Ice

by Ed McBain

  “Some bullets,” Kling said.

  “More bullets? We had the Valentine’s Day Massacre all over again this morning,” Grossman said. “Seven guys killed in a garage down on the Lower Platform. Guys who did it were dressed like cops. I have to admit it took style, but I don’t like the extra work it’s given us on a weekend. What bullets?”

  “We caught a homicide last night on Silvermine Road,” Kling said. “Man named Marvin Edelman, gunshot victim. I asked the morgue to send whatever they recover over to you. I thought I might mention it.”

  “You came all the way down here to tell me some bullets are on the way?” Grossman said.

  “No, no, I was in the area, anyway.”

  Grossman knew that the Criminal Court Building was right next door, and at first he figured Kling might be down here on court business. There was only one court open on Sunday, though, and that strictly for the arraignment of anyone arrested the day before. And then Grossman remembered that the Psychological Counseling Unit had recently moved into new quarters on the third floor of the building. Had Carella finally convinced Kling to see someone about his obvious depression?

  “So what did bring you down here on a Sunday?” Grossman asked in what he hoped was a casual way.

  “I had a lady in yesterday, her husband…well, it’s a long story,” Kling said.

  “Let me hear it,” Grossman said.

  “No, you’ve got bullets to worry about,” Kling said. “Anyway, keep an eye out for whatever comes from the morgue, will you? The guy’s name is Edelman.”

  “A landsman,” Grossman said, smiling, but Kling did not return the smile.

  “See you,” Kling said, and walked out of the lab and into the marble corridor outside. The story he’d been about to tell was about this woman who’d come to see him yesterday because her husband’s former girlfriend had accosted him on the street and slashed his arm from the shoulder to the wrist with a bread knife she’d pulled from her handbag. In describing the former girlfriend, the woman used the words “black as that telephone there” and then went on to describe her further as an extremely thin woman whose name was Annie—she didn’t know Annie what, and neither did her husband. Her husband, according to the woman’s story, was a Dutch seaman who came into this city’s port every other month or so and who, until they’d met and married, used to spend his wages on various prostitutes either uptown on La Via de Putas or else downtown on the stretch of hooker-packed turf known as Slit City. The wife had been witness to the knifing, and had heard the girl Annie say, “I’m goan juke you good,” and it was perhaps the use of the word juke that rang a bell for Kling.

  A working cop doesn’t always know how he remembers the myriad little details of the numberless criminal transgressions that cross his desk and his path every day of the week. To remember them is enough. The fact that the knife wielder had been black had not been enough to trigger recall. Neither had the name Annie, or the knowledge that the girl was extremely thin and a working prostitute. But the first time Kling had ever heard the word juke in his life was on Mason Avenue, when an anorectic black whore who’d slashed a customer’s face later claimed, “I di’n juke that dumb trick.” Cotton Hawes, who had answered the squeal with him, informed Kling that he himself had first heard the expression in New Orleans, and that it meant, of course, “to stab.” The hooker’s name had been Annie Holmes. The moment the victim’s wife repeated what Annie had said as she carved up her former playmate’s arm, Kling snapped his fingers.

  He was down here today—even though it was his day off— because: (a) he lived only six blocks away, in a small apartment in the shadow of the Calm’s Point Bridge, and (b) he could not question Marvin Edelman’s widow until tomorrow because she was on her way home from the Caribbean after receiving a call from her daughter informing her that Edelman had been shot and killed last night, and (c) there was not much more he could do on the homicide until Grossman’s people came up with some information on the gun used in the slaying, and (d) he knew the Identification Section was open seven days a week (although the Mayor had been threatening cutbacks) and he hoped he might be able to pick up a picture of Annie Holmes, which he could then show to the man she’d stabbed and his wife, who’d witnessed the stabbing, hoping for a positive ID that would be good enough for an arrest.

  That was why he was here.

  He had not told Grossman why he was here, even though he’d started to, because somehow the triangle of Dutch Seaman-Present Wife-Former Bedmate recalled vividly and blindingly the scene in the bedroom of the apartment Kling had shared with Augusta as man and wife, the triangular scene in that room, Augusta naked in their bed, absurdly clutching the sheet to her breasts, hiding her shame, protecting her nakedness from the prying eyes of her own husband, her green eyes wide, her hair tousled, a fine sheen of perspiration on the marvelous cheekbones that were her fortune, her lip trembling the way the gun in Kling’s hand was trembling. And the man with Augusta, the third side of the triangle, was in his undershorts and reaching for his trousers folded over a bedside chair, the man was short and wiry, he looked like Genero, for Christ’s sake, with curly black hair and brown eyes wide in terror, but he was not Genero, he was Augusta’s lover, and as he turned from the chair where his trousers were draped, he said only, “Don’t shoot,” and Kling leveled the gun at him.

  I should have shot him, he thought now. If I’d shot him, I wouldn’t still be living with the shame. I wouldn’t have to stop telling a story about a Dutch seaman and his hooker girlfriend for fear that even a decent man like Sam Grossman will remember, will think, Ah yes, Kling and his cheating wife, Ah yes, Kling did nothing, Ah yes, Kling did not kill the man who was—

  “Hey, hi!” the voice said.

