Read Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 for Free Online Page B

Detective Harry Hansen would not.
    On the force for over twenty years, better than half of them working out of Homicide Division, Hansen stepped out from the rider’s side and just seemed to keep coming: tall, tanned, lanky, in his late forties, he had an oblong, deeply grooved face with deceptively sleepy eyes, a long blunt nose and a pursed kiss of a mouth. The big redheaded Dane—who supervised most significant L.A. homicide investigations—had a reputation as the most dapper cop in the department, which his wardrobe this morning lived up to: tailored dark blue suit, white-and-shades-of-blue-striped silk tie, and dark-banded powder-blue snapbrim fedora.
    The fedora—probably a fifty-dollar number—was his trademark, and he was seldom seen out of one, even indoors—in part, it was said, because he was balding. The newspapers liked to call Hansen “Mr. Homicide,” a sobriquet rumored to have been suggested by Hansen himself; but what he was called on the street, by both cops and crooks, was Harry the Hat.

    I didn’t recognize his partner, who’d been driving. Whoever he was, this plainclothes dick was not the second most dapper cop on the force: a prematurely gray, thirtyish, round-faced, chunky character in an off-the-rack slept-in-looking brown suit with red-and-white-dotted tie, with a rumpled brown fedora shoved back on his head, revealing a hairline that had receded to the next county.
    The Hat scowled, glancing down and around at the cigarette butts and spent black flashbulbs littering the street and sidewalk. Maybe because his eyes were lowered, he didn’t notice me, as he and his partner were ushered to the bisected body by that University Station lieutenant who, seeing Hansen, almost certainly realized he had just been usurped of his case.
    Along the way, Lieutenant Haskins—slender, nondescript, his gray suit flapping in the breeze—introduced himself to the city’s most famous homicide detective.
    “I’m the one who called Captain Donahoe and requested backup,” Haskins said.
    Hansen’s sleepy eyes snapped awake at the suggestion that he was “backup.”
    “I don’t much care who called Captain Donahoe,” Hansen said, his tone as gentle as his words were sharp, nodding toward the white shape in the weeds. “What I do care about is, who called this in?”
    “An unidentified female.”
    “That makes two unidentified females we have on our hands.”
    The lieutenant shrugged. “The anonymous woman caller just said somebody was lying in the weeds, and needed attending to.”
    “I would call that an understatement,” Hansen said, and ambled to the edge of the sidewalk. His chunky partner followed him, and when Hansen squatted to regard the corpse, the partner squatted beside him, as if their entire relationship were a game of Simon Says.
    Like Aggie Underwood, Harry the Hat had seen damn near everything; but even from my vantage point in the street, I could see his stony mask slip. The chunky cop at Harry’s side was scowling in disgust.

    “Christ, Harry,” he was saying, waving away the flies.
    “Somebody spent his sweet time on her, Brownie,” Hansen said to his partner. “Ever see a face cut up like that?”
    “Hell no.”
    “That grin carved in her face? Cut clean through the cheeks. . . . Somebody made a real hobby out of her.”
    The Hat rose; so did “Brownie.”
    Lieutenant Haskins said, “I already called in the lab boys. They should be on the way.”
    The Hat shot him a look. “Who did you talk to?”
    “Lieutenant Jones—Lee Jones.”
    “Call again. Get Ray Pinker over here.”
    Pinker was chief of the LAPD crime lab.
    “Yes, sir,” Haskins said, and went off to use the police radio.
    The Hat called out to him. “Don’t use the radio! We got enough bystanders and meddling cops and damn reporters, already. Where’s the nearest pay phone?”
    “There’s one on Crenshaw.”
    “Good. . . . Hurry back.”
    The lieutenant paused, as if trying to find the