by Ed McBain
In this city you could get somebody killed for $50. There was a possible $25,000 at stake here, and for a tenth of that you could hire a battalion of goons. They did not yet know whether the lab boys had lifted any good prints in the Harris apartment. In the meantime, and against that eventuality, they decided to request an I.D. run on Charles C. Clarke in the morning. It was almost 8:00 when they left Diamondback. Carella dropped Meyer at the nearest subway station, and then drove home to Riverhead.
The front door to the house was locked.
Night like tonight, the goddamn door would be locked and he’d have to stand out there in the cold fumbling for keys. He rang the doorbell, and indeed began fumbling for keys, muttering under his breath. His fingers were stiff, they rummaged awkwardly through the loose change in his right-hand pocket. He took out his key ring. There were enough skeleton keys on it to have convicted a burglar of possession of tools. The house was a huge old rambling monster near Donnegan’s Bluff, purchased by the Carellas shortly after the twins were born, a house that had undoubtedly quartered a large family and an army of servants in the good old days. These were the bad new days, however. It was only Fanny who finally opened the door for him.
“Well, well, it’s himself,” she said.
Fanny was their housekeeper, a big woman in her late fifties, wearing a white blouse and bright-green slacks that spread wide over 140 pounds of girth, bleached red hair flaming like neon, mellow Irish brogue spilling from her lips like aged whiskey. “I thought you’d never get here, to tell the truth of it,” she said.
“Fanny,” he said, “I’m cold and I’m hungry.”
“Don’t be threatenin’ me, y’bully,” she said. “Theodora’s in the living room. Come in, you’ll catch your death.”
“If you’ll step out of the doorway…”
“Aye, I’ll step out of the doorway,” she said, and moved aside to let him in.
She had come to the Carellas years ago, as a month-long gift from Teddy’s father, who’d felt his daughter needed at least that much time to recuperate after the birth of twins. In those days Fanny’s hair was blue, and she wore a pince-nez and weighed ten pounds less than she did now. The prepaid month had gone by all too quickly, and Carella had regretfully informed her that he could not afford a full-time housekeeper on his meager salary. But Fanny was an indomitable broad who had never had a family of her own, and who rather liked this one. So she told Carella he could pay her whatever he might scrape up for the time being, and she would supplement her income with night jobs, she being a trained nurse and a very healthy woman to boot. Carella had flatly refused. Fanny had put her hands on her hips and said, “Are you going to throw me out into the street, is that it?” and they’d argued back and forth, and Fanny had stayed. She was still with them.
“Theodora’s in the living room,” she said again. “Shall I bring you a drink, or are you still on duty?”
“I’d like a scotch and soda, please, very strong,” Carella said, and took off his coat and hung it on the hallway rack.
“You should wear a hat, this weather,” Fanny said.
“I don’t like hats,” Carella said.
“Gentlemen wear hats,” Fanny said, and went out into the kitchen, where there was a wet bar recessed into what had long ago been a dumbwaiter shaft. In the spare room, the ten-year-old twins were watching television. Carella stopped in the doorway and said, “Hi.”
“Hi, Dad,” April said.
“Hi,” Mark said.
“No kisses?”
“Wait till she wins the money,” April said.
“Who?”
“Shh, Dad, there’s five thousand dollars at stake here,” Mark said.
“See you later,” Carella said, and started toward the living room, and then turned back and said, “Have you eaten yet?”
“Yes, Dad, shhhh,” April said.
Carella went down the corridor to the living room. Teddy was sitting by the fire. She had not heard the doorbell ringing, she had not heard the conversation with Fanny or the twins, she did not now hear her husband approaching; Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute. She sat by the fire, looking into the flames, the firelight touching her midnight hair with reds and oranges and yellows, as though it had been sprinkled with sequins. He hesitated in the doorway, watching her face, the dark luminous brown eyes staring into the flames, the full mouth and finely sculpted cheekbones. As always, his heart soared. He stood watching her speechlessly, feeling as he had the very first moment he’d met her. That would never change. He could guarantee that. In a world he sometimes did not understand, he understood completely his love for Teddy. He went to her. She sensed his approach now, and turned, and her face changed in the tick of an instant from meditative privacy to shared intimacy. There was nothing hidden on that face, her eyes and her mouth declared all her tongue could not. She rose from the easy chair and went into his arms. He held her close. He stroked her hair. He gently kissed her lips.
Her hands fluttered with questions, which he answered with his own hands, using the sign language she had taught him, occasionally lapsing into speech, her eyes searching his mouth. When Fanny came into the room with his drink, she did not interrupt their animated conversation. He told her about the second victim, and Teddy’s eyes clouded, and she watched as his hands and his face and his voice defined his outrage. He told her about Sophie Harris and Charles C. Clarke, whose middle name they still did not know, and Maloney from Canine, and she asked him what would happen to the dog, and he said he didn’t know. They ate dinner alone in the wood-paneled dining room, and later the children came to be kissed before going off to bed. April said the lady on television had blown it. Mark said any dope could have answered the question. April, not realizing what she was saying, said, “I couldn’t have answered it,” and they all burst out laughing.
