Ice

by Ed McBain

  Brother Anthony was one of the very few people who knew that the name on her mailbox was Emma Forbes, and that she had been born Emma Goldberg, not to be confused with the anarchist Emma Goldman, who’d been around long before Emma Goldberg was even born. Brother Anthony was also one of the very few people who called her Emma, the rest preferring to call her either Lady (not daring to use the adjective in her presence) or nothing at all, lest she suddenly take offense at an inflection and whip out that razor of hers. Brother Anthony was the only person in the precinct, and perhaps the entire world, who thought Emma Goldberg Forbes aka the Fat Lady was exceptionally beautiful and extraordinarily sexy besides.

  “Listen, there’s no accounting for taste,” a former acquaintance once said to Brother Anthony immediately after he’d mentioned how beautiful and sexy he thought Emma was. The man’s thoughtless comment was uttered a moment before Brother Anthony plucked him off his stool and hurled him through the plate glass mirror behind the bar at which they’d been sitting. Brother Anthony did not like people who belittled the way he felt about Emma. Brother Anthony saw her quite differently than most people saw her. Most people saw a dumpy little bleached blonde in a black cloth coat and black cotton stockings and blue track shoes and a black shoulder bag in which there was a straightedge razor with a bone handle. Brother Anthony—despite empirical knowledge to the contrary—saw a natural blonde with curly ringlets that framed a Madonna-like face and beautiful blue eyes; Brother Anthony saw breasts like watermelons and a behind like a brewer’s horse; Brother Anthony saw thick white thighs and acres and acres of billowy flesh; Brother Anthony saw a shy, retiring, timid, vulnerable darling dumpling caught in the whirlwind of a hostile society, someone to cuddle and cherish and console.

  Just walking beside her, Brother Anthony had an erection, but perhaps that was due to the supreme satisfaction of having beaten that pool hustler to within an inch of his life; it was sometimes difficult to separate and categorize emotions, especially when it was so cold outside. He took Emma’s elbow and led her onto Mason Avenue toward a bar in the middle of a particularly sordid stretch of real estate that ran north and south for a total of three blocks. There was a time when the Street (as the three-block stretch was familiarly defined) was called the Hussy Hole by the Irish immigrants and later Foxy Way by the blacks. With the Puerto Rican influx, the street had changed its language—but not its major source of income. The Puerto Ricans referred to it as La Via de Putas. The cops used to call it Whore Street before the word hooker became fashionable. They now referred to it as Hooker Heaven. In any language, you paid your money, and you took your choice.

  Not too long a time ago, the madams who ran the sex emporiums called themselves Mama-this or Mama-that. In those days, Mama Teresa’s was the best-known joint on the street. Mama Carmen’s was the filthiest. Mama Luz’s had been raided most often by the cops because of the somewhat exotic things that went on behind its crumbling brick facade. Those days were gone forever. The brothel, as such, was a thing of the past, a quaint memory. Nowadays, the hookers operated out of the massage parlors and bars that lined the street, and turned their tricks in the hotbed hotels that blinked their eyeless neon to the night. The bar Brother Anthony chose was a hooker hangout named Sandy’s, but at 2:00 in the afternoon most of the neighborhood working girls were still sleeping off Friday night’s meaningless exercise. Only a black girl wearing a blonde wig was sitting at the bar.

  “Hello, Brother Anthony,” she said. “Hello, Lady.”

  “Dominus vobiscum,” Brother Anthony said, cleaving the air with the edge of his right hand in a downward stroke, and then passing the hand horizontally across the first invisible stroke to form the sign of the cross. He had no idea what the Latin words meant. He knew only that they added to the image he had consciously created for himself. “All is image,” he liked to tell Emma, the words rolling mellifluously off his tongue, his voice deep and resonant, “all is illusion.”

  “What’ll it be?” the bartender asked.

  “A little red wine, please,” Brother Anthony said. “Emma?”

  “Gin on the rocks, a twist,” Emma said.

  “See what the other lady will have,” Brother Anthony said, indicating the black-and-blonde hooker. He was feeling flush. His encounter with the ambitious pool hustler had netted him a $500 profit. He asked the bartender for some change, went to the jukebox, and selected an assortment of rock-and-roll tunes. He loved rock-and-roll. He especially loved rock-and-roll groups that dressed up on stage so you couldn’t recognize them later on the street. The black-and-blonde hooker was telling the bartender she wanted another scotch and soda. As Brother Anthony went back to his stool at the other end of the bar, she said, “Thanks, Brother Anthony.”

  The bartender, who was also the Sandy who owned the place, wasn’t too happy to see Brother Anthony in here. He did not like having to replace plate glass mirrors every time Brother Anthony took it in his head to get insulted by something somebody said. Luckily, the only other person in here today, besides Brother Anthony and his fat broad, was the peroxided nigger at the end of the bar, and Brother Anthony had just bought her a drink, so maybe there’d be no trouble this afternoon. Sandy hoped so. This was Saturday. There’d be plenty of trouble here tonight, whether Sandy wanted it or not.

