Reversible Error by Robert K. Tanenbaum

of the car, a white '68 Pontiac, leaning against the door, her left hand drawn protectively up to her face. Except for the blood and the smell, she might have been sleeping next to Daddy on a long car trip.
    "When did you find her?" Art Dugman asked the patrol officer.
    "About seven-thirty this morning," the young cop replied. "A trucker spotted the car when he came in to make a delivery and called it in. When we got here, we saw it was the girl in your citywide, and we called you."
    The killer had stashed his car on one of the short streets that lead to the Hudson River just south of the Thirtieth Street Terminal. There were truckers all around, standing impatiently beside their rigs, barred from the loading docks by the police vehicles and the portable barriers that had been set up around the crime scene. The crime-scene-unit people were poking through the car, taking photographs, and collecting anything that looked like evidence. Dugman doubted they would find much.
    After speaking briefly to the medical examiner at the scene, he walked back to his own car. Maus was in the front seat, talking to someone on the police radio. He hung up the receiver and said, "The car's stolen. Belongs to a Hector Baldwin, lives up on St. Nick. He parked it at six-thirty last night and missed it when he wanted to go to work this morning. What's it look like?"
    Dugman leaned against the car and chewed his lip. What did it look like? From one angle, another dead whore down by the docks. Not that unusual. Whores went into cars all the time, worked in cars. There was an extensive trade in quick hose jobs for businessmen on the way home. Sometimes they got unlucky, got picked up by a John whose particular fancy was not on any girl's menu.
    "You think it was Slo Mo?" Maus asked.
    Dugman looked up. "No. Slo Mo didn't have no cause to kill this girl, and if he did, he wouldn't have stole no car in Harlem to shoot her in."
    "So what, then? A perv? Robbery?"
    "Possible, but I don't think so. There's something too clean about it. Girl was shot in the head point-blank with a small-caliber weapon. She's fully dressed, or as dressed as she ever got, with no real obvious marks on her besides the shot to the head. It don't sing perv, do it?"
    Maus shrugged. "The fuck should I know? I'm not a perv. The robbery angle any better?"
    Dugman shook his head. "It sucks too. Her bag's missing, yeah, but I been trying to think of another case where a guy robbed a whore, killed her, and left her in the car. It doesn't figure. Why not dump her and drive away? It also means he needs another car. What's he gonna do, walk back from the river at night? Call a cab?"
    Maus considered these questions for a moment. He knew Dugman had already figured it out, was waiting for Maus to catch up. Dugman always did this, would always diddle with him like that. Maus didn't mind playing the straight man. Maus thought Dugman was the best detective in the city, and understood that this was part of his own education. Playing the honky fool was the tuition.
    Maus said slowly, "You're saying like maybe it was a… a hit-not just any whore, but this one, because… because we wanted to talk to her on the other thing?"
    Dugman's pouchy face broke into a broad smile. "Yeah! That's thinking, Maus!" He poked his head into the back of the car, where Jeffers sat calmly reading the News. "You hear that, Mack? I told you we get a white boy on the squad, we start solvin' some crime!"
    Jeffers looked up from his paper. "He can't dance, though."
    "I can too!" said Maus indignantly.
    "Shit, you can," responded Jeffers. "It took me six months to teach you to clap on the off beat."
    Dugman raised his hands, palms out. "Brothers," he said, his voice assuming orotund tones, "this is not a time to be confusin' ourselves with racial disharmony, discord, and dissensions. Rather, it is a time to rededicate and remotivate our own selves to the cause."
    Jeffers said, "Hear him tell it!"
    Maus said, "Yes,