It was almost 9:30, it had been a long day. They sipped their coffee in silence, holding hands across the table. Insidiously, the case began to intrude again. Carella found himself hurrying through the last of his coffee. When he rose abruptly from the table, Teddy looked up at him in puzzlement.
“I’ve got to call this guy Preston,” he said.
She waited, her eyes watching his mouth.
“Why don’t you go upstairs, get ready for bed?”
Still she waited.
“I won’t be a minute,” he said, and grinned boyishly.
She nodded briefly and reached up with one hand to touch his face. He kissed the palm of her hand, and then nodded, too, and went out into the living room to dial Preston’s number from the telephone there.
“Hello?” a man’s voice said.
“Mr. Preston?”
“Yes?”
“This is Detective Carella, I called earlier.”
“Yes, Mr. Carella.”
“We’re investigating the murders of Isabel and Jimmy Harris, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Now, do you mean?”
“If it’s convenient.”
“Well…Yes, I suppose so.”
“When I spoke to Mrs. Harris yesterday, she told me she worked for your company.”
“That’s right.”
“In the mailroom.”
“Yes.”
“How long had she been working for you, Mr. Preston?”
“Two, three years.”
“What were her duties?”
“She inserted our catalogues into envelopes.”
“Who else worked in the mailroom with her?”
“She worked there alone. Another girl typed up the labels and put them on the envelopes. But that was in the outer office.”
“What’s the other girl’s name?”
“Jennie D’Amato. She also answers phones and serves as receptionist.”
“Would you know her address?”
“Not offhand. If you call the office on Monday, she’ll give it to you.”
“How many people do you employ, Mr. Preston?”
“There’s
just myself and three girls in the office—two without Isabel.”
“What’s the third girl’s name?”
“Nancy Houlihan, she’s my bookkeeper.”
“Do you employ anyone who works outside the office?”
“Yes, at the warehouse.”
“Where’s the warehouse?”
“About ten blocks from the office. On the river.”
“Who do you employ there?”
“Just two men to make up the orders and pack them and ship them.”
“So the way the operation works…”
“It’s direct mail,” Preston said. “We send out the advertising matter, and when we receive orders, they’re filled at the warehouse. It’s a very small operation.”
“These two men working at the warehouse—did they ever come up to the office?”
“On Fridays. To pick up their paychecks.”
“Would they have had any contact with Isabel Harris?”
“They knew her, yes.”
“What are their names?”
“Alex Carr and Tommy Runniman.”
“Would you know their addresses?”
“You’ll have to get those on Monday. Just call the office anytime after nine.”
“Mr. Preston, how did Isabel get along with the other employees?”
“Fine.”
“No problems?”
“None that I knew of.”
“How did you get along with her?”
“Me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hardly knew her.”
“You said she’d been working there for two, three years…”
“That’s right. But I rarely had any personal contact with the employees.”
“How’d you happen to hire her, Mr. Preston?”
“I’d been thinking of hiring someone handicapped for a long time. The job doesn’t require eyesight. It’s merely inserting catalogues into envelopes.”
“How much were you paying her, Mr. Preston?”
“She was being paid comparable wages.”
“Comparable?”
“To the other girls.”
“Not more?”
“More?”
“Yes, sir. I’m trying to determine whether anyone would have had a reason for bearing a grudge or—”
“No, she wasn’t paid more, comparably, than the other girls.”
“Sir, there’s that word ‘comparably’ again.”
“What I’m saying, Mr. Carella, is that you can’t expect someone working in the mailroom to be paid the same wages as a bookkeeper or a typist, that’s what I’m saying. Comparably, she was being paid what a sighted person doing her sort of work would be paid. Neither more nor less. The other two girls would have had no reason for enmity.”
“How about the men from the warehouse?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Mrs. Harris was an attractive woman. Did either of them ever make a play for her?”
“I have no idea.”
“But they came to the office every Friday to pick up their paychecks.”
“That’s correct.”
“Did you see them on those occasions?”
“Nancy made out their checks. Nancy Houlihan, my bookkeeper.”
“But you told me they knew Mrs. Harris.”
“Yes, I assume they did.”
“Well…Did you ever see them talking to her?”
“Yes.”
“But you wouldn’t know whether either of them made advances—”
“No, I—”
“And were rebuffed—”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Mr. Preston, I think you know what I’m looking for. I’m trying to find out whether anyone Isabel worked with would have the slightest possible reason for—”
“Yes, I know exactly what you’re looking for, but I can’t help you.”
“Okay,” Carella said. “Thank you very much, Mr. Preston. I’ll call the office on Monday for those addresses.”
