there. Mat's checking.”

“All right.” Leopold rubbed his eyes. “I'll be over there, too. Call me when the doc comes.”

“Right, Captain.”

Leopold walked back through the wet grass and crossed the lot toward the brown house. There were many children on this street, he noticed. They were running and playing and having fun. It was a good street. Or at least it had been.

“Mister Cranston?”

“Yes…”

“I'm Captain Leopold.”

“Come…come in…We just heard…”

“I'm very sorry.”

“Yes…Of course…”

“Is Mrs. Cranston…?”

“She…It was a great shock to her. One of your men is with her in the living room…”

One of his men…Mat Slater, a big tough hard cop who'd seen the city at its worst. Leopold knew him, but didn't like him. He was the type of cop you found in the tough mystery novels. Only once in a while you found him in real life, too.

“Hello, Leopold. I just told them about it.”

“Yeah.” To Slater he was always “Leopold,” never “Captain.”

Mrs. Cranston was crying in a big green chair. Right at that moment she looked very small and very helpless.

“My boy…My boy…He…he was on his way to the circus…”

Leopold felt suddenly cold and he wanted to be out of that big brown house and away from the crying woman in the green chair.

“Come on, Slater. We can talk to them later.”

“Right.”

They went back outside and crossed the lot to the trees once again, and Leopold cursed the wet grass that clung to his shoes.

Slater lit a cigarette. “Something like this always happens on a Saturday afternoon. We'll probably be up all night chasing down leads.”

“Yeah.”

“The doc's here.” The doc was the coroner's assistant, a middle-aged man who'd met death many times while working for the city. Leopold had seen him like this a hundred times before, bending over a silent form in some dim alley or crowded street. This was what the doc lived for.

Leopold frowned at the wet grass and the thing under the blanket. “How long's he been dead, Doc?”

“About an hour.”

“Before or after the rain?”

The doc looked puzzled at that one. Finally he answered. “Body and the ground under it are both wet, but the ground's not as wet as the rest of the place. Guess that means he was killed just after the rain started, but it's hard to tell for sure.”

“Yeah.” Leopold had a vision of the killer tightening his rope around Tommy's throat and killing him as the rain began to beat down upon them.

Slater ground out his cigarette and lit another one. “And nobody saw him?”

“That's what we're going to find out. Come on, Slater. We'll see you a little later, Doc.”

The lot was filled with people now, and they had to push their way through the crowd.

“You know, Leopold, we should sell tickets to this thing. We'd probably get a bigger crowd than the circus.”

“Shut up, Slater.”

“What?”

“Shut up. I'm tired of listening to you. We've got a job to do. Let's get it done and clear out of here.”

“Sure, Leopold, sure.”

Leopold looked up and down the quiet street with its puddles of water reflecting the grey clouds above. Even with the crowd in the lot, the street still had the silence of death about it. He wondered if it was always like this.

“What did you find out about the parents?”

“Not much,” Slater mumbled. “Kid left just before the rain started. He was going over to the circus. They'd taken him the night before, but he wanted to go again. It's just a few blocks away. He was cutting through the lot on his way there. In fact, his mother watched him out the window until he got around the side of the house.”

Leopold was sweating now. He almost wished the rain would start again. “Did she see anything?”

“No. Nothing.”

“They got any other kids?”

“No. He was the only one.”

Leopold swore again and thought about the woman in the green chair. Maybe it was better in a way that Tommy was the only one. Then at least she'd never have to go through it all again. There were so many ways that sons could die these days. In front of a speeding car, or on some distant, half-remembered battlefield. Or in a vacant lot in the rain.

“Take the houses on this side of the street, Slater. See if the people noticed anything.”

“Sure.”

Leopold left him and headed for the nearest house. He glanced back at the lot and saw that the trees where Tommy had died were out of view now. There were only the police, clearing the crowd away. The body would be gone now, but men would still be working over the spot. There was much to be done before nightfall.

