Ed McBain_87th Precinct 48

by Nocturne

  “What else did you take?” Carella asked.

  Because all at once this was still the tale of a gun and a dead old woman, and not a sad soap opera about a dead chicken. People ate chicken every Sunday.

  “Take?” Santiago asked drunkenly. “What do you mean?”

  “You drove Diablo uptown in a limo, didn’t you?”

  “He was a champion!”

  “You stole a black Caddy …”

  “I borrowed it!”

  “… from Bridge Texaco. A limo that …”

  “I returned it!”

  “… was in for a new engine.”

  “He was a champion!”

  “He was a bird who needed a ride uptown.”

  “A hero!”

  “Who made a mess all over the backseat.”

  “A mess? A champion’s feathers! Diablo’s feathers!”

  Diablo’s shit, too, Hawes thought.

  “How could I bear touching them?” Santiago said, and began weeping again. He tilted the rum bottle to his lips, but it was empty. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of the pink sweater.

  “Did you find a gun in the glove compartment of that car?” Carella asked.

  “No. Hey, no. No.”

  “Did you know there was a gun in the glove compartment?”

  “No. What gun? A gun? No.”

  “A .38 Smith & Wesson.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Didn’t see the gun, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t know it was in the glove compartment.”

  “No.”

  “That’s good, Jose. Because the gun was used in a murder …”

  “A murder? No.”

  “A murder, yes.”

  “And if we can trace that gun to you …”

  “If your fingerprints are on that gun, for example …”

  “I didn’t shoot anybody with that gun.”

  “Oh? You know the gun we mean, huh?”

  “I know the gun, yes. But …”

  “Did you steal it from that glove compartment?”

  “I borrowed it.”

  “Same way you borrowed the limo, huh?”

  “I did borrow the limo. And I borrowed the gun, too.”

  “Why?”

  “To shoot the bird who killed Diablo.”

  “So this was after the match, huh?”

  “Sí.”

  “You took the gun from the car after the match.”

  “Sí. To shoot the bird.”

  “Did you shoot the bird?”

  “No. The cops came. I was going back in the theater when I saw all these cops. So I ran back to the garage.”

  “With the gun.”

  “With the gun, sí.”

  “What did you do with the gun then?”

  “I sold it.”

  The detectives looked at each other.

  “That’s right,” Jose said. “I sold it.”

  Carella sighed.

  So did Hawes.

  “Who’d you sell it to?”

  “A man I met at a club up the street.”

  “What club?”

  “The Juice Bar.”

  “What man?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “You sold a stolen gun to a man you didn’t even know?”

  “We were talking, he said he needed a gun. So I happened to have a gun. So I sold it to him.”

  “You sold him a gun you’d just stolen.”

  “I had just lost my best friend in the whole world.”

  “What’s that got to do with stealing a gun and selling it?”

  “I also lost ten thousand dollars.”

  “Ah. So how much did you get for the gun?”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “That’s cutting your losses, all right,” Hawes said.

  “My greatest loss was Diablo.”

  “What’d he look like?” Carella asked.

  “He was a white bird, large in the chest, with …”

  “The man who bought the gun.”

  “Oh. He was a tall blond guy.”

  “Blond guy with a blue coat and a red scarf, yeah,” Anna said. “Tall blond guy. Sure. Matter of fact, he was in here twice.”

  This was beginning to get interesting.

  Georgie hoped it wouldn’t get too interesting.

  “The first time was Friday night around midnight,” Anna said. “He was meeting a guy named Bernie, comes in here all the time. Scar on his right cheek, I think he’s a bookie.”

  “The blond guy?” Tony asked.

  “No, Bernie.”

  “Did you happen to get his name?” Priscilla asked.

  “I just told you. Bernie.”

  “I mean the blond guy.”

  “No, I didn’t. Matter of fact, the first time I laid eyes on him was Friday night.”

  “When was the next time he came in?”

  “Yesterday,” Anna said. “Around twelve noon. Met with Bernie again. They sat right over there,” she said, and pointed to a table. “Money changed hands. At least yesterday, it did. On Friday, they were just talking. He seemed very angry.”

  “The blond guy?” Priscilla asked.

  “No, Bernie.”

  “He was angry yesterday?”

  “No, he was angry Friday. Yesterday, he was all smiles.”

  “So as I understand this,” Georgie said, interpreting for Priscilla, “on Friday night the blond guy and Bernie the bookie just sat over there and talked, and Bernie was pissed off about something, is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Anna said.

  “But money changed hands yesterday and Bernie the bookie was all smiles. Is that also correct?”

  “Matter of fact, yes,” Anna said.

  “You know what this indicates to me?” Georgie said.

  “What?” Priscilla asked.

  “A man paying off a marker.”

  “That’s what it looks like to me, too,” Tony said, nodding sagely.

  Priscilla nodded, too, and then turned back to Anna.

  “But you never got the blond guy’s name,” she said.

  “Matter of fact, I didn’t,” Anna said.

  “And you don’t know Bernie’s last name.”

  “Just his first name.”

