In the last episode of Special Delivery, Rocky and James Wong returned to the Hoffman mansion to find it swarming with police cars. Not only that, but Rocky was wanted for questioning in a murder. The following takes place in the afternoon of April 26, 1949:
The guys in the white coats backed up a roomy wagon on the farthest end of the Hoffman's driveway, so close to the front steps that several people had to climb around the back end to get off the porch. At the far end, the police and medics scooped up their bagged-up prize and placed him on a cart. While all this was going on, the officer led me by the arm across the wet grass, growling quietly to himself about the current weather situation.
“Rocky Stone,” he said, finally, as if that summed up his thoughts.
“That's the name on my driver's license. What of it?”
He gripped my shoulder with a strong hand, stopping me in my tracks, and stood still at the edge of the grass for a moment, watching as the medics rolled the victim down the steps and into the back of the ambulance. He grinned at some thought rattling around inside his head. “You got nothing to worry about, not if there's any justice.”
“Of course I don't,” I replied. “I haven't been here for hours. Ask anybody.”
The officer glanced over at my car. He looked disappointed, almost like he wanted me to be guilty. “Have it your way, but you got nothin' to worry about, like I said.”
I begged to differ. One of the plainclothes cops loading the remains into the ambulance was Lieutenant Phillip Hardacre of Homicide. No doubt Hardacre was in charge and no doubt the meeting the officer was hustling me off to was with him, and if that was the case I had plenty to worry about. For years I've been dealing with Lieutenant Hardacre and I don't like him and he doesn't like me. He's one of those by-the-book types who leads with his chin, the kind you can spot from across the room and know he's a cop.
The ambulance rolled away revealing the man himself. He was wearing a wrinkled, dark blue police-issue overcoat and a black fedora that appeared to be one size too small. Even from this distance, I could see the sneer on his face as soon as he locked eyes with me. His shoes angrily split the puddles in the pavement. He was on top of me in a second and a half.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” he asked me.
“Nice to see you too, Phil.”
His eyes quickly rolled back and he blinked it off. “Your car's here. A body's on the porch with three holes in it. Two and two makes four, Stone.”
“Unless I have an alibi,” I pointed out. “Then two and two makes zero. I've been around town with James Wong all day. Go and talk to him. He's behind the wheel of a roadster just outside the barrier.”
A thought crept into Hardacre's head, turning his eyes skyward. “Wong, ah? That figures.”
“Why?”
“The stiff's Chinese, that's why,” he barked.
He was right: that figured. All the players were returning to the field now that Il Pollice Nero had done her work on Sid Hoffman and it was time for the real game to begin. If I had to take a guess, the victim was one of the Communist faction we had chased around the day before, and if I had to take another, he was there to get his hands on the statue. But someone beat him to it, and left him with a belly-full of lead.
“Forced entry?” I asked.
Hardacre nodded absently and eyed up the front door. Then he thought about what I said and twisted his around and looked at me. “What's on your mind?”
“There was a statue and a crate sitting in the foyer when Wong and I were here this morning. Go ahead and surprise me and tell me it's still there where we left it.”
He looked at me like I just stepped off a spaceship or the bus from Cucamonga or something. “I'm not gonna surprise you,” he said.
Who has taken the statue, and who murdered the man on the porch of the Hoffman mansion? Find out in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone!
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