by Ed McBain
It was going to be a long night.
When the telephone rang, it startled Kling.
The phone was on an end table beside the bed, and the first ring slammed into the silence of the room like a pistol shot, causing him to sit bolt upright, his heart pounding. He grabbed for the receiver.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hi, this is Eileen,” she said.
“Oh, hi,” he said.
“You sound out of breath.”
“No, I…it was very quiet in here. When the phone rang, it surprised me.” His heart was still pounding.
“You weren’t asleep, were you? I didn’t—”
“No, no, I was just lying here.”
“In bed?”
“Yes.”
“I’m in bed, too,” she said.
He said nothing.
“I wanted to apologize,” she said.
“What for?”
“I didn’t know about the divorce,” she said.
“Well, that’s okay.”
“I wouldn’t have said what I said if I’d known.”
What she meant, he realized, was that she hadn’t known about the circumstances of the divorce. She had found out since yesterday, it was common currency in the department, and now she was apologizing for having described what she’d called an “uh-oh!” scene, the wife in bed with her lover, the husband coming up the steps, the very damn thing that had happened to Kling.
“That’s okay,” he said.
It was not okay.
“I’ve just made it worse, haven’t I?” she said.
He was about to say, “No, don’t be silly, thanks for calling,” when he thought, unexpectedly, Yes, you have made it worse, and he said, “As a matter of fact, you have.”
“I’m sorry. I only wanted—”
“What’d they tell you?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Come on,” he said. “Whoever told you about it.”
“Only that there’d been some kind of problem.”
“Uh-huh. What kind of problem?”
“Just a problem.”
“My wife was playing around, right?”
“Well, yes, that’s what I was told.”
“Fine,” he said.
There was a long silence on the line.
“Well,” she said, and sighed. “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry if I upset you yesterday.”
“You didn’t upset me,” he said.
“You sound upset.”
“I am upset,” he said.
“Bert…,” she said, and hesitated. “Please don’t be mad at me, okay? Please don’t!” and he could swear that suddenly she was crying. The next thing he heard was a click on the line.
He looked at the phone receiver.
“What?” he said to the empty room.
The trouble with Edelman’s records was that they didn’t seem to add up. Or maybe Brown was just adding them up wrong. Either way, the arithmetic didn’t come out right. There seemed to be large sums of money unaccounted for. The constant factor in Brown’s calculations was the $300,000 they’d found in Edelman’s safe. To Brown, this indicated at least one cash transaction. Possibly a series of cash transactions, fifty thou a throw, say, allowed to accumulate in his safe before—
Before what?
According to his bank statements and canceled checks, Edelman had not made any truly large deposits or withdrawals during the past year. His various outlays for business expenses were for trips to Amsterdam, Zurich, and other European cities—the air fares, the hotel rooms, the checks written to gem merchants in the Dutch city. But the purchases he’d made (and he was, after all, in the business of buying and selling precious gems) were relatively small ones: $5,000 here, $10,000 here, a comparatively big check for $20,000 written to one Dutch firm. The subsequent bank deposits here in America seemed to indicate that Edelman turned a good, if not spectacular, profit on each of his purchases abroad.
From what Brown could figure, Edelman did a business somewhere in the vicinity of $200,000 to $300,000 a year. His current tax return had not yet been prepared—this was still only February, and it was not due till April 15—but on the last return he’d filed, he’d indicated a gross income of $265,523.12 for the year, with a taxable income of $226,523.12 after allowable deductions and business expenses. A little calculation told Brown that Edelman had deducted about 15 percent from his gross. With Uncle Sam, he was playing it entirely safe: the tax due had been $100,710.56; a check written on April 14 last year indicated that Edelman had completely satisfied his obligation to the government—at least on the income he’d reported.
It was the $300,000 in cash that kept bothering Brown.
Doggedly, he turned to the documents they had taken from Edelman’s safety deposit box.
Kling looked at the telephone for a long time.
Had she been crying?
He hadn’t wanted to make her cry, he hardly knew the girl. He went to the window and stared out at the cars moving steadily across the bridge, their headlights piercing the night. It was snowing again. Would it ever stop snowing? He had not wanted to make her cry. What the hell was wrong with him? Augusta is wrong with me, he thought, and went back to bed.
It might have been easier to forget her if only he didn’t have to see her face everywhere he turned. Your average divorced couple, especially if there were no kids involved, you hardly ever ran into each other after the final decree. You started to forget. Sometimes you forgot even the good things you’d shared, which was bad but which was the nature of the beast called divorce. With Augusta, it was different. Augusta was a model. You couldn’t pass a magazine rack without seeing her face on the cover of at least one magazine each and every month, sometimes two. You couldn’t turn on television without seeing her in a hair commercial (she had such beautiful hair) or a toothpaste commercial, or just last week in a nail-polish commercial, Augusta’s hands fanned out in front of her gorgeous face, the nails long and bright red, as if they’d been dipped in fresh blood, the smile on her face—ahh, Jesus, that wonderful smile. It got so he didn’t want to turn on the TV set anymore, for fear Augusta would leap out of the tube at him, and he’d start remembering again, and begin crying again.
