“Yes?” Leland said to another.

“I wanted to ask Captain Richardson how well he thought you were handling the case.”

“If there’s a citation awarded in this case, Joe will get it,” Richardson said. “Excuse me, I have things to do.” He turned upstairs.

“What do you think of Joytown, Lieutenant?”

“A housing project is an idea I’ve heard kicked around.”

“Do you think Mr. Howard will sue you?”

“We’ll have to see what happens,” Leland said, and smiled.

“A personal question, Lieutenant. We’ve been led to understand that there’s some sort of difficulty between you and your wife.”

“You’ve been led wrong—very wrong.” Unnerved, he looked at the others. They, too, thought that the question had been improper. “Is there anything else?”

“No. Thanks for your help, Lieutenant.”

Pictures were taken, then Leland went upstairs. Richardson was waiting for him. He had had to get away; he had seen that he didn’t know anything about dealing with reporters. He wanted to see how they worked over what Leland said about Davis.

The afternoon papers gave it front-page coverage, and one ran a picture of Davis beside a picture of one of the buffs of the Fifth, a simple-minded man who had been loitering in the station for thirty-five years. JOB STEALING? ran the headline, and under both photographs, “What I do is I go for coffee and stuff, and sometimes I sweep a little. The cops are nice guys. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t help out.” By four o’clock the story as it was running in all the papers was hanging on the bulletin board in the squad room, but at that hour Leland, Dan Curran, and Dave Schoenstein were at the Springfield Street YMCA, questioning the desk clerk, Frederick Jensen, about the man he thought they were looking for. The man was a regular member of that branch and had given as his residence, a year and a half before when he had joined, an address in Westlake which the detectives knew was a rooming house.

“He used to come three or four times a week, just for the weights. I’m not always behind the desk. I saw him in there. He looks a lot shorter than he is because he’s so wide. Very well built. A quiet fellow. One of the other members spoke to me about him once, saying that his personal effects were dirty. We don’t like to speak to the men about things like that if we can help it.”

Leland looked at a sign over the desk that read Swearing is lip filth. “Can you recall anything else?”