by Ed McBain
“In that big musical downtown,” the super said.
“What do you mean?” Brother Anthony asked.
“Fatback,” the super said.
Brother Anthony still didn’t know what he meant.
“The show,” the super said. “Downtown.”
“Where downtown?” Brother Anthony asked.
“I don’t know the name of the theater. Buy yourself a newspaper. Maybe they got one printed in Latin.”
“God bless you,” Brother Anthony said.
The phone on Kling’s desk began ringing just as he and Brown were leaving the squadroom. He leaned over the slatted rail divider and picked up the receiver.
“Kling,” he said.
“Bert, it’s Eileen.”
“Oh, hi,” he said. “I was going to call you later today.”
“Did you find it?”
“Just where you said it was. Back seat of the car.”
“You know how many earrings I’ve lost in the back seats of cars?” Eileen said.
Kling said nothing.
“Years ago, of course,” she said.
Kling still said nothing.
“When I was a teenager,” she said.
The silence lengthened.
“Well,” she said, “I’m glad you found it.”
“What do you want me to do with it?” Kling asked.
“I don’t suppose you’ll be coming down this way for anything, will you?”
“Well—”
“Court? Or the lab? DA’s Office? Anything like that?”
“No, but…”
She waited.
“Actually, I live down near the bridge,” Kling said.
“The Calm’s Point Bridge?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, well, good! Do you know A View from the Bridge?”
“What?”
“It’s under the bridge, actually, right on the Dix. A little wine bar.”
“Oh.”
“It’s just…I don’t want to take you out of your way.”
“Well—”
“Does five sound okay?” Eileen asked.
“I was just leaving the office, I don’t know what time—”
“It’s just at the end of Lamb Street, under the bridge, right on the river, you can’t miss it. Five o’clock, okay? My treat, it’ll be a reward, sort of.”
“Well—”
“Or have you made other plans?” Eileen asked.
“No. No other plans.”
“Five o’clock then?”
“Okay,” he said.
“Good,” she said, and hung up.
Kling had a bewildered look on his face.
“What was that?” Brown asked.
“Eileen’s earring,” Kling said.
“What?” Brown said.
“Forget it,” Kling said.
By 3:00 that afternoon, they had been through Edelman’s small second-floor office a total of three times—four times, if you counted the extra half hour they’d spent going through his desk again. Brown wanted to call it quits. Kling pointed out that they hadn’t yet looked inside the safe. Brown mentioned that the safe was locked. Kling put in a call to the Safe, Loft & Truck Squad. A detective there told him they’d try to get somebody up there within the half hour. Brown lighted a cigarette, and they began going over the office yet another time.
The office was the first in the hallway at the top of the stairs, which probably accounted for the fact that Andrew Fleet had chosen it for his stickup last July, a junkie robber being interested only in expediency and opportunity. A frosted-glass panel on the front door was lettered in gold leaf with the words EDELMAN BROS. and beneath that PRECIOUS GEMS. Mrs. Edelman had told them her husband worked alone, so both Brown and Kling figured the firm had been named when there was a brother-partner, and that either the brother was now dead, or else no longer active in the business. They each made a note, in their separate pads, to call Mrs. Edelman and check on this.
Just inside the entrance doorway, there was a space some four feet wide, leading to a chest-high counter behind which was a grille fashioned of the same steel mesh as that on the squadroom’s detention cage. A glass-paneled door covered with the same protective mesh was to the left of the counter. A button on the other side of the counter, when pressed, released the lock on the door to the inner office. But the mesh, somewhat like what you might find in a cyclone fence around a school playground, could not have prevented an intruder from sticking a gun through any one of its diamond-shaped openings and demanding that the release button for the door be pressed. Presumably, this was what had happened on that night last July. Andrew Fleet had barged into the office, pointed his gun at Edelman, and ordered him to unlock the door. The steel mesh grille had been as helpful as a bathing suit in a blizzard.
The office side of the dividing counter resembled an apothecary chest, with dozens of little drawers set into it, each of them labeled with the names of the gems they presumably contained. No one had been in this office since the night of Edelman’s murder, but the drawers were surprisingly empty, which led both Kling and Brown to assume that Edelman had locked his stuff in the safe before heading home that night. The men were both wearing cotton gloves as they went through the office. It was unlikely that the murderer had been here before heading uptown to ambush Edelman in the garage under his building, but the Crime Unit boys had not yet been through the place, and they weren’t taking any chances. If they found a residue of anything that even remotely resembled cocaine, they would place a call downtown at once. They were working this by the book. You didn’t summon the harried Crime Unit to a place that wasn’t the scene of the crime, unless you had damn good reason to suspect this other place was somehow linked to the crime. They had no reason to suspect that as yet.
The detective from Safe, Loft & Truck arrived forty minutes later, which wasn’t bad considering the condition of the roads. He was wearing a sheepskin car coat, a cap with earflaps, fleece-lined gloves, heavy woolen trousers, a turtleneck shirt, and black rubbers. He was also carrying a black satchel. He put the satchel down on the floor, took off his gloves, rubbed his hands briskly together, said, “Some weather, huh?” and extended his right hand. “Turbo,” he said, and shook hands first with Brown and then with Kling, who introduced themselves in turn.
