True Detective Read Free

reach for the automatic under my jacket. But as they neared the table, I recognized them: Lang and Miller. The mayor's bagmen.
    I didn't know them exactly, but everybody
knew
them: the two Harrys- Harry Lang and Harry Miller, the detectives handpicked by Mayor Cermak to handle the dirty linen. Lang I'd spoken to before; he was a guy about ten years my senior, thirty-seven or eight maybe, and a couple of inches under my six feet, a couple pounds over my 180. He had five-o'clock shadow and coal black hair and cold black eyes and the sort of shaggy eyebrows you don't trust; even the impression of hair was a lie: under the hat his forehead kept going. Miller was forty and fat and five eight, with a blank face and blanker eyes- the kind you can take for stupidity if you aren't careful. He was cleaning off the lenses of his wire-frames with a hanky, the glasses having got fogged up in the cold. His ears stuck out; when he put his glasses on, they stuck out more. The Coke-bottle lenses magnified the blank eyes, and it struck me he looked like an owl- an owl that could kick the crap out of an eagle, that is.
    Before he was a cop, Miller was a bootlegger- one of the Miller Gang, who were West Side Boys. That made it Old Home Week: we were all West Side Boys. Maxwell Street, where my father's stall had been, was where I knew Lana from.
    But I didn't know Lang well enough to merit the old-drinking-pals camaraderie he suggested in his words if not his tone: "Hiya, Red. Heard you hung out here."
    Red wasn't my name. Heller was. Nathan Heller. Nate. Never Red, despite my mother's reddish-brown hair I was earning around.
    "The joint's halfway between Dearborn and LaSalle Street stations." I shrugged. "It's handy for me."
    It was around three in the afternoon, and we had the place pretty much to ourselves: just me, the mayor's front-office dicks, the guy at the door, the guy behind the bar. But it was a cramped, boxlike joint with lots of dark wood and a mirror behind the bar and framed photos everywhere: celebrities and near-celebrities, signatures on their faces, were staring at me.
    So were Lana and Miller.
    "Buy you a cup of coffee?" I said, rising a little. I was a plainclothes officer, working the pickpocket detail, bucking for detective status. These guys were the best-paid detectives in town, sergeants yet, and they maybe didn't deserve respect, exactly, but I knew enough to give them some.
    They made no move to sit down. Lang just stood there, hands in his topcoat pockets, snow brushing his shoulders like dandruff, and rocked on his heels, like a hobbyhorse; but whether it was from nerves, or from boredom, I couldn't say: I could just sense there was something I wasn't being let in on. Miller stood planted there like one of the lions in front of the Art Institute, only meaner-looking. Also, the lions were bronze and he was tarnished copper.
    Then Miller spoke.
    "We need a third" he said. He had a voice like somebody trying to sound tough in a talkie: monotone and slightly off-pitch. It should've been funny. It wasn't.
    "A third what?" I said.
    "A third man," Lang chimed in. "A third player."
    "What's the same?"
    "We'll tell you in the car."
    They both turned toward the door. I was supposed to follow- them, apparently. I grabbed my topcoat and hat.
    The speak was on the corner of Clark and Polk. Out on the street the wind was whipping at package-clutching pedestrians heading for Dearborn Station, which was around the comer and a block down, where I should be getting back to, to protect these shoppers from losing whatever dough they had left after Marshall Field's got through with them. Skirts and overcoats flapped, and everybody walked with heads lowered, watching the pavement, ignoring the occasional panhandler; dry, wind-scattered snow was like confetti being tossed out of the windows during a particularly uninspiring parade. Across the way the R.E.A. Station was busy, trucks pulling in and out, others being loaded up. Four women,