by Ed McBain
Now we move, he thought. Straight up into the big time, man, Cadillacs and Cuban cigars, champagne and caviar, man! Still giggling, he tucked the letter into his pouch, considered whether it was safe to go out the way he had come in, decided it was, and headed uptown to share the wealth with Emma.
Alonso Quadrado was naked when they walked in on him at 4:00 that afternoon. They considered this an advantage. A naked man feels uncomfortable talking to a person who is fully dressed. This was why burglars had an edge whenever they surprised some guy asleep in his bedroom, and he jumped out of bed naked and stood there with everything hanging out, facing an intruder who was wearing an overcoat and holding a gun in his hand. Alonso Quadrado was taking a shower in the locker room at the YMCA on Landis Avenue when the two detectives walked in. The two detectives were both wearing overcoats. One of them was wearing a hat. Quadrado was wearing nothing but a thin layer of soapsuds.
“Hello, Alonso,” Meyer said.
Quadrado got soap in his eyes. He said, “Damn it!” and began splashing water onto his face. He was an exceptionally thin man, with narrow bones and a pale olive complexion. The Pancho Villa mustache over his upper lip was almost bigger than he was.
“Few more questions we’d like to ask you,” Carella said.
“You picked some time,” Quadrado said. He rinsed himself off, turning this way and that under the needle spray. He turned off the shower, picked up a towel, and began drying himself. The detectives waited. Quadrado wrapped the towel around his waist and walked into the locker room. The detectives followed him.
“I just got done playing handball,” he said. “You play handball?”
“I used to,” Meyer said.
“Best game there is,” Quadrado said, and sat on the bench, and opened the door to one of the lockers. “So what now?” he said.
“Do you know your cousin’s dead?” Meyer asked.
“Yeah, I know it. The funeral’s tomorrow. I ain’t going. I hate funerals. You ever been to a Spanish funeral? All those old ladies throwing themselves on the coffin? Not for me, man.”
“She was cut, do you know that?”
“Yeah.”
“Any idea who did it?”
“No. If Lopez was still alive, I’da said it was him. But he’s dead, too.”
“Anybody else you can think of?”
“Look, you know what she was into, it coulda been anybody.”
He was drying his feet. He reached into the locker, took out a pair of socks, and began putting them on. It was interesting the way people dressed themselves, Meyer thought. It was like the different ways people ate an ear of corn. No two people ate corn the same way, and no two people got dressed the same way. Why was Quadrado starting with his socks? Black socks, at that. Was he about to audition for a porn flick? Meyer wondered if he would put on his shoes next, before he put on his Jockey shorts or his pants. Another of life’s little mysteries.
“What was she into?” Carella said.
“Well, not exactly into it, not yet. But working on it, let’s say.”
“And what was that?”
“The only thing she inherited from Lopez.”
“Spell it out,” Carella said.
Quadrado reached into the locker again. He took a pair of boxer shorts from where they were hanging on a hook, and pulled them on. “Lopez’s trade,” he said, and reached into the locker for his pants.
“His dope trade?”
“Yeah, she had the list.”
“What list?”
“Of his customers.”
“How’d she get that?”
“She was living with him, wasn’t she?”
“Is this a real list you’re talking about? Names and addresses? Written down on a piece of paper?”
“No, no, what piece of paper? But she was living with him, she knew who his customers were. She told me she was gonna move on it, get the coke the same place he was getting it, make herself a little extra change, you know?”
“When did she tell you this?” Meyer asked.
“Right after he got shot,” Quadrado said, and put on his shirt.
“Why didn’t you mention this the last time we talked?”
“You didn’t ask me.”
“Did this sound like a new thing for her?” Carella asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Dealing.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“She wasn’t working with him before he got killed, was she? They weren’t partners or anything?”
“No, no. Lopez? You think he’d share a good thing with a chick? No way.”
“But he told her who his customers were.”
“Well, he didn’t say, ‘This guy takes four grams, and this guy takes six grams,’ nothing like that. I mean, he didn’t hand her the list on a platter. But when a guy’s livin’ with somebody, they talk, you know what I mean? He’ll say, ‘I got to deliver a coupla three grams to Luis today,’ something like that. They’ll talk, you know?”
“Pillow talk,” Meyer said.
“Yeah, pillow talk, right,” Quadrado said. “That’s a good way of putting it. Judite was a smart girl. When Lopez talked, she listened. Look, I’ll tell you the truth, Judite didn’t think this thing was gonna last very long, you know what I mean? After the guy hurt her…I mean, how much can a chick put up with? He was a crazy bastard to begin with, and he still had other women, never mind just Judite. So I guess she listened a lot. She had no way of knowing he was gonna get killed, of course, but I guess she figured it wouldn’t hurt to—”
“How do you know that?”
“How do I know what?”
“That she didn’t know he was going to get killed?”
“I’m just assuming. You guys mind if I smoke?”
“Go right ahead,” Meyer said.