  In this neighborhood, and especially on this street, Saturday night was never the loneliest night of the week, no matter what the song said. In this neighborhood, and especially on this street, nobody had to go lonely on a Saturday night, not if he had yesterday’s paycheck in his pocket. Along about 10:00 tonight, there’d be more hookers cruising this bar than there’d be rats rummaging in the empty lot next door, black hookers and white ones, blondes and brunettes and redheads, even some with pink hair or lavender hair, males and females and some who were AC/DC. Two by two they came, it took all kinds to make a world, into the ark they came, your garden variety scaly-legged $20-a-blowjob beasts or your slinky racehorses who thought they should be working downtown at a C-note an hour, it took all kinds to make a pleasant family neighborhood bar. Two by two they came and were welcomed by Sandy, who recognized that all those men drinking at the bar were here to sample the flesh and not the spirits, and who was anyway getting a piece of the action from each of the nocturnal ladies who were allowed to cruise here, his recompense (or so he told them) for having to pay off the cops on the beat and also their sergeant who dropped in every now and again. Actually, Sandy was ahead of the game, except when the weekend trouble assumed larger proportions than it normally did. He dreaded weekends, even though it was the weekends that made it possible for the bar to remain open on weekdays.

  “This is on the house,” he said to Brother Anthony, hoping the bribe would keep him away from here tonight, and then suddenly panicking when he realized Brother Anthony might like the hospitality and might decide to return for more of it later.

  “I pay for my own drinks,” Brother Anthony said, and fetched the roll of bills from the pouchlike pocket running across the front of his cassock, and peeled off one of the pool hustler’s tens, and put it on the bar.

  “Even so…,” Sandy started, but Brother Anthony silently made the sign of the cross on the air, and Sandy figured who was he to argue with a messenger of God? He picked up the ten-spot, rang up the sale, and then put Brother Anthony’s change on the bar in front of him. At the end of the bar, the black hooker in the frizzy blonde wig lifted her glass and said, “Cheers, Brother Anthony.”

  “Dominus vobiscum,” Brother Anthony said, lifting his own glass.

  Emma put her fleshy hand on his knee.

  “Did you hear anything else?” she whispered.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Did you?”

  “Only that he had eleven bills in his wallet when he caught it.”

  “Eleven bills,” Brother Anthony whispered.

  “And also, it was a .38. The gun.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I heard two cops talking
in the diner.”

  “A .38,” Brother Anthony said. “Eleven bills.”

  “That’s the kind of bread I’m talking about,” Emma said. “That’s cocaine bread, my dear.”

  Brother Anthony let his eyes slide sidelong down the bar, just to make sure neither the bartender nor the black hooker was tuning in. The bartender was leaning over the bar, in deep and whispered conversation with the hooker. His fingertips roamed the yoke front of her dress, brushing the cleft her cushiony breasts formed. Brother Anthony smiled.

  “The death of that little schwanz has left a gap,” Emma said.

  “Indeed,” Brother Anthony said.

  “There are customers adrift in the night,” Emma said.

  “Indeed,” Brother Anthony said again.

  “It would be nice if we could fill that gap,” Emma said. “Inherit the trade, so to speak. Find out who the man was servicing, become their new candyman and candylady.”

  “There’s people who might not like that,” Brother Anthony said.

  “I don’t agree with you. I don’t think the little pisher was killed for his trade. No, my dear, I definitely disagree with you.”

  “Then why?”

  “Was he killed? My educated guess?”

  “Please,” Brother Anthony said.

  “Because he was a stupid little man who probably got stingy with one of his customers. That’s my guess, bro. But, ah, my dear, when we begin selling the nose dust it’ll be a different story. We will be sugar-sweet to everybody; we will be Mr. and Mrs. Nice.”

  “How do we get the stuff to sell?” Brother Anthony asked.

  “First things first,” Emma said. “First we get the customers, then we get the candy.”

  “How many customers do you think he had?” Brother Anthony asked.

  “Hundreds,” Emma said. “Maybe thousands. We are going to get rich, my dear. We are going to thank God every day of the week that somebody killed Paco Lopez.”

  “Dominus vobiscum,” Brother Anthony said, and made the sign of the cross.

  Timothy Moore came into the squadroom not ten minutes after a package of Sally Anderson’s effects was delivered by a patrolman from Midtown East. The accompanying note from Detective Levine mentioned that he had talked with the dead girl’s boyfriend and they ought to expect a visit from him. So here he was now, standing just outside the slatted rail divider and introducing himself to Genero, who immediately said, “That ain’t my case.”

  “In here, sir,” Meyer said, signaling to Moore, who looked up, nodded, found the release catch on the inside of the gate, and let himself into the squadroom. He was a tall, angular young man with wheat-colored hair and dark brown eyes. The trench coat he was wearing seemed too lightweight for this kind of weather, but perhaps the long striped muffler around his neck and the rubber boots on his feet were some sort of compensation. His eyes were quite solemn behind the aviator eyeglasses he wore. He took Meyer’s offered hand and said, “Detective Carella?”

