Who's sorry now?

person in the old gang.”
    ”This sounds as if they were all nice people,” Lily said. ”Not good suspects.”
    ”The fourth one wasn’t quite as nice, if that makes you feel better,” Howard said.
    ”Oh, good. Tell us about him.”
    ”Fat, sour, unhappy, sloppy, and cranky. Jake, he was called. He’d been married three times and all of his wives had left him. Still, he was loyal to Edwin, Dennis, and Patrick. They’d been good friends and if they’d all stayed together he wouldn’t be in this mess.”
    ”Please tell us that he knew the ‘hanger-on,’ ” Robert begged.
    ”He did. I found him in a seedy office a few blocks away. His name was Mario. He probably has no home and sleeps in the back room of his office. I suspect he has grown-up gang ties and keeps a very low profile. His desk was magnificent, but the chair he offered me was in tatters. When he heard that Edwin McBride was murdered, he laughed. Said he deserved it. He was a Goody Two-shoes. Claimed he hadn’t seen or heard from him in many years.”
    ”You got a fingerprint, didn’t you?” Robert asked. ”I’d like him to be the perpetrator.”
    ”Why would he be, except that he didn’t like Edwin? But I did get a fingerprint anyway.”
    ”How?” Lily asked.
    Howard looked a bit embarrassed. ”I bought a big white cup that was spotlessly clean. And I’d only touched the handle. As I was leaving, I asked if he could fill it. There was a pot of coffee brewing on a table. He told me to help myself, but I faked a sudden cramp in my calf and shoved it near him.”
    ”Brilliant,” Robert exclaimed.
    ”Not brilliant at all. Sheer good luck. He picked the cup up in both hands and filled it. I sent it off for fingerprints this morning.”
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Tuesday, May 2
     
    IN SPITE OF ROBERT’S thinking getting a fingerprint on a coffee cup was brilliant, Howard knew that the most he could find out was whether Mario, the last man he interviewed, had a criminal record. He was unlikely to have anything to do with Edwin McBride’s murder. Not after all those years had passed.
    It was remotely possible that Mario knew Edwin lived in Voorburg. Jake had been in touch with Mrs. McBride and she knew where her son was. Jake could have told Mario. Jake must have been occasionally in touch with Mario to know his office address.
    But the fingerprints wouldn’t be useful as a key to the swastika painted on Mr. Kurtz’s window. That was a completely unrelated crime.
    Meanwhile, Howard was looking forward to the arrival of his new deputy, Ron Parker. Walker had made Ralph leave his uniform behind. Ralph was hard on clothing. The Voorburg police budget had had to cough up a new uniform a mere three months earlier. Ralph’s old uniform would be too long in the trousers, and too fat around the middle for Parker, but Mr. Kurtz could get it to fit properly. Ralph hadn’t had time to get stains and snags on it.
    Parker took the train and arrived just after noon. He was wearing his old uniform, which really didn’t fit him well either. And the patch on the sleeve identifying him as an officer in the Beacon Police Department could be replaced with Ralph’s old one.
    Walker asked, ”Have you had lunch yet?”
    Parker hadn’t, so Walker took him to Mabel’s. Somehow she’d found good hamburger somewhere and they both stuffed themselves on sandwiches, fried potatoes, and green beans. There was also a pudding. But it had been made with dried milk instead of the real thing and was bland and lumpy.
    Parker, thin and fair-haired, kept his eyes on Walker while they ate. Ron Parker was still astonished that Chief Walker, his idol, had actually wanted to hire him.
    After lunch, he took Parker to Mr. Kurtz to refit Ralph’s uniform to Parker’s slighter stance and replace the patch on the sleeve when the jacket was done. Walker then took his new deputy to his office in town and told him what little he knew about Edwin McBride’s death. He explained that he’d already interviewed McBride’s old gang of friends and his one enemy. He invited Parker to go over the notes he’d taken.
    ”I don’t like the sound of this Mario guy,” Parker said. ”Couldn’t Jake have told him where McBride lived?”
    ”He could have. But I doubt it. Jake must have known that Mario held a deep dislike of McBride. I doubt that the dislike was enough to send him up here after so many years.”
    They left it at that for a while, and Walker told Parker about the