” ‘Cause I like a little smoke after I finish playing,” Quadrado said, and reached into the bag on the floor of the locker, and pulled out a Sucrets tin. They knew what was in the tin even before he opened it. They were surprised, but not too surprised. Nowadays, people smoked grass even on the park bench across the street from the station house. They watched as Quadrado fired the joint. He sucked on it. He let out a stream of smoke.
“Care for a toke?” he asked, blithely extending the joint to Meyer.
“Thanks,” Meyer said drily. “I’m on duty.”
Carella smiled.
“Who were these other women?’ he asked.
“Jesus, who could count them?” Quadrado said. “There’s this one-legged hooker he was putting it to, you know Anita Diaz? She’s gorgeous, but she’s got only one leg, they call her La Mujer Coja in the neighborhood, she’s the best lay in the world, you ever happen to run into her. Lopez was making it with her. And there was…you know the guy who owns the candy store on Mason and Tenth? His wife. Lopez was making it with her, too. This was all while he was living with Judite, who knows why she put up with it for so long?” He sucked on the joint. “I figure she was scared of him, you know? Like, he was all the time threatening her, and finally he burned her with the cigarette, so that must’ve really scared her. So I guess she figured she’d just keep her mouth shut, let him run around with whoever he wanted to.”
“How’d she plan to supply these people?”
“What do you mean?”
“Lopez’s customers. Where’d she plan to get the stuff?”
“Same place Lopez got it.”
“And where was that?”
“From the Anglo ounce dealer.”
“What Anglo ounce dealer?”
“The one Lopez used to live with. The way Judite figured it, bygones are bygones, and business is business. If the chick was supplying Lopez, why couldn’t she also supply Judite?”
“This was a woman, huh?”
“The blonde he used to live with, yeah.”
Carella looked at Meyer.
“What blonde?” he said.
“I told you. The Anglo chick he used to live with.”<
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“A blonde?” Meyer said.
“Yeah, a blonde,” Lopez said. “What is it with you guys? You’re hard of hearing?”
“When was this?” Meyer said.
“A year ago? Who remembers? Lopez had them coming and going like subway trains.”
“What’s her name, would you know?”
“No,” Quadrado said, and took a last draw on the roach before dropping it on the floor. He was about to step on it when he realized he was still in his stocking feet. Meyer stepped on it for him. Quadrado sat, pulled on a pair of high-topped black sneakers, and began lacing them.
“Where’d they live?” Carella asked.
“On Ainsley. We still got a handful of Anglos living up here… the rent’s cheap, they’re mostly people trying to make it, you know? Like starving painters, or musicians, or these guys who make statues, you know?”
“Sculptors,” Meyer said.
“Right, sculptors,” Quadrado said. “That’s a good way of putting it.”
“Let me get this straight,” Carella said. “You’re saying that a year ago—”
“Around then.”
“Lopez was living with a blonde cocaine dealer—”
“No, not then.”
“He wasn’t living with her?”
“He was living with her, but she wasn’t dealing coke. Not then.”
“What was she doing?”
“Trying to make it. Same as anybody else.”
“Trying to make it how?”
“I think she was a dancer or something.”
Carella looked at Meyer again.
“I think she finally moved away because she got a part in a show,” Quadrado said. “Last summer sometime. Moved back downtown, you know?”
“And surfaced again dealing coke,” Carella said.
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“The coke? Musta been last fall sometime. October, sometime.”
“Began supplying Lopez with coke.”
“Yeah.”
“Who told you this?”
“Judite.”
“Are you sure the girl wasn’t coming up here to buy coke?”
“No, no. She was an ounce dealer, she was selling it. That’s how come Judite figured she could pick up the trade now that Lopez was dead and gone. Same customers, same ounce dealer.”
“How often did she come up here?”
“The blonde? Every week.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“I know it because that’s what Judite told me.”
“And this started in October sometime?”
“Yeah, that’s when Lopez went into business. Again, this is all according to Judite. I got no personal knowledge of it myself.”
“When did she come up?”
“On Sundays, usually.”
“To deliver the coke.”
“And maybe a little something else besides.”
“What do you mean?”
“Renew old times, you know? In the sack.”
“With Lopez?”
“According to Judite. Who knows if it’s true or not? You get a chick taking all kinds of shit from a guy, she begins to imagine things, you know? She starts finding panties that ain’t hers under every pillow, you know what I mean? She starts smelling other women on her sheets. It gets to her. Listen, my cousin was a little nuts, I’ll tell you the truth. You have to be a little nuts to take up with a guy like Lopez.”
“But you don’t know the girl’s name, huh?”
“No.”
“Do you know the name of the show she was in?”
“No.”
“But you’re sure she used to live with Lopez.”
“Positive. Not at first. She had an apartment in this building where there’s a couple other Anglos. But then she moved in with him. Yeah, I’m sure of that. I mean, that I seen with my own eyes.”
“What did you see?”
“Him and her coming in and going out of the building together, all hours of the day and night. Look, it was common knowledge Lopez had himself a blonde chick from downtown.”
“What building was this?” Meyer asked.
“The building he was living in.”
“When he got shot?”
