Leopold's Way by Edward D. Hoch

Author:Edward D. Hoch [Hoch, Edward D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-5645-7
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2013-10-11T16:22:00+00:00

Christmas Is for Cops

“GOING TO THE CHRISTMAS party, Captain?” Fletcher asked from the doorway. Captain Leopold glanced up from his eternally cluttered desk. Fletcher was now a lieutenant in the newly reorganized Violent Crimes Division, and they did not work together as closely as they once had. “I’ll be there,” Leopold said. “In fact, I’ve been invited to speak.”

This news brought a grin to Fletcher’s face. “Nobody speaks at the Christmas party, Captain. They just drink.”

“Well, this year you’re going to hear a speech, and I’m going to give it.”

“Lots of luck.”

“Is your wife helping with the decorations again this year?”

“I suppose she’ll be around,” Fletcher chuckled. “She doesn’t trust me at any Christmas party without her.”

The annual Detective Bureau party was, by tradition, a stag affair. But in recent years Carol Fletcher and some of the other wives had come down to Eagles Hall in the afternoon to trim the tree and hang the holly. Somehow these members of the unofficial Decorations Committee usually managed to stay on for the evening’s festivities.

The party was the following evening, and Captain Leopold was looking forward to it. But he had one unpleasant task to perform first. That afternoon, feeling he could delay it no longer, he summoned Sergeant Tommy Gibson to his office and closed the door.

Gibson was a tough cop of the old school, a bleak and burly man who’d campaigned actively for the lieutenancy which had finally been given to Fletcher. Leopold had never liked Gibson, but until now he’d managed to overlook the petty graft with which Gibson’s name was occasionally linked.

“What seems to be the trouble, Captain?” Gibson asked, taking a seat. “You look unhappy.”

“I am unhappy, Gibson. Damned unhappy! While you were working the assault and robbery detail I had no direct command over your activities. But now that I’m in charge of a combined Violent Crimes Division, I feel I should take a greater interest in them.” He reached across his desk to pick up a folder. “I have a report here from the District Attorney’s office. The report mentions you, Gibson, and makes some very grave charges.”

“What kind of charges?” The sergeant’s tongue forked out to lick his dry lips.

“That you’ve been accepting regular payments from a man named Freese.”

Gibson went pale. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Carl Freese, the man who runs the numbers racket in every factory in this city. You know who he is, and you know what he’s done. Men who’ve opposed him, or tried to report his operations to the police, have been beaten and nearly killed. I have a report here of a foreman at Lecko Industries. When some of his men started losing a whole week’s pay in the numbers and other gambling controlled by Freese, he went to his supervisor and reported it. That night on the way home his car was forced off the road and he was badly beaten, so badly that he spent three weeks in the hospital. You should be familiar with that case, Gibson, because you investigated it just last summer.

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