Fat Ollie's Book: A Novel of the 87th Precinct

by Ed McBain

  “Gee, I really don’t know,” Foster said. “You think it’s cause I called him a racist pig?”

  “Now why’d you go say something like that?” Carella asked. His eyes, his faint smile betrayed the knowledge that Lester Henderson had been called this before, in many variations on the theme, the most recent one from a state senator, who’d called him “Hitler without a mustache.”

  “It’s a known fact that he was targeting Diamondback for extinction,” Foster said. “If I’m not mistaken, Detective Carella, you yourself investigated a case just recently where the drug problem up here played an important role. Well, Henderson was all for toughening the state’s already Draconian drug laws, laws that are methodically clearing young black people off the streets…”

  Here comes a speech, Kling thought.

  “…and throwing them into already overcrowded prisons that are costing taxpayers a fortune to maintain. Instead of helping these youths to become productive members of a thriving community, we are instead turning them into criminals. I pointed this out to Lester, and I casually mentioned that only a racist pig would pursue a course as politically motivated as the one he was promoting. That was when he tried to pop me.”

  “Small wonder,” Carella said. “So where were you around ten-thirty Monday morning, Gabe?”

  “Oh dear,” Foster said.

  “Oh dear indeed.”

  “I fear I was asleep in my own little beddie-bye, all by my little self.”

  “Which would have been where?”

  “1112 Roosevelt Av. Apartment 6B.”

  “And what time did you getout of your little beddie-bye?”

  “I came to the office here at eleven. I had a scheduled eleven-thirty interview with a reporter.”

  “What time did you leave the apartment?” Kling asked.

  “Around ten-thirty. Whenever the weather is good, I walk to work.”

  “So you weren’t anywhere near King Memorial at ten-thirty Monday morning, is that right?”

  “Nowhere near it at all.”

  “Be nice if someone had been in bed with you,” Carella said.

  “Yes, it’s always nice to have someone in bed with you,” Foster said.

  “But no one was.”

  “No one at all.”

  “What’dyou say your address was again?” Kling asked.

  “1112 Roosevelt.”

  “That’s between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s further uptown.”

  “Near King Memorial?”

  “A few blocks away, yes.”

  “Where exactly?” Carella asked.

  “Between Thirty-first and -second.”

  “The Hall’s on St. Sab’s, corner of Thirtieth,” Kling said.

  “So it is,” Foster said.

  “If you’d walked one block over, you could’ve passed it on your way to work.”

  “IfI’d walked one block over,” Foster said. “But I came straight down Roosevelt. Same way I always do.”

  “You walk the ten blocks down to Twenty-first here…”

  “Yes, and then I walk the block crosstown to St. Sab’s.”

  “Nice walk.”

  “If the weather’s nice, yes.”

  “It certainly was nice Monday,” Kling said.

  “It certainly was,” Carella said.

  “Fellas, let’s cut the idle bullshit, okay?” Foster said. “You know I didn’t kill that prick, so it doesn’t matterwhere I was Monday morning. I could’ve been home in bed with the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or I could’ve been right outside King Memorial tying my shoelaces. I may have done some foolish things in my lifetime, but killing a man a week after we had a brawl is definitely not one of them.”

  “I tend to agree,” Carella said.

  “Me, too,” Kling said.

  “But we have to ask,” Carella said.

  “You know how it is,” Kling said.

  “Thanks for your time, Gabe. If you happen to hear anything…”

  “What would I hear?”

  “Well, youdo have your finger on the community pulse. Maybe somebody saw something, heard something, feels it’s his duty to report it to a community leader…”

  “That’s yetmore bullshit,” Foster said. “I’m still a suspect, right?”

  “Teach you to sleep alone,” Carella said.

  5

  TO TELL THEGod’s honest truth, Ollie was more interested in finding whoever had stolen his book than he was in finding whoever had murdered Lester Henderson. Toward that end, he had already coerced the Mobile Crime Unit into coming all the way uptown to dust his car for prints, the operative theory being that the perp hadn’t been wearing gloves on a nice spring day, and had therefore left tell-tale evidence all over the place.

