by Ed McBain
“Is that why you denied knowing her?”
“Yes. I figured…well, if any of this came to light, you might think—”
“We might think exactly what we are thinking, Mr. Carter.”
“No. You’re mistaken. It was just that once. Sally never wanted anything more, Sally never threatened me with—”
“How much did she get for her services?” Meyer asked.
“Two hundred bucks. But that was the one and only time.”
“How much do you give Tina? Is she your regular bag lady?”
“Yes. She gets the same.”
“Two hundred for each pickup and delivery?”
“Yes.”
“Twelve hundred a week?”
“Yes.”
“And your end?”
“We’re splitting it four ways.”
“Who?”
“Me, my general manager, my company manager, and the box-office treasurer.”
“Splitting thirty-two thousand a week?”
“More or less.”
“So your end is something like four hundred grand a year,” Meyer said.
“Tax free,” Carella said.
“Weren’t the show’s profits enough for you?” Meyer asked.
“Nobody’s getting hurt,” Carter said.
“Except you and your pals,” Carella said. “Get your coat.”
“Why?” Carter said. “Are you wired?”
The detectives looked at each other.
“Let’s hear the proof,” Carter said.
“A man named Timothy Moore knows all about it,” Carella said. “So does Lonnie Cooper, one of your dancers. Maybe Sally wasn’t as trustworthy as you thought she was. Get your coat.”
Carter stubbed out his cigarette and smiled thinly. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “If there’s ice—and I don’t remember having this conversation today, do you?—and if Sally Anderson, once upon a time very long ago, really and truly delivered some tickets and picked up some cash, it seems to me you’d need more proof than…hearsay, do you call it? So let’s say you run over to my box office straight from here. Do you know what you’ll find? You’ll find that all of our brokers, from this minute on, are getting only their legitimate allotments of tickets, and anything we sell them beyond their usual quotas will be at box-office prices. Our top ticket sells for forty dollars. If we send a house seat to a broker, that’s what he’ll pay for it. Forty dollars. Everything open and honest. Now tell me, gentlemen, are you going to try tracking down whatever cash has changed hands since the show opened? Impossible.”
The detectives looked at each other.
“You can go to the attorney general with this,” Carter said, still smiling, “but without proof you’d only look foolish.”
Carella began buttoning his coat.
Meyer put on his hat.
“And, anyway…,” Carter said.
The detectives were already heading for the door.
“…a hot show always generates ice.”
In the corridor outside, Meyer said, “Nothing ever hurts anybody, right? Snow isn’t habit-forming, and ice is a time-honored scam. Marvelous.”
“Lovely,” Carella said, and pressed the button for the elevator.
“He knows we have no proof, he knows we can’t do a damn thing. So he walks,” Meyer said.
“Maybe he’ll clean up his act, though.”
“For how long?” Meyer asked.
Both men fell silent, listening to the elevator as it lumbered slowly up the shaft. Through a window at the far end of the corridor, they could see that the sunshine was waning, the day was turning gray again.
“What do you think about the other?” Carella asked.
“The dead girl?”
“Yes.”
“I think he’s clean, don’t you?”
“I think so.”
The elevator doors slid open.
“There ain’t no justice in this world,” Meyer said.
Years ago, when Brother Anthony was spending a little time at Castleview State Penitentiary on that manslaughter conviction, his cellmate was a burglar. Guy named Jack Greenspan. Big Jack Greenspan, they used to call him. Jewish guy. You hardly ever ran into any Jewish burglars. Big Jack taught him a lot of things, but Brother Anthony never figured any of them would help him on the outside.
Until today.
Today, all the things Big Jack had told him all those years ago seemed of immense value to Brother Anthony because what he planned to do was break into the Anderson girl’s apartment. This was not a sudden whim. He had discussed it thoroughly with Emma yesterday, after he’d learned that the Anderson girl had been killed. The reason he had gone to see her in the first place was because Judite Quadrado had told them she was the source from which the sweet snow flowed. It was one thing to have a list of customers, but customers weren’t worth beans without what to sell them. So he had gone there yesterday hoping to strike up a business relationship with the girl, only to discover she wouldn’t be doing business as usual no more, someone had seen to that.
