Killer's Payoff

by McBain, Ed

  “HELLO, JEAN?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Lucy Mencken.”

  “Oh, hello, Lucy, how are you? I was just thinking about you.”

  “Really?”

  “I was going to call you for that stuffed-pepper recipe. The one you used for the last buffet.”

  “Oh, that. Did you really like them that much?”

  “Lucy, they were magnificent!”

  “I’m glad. I’ll bring you the recipe…or perhaps…well, the reason I’m calling, Jean, I thought you and the children might like to come over for a swim this afternoon. The water’s just grand, and it looks as if it’s going to be a terribly hot day.”

  “Yes, it does. I don’t know, Lucy. Frank said he might be home early…”

  “Well, bring him along. Charles is here.”

  “He is?”

  “Yes. Jean, you know you have a standing invitation to swim here whenever you like. I feel awfully silly having to call to invite you each time.”

  “Well…”

  “Say you’ll come.”

  “What time, Lucy?”

  “Whenever you like. Come for lunch, if you can.”

  “All right, I’ll be there.”

  “Good. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  The recorder in the mock telephone-company shack across the highway wound its tapes relentlessly. Arthur Brown, monitoring the calls, was bored to tears. He had brought along a dozen back issues of National Geographic, and he read those now while Lucy and her various contacts talked and talked and talked. Thus far, there had been no threatening calls.

  But the telephone of Lucy Mencken was damned busy.

  THE TELEPHONE OF Teddy Carella was not busy at all. To Teddy Carella, the telephone was a worthless instrument designed for people who, in one respect alone, were more fortunate than she.

  Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute.

  Her handicap had been an unfortunate accident of birth, but she was more fortunate than other women in many other respects, and so she never gave much thought to it. Her greatest fortune was her husband, Steve Carella. She would never tire of looking at him, never tire of “listening” to him, never tire of loving him.

  On the evening of July eighth, after dinner, she and Carella were sitting in the living room of their River-head apartment watching television. Reading the lips of the performers, Teddy glanced at Carella and realized that she was watching television alone. Her husband was up somewhere on cloud thirteen. She smiled. Her entire face seemed to open when she smiled. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, she embodied the physical attributes of a Venus, which were somehow combined with the impishness of a Puck. Wearing a skirt and halter, she came up out of her chair, went to sit at Carella’s feet, and then gestured with her head toward the television screen, her black eyebrows raised questioningly.

  “Huh?” Carella said. “Oh, it’s a good show. Wonderful, wonderful.”

  Teddy nodded, burlesquing the expression on his face.

  “Really,” Carella said sincerely. “I love summer-replacement shows. They’ve got a lot of spark, a lot of imagination. Wonderful, wonderful.”

  She gazed at him steadily.

  “Okay,” he admitted, “I was thinking about the case.”

  Teddy moved her mouth slightly and then pointed to herself.

  “I’ll tell you about it, if you really want to hear it,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Well, Hawes is working on it with me.”

  Teddy pulled a sour face.

  “No, no,” Carella said, “he’s going to be all right. He’s going to be a good man.” He grinned. “Remember. You heard it here first.”

  Teddy grinned back.

  “I told you about the kill, and the bank accounts, and about Kramer’s victims. We still haven’t located the eleven-hundred-dollar mark, and Lucy Mencken still seems like our best bet for the grand award. But a couple of things keep bothering me.”

  Teddy nodded, listening intently.

  “Well, for one thing, where did Kramer keep these extortion documents? The photostated copies of the letter, the pictures of Lucy, and whatever he had on this eleven-hundred-dollar mark. Not to mention the big babies in the bank book. We went over his apartment with a fine comb, but there wasn’t anything there. Hey, honey, you should see this redhead he was shacking with. Now, that’s my idea of a woman.”

  Teddy frowned menacingly.

  “Very pretty,” Carella said. “Very pretty. I think I’ll go back there and make another search for important documents. I think he might have kept them in the bedroom, don’t you?”

  Teddy nodded her head in an exaggerated, “Sure he did!”

  “Seriously, honey, it bothers me. You’d figure a safety deposit box, wouldn’t you?”

  Again, Teddy nodded.

  “Well, I put a check on all the banks in the city. No safety deposit boxes for Sy or Seymour Kramer. I got a list of eighty-five S. K. box holders—people with the initials S. K., you understand. Just in case Kramer used a phony name for the box. When a guy picks a phony, he’ll sometimes use his own initials. We called each and every one of those names. They’re all legitimate. So where the hell did Kramer hide the documents?”

  Teddy licked an imaginary letter with her tongue.

  “A post office box?” Carella asked. “Possibly. We checked his local post office, and he didn’t have one there. But it could be anyplace in the city. I’ll have a check started in the morning. But I don’t think we’ll turn up anything. We didn’t find any unexplained keys in his effects.”