He lay fully dressed on the bed in the small apartment he was renting near the bridge, his hands behind his head, his head turned so that he could see through the window, see the cars moving on the bridge to Calm’s Point—the theater crowd, he guessed; the shows had all broken by now, and people were heading home. People going home together. He took a deep breath.
His gun was in a holster on the dresser across the room.
He thought about the gun a lot.
Whenever he wasn’t thinking about Augusta, he was thinking about the gun.
He didn’t know why he’d let Brown take all that stuff home with him, he’d have welcomed the opportunity to go through it himself, give him something to do tonight instead of thinking about either Augusta or the gun. He knew Brown hated paperwork, he’d have been happy to take the load off his hands. But Brown had tiptoed around him, they all tiptoed around him these days, No, Bert, that’s fine, you just go out and have a good time, hear? I’ll be through with this stuff by morning, we’ll talk it over then, okay? It was as if somebody very close to him had died. They all knew somebody had died, and they were uncomfortable with him, the way people are always uncomfortable with mourners, never knowing where to hide their hands, never knowing what to say in condolence. He’d be doing them all a favor, not only himself. Take the gun and…
Come on, he thought.
He turned his head on the pillow, and looked up at the ceiling.
He knew the ceiling by heart. He knew every peak and valley in the rough plaster, knew every smear of dirt, every cobweb. He didn’t know some people the way he knew that ceiling. Sometimes, when he thought of Augusta, the ceiling blurred, he could not see his old friend the ceiling through his own tears. If he used the gun, he’d have to be carefu
l of the angle. Wouldn’t want to have the bullet take off the top of his skull and then put a hole in the ceiling besides, not his old friend the ceiling. He smiled. He figured somebody smiling wasn’t somebody about to eat his own gun. Not yet, anyway.
Damn it, he really hadn’t wanted to make her cry.
He sat up abruptly, reached for the Isola directory on the end table, and thumbed through it, not expecting to find a listing for her, and not surprised when he didn’t. Nowadays, with thieves getting out of prison ten minutes after you locked them up, not too many cops were eager to list their home numbers in the city’s telephone books. He dialed Communications downtown, a number he knew by heart, and told the clerk who answered the phone that he wanted extension 12.
“Departmental Directory,” a woman’s voice said.
“Home number for a police officer,” Kling said.
“Is this a police officer calling?”
“It is,” Kling said.
“Your name, please?”
“Bertram A. Kling.”
“Your rank and shield number, please?”
“Detective/third, 74579.”
“And the party?”
“Eileen Burke.”
There was a silence on the line.
“Is this a joke?” the woman said.
“A joke? What do you mean?”
“She called here ten minutes ago, wanting your number.”
“We’re working a case together,” Kling said, and wondered why he’d lied.
“So did she call you?”
“She called me.”
“So why didn’t you ask her what her number was?”
“I forgot,” Kling said.
“This isn’t a dating service,” the woman said.
“I told you, we’re working a case together,” Kling said.
“Sure,” the woman said. “Hold on, let me run this through.”
He waited. He knew she was making a computer check on him, verifying that he was a bona fide cop. He looked through the window. It was snowing more heavily now. Come on, he thought.
“Hello?” the woman said.
“I’m still here,” Kling said.
“Our computers are down, I had to do it manually.”
“Am I a real cop?” Kling said.
“Who knows nowadays?” the woman answered. “Here’s the number, have you got a pencil?”
He wrote down the number, thanked her for her time, and then pressed one of the receiver rest buttons on top of the phone. He released the button, got a dial tone, was about to dial, and then hesitated. What am I starting here? he wondered. I don’t want to start anything here. I’m not ready to start anything. He put the phone back on the cradle.
The contents of the safety deposit box were very interesting indeed. The way Brown was finally coming to understand it, Edelman’s precious-gems business was a mere avocation when compared to what appeared to be his true business—the accumulation of real estate in various foreign countries. The deeds to land, houses, and office buildings in such diverse countries as Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and England were dated from as far back as five years ago to as recently as six months ago. In July of last year alone, Edelman had purchased 40,000 square meters of land in a place called Porto Santo Stefano, for 200 million Italian lire. Brown did not know where Porto Santo Stefano was. Neither did he know how much the Italian lira had been worth six months ago. But a look at the financial pages of the city’s morning paper told him that the current exchange rate was 100 lire for 12C/ US. Brown had no idea how much the exchange rate had fluctuated during the past six months. But basing the purchase price on today’s money market, Edelman would have spent something like $240,000 for the land he’d bought.
