Riggs is Here | Page 2

need a guy like that."
Carey threw the pictures down on the desk top. "Listen! I've told you before--"
"I've got more than that." Tommy picked out four other pictures, thrust them into Carey's hand. "Look at those." Each was a fingerprint with its classification written in ink on the corner of the photograph.
"Those are yours," Tommy said. "I got them off a beer glass you drank out of at Goldie's. There are only four of them," he apologized, "because when you were drinking, you held your little finger up."
Carey took a deep breath. As he looked at Tommy Riggs his thin lips reluctantly spread in a smile. "You're crazy as hell, kid. We don't give a damn about all this stuff. That's the worry of the cops down at headquarters." He opened his desk and drew out some papers. "No, Riggs, I can't do anything for you now."
"You never know when it'll come in handy," Tommy warned. "I'm good at lots of other things besides." He took a red notebook out of his pocket. "Now just take a--"
Carey shook his head. "No, kid, nothing doing. You better beat it now. I'm busy."
"O. K." Tommy stood up and grinned. "I wanted to show you how good I was at shadowing. I tailed you all day yesterday, and you didn't even know it."
"You what!"
"Sure!" Tommy said, talking fast, now, before he got sent out. "All morning you didn't do anything--that is you stayed here. Then you went out and had lunch at the Miramar. I got the times and everything." He tapped the notebook "After that you went down to Jones and Turk streets. It was easy following you there. I live just a couple of blocks from there."
A frown grew deep between Carey's black eyebrows. He sat perfectly motionless in his chair while Tommy went on:
"You met a guy in a beer joint there, a little guy with a broken nose and a screwy way of jerking up the side of his mouth. I'd never seen him before, but you talked to him quite a time in a booth. Then you went over to the Freeman Warehouse and talked to Pop Dillon, the watchman there. After that--"
"Sit down a minute, Riggs." Carey tipped his head toward the chair. "Let's see that notebook." He thumbed through the leaves slowly, studying the report of everything he had done the previous day. When he looked up, his mouth was a tight line.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he snapped. "The slugs outta my gun, my fingerprints--and then shadowing me! You crazy fool, if--"
"Listen, mister!" The grin went off Tommy's face. "There's no call to get sore about it. All I wanted was to show you."
"Oh, sit down!" Carey grunted. "You say you live near the--down by Turk and Jones streets."
"Sure! You know Ryan's place just up the street from Shanty Malone's?"
"Yeah, I know." Carey picked up a pencil and traced deep lines with it on his desk blotter. "I suppose you've blown off your yap all over the place about following me?"
Tommy shook his head. "Why should I? And anyhow, what difference would it make?"
"Quite a lot, kid." Carey straightened up in his chair and smiled. To me, none at all. To you, quite a lot." He tapped the red notebook. "I sorta like the job you did in here. You might make a good shamus yet, Riggs. I was wondering if you could keep your mouth shut. A cop's got to do that!"
"You mean you can find a place for me?"
Carey pulled thoughtfully at the end of his nose. "Not yet, Riggs. I'll keep this and look it over." He slipped the notebook in his pocket. "If you can convince me that you know how to keep your trap closed, I'll begin to think that you've got the makings."
Tommy's grin came back. "That's easy! And I can do more than that, Mr. Carey. I can work on some case on the outside and show you--"
"Yeah, you do that. And in the meantime, I'll be keeping a check on you to see just how good you are. A guy that blabs everything he knows is no good to me."
"Sure!" Tommy's grin was wide. "I knew you'd wake up one of these days, Mr. Carey."
Tommy Riggs got his chance the night of that same day--a chance to crack a case on the outside. About midnight, he was at the cluttered desk in his room. Mendhom's "Psychological Studies of Criminal Minds," open before him to the third chapter, made his eyelids droop.
Sirens and the clanging bell of a fire truck brought his head up with a jerk. When they stopped not more than a block or two away, he jumped to his feet, stared for a moment at Mendhom's "Psychological Studies," grimaced, and grabbed his