  In which case, let us be on our way, Georgie thought.

  “But maybe Marvin knows,” Anna said.

  Matter of fact, he did.

  Three black guys who looked like they were homeless bums were warming themselves up around a fire in an oil drum on the corner of Ainsley and Eleventh. Ollie felt like arresting them. He was cold and he was tired after a full eight-hour shift, not to mention trotting here and there around the city afterward trying to get a line on who iced the hooker and her two black buddies. Three-thirty in the fuckin morning, he really felt like arresting them.

  “You guys,” he said, approaching the blazing oil drum. “You know arson’s against the law?”

  “Nobody committin no arson here, suh,” one of the men said. He was a grizzled old bum looked like that black guy in the prison picture, whatever it was called, The Scrimshaw Reduction, about this black guy who used to drive around this old Jewish southern lady before he got sent up. The old bum standing with his hands stretched out to the fire looked just like that guy in the picture. The other two looked like ordinary black bums you’d see standing around any fire three-thirty in the morning. Nobody looked at Ollie. They all just kept staring into the flames, hands reaching toward them.

  “So is this your usual corner here?” Ollie asked. “This lovely garden spot here?”

  He was being sarcastic. This was an unusually filthy stretch of Ainsley Avenue. Because of yesterday’s storm—and because this was Diamondback, where nobody gave a damn about refuse collection, anyway—overflowing garbage cans stood against the tenement walls and marauding rats the size of buffalo were boldly shredding stacks of black plastic bags. The noise of the rats was frightening in i
tself. Over the crackle of the fire in the oil drum, Ollie could hear their incessant squealing and squeaking and scratching. He felt like shooting them.

  “Everybody hard of hearing here?” he asked.

  “This’s our regular corner here, yessuh,” the one from the Scrimshaw picture said. Ollie didn’t know who he hated most, the ones who bowed and scraped or the ones with attitude. There wasn’t much attitude around this fire tonight. Just three cold homeless bums afraid to go crawl into their cardboard boxes lest one of their brothers did them in the night.

  “You happen to be here Saturday night around this time?” he asked. “Little later, actually?”

  None of the men said anything.

  “Hey!” Ollie shouted. “Anybody listening to me here?”

  “What time would that’ve been, suh?” the older bum said. Doing his Uncle Tom bit for the benefit of the dumb honkie cop.

  “This would’ve been six o’clock in the morning, suh,” Ollie said, mimicking him. “This would’ve been a taxicab letting out a white blonde in a short skirt and a red fur jacket who was being met by three white guys in blue parkas and a black guy in a black leather jacket. So were you here at that hour, suh, and did you happen to see them?”

  “We was here,” he said, “and we happen to see em.”

  Carella and Hawes got to The Juice Bar about five minutes after Priscilla and the boys left. Marvin the bartender and Anna the hatcheck girl both felt it was déjà vu all over again. Just a few minutes ago, three people who might have been under-covers had been here asking about a tall blond man, and now here were two more very definite detectives flashing badges and asking about the same tall blond man. They told Carella and Hawes exactly what they had told Priscilla and the boys.

  So now five people were looking for a bookie named Bernie Himmel.

  The cops had an edge.

  At this hour, The Silver Chief Diner was mostly populated with predators. The morning shifts would not begin till eight, and any honest person with a night job—office cleaners and hospital personnel, transit employees and cops, night watchmen, bakery crews, cabdrivers, short-order cooks, hotel workers, toll takers—was still busy earning a living. Here in the diner, there were mainly prostitutes and pimps, burglars and muggers, dealers and users, the occasional noncriminal sprinkling of drunks, insomniacs, or writers with blocks. Ollie separated the wheat from the chaff at once. The minute he walked in, every thief in the joint recognized him for what he was, too. None of them even glanced in his direction.

  He went straight to the counter, took a stool, and ordered a cup of coffee from a redheaded girl in a pale green uniform. Her name tag read sally.

  “You serve Indian food here?” he asked.

  “No, sir, we sure don’t,” Sally said.

  “Native American food?” he asked.

  “Nor that neither,” she said.

  “Then how come you call yourself the Silver Chief?”

  “It’s spose to be like a train,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “That’s what it’s spose to be, yes, sir.”

  “What part of the South you from, Sally?”

  “Tennessee,” she said.

  “You serve grits here, Sally?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You serve hominy?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How about a nice hot cup of coffee then? And one of those donuts there.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  Ollie looked the place over again. Each time his gaze fell upon someone who’d been out victimizing tonight, eyes turned away. Good, he thought. Shit your pants. Sally came back with his coffee and donut.

  “I’m a police officer,” he said, and showed her his shield. “Were you working here on Saturday night around this time, a little bit later?”

  “I was,” she said.

  “I’m looking for a blond girl was wearing a black mini and a red fur jacket.”

  He didn’t mention that she was dead.

  “Fake fur,” he said. “Fake blonde, too.”

  “We get lots of those in here,” Sally said, and with a faint tilt of her head indicated that lots of those were in here right this very minute, sitting at tables hither and yon behind Ollie.

