Free American Quartet by Warren Adler

building, a fucking public building filled with tourists, then we all belong in the shithouse.”
    He sucked in a deep breath and tried to calm himself. His hands were still trembling.
    “Tourists are the business-blood of this city. Next to government, the second biggest industry,” he said almost in a normal voice. He was no longer looking at Fiona. It was obviously the way the chief had put it to him.
    Because of the pressure from upstairs, the case had resulted in confusion and paranoia within their department. There were other open cases, but the glare of publicity was on them, and the eggplant, angry and frustrated, had passed it on down, especially to Teddy and her.
    It was his special way of coping with upstairs pressure. When things got too hot, he had to perform in front of his available underlings, focusing his anger on specific cops. It was obvious that this brief meeting was called for their benefit alone, a kind of public trial.
    “I hate mysteries,” the eggplant shouted to the assembled group, forcing her to tune him in again. What he also meant was that it was bad for the percentages. Last year they had closed more cases. Soon they, the ubiquitous white enemy, would blame it on the fact that too many blacks were running the show, even though they had deliberately kept Fiona as the point lady. Now the eggplant was actually ducking press conferences and had changed his home number.
    “In an election year we have to be especially responsive to the community,” he continued, his eyes wandering, deliberately avoiding Fiona’s and Teddy’s. “And we live in a society where everyone craps on cops. It’s a national pastime. That’s why we need to maintain a good public relations attitude and set up priorities.” Finally, his gaze rested on Fiona. “And my priority is to pour our maximum effort on those cases directly relating to large bodies of people. Do I make myself clear?”
    Fiona nodded eagerly. It was the expected response. Apparently Teddy had been less demonstrative, and the eggplant turned to him with visible fury.
    “There is a tendency around here for long-termers to take things for granted, waiting around to draw retirement. I won’t stand for that. Everybody puts out to the end, down to the last second of the last minute of the last day. You all get that.” The all was superfluous. Everyone knew whom he meant.
    Poor Teddy. He didn’t have the protection of her sex. He became inert, fear-ridden, and it showed.
    “You can’t leave me hanging by my thumbs,” the eggplant had shouted at him after the meeting. The door of his office was open. He wanted everyone to hear.
    She had read and reread her notes, badgering Flannagan at the lab and Hadley in ballistics. Had they missed something? They interviewed eyewitnesses again and again. There simply were no clues. She couldn’t come up with a single theory. Their trips to Hagerstown had led nowhere.
    As she had predicted, the hapless Damato was savaged in the press as a pervert and the nymphet, Celia Baines, had attained a dubious notoriety. But there was nothing concrete, except the blank walls that ended every investigative path.
    The eggplant had tried brutally to force the issue. It was already late July and he had begun to feel the first sharp needles of pressure. The press had turned ghoulish, and had exaggerated the episode. The Post had run a series on crimes in public buildings, and a television station did a three-part series about Washington tourists who had died under mysterious circumstances, going back over more than 150 years of history.
    The District government, meaning the mayor and his staff, already paranoid in a presidential year, saw a conspiracy to hound them out of getting their just budget rewards. As always, the police hierarchy saw the media campaign as an attempt to prove their incompetence on solely racial grounds. The chief and his major deputies were all black.
    His superiors accused the eggplant of creating the