  “I’m Detective Meyer. This is Detective Carella.”

  “How do you do?” Carella said, rising from behind his desk and extending his hand. Moore was just a trifle taller than he was; their eyes met at almost the same level.

  “Detective Levine at Midtown East—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Told me the case had been turned over to you.”

  “That’s right,” Carella said.

  “I went up there the minute I learned about Sally.”

  “When was that, sir?”

  “This morning. I heard about it this morning.”

  “Sit down, won’t you? Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, thank you. I went up there at about ten o’clock, it must’ve been, right after I heard the news on the radio.”

  “Where was this, Mr. Moore?”

  “In my apartment.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “On Chelsea Place. Downtown, near the university. Ramsey.”

  “We understand you’re a medical student there,” Carella said.

  “Yes.” He seemed puzzled as to how they already knew this, but he let it pass, shrugging it aside. “I went back up there a little while ago—”

  “Up there?”

  “Midtown East. And Mr. Levine told me the case had been turned over to you. So I thought I’d check with you, just to see if there was anything I could do to help.”

  “We appreciate that,” Carella said.

  “How long had you known Miss Anderson?” Meyer asked.

  “Since last July. I met her shortly after my father died.”

  “How’d you happen to meet her?”

  “At a party I crashed. She…the minute I saw her…” He looked down at his hands. The fingers were long and slender, the nails as clean as a surgeon’s. “She was…very beautiful. I…was attracted to her from the first minute I saw her.”

  “So you began seeing her—”

  “Yes—”

  “Last July.”

  “Yes. She’d just gotten the part in Fatback.”

  “But you weren’t living together or anything,” Meyer said. “Or were you?”

  “Not officially. That is, we didn’t share the same apartment,” Moore said. “But we saw each other virtually every night. I keep thinking…” He shook his head. The detectives waited. “I keep thinking if only I’d been with her last night…” He shook his head again. “I usually picked her up after the show. Last night…” Again he shook his head. The detectives waited. He said nothing further.

  “Last night…,” Carella prompted.

  “It’s stupid the way things work sometimes, isn’t it?” Moore said. “My grades were slipping. Too much partying. Okay. I made a New Year’s resolution to spend at least one weekend night studying. Either Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. This week it was Friday.”

  “You’re saying—”

  “I’m saying…look, I don’t know who did this to her, but chances are it was just some lunatic who ran across her on the street, am I right? Saw her on the street and killed her, am I right? A chance victim.”

  “Maybe,” Carella said.

  “So what I’m saying is if this had been last week, I’d have been there to pick her up on Friday night. Because last week I stayed home on Sunday to study. I remember there was a party she wanted me to go to on Sunday, and I told her no, I had to study. Or the week before that, it would’ve been a Saturday. What I’m saying is why did it have to be a Friday this week, why couldn’t I have been waiting for her last night when she came out of that theater?”

  “Mr. Moore,” Meyer said, “in the event this wasn’t a crazy—”

  “It had to be,” Moore said.

  “Yes, well,” Meyer said, and glanced at Carella, looking for some sort of expression on his face that would indicate whether or not it would be wise to mention Paco Lopez. Carella’s face said nothing, which was as good as telling Meyer to cool it. “But we have to explore every possibility,” Meyer said, “which is why the questions we’re about to ask may sound irrelevant, but we have to ask them anyway.”

  “I understand,” Moore said.

  “As the person closest to Miss Anderson—”

  “Well, her mother is alive, you know,” Moore said.

  “Does she live here in the city?”

  “No, she lives in San Francisco.”

  “Did Miss Anderson have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No.”

  “Then essentially—”

  “Yes, I suppose you could say I was closest…to her.”

  “I’m assuming you confided things to each other.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she ever mention any threatening letters or telephone calls?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone following her?”

  “No.”

  “Or lurking about the building?”

  “No.”

  “Did she owe money to anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Did any
one owe her money?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was she involved with drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Or any other illegal activity?”

  “No.”

  “Had she recently received any gifts from strangers?” Carella asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “At the theater,” Carella said. “Flowers…or candy? From unknown admirers?”

  “She never mentioned anything like that.”

  “Did she ever have any trouble at the stage door?”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Someone waiting for her, trying to talk to her, or touch her—”

  “You don’t mean autograph hounds?”

  “Well, anyone who might have got overly aggressive.”

  “No.”

  “Or who was rejected by her—”

  “No.”

  “Nothing you saw or that she later mentioned to you.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Mr. Moore,” Carella said, “we’ve gone through Miss Anderson’s appointment calendar and had a schedule typed up for every day this month. We’ve just now received her address book from Midtown East, and we’ll be cross-checking that against the names on the calendar. But you might save us some time if you could identify—”