Leopold began ringing doorbells and talking to people, but the answer was always the same. They had seen nothing, or if they had it was only the usual mysterious stranger who could be found any day in any neighborhood.

The sun was disappearing behind a low cloud when Leopold met Slater again.

“Get anything?”

“Nothing, Leopold. How about you?”

“Nothing. Listen, take a run over to that circus and start checking. Find out who could have been away at the time of the killing.”

“You think it's somebody from over there?”

“No, but it's worth trying anyway. I'll be at the Cranstons' house.”

Slater muttered something and walked away toward his car. Leopold watched him for a moment and then walked slowly toward the big house.

Across the street the cars of police and newspaper reporters were still parked, and in the lot next to the house there was still activity. Now and then a flashbulb would light the dim twilight for a second, and then fade away. Reporters, getting plenty of pictures for Sunday's edition.

“Captain…Captain Leopold! How about a statement?”

A young kid, probably just out of journalism school.

“No statement. We're following a few leads…”

“Are you personally conducting the investigation?”

“I'm here. I've been here since two o'clock this afternoon. And maybe I'll be here all night.”

The reporter made quick notes on a small pad.

“Do you have any children yourself, Captain?”

Leopold looked at the young face for a long while, and then he walked away without replying.

“Captain…Captain…”

But he kept walking. It was just a story to them. Just a shocking story of a kid's murder. Just something to sell a few more Sunday papers.

And to Slater it was just a job, a job he was paid for, but one that interfered with his Saturday nights.

Leopold went up the steps and knocked on the door of the brown house. Mr. Cranston came to the door, looking pale and very tired. He led Leopold into the living room without a word.

The green chair was empty now, and Cranston motioned toward the upstairs. “My wife's resting. Her mother's up there with her. It's…it's been a great shock to all of us.”

“Yes…”

“Did you get him yet?”

“The man who did it? No, we didn't get him yet.”

“You've got to catch him before he does it again.”

“I know.”

“Someone's got to pay for Tommy.”

“Yes, someone's got to pay.”

Cranston kept pacing as he talked. Back and forth, across the living room floor.

Leopold sat down and began asking the usual questions. How old was the boy? Was he quiet or wild? Did he make friends with strangers? The father answered, and Leopold carefully noted the answers in a little book. But he knew there was nothing to be found here. The killer had probably not even known little Tommy Cranston.

He had just been a boy walking in the rain. And the killer had caught up with him in that vacant lot.

Cranston sat down and tried to light a cigarette. “Who…who found him, Captain?”

“One of our police cars saw something in the lot, and investigated. They found him just after the rain stopped.”

“I can still see them over there, taking pictures. Won't they ever stop? Won't they ever go away?”

“They'll stop.”

Yes, they would stop. When the next body was found. Then it would be someone else's turn to watch the prowling men and listen to the sobbing women.

The phone rang and Cranston answered it in a broken voice. “It's for you.”

“Leopold here.”

“This is Slater. I'm at the circus. Think I've found something. Come on over.”

“Right.”

“I'll meet you in front, at the main entrance.”

“Be there in five minutes.”

He left Cranston and the brown house, and it was dark outside.

Dark.

But the circus was a blaze of light; light and noise and laughter. Here was happiness, undampened by the silence a few blocks away.

And there were children here, too. Gay children. Living, laughing children.

Perhaps one of these would be the next. It might not be tomorrow, or next week, but someday, somewhere, perhaps the killer of little Tommy Cranston would see another child running alone through the rain. Then the hands would loop the strong rope around a tiny throat once more.

“What kept you, Leopold?”

“Oh, there you are, Slater. What's up?”

“I asked a few questions around here and I found out there's a guy they hired a couple of weeks ago that's been acting queer. Last week they caught him over near the girls' tent, and last night one of the girls complained he was prowling around again.”

Leopold sighed. “Let's talk to him.”

His name was Charlie. Charlie Watts. Around forty, strong, well-built, but with a gleam behind his blue eyes that told you to watch out for him. Leopold had seen that look before, too many times.