  Teddy turned an imaginary knob.

  “That’s right,” he said, “some post offices have those little combination knobs on their boxes. It’s a possibility, all right.” He kissed her rapidly. “You’re a helpmeet indeed.”

  She was in the process of getting set to kiss him more soundly, when he began shaking his head morosely.

  What is it? her eyes asked.

  “The other thing that bothers me is that bankbook,” he said. “Now, what the hell kind of extortion money is that? The only sensible entry is the fifteen thousand dollars. But if you were extorting money from me, would you come and ask for six thousand three hundred and twenty dollars and fourteen cents?”

  Teddy looked puzzled.

  “No, honey, that wasn’t an actual entry,” he explained. “I’m just trying to make a point. Why should Kramer have asked for twenty-one thousand dollars? Isn’t that a crazy figure? Wouldn’t twenty thousand be a more likely figure, assuming you were just picking figures out of the hat? And why nine thousand? Wouldn’t ten be more likely? I don’t get it. I always thought people preferred nice fat round figures.”

  Teddy began writing on the air. It took Carella a moment to realize she was doing imaginary addition.

  “Sure, sure,” he said. “Twenty-one thousand and nine thousand equal thirty thousand—and that’s a nice round figure. You think maybe he asked his victim for it in two lumps?”

  Teddy nodded.

  “Then what about the third lump? And why weren’t the first and second lumps in even figures? There’s something funny about it, Teddy. And I keep thinking if we can find Kramer’s bunk, find his goddamn hiding place, we’ll learn a lot about those figures. Those are the biggest deposits he made, honey. We’re chasing around after the small potatoes, and we haven’t even an inkling to the identity of the big one—the one who could have committed murder. Oh, what the hell, I guess Lucy Mencken could have done it, too. She’s been chasing around like a wild woman looking for those pictures of hers. I’d like to get a look at them. I’d like to see her without her space suit.”

  Again Teddy frowned.

  “You know I love you dearly,” Carella said, grinning. “You’re a wonderful kid.” He paused. “I love you, kid—but, oh, that Mencken’s wife.”

  Teddy tried a frown and then burst out laughing. She flung herself into his arms, and he said, “Hey, hey, how’m I ever gonna solve this case if you carry on like th
at?”

  But he had already stopped thinking about the case.

  OH, THAT COTTON HAWES.

  On Tuesday morning, July ninth, he left the city.

  It was truly a beautiful day, not too hot for July, but with the sun shining brightly overhead and a fresh breeze blowing in over the River Harb. He crossed the Hamilton Bridge, at the foot of which a dead blond girl had been found long before Hawes had been transferred to the 87th. The River Harb looked quiet and still that day. He went into the next state, following the Greentree Highway, which bounded the river, heading north. He drove with the top of his Ford down. His jacket rested on the seat beside him. He wore a sports shirt with wide alternating black and red stripes. He wore old Navy gray trousers. Hawes had once been a chief petty officer, and he still had most of his Navy clothes. He wore them often, not because of sentiment but simply because his cop’s salary didn’t allow the range to buy all the clothes he’d have liked to own.

  The wind caught at his red hair as he drove along. The sun beat down on his head and shoulders. It was a good day, and he was beginning to feel in a slightly holiday mood, almost forgetting why he was driving to upstate New York. He remembered again when he passed Castleview Prison. He could look across the River Harb into his own state, and there he could see the gray walls of the prison merging with the sheer face of the cliff that dropped to the river’s edge below. Directly opposite, almost on the road he drove, was the castle from which the prison derived its name. The castle had allegedly been built by a Dutch patroom in the days of early settlement. It stared across the river and into the next state, providing an excellent view of the prison walls. And from the prison, the castle could be seen, and so it was called Castleview. He looked at the prison now with only passing interest. It would one day, in the not too distant future, become an integral part of his life, but he did not know that now, and he would not know it until long after the Kramer case had been solved.

  On that July morning it only reminded him of crime and punishment, and it brought his thoughts back to the reason for his trip to the Adirondacks. When he stopped for lunch that afternoon, his mind began to wander because, alas, he fell in love.

  The girl with whom he fell in love was a waitress.

  She wore a white dress and a white cap on her clipped blond hair. She came to his table, and she smiled, and the smile knocked him clear back against the wall.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” she said. When he heard her voice, he was hopelessly gone. “Would you care to see a menu?”

  “I have a better idea,” Hawes said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Go back and change into your street clothes. Show me the best restaurant in town, and I’ll buy you lunch there.”

  The girl looked at him with a half-amused, half-shocked expression on her face. “I’ve heard of speed demons,” she said, “but you just broke the sound barrier.”

  “Life is sweet and short,” Hawes said.