  He was approaching the elevators, his head bent, his eyes on the marble floor. He did not recognize the voice, nor did he even realize at first that it was he who was being addressed. But he looked up because someone had stepped into his path. The someone was Eileen Burke.

  She was wearing a simple brown suit with a green blouse that was sort of ruffly at the throat, the green the color of her eyes, her long red hair swept efficiently back from her face, standing tall in high-heeled brown pumps a shade darker than the suit. She was carrying a shoulder bag, and he could see into the bag to where the barrel of a revolver seemed planted in a bed of crumpled Kleenexes. The picture on her plastic ID card, clipped to the lapel of her suit, showed a younger Eileen Burke, her red hair done in the frizzies. She was smiling—in the picture, and in person.

  “What are you doing down here?” she asked. “Nobody comes here on a Sunday.”

  “I need a picture from the IS,” he said. She seemed waiting for him to say more. “How about you?” he added.

  “I work here. Special Forces is here. Right on this floor, in fact. Come on in for a cup of coffee,” she said, and her smile widened.

  “No, thanks, I’m sort of in a hurry,” Kling said, even though he was in no hurry at all.

  “Okay,” Eileen said, and shrugged. “Actually, I’m glad I ran into you. I was going to call later in the day, anyway.”

  “Oh?” Kling said.

  “I think I lost an earring up there. Either there or in the Laundromat with the panty perpetrator. If it was the Laundromat, good-bye, Charlie. But if it was the squadroom, or maybe the car—when you were dropping me off last night, you know—”

  “Yeah,” Kling said.

  “It was just a simple gold hoop earring, about the size of a quarter. Nothing ostentatious when you’re doing dirty laundry, right?”

  “Which ear was it?” he asked.

  “The right,” she said. “Huh? What difference does it make? I mean, it was the right ear, but earnings are interchangeable, so—”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Kling said. He was looking at her right ear, or at the space beyond her right ear, or wherever. He was certainly not looking at her face, certainly not allowing his eyes to meet her eyes. What the hell is wrong with him? s
he wondered.

  “Well, take a look up there, okay?” she said. “If you find it, give me a call. I’m with Special Forces—well, you know that—but I’m in and out all the time, so just leave a message. That is, if you happen to find the earring.” She hesitated, and then said, “The right one, that is. If you find the left one, it’s the wrong one.” She smiled. He did not return the smile. “Well, see you around the pool hall,” she said, and spread her hand in a farewell fan, and turned on her heel, and walked away from him.

  Kling pressed the button for the elevator.

  Tina Wong had been jogging in the snow, and she was surprised to find the detectives waiting in the lobby of her building when she came out of the park. She was wearing a gray sweat suit and a woolen hat that was less colorful than the one Meyer had received as a present. Her track shoes were wet, as were the legs of the sweat suit pants. She said, “Oh,” and then inexplicably looked over her shoulder, as though her car were illegally parked at the curb or something.

  “Sorry to bother you, Miss Wong,” Meyer said. He was not wearing his Valentine’s Day gift. Instead, he had on a blue snap-brim fedora that he felt made him look more stylish if a trifle more bald than the watch cap did.

  “Just a few questions we’d like to ask,” Carella said. They had been standing in the lobby for close to forty minutes, after having been advised by Tina’s doorman that Miss Wong was “out for her run.”

  “Sure,” Tina said, and gestured toward an array of furniture clustered around an imitation fireplace. The lobby was very hot. Tina’s face was flushed red from the cold outside and the energetic jogging she had done. She yanked off the woolen hat and shook out her hair. All three sat in chairs around the fake fireplace. At the switchboard across the room, the doorman looked bored as he read the headline on the morning paper. There was a mechanical hum in the room; the detectives could not locate its source. The lobby had the feel and smell of slightly damp clothes in a cloistered alcove. Outside the glass entrance doors, the wind blew fiercely, its rising and falling keen counterpointing the steady hum.

  “Miss Wong,” Carella said, “when we spoke to you yesterday, do you remember our asking whether or not Sally was doing anything like cocaine?”

  “Uh-huh,” Tina said.

  “And you remember you told us—”

  “I said that to my knowledge she wasn’t.”

  “Does that mean you never saw her using cocaine?”

  “Never.”

  “Does that also mean she never mentioned it to you?”

  “Never.”

  “Would she have mentioned something like that?”

  “We were close friends. There’s nothing so terrible about snorting a few lines every now and then. I suppose if she’d been using it, she might have mentioned it.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Miss Wong, according to Timothy Moore, there was a party Sally Anderson went to last Sunday night. Someone named Lonnie. One of the black dancers in the show.”

  “Yes?” Tina said.

  “Were you at that party?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “But Mr. Moore wasn’t.”

  “No, he wasn’t. He had to study. He made this New Year’s Eve resolution—”

  “Yes, he told us. At any time that night, did you notice Miss Anderson sniffing coke?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “How about anyone else?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Were there any other cast members there?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Do you remember when we talked yesterday, you mentioned that some people in the cast were doing coke.”

