LUDIC LOG

The Chief Inspector limped in at noon. He'd hit the booze already, you could tell from the way his stumpy little legs bore that long cool frame, like two children carrying a plate glass window across the road. "Artificially flavored," we used to joke when he wasn't in earshot (the old bastard still could hear clothes rustle in the middle of a gunfight); "contains no fruit juice". It was a mean defensive crack; we knew we'd never be as good as he was, so we hid our jealousy in the only kind of smart he wasn't.

"Anything new come in on that Lemon case, kid?" Kid. I was 43 with a pair of busted marriages and a wall full of citations, but I'd always be "kid" to him. I never corrected him, either; the Taj Mahal doesn't tell the Great Wall of China that it's pretty old, too.

"Nothing, Chief. We had Louie Bloo in here again today, and I think he knows we've gone cold on the whole case. He's not even pretending to be afraid anymore."

"Goddamn frog bastard! We could nail him on morals charges or trafficking in a fucking Jel-Sert minute. I'd like to wring his neck by that fruity cravat."

"Should I pull him tomorrow? We could get him on anything."

"Anything but murder, kid. And that's all we want him for, and..."

And he didn't do it. Neither of us say it, because we've said it before, a million times. We're tired of saying who didn't do it. We've each got a month's salary worth of manila folders on our desks full of people who didn't to it. I'm near my breaking point; I can't take hot climates, or I would have requested a transfer a long time ago.

"I'm starting to wear out on this one, Chief, I gotta be honest. We just keep going over it again and again and..."

His eyes are little black bullet-points. His mouth is a sliver, a slit, a flaw in the seal. He raises a raspy voice that's got an edge like an ice scraper. "And we'll keep going over it again and again! This is murder, kid, not a goddamn stolen bicycle! This guy Lemon had a family. We owe them more than 'hey, sorry about that, just go get another one'. So again: what about the spic?"

I winced, but the Inspector was from the old school. You could no more convince him to be p.c. than you could convince him to start measuring the temperature in Kelvin. "He's got a rap sheet as long as his last name, and he knifed up a prostie just after coming to the States, but he's got a water-tight alibi. Half the fucking whorehouse saw him getting eaten that night."

"How about the egghead?"

"There were professional issues. He really slagged out Lemon in the journals for cribbing some of his research, but for Christ's sake, he's almost 80 years old. He can hardly get out of his study, let alone carve someone right out of existence like that."

"Sure. He's also got no history, no money problems and a wife who loves him. Must be nice. Tell me why we can't bring in Alexander."

This hurt me, because I personally thought Alex was our man. I could feel it in my head, aching my teeth like a sugar buzz, that he was the one who sliced up Lemon. And I couldn't prove a fucking thing.

"He's guilty as sin, Chief. I know it. But..."

"But the public loves him, he's got enough political clout to bust you down to writing traffic tickets in the frozen vegetable aisle, and most importantly, you got jack shit on him but a feeling. What about the woman in question?"

"She's nuts, but not that nuts. She's quiet nuts, crying nuts, not stabbing and burning nuts. I can dig what the deceased saw in her; she's tasty, a real looker. But that kind of crazy is just trouble. If he handn't been at her place he wouldn't have gotten cut up."

"But?"

I sighed. Bastard won't be happy unless he hears me sigh. "But she didn't do it. She's a factor, but not the perp. She's clean as a bean. Besides, if we bring her in, the public will tear our heads off. Might as well arrest that little orphan and her dog."

This time I got the sigh. He leaned back in his chair, a rickety old wooden thing that was probably here when he first got transferred to the Freezer. He put his tiny black wireframe glasses up on that never-ending forehead of his and stared at the cold white ceiling. He had the look of an old man who's tired of defeat and hungry for quiet.

"Keep looking, kid. That's all we can do in this job, is keep looking and keep asking. Someone out there knows why there's only six zippy flavors instead of seven. And I'd rather try all six than be carried by twelve."