  Sure.

  That was for fiction.

  The MCU boys hadn’t come up with anything at all—which didn’t surprise Ollie, those jackasses—but which still leftsomebody out there who had smashed Ollie’s car window (in plain view of the deaf, dumb, and blind blues standing outside King Memorial, don’t forget) and reached in to unlock the door and run off with Ollie’s precious manuscript. He didn’t think anyone up here knew how to read, so he didn’t suppose they could discern he or she was looking at something written by a police officer, which if it wasn’t returned pronto, could put his or her ass in a sling.

  The dispatch case bearing the manuscript had been a gift from Isabelle two Christmases ago. Like everything else his dumb sister ever gave him, he’d had no use for it until he placed his book inside it to carry to Kinko’s. He figured the only use the thief had for the case was to hock it, so he’d already sent out a flier to all the hock shops in the Eight-Eight and neighboring precincts. Junkies—if indeed a junkie had stolen it—were territorial by nature and basic by instinct.

  In the three months it had taken him to write the book, he had learned a lot about so-called mystery fiction. After he’d thrown away his first feeble attempts atBad Money, he’d started all over again by reading most of the crap on the bestseller list, much of it written by ladies who were not now, nor had ever in their entire lives been cops or private eyes or medical examiners or game wardens or bounty hunters, or any of the other things they professed to be. He then began reading all the book reviews posted on Amazon Dot Com.

  Before he himself got on the Web, he used to think Amazon Dot Com was a very large broad named Dorothy Kahm. Now he knew better. To him, the reviews on this bookselling site seemed like the book reports he had to write when he was in the sixth grade. In fact, the reviews on Amazon seemed to be written by soccer moms who’d never been to school atall, it looked like, who were also not cops or private eyes or anything else, and who weren’t very good writers in the bargain. He wondered why Amazon, presumably in the business of selling books, would post bad reviews about books they were trying to sell, but hey, that wastheir business. Besides, these so-called book reviews were very informative to Ollie.

  What he learned from them was that any book with more than half a dozen characters in it, or more than a single plot line, was too confusing to be understood by some hick down there in Green Beans, Georgia, or out there in Saddle Sores, Texas. The answer was simplicity. Keep it simple. If simpletons were out there reading mystery fiction or detective fiction or crime fiction or thrillers or whatever anyone chose to call these so-called stories, then anybody actually writing the stuff had better learn how to keep it simple. Simplicity for the simpletons.

  Simple.

  So what he’d done was to scrap the literary approach he’d formerly been striving for inBad Money. For example, in the original version of his book, there had been high-flown language like:

  The sound of music came from somewhere inside the apartment. Its noisome beat filled the hallway tremblingly.

  In the next version, Ollie changed this to:

  Loud music hammered the halls.

  Period.

  Simple.

  H
e thought he had found his voice.

  There was no sense trying to explain “voice” to anyone who wasn’t a writer. He had once tried to define it for his jackass sister Isabelle, and she had immediately said, “Oh, are you gonna be a singer now?” To a writer, voice had nothing to do with singing. Voice was as intangible as mist on an Irish bog. Voice was something that came from the very heart and soul. Voice was the essential essence of any novel, its perfume, so to speak. Try explaining that to a jackass like Isabelle.

  And then, all at once, he had a truly brilliant idea.

  In the first version of the book, he had called his lead character Detective/First Grade Oswald Wesley Watts. He had, in fact, described him like this:

  Tall and handsome, broad of shoulder and wide of chest, slender of waist and fleet of foot, Detective “Big Ozzie” Watts, pistol in hand (a nine-millimeter semi-automatic Glock, by the way) climbed the steps to the fourth floor of the reeking tenement and knocked on the door to apartment 4C.