“No, no. That’s where he was living with Judite. That was on Culver. This was on Ainsley.”
“Do you know the address?”
“No. It’s near the drugstore there. On the corner of Ainsley and Sixth, I think it is. The Tru-Way drugstore.”
“Would you recognize the girl if you saw her again?”
“The blonde? Oh, sure. Nice-looking chick. What she saw in Lopez is another mystery, right?”
“Alonso, would you do us a favor?” Meyer said. “Would you come over to the station house with us? For just a minute?”
“Why? What’d I do?” Quadrado said.
“Nothing,” Meyer said. “We want to show you some pictures.”
Arthur Brown did not want to be doing what he was doing. Arthur Brown wanted to be watching television with his wife.
He did not want to be wading through all this stuff he and Kling had got, first, from Marvin Edelman’s widow, and next, from Marvin Edelman’s safety deposit box. If Arthur Brown had wanted to become an accountant, he would not have taken the patrolmen’s test all those years ago. Accounting bored Brown. Even his own accounting bored him. He normally asked Caroline to balance the family checkbooks, something she did marvelously well.
It was twenty minutes past 11:00.
The news would be over in ten minutes, and Johnny Carson would be coming on. Brown sometimes felt that the only two things uniting the people of the United States were Johnny Carson and the weather. Nothing short of a nuclear war could make everyone in the good old US of A feel more united than Johnny Carson and the weather. This winter, the weather was rotten all over the country. If you flew from here to Minneapolis, the weather would be the same. It gave you a feeling that here and Minneapolis were one and the same place. It united the people in adversity. If you flew from here to Cincinnati, the weather would be rotten there, too, and you’d step off the plane and immediately feel this enormous sense of brotherhood. Then, when you got to the hotel room and ordered your drink from room service, and unpacked your bag, and turned on your television set, why there would be old Johnny Carson at 11:30 P.M. sharp all over the country, and you knew that in Los Angeles they were watching Johnny Carson at the very same time, and in New York they were watching him, and in Kalamazoo, and Atlanta, and Washington, DC, they were all watching Johnny Carson, and it made you feel like an essential part of the greatest people on earth, all of them sitting there with their fingers up their asses, watching Johnny Carson.
Brown figured that if Johnny Carson ran for the presidency, he would win hands down. What he wanted to do right now—well, ten minutes from now—was watch Johnny Carson. He did not want to be cross-checking the contents of Marvin Edelman’s safety deposit box against Marvin Edelman’s bank statements and canceled checks for the past year or so. That was something for an accountant to be doing. What a cop should be doing was sitting on the sofa with his arm around Caroline while they watched Lola Falana, who was scheduled to be Johnny’s guest tonight, and whom Brown considered the most beautiful black woman in the world—next to Caroline, of course. He had never mentioned to Caroline how beautiful he thought Lola Falana was. After all these years on the force, he had learned that you never opened a door until you knew for certain what was behind it, and he wasn’t quite sure what might be lurking behind Caroline’s door these days. Brown had once mentioned that Diana Ross wasn’t bad looking, and Caroline had thrown an ashtray at him. He had threatened to arrest her for attempted assault, and she had told him he could damn well glue the ashtray together himself. That had been a long time ago, and he hadn’t tried opening that particular door since. He had the feeling he might find the same familiar tigress behind it.
He was very happy that Mrs. Edelman had found th
e duplicate key to her husband’s safety deposit box, because the discovery had saved him and Kling the trouble of going all the way downtown to apply for a court order to open the box, which application might or might not have been granted depending on which magistrate they’d have come up against that afternoon. Some of the judges downtown, you got the feeling they were on the side of the bad guys. You got a judge like Walking Wilbur Harris, you could go into his courtroom with a guy holding a machete in one bloody hand and a severed head in the other, and old Wilbur would cluck his tongue and say, “My, my, we’ve been a naughty boy today, haven’t we? Prisoner released on his own recognizance.” Or he’d set a ridiculous bail like ten thousand bucks for somebody who’d killed his mother, his father, his Labrador retriever, and all his pet goldfish. You got a judge like Walking Wilbur, it sometimes made you feel you were on the job for no reason at all in the world. You worked your tail off out there, you made your collar, and Wilbur let the man walk, sometimes clear to China, never to be heard from since. So what was the use? He was happy he hadn’t had to go downtown today to beg for a court order to open that box.
He had not been happy when he’d seen the size of the safety deposit box, and he had been even less happy when he and Kling discovered just how many papers were inside the damn thing. Those papers were scattered before him on the desk in the spare room now, together with Edelman’s bank statements and canceled checks and a can of beer. From the other room—his daughter Connie’s playroom during the day, his and Caroline’s television room at night—he could hear the identifying theme song of the Johnny Carson Show. He kept listening. He heard Ed McMahon announcing the list of guests (Lola Falana was one of them, sure as hell) and then he heard the familiar “Heeeeeere’s Johnnnnnnnnny!” and he sighed and took a long swallow of his beer, and then started separating the various documents they’d taken from the safety deposit box.