by Ed McBain
“With Isabel.”
“Where?”
“At a motel on Culver.”
“Did you register under your own name?”
“No.”
“What name did you use?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Mr. Preston, remember. I suggest that you remember. I strongly suggest that you remember right this minute.”
“I really don’t remember. I used a different name each time.”
“Then I think you’d better put on some clothes and tell your wife you’re coming downtown with me.”
“Wait a minute.”
“I’m waiting.”
“It was Felix something.”
“Felix what?”
“Felix…something with a P.”
“Take your time.”
“Felix Pratt or Pitt—one of the two, I don’t remember.”
“Are those names you’d used before?”
“Yes.”
“All right, what’s the name of the motel?”
“The Golden Inn.”
“On Culver, did you say?”
“Yes, near the old Hanover Hospital.”
“I’m going to call and ask if you were registered there Thursday afternoon. Is that all right with you?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s your phone?”
“My wife…”
“You keep your wife busy while I make the call. Because if you weren’t there on Thursday when Jimmy Harris was having his throat slit, you’re coming with me. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I was there.”
“Okay, call your wife and tell her I want to use the phone in private.”
“All right.”
“Go ahead, do it.”
“You won’t…”
“No, I won’t tell her you were playing around.”
“Thank you.”
“Call her.”
Preston went to the door and opened it. He looked out into the corridor, and then turned back to look at Carella again. Carella nodded. Preston went into the corridor and shouted, “Sylvia?”
From somewhere in the apartment she answered, “Yes, Frank?”
“Sylvia, Mr. Carella wants to use the phone…Come in here a minute, will you?”
“Yes, Frank.”
“The phone’s in the bedroom,” Preston said. “Down the hall.”
“Thank you,” Carella said.
As he walked down the corridor Mrs. Preston came around the bend in the L. “It’s in the bedroom,” she said.
“Yes, thank you,” he said, and went into the bedroom and waited until he saw Preston and his wife entering the television room at the end of the hall. He closed the door then, and went directly to where the phone was resting on a night table alongside the bed. The elevated train rattled along the tracks a block away. Through the windows at the end of the room, he saw it moving against the sky, black against the cold gray of November. There was something oddly evocative about the sight of it. A toy train somewhere? The house in Riverhead when he was a boy. His father’s rich laughter.
He watched the train, and forgot for a moment that he was here to learn about murder. He kept watching it until it rumbled into the platform, and then he picked up the telephone receiver and dialed 411 for information. When the operator came on, he asked for the Golden Inn on Culver, and she gave him the number. He dialed it at once. Through the windows he could see the train moving away from the platform. A library. Something. Walking to the library with books under his arm. The elevated train overhead. Snow on the pavement.
“Golden Inn, good morning,” a man’s voice said.
“Good morning, this is Detective Carella, police department.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d check your register for a couple that may have been there this past Thursday, that would have been November eighteenth.”
“Sir?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to call you back on that.”
“I’m not at the office.”
“Well, it’s…How do I know you’re a policeman?”
“Call the 87th Squad, here’s the number, and ask whoever’s there if a Detective Carella works there. That’s Frederick 7-8024. Then call me back here as soon as you’ve checked—the number here is Westmore 6-2275. Have you got both those numbers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do it fast, please.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do it right this minute.”
“Good,” Carella said, and hung up.
He waited. Another train pulled into the elevated platform. He waited. The train pulled out. He looked at his watch. On the dresser opposite the bed, there was a picture of Frank and Sylvia Preston, taken when they were much younger. There were pictures of grown children, presumably theirs. There was a wedding picture of two young people Carella assumed were also children of the Prestons. The sweep hand on the electric dresser clock wiped the dial relentlessly. Another train pulled into the station. Carella sighed. He waited. The train rumbled out again. Exasperated, he picked up the receiver and dialed the motel.
“Golden Inn, good morning.”
“Good morning, this is Detective Carella again. Did you check with the squad?”
“Sir, the phone rang the minute I hung up, I haven’t had a chance to—”
“What’s your name?” Carella asked.
“Gary Otis.”
“All right, Mr. Otis, listen to me,” Carella said. “This is a homicide I’m investigating here, and I haven’t got time for you to go checking all over the city to see whether I’m a bona fide cop or not. My name is—have you got a pencil?—Stephen Louis Carella, that’s Stephen with a p-h, I’m a detective second/grade working out of the 87th Squad in Isola. My shield number is 714-56-32, and my commanding officer’s name is Detective-Lieutenant Peter Byrnes. Have you got all that?”
“Well, I…I think so.”
“Good. If it turns out I’m a fake cop, you can sue the city. In the meantime, Mr. Otis—”
“How can I sue the city?”
“Mr. Otis, you’re irritating me,” Carella said.
“I’m sorry, sir, but how can I sue the city? Let’s say you’re somebody’s husband calling to find out—”
“Let’s say I’m a real cop who’s getting very irritated. Have you got your register there in front of you?”
“Yes, sir, but I think you can understand why I’m not at liberty to reveal the names of any of our guests.”