  But after realizing that most of the mysteries on the bestseller list were written byladies, Ollie took an entirely different approach. The revised version of his book started like this:

  I am locked in a basement with $2,700,000 in so-called conflict diamonds, and I just got a run in my pantyhose.

  He had found a voice at last.

  • • •

  IT DID NOT TAKEEmilio Herrera long to realize that he had stumbled upon something very large indeed. He was not talking about the dispatch case itself. He had already sold that for five dollars. He was talking about what was inside the case. What he had just finished reading was a private report to the Police Commissioner from one of his female detectives:

  What he was just about to start reading again, more carefully this time, was an intensely personal account of a massive diamond deal that had gone awry. What he was hoping to discover—if he was smart enough to crack the code—was the location of millions of dollars in so-called conflict diamonds.

  Emilio was a fast reader. One of his best subjects in school, before he dropped out to become a dope addict, was English Literature. It took only a matter of minutes for him to realize that the detective writing the report was using a sort of code known only to herself and the Police Commissioner. For example, when the detective used the word “Rubytown,” Emilio knew right off she was talking about Diamondback, right here where he lived. And no matterwhat she called the city in her report, Emilio knew that Detective Olivia Wesley Watts was talking about this city right here, this big bad city where Emilio was born and raised and corrupted.

  Emilio knew he had been corrupted. That is to say, he knew he was a drug addict. Lots of junkies told you they were not addicted, they could walk away from it anytime they chose, they could take it or leave it alone. But Emilio preferred not lying to himself; he knew he was hooked clear through the bag and back again. He did not start out life planning to become a drug addict. He had not told his mother, “Hey,jefita, you know what I wish to become when I grow up? A drug addict!”

  As a matter of fact, what he wished to become was a baseball player. A second baseman. Instead, he had become a drug addict. That was one of the things you had to watch out for in this city. You could start out wanting to be President of the United States but there were people who had other ideas for you, and all of a sudden you were sniffing your life up your nose. Just like that. One day you were playing ball on the diamond under the bridge near the drive, and the next day you were breaking a car window because you saw a brown leather dispatch case on the back seat and you figured maybe there was dope inside it.

  But, you know…

  It all worked out in the long run, didn’t it?

  Here in Emilio’s hands was the key to millions of dollars. In a way, this was better than winning the lottery. All he had to do was read Detective Watts’s report again and again, backwards and forwards, decipher which code names in the book stood for which real place names in the city, and he would know where the gang in the book had stashed what amounted to $2,700,000 in diamonds before they locked poor Olivia in the basement with a run in her pantyhose, which to tell the truth excited Emilio to read about a girl’s underwear so honestly.

  THE ELECTRICAL GUY’Sname was Peter Handel.

  The rain had stopped and he was playing chess in the park outside Ramsey U downtown when Ollie found him. Both Handel and his chess partner were people who, in Ollie’s estimation, could have stood losing a few pounds. Like giant pandas, the two men hunched over the stone-topped table, pondering their next moves. Not wishing to break their hugely intense concentration, Ollie waited a moment before flashing the tin and introducing himself.

  “I’d like to talk to you privately, Mr. Handel,” he said. “If your friend here doesn’t mind.”

  “I’m three moves away from checkmate,” his friend said.

  Ollie wondered how chess players knew such things.

  “Take a walk around the block,” he suggested. “It’s turning into a nice day.”

  “He’ll figure out my game plan,” the man complained, and waddled off grudgingly.

  Ollie took his place at the chess table. He and Handel sat in dappled sunshine. Women strolled by pushing baby carriages. Across the street, young dealers were selling dope to college students. Ollie wondered where the hell all the cops were in this city.

  “I understand you were in the booth up there when Henderson got shot,” Ollie said.

  “Yeah,” Handel said.

  Over a plaid sports shirt, Handel was wearing a brown woolen cardigan with darker brown buttons, what Ollie’s sister called a “candy-store sweater.” Combined with wide-waled brown corduroy trousers, the ill-fitting sweater made him look exceptionally stout. Ollie wondered why such people didn’t go on diets.