The reason he wanted to get into her apartment—well, there were two reasons, actually. The first reason was that maybe the girl had stashed away a whole pile of dope the cops hadn’t found. He didn’t think that was likely, but it was worth a shot. Cops were as careless as anybody else in the world, and maybe she’d stashed away a couple of kilos someplace, which would be like found money with a key going for something like sixty grand before it was stepped on. The second reason was that if the girl was an ounce dealer, which Judite Quadrado had said she was, then she was sure as hell getting those ounces from somebody else, unless she was in the habit of running down to South America every other weekend, which Brother Anthony doubted. The super of the building had told him she was a dancer in a hit show, right? Well, dancers couldn’t go running off whenever they wanted to. No, the way he figured it, she was being supplied by somebody else.
So…
If she was getting her stuff from somebody else, then wouldn’t there be something in the apartment that might tell him where she was getting it? If he could learn where she was getting it, why then he would just go to the man and tell him he’d bought out Sally, or some such bullshit, and would the man care to do business with him instead? Unless the man turned out to be the one who’d killed her, in which case Brother Anthony would make the sign of the cross, pick up his skirts, and disappear like an Arab in the night. One thing be didn’t want was any heavy action from a guy who lived in Baby Bogota.
He was carrying in the pouch at the front of his cassock two things that were essential to a successful break-in, again according to Big Jack, and assuming that the lock on the dead girl’s door was a Mickey Mouse lock. If the lock looked like something Brother Anthony couldn’t handle, he’d find some other way of getting in—like maybe climbing up the fire escape and smashing a window, although Big Jack said that was Amateur Night in Dixie, smashing windows, something only junkie burglars did. The two things Brother Anthony had in his pouch were a box of toothpicks and a strip of plastic he had torn from one of those milk bottles with a handle and a screw-top cap.
The toothpicks were his own portable burglar alarm.
The strip of plastic was to open the door.
The way Big Jack explained it, a credit card was the best way to loid a Mickey Mouse lock, but any thin strip of plastic or celluloid would do. That was where the expression loid had come from: before credit cards were even invented, the old-time burglars used to use strips of celluloid to work open a lock. Brother Anthony didn’t have any credit cards, and he wasn’t sure the plastic he’d torn from the milk bottle would work; still, Big Jack had said any strip of plastic, right?
He had checked out the lobby downstairs before entering the building; no security, and the old fart superintendent was nowhere in sight. He had been up to the girl’s apartment yesterday, when he’d knocked and got no answer, so he knew she was in apartment 3A, but he checked the mailboxes in the lobby just to mak
e sure, and then he took the steps up to the third floor, and stepped out into an empty corridor, not a sound anywhere, Big Jack was right about apartment buildings being mostly empty during the daytime. If he played this right, according to Big Jack’s rules, he should be inside the apartment in maybe a minute and a half.
It took him half an hour.
He kept sliding the plastic shim into the crack where the door met the jamb, working it, jiggling it, trying to find purchase on the bolt, turning it this way and that, beginning to sweat, removing it from the crack, inserting it again, worrying it, pushing at it, glancing over his shoulder down the hallway, coaxing it, whispering to it (Come on, baby, come on), positive some lady would come out of her apartment down the hall and start screaming at the top of her lungs, jerking the plastic shim, catching the bolt, losing the bolt, sweating more profusely now, the heavy cassock clinging to his body, his hands working feverishly, a full half hour before he finally felt the latch beginning to yield (Careful, don’t lose it now!), felt it beginning to slide back as the plastic insinuated itself between the steel of the bolt and the wood of the jamb, twisting the shim slowly now, feeling the bolt give and then surrender entirely. He seized the knob and turned it, and the door was open.
He was drenched with sweat.
He stepped quickly into the apartment, closed the door immediately behind him, and leaned against it, breathing hard, listening, pouring sweat. When he had caught his breath, he fished in his pouch for the box of wooden toothpicks, opened the box, took a toothpick from it, and then carefully opened the door just a crack and peered out into the hallway, looking, listening again. Nothing.