All well and good, Brown thought. A man wants to buy himself a big olive grove in Italy, fine, there was no law against that. But where was the canceled check, in either US dollars or Italian lire, for the deal Edelman had closed in Rome on the eighth day of July last year? Two hundred forty thousand dollars—more than that, when you figured in the legal fees and closing costs and taxes listed on the Italian closing statement—had exchanged hands last July.
Where had the $240,000 come from?
Kling kept pacing the room. He owed her an apology, didn’t he? Or did he? What the hell, he thought, and went back to the phone, and dialed her number.
“Hello?” she said. Her voice sounded very small and a trifle sniffly.
“This is Bert,” he said.
“Hello,” she said. The same small sniffly voice.
“Bert Kling,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“That’s okay,” she said.
“Really, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” she said again.
There was a long silence on the line.
“So…how are you?” he said.
“Fine, I guess,” she said.
There was another long silence.
“Is your apartment cold?” she asked.
“No, it’s fine. Nice and warm.”
“I’m freezing to death here,” she said. “I’m going to call the Ombudsman’s Office first thing tomorrow morning. They’re not supposed to turn off the heat so early, are they?”
“Eleven o’clock, I thought.”
“Is it eleven already?”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“Another day, another dollar,” Eileen said, and sighed. “Anyway, they’re not supposed to turn it off entirely, are they?”
“Sixty-two, I think.”
“The radiators here are ice cold,” she said. “I have four blankets on the bed.”
“You ought to get an electric blanket,” Kling said.
“I’m afraid of them. I’m afraid I’ll catch on fire or something.”
“No, no, they’re very safe.”
“Do you have an electric blanket?”
“No. But I’m told they’re very safe.”
“Or electrocuted,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. And really, I am sorry for—”
“Me, too.” She paused. “This is the ‘I’m-Sorry-You’re-Sorry’ scene, isn’t it?” she said.
“I guess so.”
“Yeah, that’s what it is,” she said.
Silence again.
“Well,” he said, “it’s late, I don’t want to—”
“No, don’t go,” she said.
Silence again.
“Well,” he said, “it’s late, I don’t want to—”
“No, don’t go,” she said. “Talk to me.”
It seemed evident to Brown, as he studied the purchase prices on Edelman’s various real estate documents—and translated the French francs, Spanish pesetas, Portuguese escudos, and British pounds to US dollars—that Edelman had been involved in cash transactions that totaled some $4 million over the past five years. His recorded transactions, the purchases and sales covered by his various checks and subsequent deposits, amounted to some $1,275,000 over that same period of time. That left almost $3 million unaccounted for—and unaccountable to the Internal Revenue Service.
The trips to Zurich, five in the past year alone, suddenly seemed to make sense, especially in view of the fact that the only expenses he’d incurred there had been for food and lodging. Apparently, Edelman conducted no business in the city of Zurich, no gem business, anyway. Then why did he go there? And why had his visits there been followed invariably by side excursions to other cities on the continent? His itineraries, based on the flow of checks in each city, seemed to follow a consistent pattern: Amsterdam, Zurich, Paris, London, with an occasional side trip to Lisbon. Brown guessed that Edelman’s trips to Zurich were prompted not so much by a desire to visit the Alps as they were by a need to visit his money.
There was no way of finding out whether or not he had a Swiss bank account; Swiss bankers were as tight with
information as hookers were with free trade. Perhaps Mrs. Edelman knew something more about her husband’s various trips abroad and his ownership (in his name only, Brown noticed) of real estate in five foreign countries. Perhaps she knew why Zurich had been an essential stop on all of his little journeys. Or perhaps, faced with what now looked like a simple case of tax evasion, she would claim she was an “innocent spouse” who knew nothing about her husband’s business activities. Perhaps she didn’t.
In any case, it now looked as if they had a mildly prosperous gem merchant who kept honest books on the little baubles he bought and sold here and there, deducted his operating expenses from his small profits, and then paid the tax man whatever was due on his net income. In the meantime, this same guy was spending large sums of cash for the unreported purchase of gems abroad, selling those gems for cash here in the United States—again without reporting the transactions—and then using his huge profits to buy not only more gems for resale later, but real estate as well. It did not take a financial genius to recognize that a cash buyer in today’s real estate market, when mortgage interest rates both here and abroad were astronomical, would be welcomed with open arms in any country on the face of the earth. Edelman had been buying like a drunken Arab; his real business was netting him millions of dollars, none of it reported to Uncle Sam.
Brown reached for the phone on his desk and dialed Kling’s home number.
The line was busy.
She had asked him not to go, she had asked him to talk to her, and suddenly he could think of nothing else to say. The silence on the line lengthened. On the street outside, he heard the distinctive wail of a 911-Emergency truck, and wondered which poor bastard had jumped off a bridge or got himself pinned under a subway train.
“Do you ever get scared?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“I mean, on the job.”
“Yes.”
“I’m scared,” she said.
“What about?”