  “And you’re getting old,” the girl replied. “Even your hair’s turning white.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I say I don’t even know your name. I say I couldn’t possibly have lunch with you because I don’t get off until I’m relieved at four. I also say you’re from the city.”

  “I am.” Hawes paused. “How’d you know?”

  “I’m from the city myself. Majesta.”

  “That’s a nice section.”

  “It’s fine. Especially when you compare it to this hick village.”

  “You here for the summer?”

  “Yes. I’m going back to college in the fall. I’m a senior.”

  “Have lunch with me,” Hawes said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cotton.”

  “Your first name, I mean.”

  “That’s it.”

  The girl grinned. “Like Cotton Mather?”

  “Exactly. Only it’s Cotton Hawes.”

  “I’ve never had lunch with a man named Cotton,” the girl said.

  “Go tell your boss you have a terrible headache. I’m the only customer in the place, anyway. He won’t miss either of us.”

  The girl considered this a moment. “Then what’ll I do the rest of the afternoon?” she asked. “Working helps me kill the time. You can go crazy in this miserable village.”

  Hawes smiled. “We’ll figure something out,” he said.

  The girl’s name was Polly. She was an anthropology major, and she hoped to go on for her master’s after graduation and then for her doctorate. She wanted to go to Yucatán, she said, to study the Mayan Indians and learn all about the feathered serpent. Hawes learned all this during lunch. She had taken him to a restaurant in the next town, a restaurant that jutted out over a pine-shrouded lake, cantilevering over the waters below. When he told Polly he was a cop, she didn’t believe him, and so he showed her his gun. Polly’s blue eyes opened wide. Her wonderful mouth curved into a long O. She was a deceptively slender girl with a well-rounded bosom and wide hips. She walked with the angular sveltness of a model.

  When they finished lunch, there wasn’t much to do in town, and so they had a couple of drinks. The couple of drinks weren’t sufficient on a day that was turning hot, and so they had several more. There was a juke box in the lounge off the restaurant, and so they danced. The afternoon was still very young and a good movie was playing in the local theater, and so they went to see it. And then, because it was time for dinner when they once more came into the daylight, they ate again.

  There was a long evening ahead.

  Polly lived in a two-room cottage near the restaurant for which she worked. The cottage had a record player and whisky, and so they went there after dinner.

  Polly lived alone in the cottage. Polly was a very pretty blond girl with blue eyes, deceptively slender with a well-rounded bosom and wide hips. Polly was an anthropology major who wanted to go to Yucatán. Polly was a city girl who was bored to tears with the village and tickled to death she had met this entertaining stranger with a white streak in his hair and a name like Cotton.

  She fell in love with him a little bit, too.

  She lived alone in the cottage.

  And so to bed.

  10.

  FROM THE SHORES of the lake and the entrance to Kukabonga Lodge, you could see the green-backed humps of the mountains and the clear blue of the sky beyond. The lodge was small, built of logs that seemed a part of the surrounding greenery. A double flight of wooden steps rose from the flat rock almost at the lake’s edge, rose in tentlike ascent to the front door of the lodge. The front door was a Dutch door, the top half open now as Hawes mounted the stairs. He mounted the stairs wearily and almost dejectedly. He had already checked half a dozen of the lodges scattered through the mountains, doggedly working his way north with Griffins as his starting point. None of the lodge owners remembered a man named Sy Kramer. Most of them admitted that the real hunters didn’t come up until the end of October, when the deer season started. September wasn’t such a good time. One lodge owner admitted his place was full of what he called “cheater hunters” during the early part of September. These, he said, were men who came up with girls after telling their wives they were off to the wilds to hunt.

  Hawes was disappointed. The country was lovely, but he had not come up here to admire the scenery. Besides, he was no longer in love and he was becoming rather bored with the continuous slope of the land, the brazen cloudless blue of the sky, the constant chatter of birds and insects. He almost wished he were back in the 87th, where a man couldn’t see the sky for the tenements.

  It grows on you, he thought. It’s a hairy bastard, but you get to love it.

  “Hello, there,” a voice at the top of the steps said.

  Hawes looked up. “Hello,” he said.

  The man was standing just behind the lower half of the Dutch door. The visible half of his body was lean and tight, the body of an Indian scout, the body of a man who labored in the sun. The man wore a white te
e shirt, which covered the hardness of his muscles like a thin layer of oil. His face was square and angular; it could have been chiseled from the rock that formed a backdrop for the lodge. His eyes were blue and piercing. He smoked a pipe leisurely, and the ease with which he smoked softened the first impression of hard muscularity. His voice, too, in contrast to the wiriness of his body, was soft and gentle, with a mild twang.

  “Welcome to Kukabonga,” the man said. “I’m Jerry Fielding.”