Page 168 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Jury-rigged

earlier and had been out like a light all night. Why did he have trouble
sleeping?”
“He told us he had been keeping odd hours the previous few days
owing to the World Cup soccer games broadcast from the Eastern
Hemisphere via satellite, and that taking a strong dose of Lethion
usually reset his internal clock following such occasions.”
Labelle frowned. “I did not think he was an avid sports fan.”
“He’s not. The phone tap indicates he was probably running a
sports book from his living room. Most of the conversations before
and after the matches were in code. We haven’t broken it yet, and no
money was directly involved. The banker must be a third party, or
one of his callers.”
“I will study the calls—they are recorded and identified by time,
date and phone number?”
“Yes.” I knew she fancied herself a cryptographer; perhaps that
would keep her occupied while I was preparing my speech for the
press conference with the chief and the mayor.
“And the urine sample was positive for the drug, and consistent
with the dosage and time administered?”
“Right again. The man watching his residence saw the lights go out
around midnight and detected no movement around the perimeter,
straight through the wee small hours until I roused him.”
“The plainclothesman was not relieved during that time?”
I enforced patience on my facial muscles and vocal cords. “We did
not have enough coverage then to afford the luxury of putting more
than one man on surveillance of a suspect who spent most of his free
time in his living room in front of the television.”
She went on to the next Simulian after almost sowing seeds of
doubt in my mind about the reliability of anyone of lesser endurance
than herself. Anyway, Pershing could not have shrugged off that
much soporific.
“Rommel Simulian didn’t need to be watched that night: he was in
jail. Did you have any clue that a patrol officer stopping his car for a
missing rear license plate light would haul him in for ignoring about a
dozen parking tickets over the past three months?”
“Not at that particularly opportune moment for him. Most of
those violations occurred outside the courthouse during Sherman’s
trial. We didn’t want to distract the press by calling attention to such

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