  “How about Saturday night? Remember a blonde in a red fur jacket?”

  “I sure don’t,” Sally said.

  “How about three white guys in blue hooded parkas?”

  “Nope.”

  “Or a black guy in a black leather jacket.”

  “We get thousands of black guys in black leather jackets.”

  “These three white guys would’ve been peeing in the gutter.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside there,” Ollie said, jerking his head over his shoulder toward the front windows of the diner.

  “This weather?” Sally said, and laughed.

  Ollie laughed, too.

  “Need Willie warmers, this weather,” Sally said.

  “Black guy would’ve run out the diner, told them to stop peeing.”

  “Can’t blame him,” Sally said, and began laughing again.

  Ollie laughed, too.

  “How do you know all this fascinating stuff?” Sally asked.

  Ollie figured she was flirting with him. Lots of women preferred men with a little girth, as he called it.

  “Three black guys outside told me,” he said.

  “Oh, those three.”

  “You know them?”

  “They’re out there every night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, they’re crazy.”

  “Yeah? Crazy?”

  “Yeah, they just got out of Buenavista a few months ago.”

  “Buenavista, huh?”

  “Yeah. What they do, these mental hospitals, they medicate all these psychos till they’re stabilized. Then they let them loose on the streets with prescriptions they don’t bother filling. Before you know it, they’re acting nutty all over again. I saw a man talking to a mailbox the other day, would you believe it? Holding a long conversation with a mailbox. Those three guys out there stand around that fire all night like it’s some kind of shrine. The one who looks like Morgan Fairchild …”

  “That’s his name!” Ollie said, and snapped his fingers.

  “He’s the nuttiest of them all. Anything he told you, I’d take with a grain of salt.”

  “He told me these three white guys were peeing in the gutter when this black man in a black leather jacket came running out of here to stop them.”

  “Naw,” Sally said. “Don’t believe it.”

  “Were you working here alone on Saturday night?” Ollie asked slyly.

  He spent the next fifteen minutes talking to another waitress, the short-order cook, and the cashier, who was also the night manager. None of them had seen three white guys in hooded parkas peeing in the gutter. And whereas all of them had seen half a dozen black guys in black leather jackets, none of them had seen one running out into the street to prevent mass urination.

  Five minutes after Ollie left, Curly Joe Simms walked in.

  There was no one named Bernie Himmel or Bernard Himmel listed in any of the phone directories for the city’s five separate sectors. On the off chance that Marvin the bartender had got Bernie the bookie’s family name wrong, they even checked all the listings under himmer and hammil, but found no matching first name. There were two listings for b. hemmer, but these turned out to be women, big surprise, who did not appreciate being awakened at a quarter to four in the morning.

  “So that’s it,” Georgie said. “Let’s forget it for now. Go home, get some sleep.”

  “No,” Priscilla said.

  She had just had an idea.

  The computer listed a Bernard Himmel, alias Bernie Himmel, alias Benny Himmel, alias Bernie “The Banker” Himmel, a thirty-six-year-old white male who had taken two prior falls for violation of Section 225.10 of the state’s Penal Law, titled Promoting Gambling in the First Degree, which read
:

  A person is guilty of promoting gambling in the first degree when he knowingly advances or profits from unlawful gambling activity by 1) Engaging in bookmaking to the extent that he receives or accepts in any one day more than five bets totaling more than five thousand dollars; or 2) Receiving, in connection with a lottery or policy scheme …

  And so on, which second provision did not apply to either of Bernie’s arrests and subsequent convictions.

  Violation of 225.10 was a class-E felony, punishable by a term of imprisonment not to exceed four years. The first time around, Bernie was sentenced to one to three and was back on the street again, and at the same old stand again, after serving the requisite year. The next time, he drew two to four as a so-called predicate felon and was paroled after serving the minimum. The address he’d registered with his parole officer was 1110 Garner Avenue, not a mile away from The Juice Bar, where apparently he’d set up business again.

  Carella and Hawes got to Garner at four a.m.

  If Himmel was in fact taking bets again, then he was breaking parole at best and would be returned to prison to serve the two years he still owed the state. If, in addition, he was once again arrested and charged and convicted, then he would technically become a so-called persistent felony offender, and could be sentenced for an A-1 felony, which could mean fifteen to twenty-five years behind bars. Neither Carella nor Hawes had ever heard of anyone in this city or this state taking such a fall on a gambling violation. But Bernie the Banker Himmel was still looking at the two years owed on the parole violation, plus another two to four as a predicate felon with a new gambling violation. Such visions of the future could make any man desperate. Moreover, only two mornings ago, Carella and Hawes had knocked on a door and been greeted with four bullets plowing through the wood. They did not want to provoke yet another fusillade.

  Without a no-knock arrest warrant, they were compelled to announce themselves. Gun-shy, they flanked the door. Service revolvers drawn, they pressed themselves against the wall on either side of it. Carella reached in to knock. No answer. He knocked again. He was about to knock a third time when a man’s voice said, “Who is it?”