Spiral

white males, seemingly the right build, so much as you could tell from the biceps on up.
    ”Your assailant among these men?” asked the sergeant from her chair.
    I studied them slowly, making sure.
    Behind me, Cascadden said, ”Come on, Beantown.”
    I ignored him, going back and forth between two of the photos.
    ”Take your time, Mr. Cuddy,” said Pintana, rather pointedly.
    Focusing on the third mug shot in the array, I said, ”This is him.”
    Pintana spoke slowly. ”Please pick up the one you are identifying.”
    I did.
    Cascadden laughed behind me.
    I said, ”What’s so funny?”
    Pintana extended her hand, and I gave her the photo. She laid it on her desk. ”This man is named Ford Walton.” I shook my head. ”Means nothing to me.”
    Pintana said, ”Approximately eleven days ago, a female prostitute, last name Moran, was slashed to death with a knife very much like the one used to attack you.”
    I remembered Cascadden saying something about another murder the first time I’d met them. ”Meaning, right around the time that Veronica Held died?”
    Pintana nodded. ”Within ten hours or so. Moran’s body was left in a cheap hotel room with the air-conditioning on high.”
    ”Fuzzing any determination regarding her time of death.”
    ‘Yes,” said Pintana. ”But there are two further points about
    the case.”
    Cascadden cut in. ”First is, old Ford was the whore’s sometime boyfriend.”
    Pintana let him finish before saying, ”The other is that Moran spelled her street name ‘S-U-N-D-Y.’”

    Half an hour later, I was still sitting in the same chair-looking down at the bandaged part of my left arm and giving serious thought to trying one of the Haitian doctor’s painkillers—when Cascadden came back into the room.
    He handed a folder to Pintana, who opened it, read something, then looked up at him. Cascadden nodded to her.
    She turned to me. ”The prints on the knife used to attack you belong to Ford Walton.”
    Cascadden said, ”Blood work’s gonna take longer, Beantown, account of so much was yours.”
    I watched Pintana. ”Meaning, the lab’s checking the knife for this Sundy Moran’s blood?”
    ”Yes”
    ”Walton would have to be pretty stupid to keep a knife Used in a killing.”
    ”Old Ford ain’t never been no brain trust.”
    I looked up at Cascadden. ‘You know him?”
    ”Went to high school with the fucker. Back when we had just Stranahan for us and Old Dillard for the nig blacks.”
    I kept looking at Cascadden. Could he be that stupid, to roust me himself, fail, and then get somebody he admitted knowing to—
    ”Mr. Cuddy?” said Pintana.
    ”Sorry. That concussion again.”
    She nodded, but not like she was convinced. ”I’d like to know what connection you had to Sundy Moran.”
    ”None that I know of.”
    ”From what you said earlier, Ford Walton appears to think otherwise.”
    ”Sergeant, Moran was dead over a week before I was even in your state, and I’m sure I’d never seen Walton before last night.” I thought of something. ”After Moran’s body was found, you must have looked for her boyfriend.”
    ”And found him, Beantown,” said Cascadden, proudly. Pintana glared at him.
    I waited for her to look back toward me. ”But not the knife in question.”
    Cascadden seemed to have decided he’d said enough. The sergeant drummed her nails on the desktop. ”Ford Walton likes to use knives, Mr. Cuddy.”
    ”I could tell.”
    She didn’t nod. ”But he had an alibi for the time period that Sundy Moran must have been killed.”
    ”What kind of alibi?”
    Kyle Cascadden changed his mind. ”Old Ford was shacked up with the whore’s mother. Now, can you beat that?”

    From the passenger’s seat of the unmarked sedan, I said, ”How many cases has Cascadden blown for you?”
    Sergeant Lourdes Pintana shook her head. ”I thought we already had this conversation.”
    ”Seems timely again.”
    We turned north on an avenue toward my hotel. ”I told you, Mr. Cuddy. Kyle was a hero here, from the gridiron for his school to the streets for our department. He gets cut some slack for that.”
    ”The department ever cut you any slack?”
    Pintana glanced over, frowning. ”For what?”
    ”There’s only one woman in the Boston Homicide unit, and she doesn’t command it.”
    Frown became grimace. ”Meaning, how did a ‘ cubana chick’ get to the top?”
    ”Meaning, how did an immigrant woman in a man’s profession end up doing so well so