He opened the door wider.
He wedged the toothpick into the keyway on the lock, and then broke it off flush with the cylinder. He closed the door again, and turned the thumb-bolt, locking it. The way Big Jack had explained it, if anybody came to the apartment with a key, they’d try to put the key in the lock, not knowing a toothpick was wedged there in the keyway, and they’d keep fumbling with the key, trying to get it in there, and the guy inside the apartment would hear all the clicking noise of metal against metal and would go out the window or whatever he’d chosen for his escape route. Your kitchen was a good escape route, Big Jack had told him. Some kitchens had service doors, and most kitchens had fire escapes. He didn’t know why so many kitchens had fire escapes, they just did. Brother Anthony went into the kitchen now.
He leaned over the kitchen sink and looked through the window. No fire escape. He began roaming through the apartment, looking out over the windowsills for a fire escape. The only fire escape was outside the bedroom window. He turned the latch on the window, opened the window just a trifle so he could throw it all the way open in a second if anybody came in here, and then walked into the living room. This was a nice place. Carpet on the floor, nice furniture, he wished Emma and him could live in a place like this. Posters on all the walls, nice black leather sofa with pillows. There were some framed pictures of a girl wearing tights and one of those little short frilly skirts ballet dancers wore. He figured she was the dead girl. Good-looking broad. Blonde hair, nice figure, but a little on the thin side. He wondered where you could buy those little skirts ballet dancers wore. There were probably places in the city you could buy them. He’d like to buy one of them for Emma, have her run around the apartment naked except for the little skirt.
There was a poster for some ballet company hanging on the wall outside the bathroom. He figured he’d start with the bathroom first because Big Jack had told him lots of people stashed their valuables in the toilet tank, in the water inside the tank. He lowered the toilet seat and lifted the top of the toilet tank and put it down on the seat. He looked inside there. A lot of rusty water. He stuck his hand down into the water, felt around. Nothing. He pulled his hand back, wiped it on a towel hanging on a rod across from the toilet bowl, and then put the top of the tank back on again, trying to remember where else Big Jack said a person should look.
Well, let’s try the bedroom, he thought. Big Jack had told him that a lot of bedroom dressers, the bottom drawer rested just on the frame of the dresser itself. There wasn’t a shelf or anything under the bottom drawer. This meant there was a space of about two, three inches between the drawer and the floor of the room. What a lot of people did, they pulled out the drawer, and then put their valuables right on the floor itself before they put the drawer back in. An inexperienced burglar would go through the drawer, but he wouldn’t think of pulling out the drawer to look on the floor.
Brother Anthony pulled out the bottom drawer. It was full of the girl’s panties and brassieres. Little nylon bikinis in all colors. Tiny little brassieres, she must’ve had small tits. He tried to visualize her in just her panties. She was really too skinny, but some of those skinny ones, the closer the bone, the sweeter the meat. He picked up a pair of panties, the purple ones, and held them in his hands for several moments before throwing them back into the drawer. He was here to find two things: either a stash of cocaine, or something that would tell him where the girl was getting her stuff.
He got down on his hands and knees and looked into the empty space where the drawer had been. He couldn’t see a thing. He stood up, turned on the lamp on the dresser, and got down on his hands and knees again. He still couldn’t see anything. He reached into the dresser and began feeling around with both hands. There was nothing on the floor. He picked up the drawer from where he had left it on the floor, carried it to the bed—nice big bed with a patchwork quilt—and dumped the contents on the bed. Nothing but brassieres and panties, damn girl must’ve changed her underwear three times a day. He guessed maybe dancers did that. Worked up a sweat, changed their underwear a lot.
He took out all the other drawers in the dresser and dumped them on the bed, too. Nothing but clothes. Blouses and sweaters and tights and T-shirts, a whole pile of girl stuff. No cocaine. Not a scrap of paper with anything written on it. The cops had probably fine-combed the place, taken anything that looked interesting. They probably sold whatever dope they confiscated, the cops. Worse crooks than the honest crooks in this city. He put his hands on his hips, and looked around. Now where? he wondered.