Turbo reminded Brown of the pictures of Santa Claus in the illustrated version of “The Night before Christmas,” which he ritually read to his kid every Christmas Eve. Turbo didn’t have a beard, but he was a roly-poly little man with bright red cheeks, no taller than Hal Willis, but at least a yard wider. He had retrieved his right hand, and was again rubbing both hands briskly together. Brown figured he was going to try the combination, the way Jimmy Valentine might have.
“So where is it?” Turbo said.
“Right there in the corner,” Kling said.
Turbo looked.
“I was hoping it’d be an old one,” he said. “That box looks brand new.”
He walked over to the safe.
“I coulda punched an old box in three seconds flat. This one’s gonna take time.”
He studied the safe.
“You know what I’m gonna find here, most likely?” he said. “A lead spindle shaft with the locknuts away from the shaft so I won’t be able to pound it through the gut box and break the nuts that way.”
Brown and Kling looked at each other. Turbo sounded as if he were speaking a foreign language.
“Well, let’s see,” Turbo said. “You think he may have left it on day combination, no such luck, huh?” He was reaching for the dial when his hand stopped. “The Crime Unit been in here?” he asked.
“No,” Kling said.
“Is that why you’re wearing the Mickey Mouse gloves?”
Both men looked at their hands. Neither of them had removed the cotton gloves when shaking hands with Turbo, a lack of etiquette he seemed not to have minded.
“What is this case, anyway?” he asked.
&
nbsp; “Homicide,” Kling said.
“And no Crime Unit?”
“He was killed uptown.”
“So what’s this, his place of business?”
“Right,” Brown said.
“Whose authority do I have to open this thing?”
“It’s our case,” Kling said.
“So what does that mean?” Turbo asked.
“That’s your authority,” Brown said.
“Yeah? You go tell that to my lieutenant, that I busted open a safe on the authority of two flatfoots from the boonies,” Turbo said, and went to the phone. Mindful of the fact that the Crime Unit hadn’t yet been here, he opened his satchel, took out his own pair of white cotton gloves, and pulled them on. The three detectives now looked like waiters in a fancy restaurant. Brown expected one of them to start passing around the finger bowls. Turbo lifted the phone receiver, dialed a number, and waited.
“Yeah,” he said, “Turbo here. Let me talk to the Loot.” He waited again. “Mike,” he said, “it’s Dom. I’m here on North Greenfield, there’s two guys from uptown want me to open a safe for them.” He looked at Kling and Brown. “What’s your names again?” he asked.
“Kling,” Kling said.
“Brown,” Brown said.
“Kling and Brown,” Turbo said into the phone, and listened again. “What precinct?” he asked them.
“The Eight-Seven,” Kling said.
“The Eight-Seven,” Turbo said into the phone. “A homicide. No, this is the guy’s place of business, the victim’s. So what should I do? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I just want my ass covered, you understand, Mike? ‘Cause next thing you know, I’ll be doing time on a Burglary Three rap.” He listened. “What release form, who’s got a release form? Well, no, I don’t. So what should it say? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You want both of them to sign it, or what? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And that’ll do it, huh? Okay, Mike, you’re the boss. I’ll see you later,” he said, and hung up. “I need a release from you guys,” he said. “Authorizing me to open that thing. One signature’ll do it, whoever caught the squeal. I’ll give you the language.”
He dictated the words to Kling, who wrote them down in his pad, and then signed the page.
“Date it, please,” Turbo said.
Kling dated it.
“And you’d better let me have your rank and shield number, too.”
Kling scribbled his rank and shield number under his signature.
“I’m sorry to get so technical,” Turbo said, pocketing the sheet of paper Kling tore from his pad, “but if there’s anything of value in that safe, and it happens to disappear—”
“Right, you’re just covering your ass,” Brown said.
“Right,” Turbo said, and shot him a glare. “So let’s see if this guy left it on day comb.” He went to the safe again. “Lots of guys who are in and out of a box all day long, they’ll just give the dial a tiny little twist when they close it, you know? Then all they have to do is turn it back to the last number, saves a lot of time.” He turned the dial slowly, and yanked on the handle. “No such luck,” he said. “Let’s try the old five-ten.”
The detectives looked at him.
“Lots of guys, they have trouble remembering numbers, so when they order a safe, they’ll ask for the combination to be three numbers in a multiplication table. Like five, ten, fifteen. Or four, eight, twelve. Or six, twelve, eighteen, or whatever. Hardly ever the nine table, that’s a bitch, the nine table. What’s nine times three?” he asked Kling.
“Twenty-seven,” Kling said.
“Yeah, well, that’s the exception that proves the rule. So let’s give it a shot.”
As he began trying the multiplication-table combinations, he said, “Would you know this guy’s birthday?”
“No,” Brown said.
” ‘Cause sometimes they use their birthdays, you know, anything to make it easy to remember. Like if he was born on October 15, 1926, the combination would be ten left, fifteen right, and then twenty-six left again. But you don’t know his birthday, huh?”
“No,” Brown said.
“Take a look at the phone there, what’s the number on it?”