“Mr. Otis, I can go downtown for a court order to look at your register, but that’s going to make me even more irritated than I am right now. If I’m forced to do that, and I come over to the Golden Inn and find so much as a cockroach in one of the rooms, I’ll call the Department of Health and have the place closed down. So you’d better make sure your establishment is spotless, you’d better make sure it’s absolutely pristine if you’re asking me to go all the way downtown for a court order on a Saturday morning.”
“Is that a threat of some kind, Mr. Carella?”
“That is whatever you choose to consider it, Mr. Otis. What do you say?”
“There are no cockroaches in the rooms here.”
“Fine. In that case, I’ll see you later with the court order.”
“But if you’re really a cop—”
“I’m really a cop, Mr. Otis.”
“And if this is really a homicide—”
“It’s really a homicide. Mr. Otis, why are you a desk clerk? Why aren’t you a noted Philadelphia lawyer?”
“I’m not a desk clerk. I own the Golden Inn.”
“Ah,” Carella said. “I see.”
“So of course I’m eager to protect my guests.”
“Of course. Mr. Otis, did you register a Mr. and Mrs. Pratt Thursday afternoon? Or a Mr. and Mrs. Pitt? Felix would have been the first name.”
“Just a moment.”
Carella waited.
“Yes, I have a Mr.
and Mrs. Felix Pitt.”
“Were you at the desk when they registered?”
“I don’t recall. Oh, wait a minute. Was she the blind girl?”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“Yes, I registered them. Beautiful woman, married to a much older man. I didn’t realize she was blind at first. She was wearing very large sunglasses, I had no idea she was blind. Until he led her to the elevator, of course, and then I realized.”
“What time did they check in?”
“The register entry doesn’t indicate that.”
“Would you remember?”
“Sometime in the late afternoon.”
“And when did they check out?”
“At about eight o’clock, I guess it was. I’d stepped out for a bite to eat, and when I came back, they were leaving. He paid me in cash. I remember.”
“Thank you, Mr. Otis,” Carella said.
“I hope you understand why—”
“Yes, I understand. Thank you,” Carella said, and hung up.
He sat with his hand on the receiver for quite some time. He had just confirmed that Isabel Harris and Frank Preston had indeed spent at least an afternoon and evening together in a motel on Thursday. Locked as they’d been in blind passionate embrace, so to speak, neither of the pair could have scooted uptown to Hannon Square to slit the throat of Jimmy Harris between 6:30 and 7:30 P.M. At 8:00, in fact, they had been seen leaving the establishment by none other than Gary Otis the Golden Innkeeper. Isabel Harris had probably got to her apartment just a few minutes before Carella knocked on her door. By that time her husband had been dead for at least two hours, and possibly longer.
He thought back to the question he’d asked her on the night of the murder, thought back to the specific question: “Are you involved with another man?” The terse answer: “No.” Liars didn’t surprise him. In the murder business, there were lots of liars. Tears didn’t surprise him, either. You sometimes got tears for somebody who’d been hated for years. They came unbidden, the response as primitive as the howl of the first man who pulled a burning stick from a fire. He rose, went down the hallway, and thanked the Prestons for the use of the telephone. Preston’s eyes met his questioningly. Carella nodded briefly, feeling like a conspirator.
The two coffins were angled into the chapel so that a passage ran between them, and those coming to pay their respects could walk past both biers simultaneously. There were white men and black men in the funeral home, chatting in whispers in the carpet-covered lobby outside, or sitting in the chapel itself on folding wooden chairs, or kneeling in prayer at the wrought-iron railings behind which the coffins rested on sawhorses draped in satin.
Sophie Harris sat on a chair in the first row, dressed entirely in black—black shoes and stockings, black dress and black veiled hat. She reminded Carella of the family women he had known as a boy, distant widowed aunts or cousins whom he had never seen wearing anything but black. He sat beside Sophie now, and she turned to look at him, and then turned away again.
“Mrs. Harris,” he said, “could we step outside a moment, please?”
“I got nothing more to say to you,” she said.
“Let’s not argue here,” he said.
She looked at the coffins.
“I’d like to talk to you,” he said. “Would you please step outside?”
Reluctantly, she rose from her chair and walked silently through the open arched doorway into the lobby. Carella followed immediately behind her.
“You satisfied about Charlie?” she whispered. Her mouth was tight, her hands clenched one over the other at her waist.
“I had to talk to him,” Carella said.
“Why? I told you he didn’t do it.”
“He was a possibility.”
“You still think he’s a possibility?”
“No.”
“You hassled him cause he’s black,” Sophie said.
“No. That isn’t true, Mrs. Harris. I didn’t hassle him, I questioned him. And only because he might have killed your son and daughter-in-law.”
She looked into his face.
“I want to find whoever killed them,” Carella said.
She kept looking at him.
“Believe me.”
“All right,” she said, and nodded.
“I have nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. I need your help. I need you to remember anyone Jimmy or his wife might have argued with, or—”
“No,” Sophie said, and shook her head. “No one. There was no one.”