  “Tell me what you saw,” he said.

  “I was following him from stage left, the spot on him all the way. Somebody shot him just as he reached the podium.”

  “Where’d the shots come from, do you know?”

  “Stage right.”

  “What does that mean, stage right, stage left?”

  “The person’s right or left. The person standing on stage.His right or left. Looking out at the audience.”

  “So, if he was approaching the podium from the left…”

  “Hisleft, yes.”

  “You’re saying somebody fired at him as he approached.”

  “Somebody fired from stageright, yes.”

  “How many shots did you hear?”

  “Quite a few.”

  “Five, six?”

  “At least.”

  “Did you see anyone sitting in the balcony?”

  “I wasn’t looking at the balcony. I was looking at the stage. My job was to keep that spot on him.”

  “Are you sure those shots didn’t come from the balcony?”

  “I’m positive. I saw the muzzle flashes.”

  “But not the shooter?”

  “Not the shooter. Just the muzzle flashes. And then he was falling. I kept the spot on him as he fell. Those were my instructions. Keep the spot on him. I kept the spot on him till somebody yelled for me to turn it off.”

  “Who was that, would you know?”

  “No, sir, I would not. I guess it was somebody running the show. So I turned it off. And then somebody turned on the house lights.”

  “When the house lights came on, did you see anybody in the wings?”

  “Nobody. I guess whoever’d done the shooting was gone by then.”

  “Stage right, you say.”

  “Was where I saw the muzzle flashes.” Handel hesitated. Then he said, “It can be confusing. Would you like me to draw a diagram?”

  CARELLA AND KLINGwere waiting for Ollie when he got back to the Eight-Eight’s squadroom at five minutes to three that Wednesday afternoon. Ollie was carrying two white pizza cartons. He opened one of them, shoved it across his desk, said, “This is for you guys, my treat,” and then opened the second carton and began eating even
before they sat down. Kling, who had never seen Ollie eating before, watched in amazement.

  “Something, Sonny Boy?” Ollie asked.

  “Nothing,” Kling said, but he continued shaking his head in wonder.

  It was like a juggling act. With only two hands, Ollie seemed to keep three slices of pizza in constant motion from the box to his mouth. But now, adding to the splendor and mystery of the act, he added a fourth element. As if suddenly growing another hand, he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, and took from it a folded sheet of paper, which he tossed onto the desk top, never missing a pizza-beat, pizza to mouth, paper to desk, more pizza to mouth, incredible.

  “Take a look at this,” he said, and nodded at the sheet of paper while biting into what appeared to be two slices of pizza at the same time.

  “What is it?” Carella asked.

  “Diagram from the electrical guy.”

  Carella put down his slice of pizza, unfolded the sheet of paper, and flattened it on the desk top.

  “The podium’s in the center there,” Ollie said. “Henderson came on stage left, walked across to it, got shot just as he reached it. The shooter was in the wings stage right. The electrical guy saw repeated muzzle flashes, are you guys going to finish that pizza or what?”

  “Go ahead, have a slice,” Kling said.

  He was eager to see if Ollie could juggle four slices simultaneously.

  “Kept the follow spot on him all the way to the floor, dedicated, huh?” Ollie said, hands reaching, mouth working, teeth biting, sauce and toppings and cheese dripping all over his hands and his shirt and the desk top. Astonishing, Kling thought.

  “Is there a Detective Weeks here?” someone said.

  They all turned toward the slatted wooden railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside. A female police officer was standing there. She was holding a manila envelope in her right hand. The wordEVIDENCE was printed across the face of the envelope.

  “I’m Detective Weeks,” Ollie said.

  “Officer Gomez,” she said, and opened the gate in the railing and walked over to the desk. She was trying to learn attitude. Fresh out of the Academy, her uniform trimly tailored, the buttons all shiny and bright, even her shield looking glistening new, she walked with a sort of sidelong gait that tried to negate her obvious femininity while emphasizing the authority of the Glock on her hip.