Big Jack had told him you could sometimes find heroin in a person’s sugar bowl, that’s if you got lucky enough to bust into some dealer’s apartment. You found a stash of dope, it was better than finding cash or credit cards or even coin collections. He went back into the kitchen again, looked for the sugar bowl, found it on the bottom shelf of one of the cabinets, took off the lid, and discovered that the bowl was full of pink Sweet ‘N’ Low packets. So much for that, may God have mercy on your soul. He went through all the cereal boxes in the cabinet, figuring she might have hidden a plastic-wrapped kilo inside one of the boxes, dumping out cornflakes and wheat germ and whatever, but he couldn’t find a thing. He went through the refrigerator. Nothing but an open container of yogurt and a lot of wilted vegetables. He went through every drawer in the living room, and felt under every tabletop, figuring the stuff might be taped under one of them. Nothing. He went back into the bedroom, and opened the door to the closet.
Girl had more clothes than a Hall Avenue department store. Even a fur coat. Raccoon, it looked like. Must have been making a bundle selling the snow, so where the hell was it? He began pulling dresses and coats from the hangers, patting down all the coat pockets, throwing everything on the floor behind him. Nothing. He opened all her shoe boxes. Sexy whore shoes, some of them, with high heels and ankle straps. He thought of her panties again. Nothing but shoes in any of the boxes. So where was it? He dug deeper into the closet.
He found a man’s clothes hanging on the rod, pushed to the far corner of the closet. Well, sure, it figured. Little whore with her sexy panties and her high-heeled shoes, of course there had to be some guy putting it to her. Nice cardigan sweater, brown, Brother Anthony would have taken it with him except that it looked too small. Pair of checked slacks, wouldn’t be caught dead in them even if they
did fit him. A black silk robe with the monogram TM over the breast pocket. Little kinky sex, T. M.? You put on your black silk robe, she puts on her silk panties and her high-heeled hooker shoes, you sniff a little blow, and it’s off to the races! Very nice, T. M. Nice clothes you got here, T. M. But not too many of them, so you couldn’t have been living here with her, could you? Maybe you just dropped in every now and then, maybe you’re some married stockbroker who was knocking off an uptown piece every Wednesday afternoon when the market closed. No more nookie, T. M. The lady’s dead and gone.
Nice cashmere jacket, soft, tan. Another pair of pants. Green! Who would wear green pants except an Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day? A down ski parka. Blue. A small one, though. Must’ve been the girl’s, with one of those zipper collars that had a hood folded up inside it, in case you got cold on the ski lift at St. Moritz, my dear. He wouldn’t strap a pair of skis to his feet if you paid him $1 million! Yeah, here was the guy’s parka, a black one, like the robe. Are you a skier, T. M.? Did you take your little sweetheart skiing every now and then? He patted down all the pockets in the cashmere jacket, and then threw it on the floor behind him. He patted down the girl’s ski parka, the blue one. Nothing. He was about to toss it on the floor with all the other clothes when he felt something strange about the collar.
He took it in both hands and twisted it.
Something felt a little stiff in there.
He twisted the collar again. There was a faint crackling sound. Something was zipped up inside that collar, something in addition to the hood. He carried the parka to the bed. He sat on the edge of the bed, the panties and brassieres scattered everywhere around him. He felt the collar again. Yes, there was definitely something in there. Quickly, he unzipped it.
At first, he was only disappointed.
What he was holding in his hands was an envelope folded lengthwise, once and then again, so that it formed a narrow oblong that had easily fitted inside the zipped-up collar of the parka. He unfolded the envelope once. He unfolded it again. The letter was addressed to Sally Anderson. He looked at the return address in the upper left-hand corner. The name there meant nothing to him, but the place triggered an instant reaction, and he suspected at once that whereas he hadn’t found the coke itself, he might have found the primary source of the coke. He reached into the envelope and took out the handwritten letter. He began reading it. He could hear the ticking of his own watch. He realized he was holding his breath. Suddenly, he began giggling.