"Let's see the bottle."
The barkeep gave that a little thought and then took a bottle off the
rack and pushed it over the bar. The interne sniffed it, made a face
and said, "There's enough arsenic in there to depopulate New Jersey."
"Arsenic!" the barkeep croaked. "You're crazy! We don't serve nobody no
arsenic here!"
The interne looked at Donovan and me and said, "Call your meat wagon,
lads. This one is beyond us."
He had identification--an Arthur Davis, with nothing at all sinister
in his wallet. The lab men came and there was a lot of activity for
an hour or so and then we padlocked the joint and took the barkeep
downtown with us. His on-the-spot story was simple. Davis had come in
and ordered a drink. The barkeep served it up. Davis knocked it off.
The drink, in turn, knocked Davis off.
The barkeep's name was Timothy Garver. He was a middle-aged cork puller
who had been in the business most of his life. We ran him through R and
I and found him clean. Then we sat him down in the interrogation room
and started digging into him.
"What did you have against Davis?"
Garver looked like a flabby-jowled ghost. His hands shook. "Nothing. So
help me. I never seen the guy before."
"You think we'll swallow that?" Donovan asked. "You think you're
playing with school kids? Telling us you poison a guy you never saw
before?"