Read 1979 - You Must Be Kidding for Free Online

see much worse than that one,’ Lepski said.
    He studied the prints in the light of the moon. The girl wasn’t pretty. Her face was thin, her mouth hard. A girl, Lepski decided, who knew all the answers, and had had a real tough life.
    Dusty Lucas, Detective 3rd Grade, joined him. Dusty was around twenty-four, massively built, with flat features of a boxer as he was: the best heavyweight of the police boxing team.
    ‘Let’s go, Dusty,’ Lepski said and got in his car. Dusty sat beside him. Lepski drove along the hard, white sand until he could see the campfire and the gas flares, lighting the tents and cabins. He pulled up.
    ‘We’ll walk from here.’
    The sound of a guitar and drums were soft. A man was singing.
    ‘Why the hell Mayor Hedley doesn’t clear this scum out of the city beats me,’ Lepski growled. ‘Phew! What a stink!’
    ‘I guess they have to live somewhere,’ Dusty said, reasonably. ‘Better for them to be here than in the city.’
    Lepski snorted. He walked briskly to where a group of around fifty young people were sitting on the sand, around a big camp fire. They were of any age from sixteen to twenty-five. Most men were bearded, some with hair to their shoulders. The girls too followed a pattern: jeans, Tshirts, hair mostly cut in a deep fringe, dirty.
    The man, singing, was lean and tall. His face and head were so covered with thick curly hair it was hard to say if he was good looking or not. He spotted the two detectives as they came out of the shadows, and he abruptly stopped singing. He was seated on an orange crate. As he got slowly to his feet, a hundred or so eyes regarded Lepski.
    Somewhere in the darkness, a voice said, ‘Fuzz.’
    There was a long moment of silence and stillness, then the tall, lean man put down his guitar and walked around the seated hippies and paused before Lepski.
    ‘I run this camp,’ he said. ‘Chet Miscolo. Something wrong?’
    ‘Yeah,’ Lepski said. ‘Detective 1st Grade Lepski. Detective Lucas.’
    Miscolo nodded to Dusty who nodded back.
    ‘What’s the trouble?’
    Lepski handed him the three polaroid prints.
    ‘Know her?’
    Miscolo moved to a gas flare, regarded the prints, then looked at Lepski.
    ‘Sure, Janie Bandler. Looks like she’s dead.’
    A sigh went through the group who were now all standing.
    ‘Yeah,’ Lepski said. ‘Murdered and ripped wide open.’
    Again a sigh went through the group.
    Kiscolo handed back the prints.
    ‘She arrived last night,’ he said. ‘She told me she was only staying a few days: had a job waiting for her in Miami.’ He rubbed his hand across his mouth. ‘I’m sorry. She seemed okay to me.’ He spoke regretfully, and Lepski, watching him, decided he was sorry.
    ‘Let’s have all you know about her, Chet.’ Aware of the tension in the group, Lepski sat on the sand. Dusty followed his example, sitting close to the gas flare, taking out his notebook.
    This was a good move. The group hesitated, then they all sat down.
    The smell of frying sausages and body dirt was a little overpowering to both detectives.
    ‘Want a sausage, Fuzz?’ Miscolo asked, dropping on the sand by Lepski’s side, ‘we are all ready to eat.’
    ‘Sure,’ Lepski said, ‘and don’t call me fuzz . . . call me Lepski . . . right?’
    A fat girl forked two sausages from the pan on the fire, wrapped them in paper and handed them to Lepski.
    ‘None for this fuzz,’ Lepski said, not wanting Dusty’s notebook to get greasy. ‘He’s getting to fat.’
    There was a faint laugh around the group and the tension eased. Dusty made a comic grimace.
    Lepski bit into his sausage and munched.
    ‘Good. You folks know how to eat.’
    ‘We get by,’ Miscolo said. ‘Who killed her?’
    Lepski finished the sausage. He told himself he must talk to Carroll about cooking sausages. Carroll was a non-expert cook, but a tryer. She constantly produced elaborate dishes that were always disasters.
    ‘That’s what we want to know,’ Lepski