“What?” Brown said.
“The phone. The phone I just used there. On the guy’s desk. What’s the first six digits? Sometimes they’ll use the first six digits of their phone number.”
“You want me to write this down, or what?” Brown asked.
“Yeah, write it down. I’m still only up to the six table. I usually only take it to eleven, because after that the tables get too tricky. Who the hell even knows what fourteen times three is?” he said.
“Forty-two,” Kling said, and Turbo gave him a sour look.
“Okay, give me that phone number,” he said.
Brown handed him the slip of paper on which he’d written down the first six digits of the number. Turbo tried them.
“No such luck,” he said. “Okay, let’s bring up the heavy artillery.” He opened his satchel, and took from it a small sledgehammer and a punch. “Best burglars in this city are on the Safe, Loft & Truck Squad,” he said, proudly, and with one swift blow knocked off the combination dial. “Looks like a lead spindle,” he said, “we’ll find out in a minute.” He began pounding on the exposed spindle. The spindle started mushrooming under the hammer blows. “Lead, sure as hell,” he said. “This here is what you call a money box here. That means it’s made of heavy steel layers, with a punch-resistant spindle, and sometimes a boltwork relock device, or even a copper sheet in the door so an acetylene torch on it don’t mean nothing. If I’da known what this was gonna be, I’da brought nitro.” He smiled suddenly. “I’m kidding. Your best burglars these days hardly ever use explosives. What I got to do here is I got to peel back the steel until I can get a big enough hole to force a jimmy in. Once I get to that lock, I can pry it loose and open the door. Make yourselves comfortable, this may take a while.”
Kling looked up at the clock. It was ten minutes past 4:00, and he had promised Eileen he’d meet her at 5:00. He debated calling her, decided not to.
“Can we get a little light in here?” Turbo asked. “Or were you partners with this dead guy?”
Brown flicked on the wall switch.
Turbo got to work.
He opened the box in twenty minutes. He was obviously very pleased with himself, and so both Brown and Kling congratulated him effusively before getting down on their hands and knees to see what was inside there.
There were not very many gems in the safe. Several pouches of rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, and one small pouch of diamonds. But on a shelf at the rear of the safe, stacked neatly there, the detectives found $300,000 in $100 bills.
“We’re in the wrong business,” Turbo told them.
Detective Richard Genero had been very leery about answering the telephone ever since he’d inadvertently yelled at a captain from downtown two days ago. You never knew who was going to be on the other end. That was the mystery of the telephone. There were other mysteries in life as well, which was why his mother constantly advised him to “mind his own business,” a warning that seemed absurd when directed to a policeman, whose business was minding other people’s business. When the telephone on Carella’s desk rang at 4:30 that Tuesday afternoon, Genero debated answering it. Carella was at the other end of the squadroom, putting on his coat, preparatory to leaving. Suppose this was that captain again? Carella and the captain seemed to be good friends. Carella had laughed a lot when he was talking to the captain on the telephone. Suppose the captain yelled at Genero again? The phone kept ringing.
“Will somebody please pick that up?” Carella shouted from across the room, where he was buttoning his coat.
Since Genero was the only other person in the room, he picked up the receiver, very gingerly, and held it a little distance from his ear, in case the captain started yelling again. “Hello?” he said, not wanting to give his name in case this was the captain again.
“Detective Carella, please,” t
he voice on the other end said.
“Who’s this, please?” Genero asked, very carefully.
“Tell him it’s Danny,” the voice said.
“Yes, sir,” Genero said, not knowing whether or not Danny was the same captain who’d called on Sunday, or perhaps even another captain. “Steve!” he yelled, “it’s Danny.”
Carella came across the room to his desk. “Why does it always ring when I’m on my way out?” he said.
“That’s the mystery of the telephone,” Genero said, and smiled like an angel. Carella took the receiver from him. Genero went back to his own desk, where he was working on a crossword puzzle, and having trouble with a three-letter word that meant feline.
“Hello, Danny,” Carella said.
“Steve? I hope this ain’t an inconvenient time.”
“No, no. What’ve you got?”
Meyer came up the corridor from the men’s room, zipping up his fly. He pushed his way through the gate in the slatted rail divider and went to the coatrack. The woolen hat his wife had knitted for him was in the right-hand pocket of his coat. He debated putting it on. Instead, he took his blue fedora from the rack, seated it on his bald head, shrugged into his coat, and walked to where Carella was on the phone.
“What do you mean, ‘interesting’?” Carella said.
“Well, I thought I might be able to talk to this chick who wouldn’t give you the right time, you know the one I mean?” Danny said.
“The Quadrado girl, yes.”
“Right. The one who used to live with Lopez. Give her a song and dance, tell her I was looking to buy some dope, whatever. Just to get her talking, you know what I mean?”
“So what was so interesting, Danny?”
“Well…you probably know this already, Steve, but maybe you don’t.”
“What is it, Danny?” Carella said, and looked at Meyer and shrugged. Meyer shrugged back.
“She was cut to ribbons Sunday night.”
“What?”
“Yeah. She died at Saint Juke’s yesterday morning, around eleven o’clock.”
“Who told you this?”