Scenarios - A Collection of Nameless Detective Stories Read Free

Colly Babcock a job when he was paroled from San Quentin.
    Colly had worked in the warehouse, and his immediate supervisor was a man I had never met named Harlin. I went through a set of swing doors opposite the main entrance, down a narrow, dark passage screened on both sides. On my left when I emerged into the warehouse was a long service counter; behind it were display shelves, and behind them long rows of bins that stretched the length and width of the building. Straight ahead, through an open doorway, I could see the loading dock and a yard cluttered with soil pipe and other supplies. On my right was a windowed office with two desks, neither occupied; an old man in a pair of baggy brown slacks, a brown vest and a battered slouch hat stood before a side counter under the windows.
    The old man didn't look up when I came into the office. A foul-smelling cigar danced in his thin mouth as he shuffled papers. I cleared my throat and said, "Excuse me."
    He looked at me then, grudgingly. "What is it?"
    "Are you Mr. Harlin?"
    "That's right."
    I told him who I was and what I did. I was about to ask him about Colly when a couple of guys came into the office and one of them plunked himself down at the nearest desk. I said to Harlin, "Could we talk someplace private?"
    "Why? What're you here about'?"
    "Colly Babcock," I said.
    He made a grunting sound, scribbled on one of his papers with a pencil stub and then led me out onto the dock. We walked along there, past a warehouseman loading crated cast-iron sinks from a pallet into a pickup truck, and up to the wide, doubled-door entrance to an adjoining warehouse.
    The old man stopped and turned to me. "We can talk here."
    "Fine. You were Colly's supervisor, is that right?"
    "I was."
    "Tell me how you felt about him."
    "You won't hear anything bad, if that's what you're looking for."
    "That's not what I'm looking for."
    He considered that for a moment, then shrugged and said, "Colly was a good worker. Did what you told him, no fuss. Quiet sort, kept to himself mostly."
    "You knew about his prison record?"
    "I knew. All of us here did. Nothing was ever said to Colly about it, though. I saw to that."
    "Did he seem happy with the job?"
    "Happy enough," Harlin said. "Never complained, if that's what you mean."
    "No friction with any of the other men?"
    "No. He got along fine with everybody."
    A horn sounded from inside the adjoining warehouse and a yellow forklift carrying a pallet of lavatories came out. We stepped out of the way as the thing clanked and belched past.
    I asked Harlin, "When you heard about what happened to Colly last night — what was your reaction?"
    "Didn't believe it," he answered. "Still don't. None of us do."
    I nodded. "Did Colly have any particular friend here? Somebody he ate lunch with regularly — like that?"
    "Kept to himself for the most part, like I said. But he stopped with Sam Biehler for a beer a time or two after work; Sam mentioned it."
    "I'd like to talk to Biehler, if it's all right."
    "Is with me," the old man said. He paused, chewing on his cigar. "Listen, there any chance Colly didn't do what the papers say he did?"
    "There might be. That's what I'm trying to find out."
    "Anything I can do," he said, "you let me know."
    "I'll do that."
    We went back inside and I spoke to Sam Biehler, a tall, slender guy with a mane of silver hair that gave him, despite his work clothes, a rather distinguished appearance.
    "I don't mind telling you," he said, "I don't believe a damned word of it. I'd have had to be there to see it with my own eyes before I'd believe it, and maybe not even then."
    "I understand you and Colly stopped for a beer occasionally?"
    "Once a week maybe, after work. Not in a bar; Colly couldn't go to a bar because of his parole. At my place. Then afterward I'd give him a ride home."
    "What did you talk about?"
    "The job, mostly," Biehler said. "What the company could do to improve things out here in the warehouse. I guess you know the way