by Ed McBain
The one person I thought I could trust.
Sally.
Would I have written to her otherwise?
Thought I could trust her. Told me we didn’t have to sell off all the stuff right away, we could—well, listen, who knew anything at all about cocaine? Babe in the woods down there in Miami, Portoles leading me by the hand, I will make you rich, amigo, for saving my son. Tested the stuff for me, I didn’t even know enough to do that. Paying fifty thousand a key, never thought to ask if it was real cocaine. Cobalt thiocyanate. Blue reaction. What’d he say? The brighter the blue, the better the girl. Referring to the coke. Called it girl. Best pure you can find, he told me. Yours now. Mine. Sally’s, too, sort of. Told me we could hold back two kilos, ounce them out, she knew somebody uptown who’d be interested, somebody who would put them on to other customers. Knew more about cocaine than I’ll ever know. Said she’d been shooting it even before it got fashionable, while she was studying dance in London, used to share what she called Cocaine Fucks with an oboe player she was living with. Shared those with her friend uptown, too, but who knew that at the time? Trusted her. One thing you should never trust is a woman in bed. Spread any woman’s legs, and secrets fly out of her like butterflies. Told him everything. Told him about our little cache, the two keys of cocaine we were milking. Our insurance, she called them. Sure.
He zipped up his toilet kit and carried it to the open suitcase in the bedroom. He stood looking down into the suitcase, as though he’d forgotten something. The gun? Funny how you became accustomed to having a gun around, accustomed to using it. Police property now, evidence tag on it, a lot of good it would do them once they realized he’d packed his tent, twenty-five carats worth of diamonds to turn into cash anywhere in the world. Still, if only…
If only she hadn’t shared our secret with him, if only he hadn’t come to me, slimy little Puerto Rican bastard, wanting a piece of the action, demanding a piece of the action, threatening to go to the police if I didn’t cut him in on a bigger piece of the pie, those dwindling two keys, greedy little bastard. Give away a piece of what I’d taken the risk for? Said he knew I had diamonds hidden someplace in the apartment, said he wanted those, too, otherwise he’d go to the cops. Said he had proof, said he knew where he could get proof. The letter, of course, she’d kept the letter. And I’d trusted her. So what was I supposed to do? Spend time in prison because Sally had babbled to the wrong lover, Sally in the heat of passion had—God, she was good in bed! Dancers, Jesus!
Bought the gun two days after he paid me his little visit. Contacted the guy I’d sold the six keys to, told him I needed a gun. Easy, he said. Cost me $200. Never used a gun in my life before then. Never even held one in my hand. Wanted to be a surgeon one day, good hands, steady, ah, well. Knew where he lived, hell, she used to deliver to him every Sunday, didn’t know she was also delivering pussy and secrets, waited for him outside his building, followed him, shot him. Easy. Killed him.
But then, you know, you start thinking, you know, you start thinking you’ve got to protect it. Not the coke, not the diamonds, but all of it. The future. I did want to be a doctor, Dad, I wasn’t just walking through it, you know, I was busting my ass, just the way you wanted me to, Doctor Timothy Moore, that’s who I wanted to be! So it had to be protected, you see, and if she’d told Lopez, then she couldn’t be trusted anymore, could she? And how long would it have taken her to realize that I was the one who’d killed that greedy little spic? How long before she herself went to the police? No, I had to—the radio, he thought. That’s what I’m forgetting. The radio.
He went into the living room, where the radio was still sitting alongside the telephone, picked up the radio, held it in the palm of his hand, and looked at it almost fondly. So simple, he thought. No way anyone in a million years could have connected the murder of a small-time coke dealer—well, Sally of course, Sally would have realized sooner or later. Which was why I had to, to, to do the same thing to her, you see. But with her, they’d find a connection. With her, they’d begin asking me questions—well, they did ask me questions, didn’t they? So I needed protection, the radio, needed someone to say I’d been talking to him on the phone and he’d heard my radio going, good old Karl, solid as a rock, make a good doctor one day. Took the phone off the hook before I left the house, called him from a phone booth, radio going, called him twice before I killed her, waiting for her, late as usual, called him again after I killed her, when I got home, kept calling him, radio going each time, good old reliable Karl.
He carried the radio back into the bedroom, and put it in the open suitcase. Anything else? he wondered. Anything I’m forgetting? So easy to forget things when you’re, when you, when you start something like this, all the things you have to do to protect it, keep your eye on the main goal, never mind the money, I wanted to be a doctor! Almost forgot about Edelman, last link in the chain, remembered him later. Suppose some IRS agent examined his books, wanted to know where he’d sold those diamonds, twenty-five carats, $300,000 in cash, who’d you sell them to, who? Tie me in with that kind of money, cops would be around asking more questions, where’d you get that kind of money, no. Had to protect myself. Had to kill him. Like the others. So I could be a doctor one day. Like my father.
He closed the suitcase.