  “Yes, I may have said that.”

  “Well, you said that some of them were doing a little coke, here and there, now and then.”

  “I suppose that’s what I said.”

  “Were any of them doing coke last Sunday night? That you may have noticed?”

  “I’m not sure I ought to answer that,” Tina said.

  “Why not?” Meyer said.

  “Anyway, why do you think Sally was into cocaine?”

  “Was she?” Carella asked at once.

  “I told you, not to my knowledge. But all these questions you’re asking…what difference does it make if she was or she wasn’t? She’s dead, she was shot to death. What does cocaine have to do with anything?”

  “Miss Wong, we have good reason to believe she was a user.”

  “How? What reason?”

  “We tested a residue of powder from her handbag.”

  “And it was cocaine?”

  “We’re reasonably certain it was.”

  “What does that mean? Was it or wasn’t it?”

  “The tests weren’t exhaustive, but from what—”

  “Then it could have been anything, right? Face powder or—”

  “No, it wasn’t face powder, Miss Wong.”

  “Why are you so anxious to prove she was doing coke?”

  “We’re not. We simply want to know who else was.”

  “How am I supposed to know who else was?”

  “When we talked to you yesterday—”

  “Yesterday, I didn’t know this would turn into a third degree.”

  “This isn’t a third degree, Miss Wong. When we talked to you yesterday, you said—and I think I’m quoting you exactly— ‘Usually, you can get a pretty good idea of who’s doing what when you’re working in a show.’ Isn’t that what you said?”

  “I don’t remember my exact words.”

  “But that’s what you meant, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Okay. If you have a pretty good idea of who’s doing what, we’d like you to share it with us.”

  “What for? So I can get decent people in trouble for no reason at all?”

  “Which decent people?” Carella asked.

  “I don’t know anybody who was involved with drugs, okay?”

  “That’s not what you said yesterday.”

  “It’s what I’m saying today.” She looked at them steadily, and then added, “I think I’d better call my lawyer.”

  “We’re not looking for a drug bust here,” Meyer said.

  “I don’t know what you’re looking for, but you’re not going to get it from me.”

  “Your best friend was murdered,” Carella said softly.

  She looked at him.

  “We’re trying to find the person who did it,” Carella said.

  “Nobody in the show did it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know it. I just know…” She fell silent. She folded her arms across her chest. She lifted her chin stubbornly. Carella looked at Meyer. Meyer nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Miss Wong,” Carella said, “on the basis of what you told us yesterday, we have good cause to believe you know who, if anyone, in the cast was using cocaine. This is a murder we’re investigating. We can subpoena you before a grand jury, who’ll ask you the same questions we’ve been asking you—”

  “No, you can’t,” she said.

  “Yes, we can,” Carella said, “and we will if you continue refusing to—”

  “What is this, Russia?” Tina asked.

  “This is the United States,” Carella said. “You’ve got your rights, but we’ve also got ours. If you refuse to answer a grand jury, you’ll be held in contempt of court. Take your choice.”

  “I can’t believe this,” she said.

  “Believe it. If you know who’s doing coke—”

  “I hate strong-arm macho shit,” Tina said.

  Neither of the detectives said anything.

  “Mafia tactics,” Tina said.

  Still, they said nothing.

  “As if it has anything at all to do with who killed her,” Tina said.

  “Let’s go, Meyer,” Carella said, and stood up.

  “Just a minute,” Tina said.

&nb
sp; He did not sit down again.

  “There were maybe half a dozen people snorting at that party.”

  “Anyone in the cast?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Sally, of course.”

  “Who else?”

  “Mike.”

  “Mike who?”

  “Roldan. Miguel Roldan.”

  “Thank you,” Carella said.

  “If you cause him any trouble—”

  “We’re not looking to cause him trouble,” Meyer said. “How well did Sally Anderson know your producer?”

  The question took her totally by surprise. Her eyes opened wide. She hesitated a moment before answering. “Allan?” she said.

  “Allan Carter,” Carella said, nodding.

  “Why?”

  “Did Sally ever mention him in anything but a professional way?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “I think you know what it means, Miss Wong.”

  “Are you asking if she was involved in some way with him? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Why do you think that’s ridiculous, Miss Wong?”

  “Because…well, she had a boyfriend. You know that, I told you that yesterday.”

  “Why would that exclude an involvement with Mr. Carter?”

  “I just know there was nothing going on between them.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “There are some things you just know.”

  “Did you ever see them together?”

  “Of course.”

  “Outside of the theater, I mean.”

  “Occasionally.”

  “When’s the last time you saw them together?”

  “Last Sunday night.”

  “Under what circumstances?”

  “He was at Lonnie’s party.”

  “Is that usual? For the producer of a show to attend a party given by one of the dancers?”

  “You’re not going to stop till you get everybody in trouble, are you?”

  “Who are we getting in trouble now?” Meyer asked.

  “Allan was with me,” Tina said, “okay? I asked him to the party.”

  The detectives looked at each other, puzzled.

  “He’s married, okay?” Tina said.