“Or even disagreed with. Sometimes a person will take offense at something, and allow—”
“No one. You didn’t know Jimmy, he never said a harsh word to anyone in his life.”
“Mrs. Harris, whoever killed Isabel seemed to be searching for something. Do you have any idea what it might have been?”
“No.”
“Did Jimmy ever mention any hidden money or jewelry, anything like that?”
“No.”
“Some people try to hide their valuables from burglars—”
“He had no valuables to hide.”
“Mrs. Harris, was Jimmy involved with anyone who had a criminal record?”
“No,” Sophie said, and immediately asked, “would you put that question to a white man?”
“Listen,” Carella said. “Let’s get off that, okay? Your son was brutally murdered, that’s the worst crime there is. I want to know if he knew any criminals. That’s a logical question, black or white, so let’s cut it out.” He had raised his voice, and mourners in the lobby were turning to look at him. He lowered his voice to a whisper again and said, “Did he know anyone with a criminal record?”
“No. Not that he ever spoke of directly.”
“What do you mean? Did he speak of criminal friends indirectly?”
“No, he never spoke of no criminal friends.”
“Then what did you mean by the word ‘directly’?”
“My son would never do nothing wrong in his life,” Sophie said.
“Mrs. Harris, you just said he never spoke directly of any criminal friends. Now what does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Did your son ever mention some sort of criminal activity in which he was involved?”
“He wasn’t involved in no criminal activity.”
“Was he planning some sort of criminal activity?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. He was a troubled person.”
“How? Troubled how?”
“The nightmares.”
“What nightmares?”
“From when he first got home from Fort Mercer.”
“Fort Mercer?”
“The Army hospital there. Upstate. Near the prison.”
“What kind of nightmares?”
“He’d wake up hollering. I’d go in his room, he’d be sitting up in the middle of his bed, staring into the darkness like he could see. I’d take him in my arms, he’d be covered with cold sweat. I’d say, ‘Jimmy, what is it? What is it, son?’ Nothing. No answer. He’d be shaking in my arms.”
“Did he ever mention these nightmares when he was awake?”
“No. But Isabel told me he was still having them.”
“When did she tell you that?”
“Just recently.”
“Mrs. Harris, you said you honestly didn’t know if Jimmy was planning some sort of criminal activity. Is it possible that he was?”
“I guess.”
“Did he say anything about it to you?”
“He said he was going to make them rich.”
“Who?”
“Him and Isabel.”
“Did he say how?”
“Mr. Carella, I got to tell you the truth. I think he was maybe planning something would be against the law.”
“Did he say that?”
“No.”
“Then what makes you think…?”
“Well, why else would he need his old Army buddy?”
; “What do you mean?”
“He told me he’d contacted one of his buddies.”
“An Army buddy?”
“I guess he meant an Army buddy.”
“Who?”
“I don’t remember his name.”
“Did he say why he’d contacted him?”
“He said the man was going to help him and Isabel get rich.”
“Did he say how?”
“No.”
“Then why do you figure he was planning something against the law?”
“I don’t know why. Maybe it’s cause soldiers are trained to use guns.”
“But your son never actually said—”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Well,” Carella said, and shrugged. He was thinking it sounded like a movie—a pair of old Army pals getting together to knock over a bank or a Las Vegas casino. He supposed it was possible; anything was possible. But he doubted it. Still—it was possible, what the hell.
“Thank you,” he said, “you’ve been very helpful.”
But he wasn’t sure she had been.
The squadroom looked rather like a cathedral that Saturday morning. Don’t laugh. November sunshine slanted through the wire-mesh grilles on the long windows, and shafts of golden light touched desktops and typewriters. Dust motes sparkled in the fanning rays of the sun. The radio on Genero’s desk was playing organ music. Carella expected a religious miracle, but none came.
Genero was typing.
He had bought himself a paperback pocket dictionary and was looking up words. Repeatedly, he glanced from typewriter keyboard to open dictionary. His stop-and-go typing irritated Carella; it was obscene to be typing in church. Besides, there were no more miracles in the world, and the case was getting staler than yesterday’s bagels.
The organ music swelled into the squadroom. Carella felt like going to confession. He had not been to confession since he stopped going to church. That was when he was fifteen. Coincidentally, that was also when he lost his virginity on the roof of an apartment building in Riverhead, with a girl named Suzie Ryan, who was Irish. Suzie was seventeen. Woman of the world. She went to the same church Carella did. After his rooftop awakening, he figured he should go to confession and mention that he had sinned. Then he wondered if the priest would ask him who his sinful partner had been. He knew they could see your face in the dark there. The priest would know it was Stephen Louis Carella who had sinned, and then he would want to know who the willing young lady had been, and Carella would then have to implicate Suzie Ryan, who had been generous and passionate and whom he would have followed into the mouth of a cannon at that budding stage of his career. He wondered what to do. He decided not to go to confession. He also decided never to go to church again, but that had nothing to do with Suzie. He decided not to go to church because church put him to sleep. His father said, “Why don’t you go to church no more?” Carella answered, “Why don’t you, Pop?” His father said, “Never mind.”