So, he thought.
He looked around the apartment.
That’s it, he thought.
He picked up the suitcase, walked out of the bedroom, and out of the apartment, and down the steps to the street.
She was waiting for him in the small dark entrance lobby downstairs.
She said only, “The opera ain’t over,” and he frowned and started to walk past her, taking her for a crazy bag lady or something, this city was full of lunatics, surprised when he saw the open straight razor in her hand, shocked when he realized she was coming at him with the razor, terrified when he saw his own blood pouring from the open wound in his throat. He clutched for his throat. Blood gushed onto his hands. He said, “I’m sorry,” but he was dead before he could say the word “Dad.”
The call from Fort Phyllis did not come until Saturday morning. There was only one notorious homosexual cruising street in the entire precinct that surrounded Ramsey University and the neighboring Quarter, but the cops of the 5th Precinct nonetheless called their turf Fort Phyllis. The man phoning was a detective/3rd grade named Dawson. He asked to speak to Detective Carella.
“This is Dawson,” he said, “5th Squad.”
“What can I do for you?” Carella asked.
“We caught a homicide last night, slashing in a hallway on Chelsea Place. Guy named Timothy Moore.”
“What?” Carella said.
“Yeah,” Dawson said. “Reason I’m calling, Charlie Nichols here was in court yesterday while you were arraigning this guy, he figured maybe you ought to know about it. Figured maybe this ties in with the homicides you were investigating. The ones you charged this guy Moore with.”
“How?” Carella said.
“Well, I don’t know how,” Dawson said. “That’s what I’m asking you.”
“A slashing, you said?”
“Yeah. Ear to ear. Nice job.”
He thought fleetingly of Judite Quadrado.
“Any leads?” he asked.
“None so far,” Dawson said. “No witnesses, nothing. Guy had a bag of diamonds in his suitcase. Was he out on bail or something?”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“Looks like he was maybe skipping, huh?”
“Looks that way,” Carella said.
“So what do you want us to do about this?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You want us to turn this over to you, or what?”
Here we go again, Carella thought.
“Well, let me see what the lieutenant thinks,” he said.
“Maybe you charged the wrong guy, you know what I mean?” Dawson said. “I mean, Charlie told me it was four counts of Murder One.”
/>
“That’s what it was,” Carella said.
“So maybe somebody else did it, is all I’m saying,” Dawson said. “The four murders. Maybe it wasn’t this guy Moore at all.”
“It was Moore,” Carella said flatly.
“Anyway,” Dawson said, and the line went silent.
“I’ll talk to the lieutenant,” Carella said.
“Sure, let me know,” Dawson said, and hung up.
The squadroom was very quiet for a Saturday morning. Carella rose from his desk and walked to the water cooler. Standing near the windows streaming wintry sunlight, he sipped at the water in the paper cup, and then crumpled the cup and tossed it into the wastebasket. He went to the lieutenant’s door and knocked on it.
“Come!” Byrnes shouted.
He went into the lieutenant’s office, and closed the door behind him. He told the lieutenant that he’d just had a call from Fort Phyllis. He told the lieutenant that someone had slit Timothy Moore’s throat in the hallway of his building last night, and that there were no witnesses and no leads, and the cops down there wanted to know what to do about it, whether they should turn this over to the Eight-Seven or what?
Byrnes listened very carefully. He was thoughtfully silent for a long time. Then he said, “No witnesses, huh?”
“None,” Carella said.
“The 5th Squad, huh?”
“Yes.”
“We got enough headaches,” Byrnes said.
“Let their mothers worry.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph (c) Dragica Hunter
Ed McBain was one of the many pen names of the successful and prolific crime fiction author Evan Hunter (1926-2005). Born Salvatore Lambino in New York, McBain served aboard a destroyer in the US Navy during World War II and then earned a degree from Hunter College in English and psychology. After a short stint teaching in a high school, McBain went to work for a literary agency in New York, working with authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and P.G. Wodehouse, all the while working on his own writing on nights and weekends. He had his first breakthrough in 1954 with the novel The Blackboard Jungle, which was published under his newly legal name Evan Hunter and based on his time teaching in the Bronx.
Perhaps his most popular work, the 87th Precinct series (released mainly under the name Ed McBain) is one of the longest running crime series ever published, debuting in 1956 with Cop Hater and featuring over fifty novels. The series is set in a fictional locale called Isola and features a wide cast of detectives including the prevalent Detective Steve Carella.
McBain was also known as a screenwriter. Most famously he adapted a short story from Daphne Du Maurier into the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). In addition to writing for the silver screen, he wrote for many television series, including Columbo and the NBC series 87th Precinct (1961-1962), based on his popular novels.
McBain was awarded the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1986 by the Mystery Writers of America and was the first American to receive the Cartier Diamond Dagger award from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. He passed away in 2005 in his home in Connecticut after a battle with larynx cancer.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
ABOUT THE AUTHOR