Death Is My Comrade by Stephen Marlowe

said, and doors opened to disgorge four detective-squad bulls.
    â€œThis is the place, eh?” a familiar voice echoed.
    My night was complete.

Chapter Thirteen
    F or me?” Jack Morley said.
    It was Sunday morning. I was shaved, showered, dabbed with after-shave lotion and all spiffed up in a wash-and-wear suit the color they call avocado in the men’s clothing stores and we used to call OD in the Army. I had a bouquet of yellow roses in my hand. A uniformed messenger had just delivered it from one of the few Washington florists that do business on Sunday. I had opened the door of my Georgetown apartment to head outside to the Chrysler and then in it to Marianne’s place, when I saw Jack Morley standing there ready to knock. That was when he made that remark about the flowers. He wasn’t alone. Pappy Piersall stood behind him. They were both as well-groomed as I and dressed almost identically in lampblack suits.
    â€œFor Marianne,” Pappy said. “Only you-all will have to send them, Chester.”
    â€œWhy,” I demanded, “will I have to send them?”
    â€œWe have come to fetch you to a meeting,” Pappy said.
    â€œAt Foggy Bottom,” Jack said. Foggy Bottom is the hottest place in Washington in summer. It was going to be a hot day. Foggy Bottom is also where the State Department does business.
    â€œWill you guys cut the Gallagher and Shean routine?” I said.
    But Pappy said: “Last night was a doozy.”
    And Jack said: “You might have thought it ended things. It didn’t.”
    Last night, after Lieutenant Creel’s echoing arrival, had been a doozy. It had everything from a flesh-wounded Semyon Laschenko who wouldn’t say anything at Headquarters, to an indignant Police Commissioner Eric Mann who had been summoned from one of Washington’s Saturday night parties and who wouldn’t stop talking. With, of course, Creel echoing him.
    It had Jack and Pappy acting in concert beautifully, as if they had rehearsed their lines, to steer the play away from Police Commissioner Mann. It had Mann in a sweat despite the air-conditioning and it had the late arrival of both Eugenie and an Under-Secretary of State who was on first-name terms with Jack. It had Eugenie, big-eyed and sheath-skirted, lapping up all the excitement as if it was a show put on just for her. It had, ultimately, no resolution.
    I made a deposition and signed it the necessary four times, and so did Jack and so did Pappy. Laschenko wouldn’t sign anything, and neither would Eugenie. Round about two o’clock it had Laschenko’s lawyer, who said he would get a writ of habeus corpus from the first magistrate he could awaken in the wee hours of the morning. About the only thing it didn’t have, which in retrospect surprised me, was Lucienne Duhamel.
    It had Police Commissioner Mann talking about murder and kidnaping and the inexorable machinery of the law and then, when the Under-Secretary arrived, changing his tune to co-operation and understanding and we-all-belong-to-the-same-team. And it had a final scene which I never got to see because they sent me home to drink Jack Daniels or do whatever I had in mind to do. I drank Jack Daniels and went to bed and got myself groomed to see Marianne.
    â€œLaschenko get his writ?” I asked now, at the apartment door, wondering how long it would take the yellow roses to wilt.
    â€œHe got it,” Jack said, “but they can’t seem to serve it at the proper jail.”
    â€œIn the vernacular,” Pappy said, “he is being taken around the horn.” I scowled. I didn’t get it. That meant the cops were shuttling Laschenko from police station to police station so the writ of habeus corpus couldn’t catch up with him.
    â€œWhat for?” I said. The cops, I knew, resorted to taking a prisoner around the horn when they were awaiting the kind of evidence that could get an indictment. But in