“Fine.”
“Good night, sir.”
“Good night,” Preston said, and hung up.
Carella sat with his hand on the telephone receiver for several moments. In the Riverhead house, just as in the squadroom, he had phone books for all five sections of the city. He lifted the Isola directory from the floor under the desk and opened it to the D’s. He knew he wouldn’t get the right time from Nancy Houlihan, but he was eager for more information, and he figured he might stand a chance with Jennie D’Amato. There were seventy-four D’Amatos in the Isola directory, and none of them were Jennies. He opened the Riverhead book. Twelve D’Amatos, no Jennies. In Calm’s Point, there were twenty-nine D’Amatos, no Jennies, but a J on Pierce Avenue. He jotted down the number. In the Majesta book, he found another J. D’Amato, and wrote down that number as well. He did not bother looking through the Bethtown directory. It was his contention that no one but retired cops lived in Bethtown, even now that a bridge had been put in. He dialed the Calm’s Point number first, and immediately hit pay dirt.
“Hello?”
“Miss D’Amato, please.”
“This is Miss D’Amato.”
“Jennie D’Amato?”
“Yes?” Tentative, cautious.
“This is Detective Carella, I believe I spoke to you earlier today.”
“Oh.” Pause. The pause lengthened. “Yes.”
“This is the woman who works at Prestige Novelty?”
“Yes.”
“Miss D’Amato, I wonder if you can tell me a little about Isabel Harris.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I’m primarily interested in how she got along with the other people in the office.”
“Fine.”
“No arguments or anything?”
“No. Well…”
“Yes?”
“Well, the usual.”
“What do you mean by ‘the usual’?”
“Well, you know how it is in an office, especially a small one. There’d be irritations every now and then, but nothing—”
“What sort of irritations?”
“Oh, I can hardly remember. Someone would answer the phone and forget to take a message. Or someone would send out for coffee and forget to ask if everybody in the office wanted anything—like that.”
“You’re the one who normally answers the phone, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“But sometimes other people did, and they forgot to take messages.”
“Well, that only happened once.”
“Who answered the phone and forgot to take a message?”
“Isabel.”
“And who got irritated?”
“Well…Nancy. Because it was her boyfriend who’d called, and Isabel just forgot to mention it.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Last month sometime.”
“Were there any recent arguments?”
“No, not really.”
“What about sending out for coffee? You said—”
“That was me. I sent out for coffee one day and forgot to ask Nancy if she wanted anything, so she blew her stack. That wasn’t Isabel.”
“How about the two fellows who work at the warehouse?”
“Alex and Tommy, yes.”
“She get along with them?”
“Oh yes. As a matter of fact, Alex was always kidding her about wanting…well, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know.”
“Take her out, do you mean?”
“Well, more than that. You know. Go away for the weekend or something. He was just kidding. He knew she was married.”
“How’d she react to these propositions?”
“Well, they weren’t propositions. He’d just say, you know, ‘Come on, Isabel, let’s run away together.’ And she’d laugh is all.”
“How about Tommy? Did he joke with her, too?”
“Well, they both s
ort of joked with her. Because she was blind, you know. To make her feel good. I guess.”
“Did it ever go beyond joking?”
“I don’t think so.”
“She never…”
“I don’t think so. It was just joking, that’s all. And maybe, you know, once in a while Alex’d lean over the desk and give her a kiss on the cheek, something like that.”
“Tommy, too?”
“No, he never did that.”
“But you don’t think she was seeing either one of them outside the office?”
“Well, they once in a while walked her to the subway. They only came up on Fridays, you understand, to get their paychecks. Isabel used to leave the office about two-thirty, and they’d be there before then so they could still get to the bank with their checks. So they’d walk her to the subway sometimes.”
“Alex and Tommy both?”
“Yes, both of them.”
“But you don’t think she was dating one of them, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think?”
“I think she was very flirtatious for a blind person.”
“In what way?”
“Well, the clothes she wore, and the way she sat…I just think she was very flirtatious.”
“What sort of clothes, Miss D’Amato?”
“Very revealing clothes. We’re none of us prudes at Prestige Novelty, we couldn’t be and—”
Her voice stopped. For a moment Carella thought they’d been cut off.
“Miss D’Amato?” he said.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“You were about to say?”
“Only that, in my opinion, she dressed suggestively.”
“But you were saying—”
“That’s what I was saying.”
Carella did not press it further. Instead, he changed the subject. “Miss D’Amato,” he said, “was anyone surprised when Isabel didn’t show up for work this morning?”
“We all were. She never missed a day, and she was always on time. The job was important to her. When she didn’t show up this morning, Mr. Preston asked me to call and find out if anything was the matter.”
“Were those his words?”
“What?”
“Did he say, ‘Call and find out if anything’s the matter’?”
“I don’t recall his exact words. He thought she might be sick or something.”
“Did he say that?”