Killer's Payoff

by Ed McBain

  “Carmela.”

  “Carmela what?”

  “Carmela Fresco.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “We stayed right here.”

  “All night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “From what time to what time?”

  “From about nine o’clock until the next morning. She left after breakfast.”

  “What’d you do all that time?” Hawes asked.

  Hall grinned. “What do you think we did?”

  “I don’t know. You tell us.”

  Hall was still grinning. “We played Parchesi,” he said.

  “Leave the room at all during that time?”

  “Nope. Here all night. I like Parchesi.”

  “Do you know a man named Sy Kramer?” Carella asked.

  “Oh,” Hall said. “That. I mighta known.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “No. Never met him. I read about the killing in the newspapers.”

  “But you’d never met him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ever hear of him before?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why’d you come here from Boston?”

  “A little rest. See some of the shows. You know. Like that.”

  “What shows have you seen so far?” Hawes asked.

  “None,” Hall admitted. “It’s pretty rough to get tickets, you know? Except for the longhair stuff. Who wants to see the longhair stuff? I like musicals. Songs, girls, that’s for me. Good-time Charlie, that’s me.” He snapped his fingers. “I got a friend who gets ice, you know what that is?”

  “What is it?” Hawes asked.

  “Free tickets. Not really free. Well, like they’re paid for at box-office prices, but he sells them back a little higher, you know what I mean? The difference between the box-office price and what he gets is called ice. So he gets ice. Only he can’t fix me up yet. Tickets are hard to get nowadays.”

  “And that’s why you’re here, right? To see a few shows.”

  “Yeah, and to take a rest.”

  “But you haven’t seen any shows yet?”

  “No.”

  “Have you rested?”

  “Well, you know…”

  “Good-time Charlie, that’s you,” Carella said.

  “Sure. Good-time Charlie, that’s me.”

  “Where do we get in touch with this Carmela Fresco?”

  “Why drag her into this?” Hall said.

  “Have you got a better alibi?”

  “No, but…She’s just a kid. I know her, and we…”

  “How old?” Hawes snapped.

  “Nothing like that,” Hall said. “She ain’t underage, don’t worry about that. I wasn’t born yesterday. But she’s a kid. You go around asking questions, you’ll scare the hell out of her. Also, you might ruin a good thing for me.”

  “That’s too bad,” Carella said.

  “What makes you think I had anything to do with the Kramer kill, anyway?” Hall said.

  “Do you know who did?”

  “That’s a stupid question.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s assume I did know, okay? Let’s assume I know who hired some guys to kill Kramer. To kill him, now. Not to scare him or warn him or anything like that. To kill him. Cool him. Put him away. So these guys mean business, right? These guys ain’t playing around. So do you think I would open my mouth on these guys who mean business, these guys who ain’t playing around, these guys who hired some other guys to kill a guy? To kill him! Oh, you got to be real foolish to open your mouth on these rough fellows, don’t you?”

  “Are there some rough fellows in this, Hall?”

  “I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t know. That’s the truth. I don’t usually assist bul—detectives, but this time I think you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. If this was a rackets thing, I woulda heard about it. And I didn’t hear nothin’.”

  “There’s another possibility, of course,” Hawes said.

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “You could have killed Kramer.”

  “The only thing I killed on Wednesday night was a girl named Carmela Fresco. I send that kid, believe me. I send her! When she leaves me, she’s killed. Dead. Unconscious.” Hall smiled. “I tell you the truth, she kills me, too. It’s a good arrangement.”

  “Like Murder, Incorporated,” Carella said.

  “Something like that. A mutual stoning society, so to speak. We stone each other. Oh Jesus, does that kid stone me!”

  “How do we reach her, Hall?”

  “She’s in the book.”

  “What’s the number?”

  “I told you. She’s in the book.”

  “We can’t read,” Hawes said.

  “Aw, come on, don’t let me be the bastard, huh?” Hall said. “This way you can tell her you got it from the book. You’ll be tellin’ the truth.”

  “We don’t mind lying a little,” Carella said. “What’s her number? We’ll say we got it from the book.”

  Hall shrugged. “Hunter 1-3800,” he said. “I wish you’d leave her out of it.”

  “You’re not out of it yourself yet,” Hawes told him.

  “Oh, brother, I’m clean,” Hall said. “I wish I was always so clean as I am on this one. I’m so clean, I glisten. I shine. I gleam.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Hawes said.

  They started for the door. At the door, Carella turned.

  “Oh. One more thing, Sun God.”

  “Yeah?” Hall said.

  “Don’t go back to Boston before checking with us.”

  “I’ll be around,” Hall said tiredly. “I got a few shows to see. Music, girls, you know. Good-time Charlie, that’s—”

  The door slammed on his sentence.

  CARMELA FRESCO was somewhat shy and hesitant at the beginning. She was a good girl, she insisted, who would certainly never spend the night in any man’s hotel room. What kind of girl did they think she was, anyway? Did she look like that kind of girl? Had this man Newton—or whatever his name was—said that she was that kind of girl?

  Carella and Hawes were very patient with her.

  The girl repeated her story again and again. She had certainly not been with this Newton—or whatever his name was—on Wednesday night or any other night. Over and over again, Carella and Hawes had her repeat the story of how she’d gone to a church bingo with her mother that night.

  And then, in the middle of a sentence, she hesitated and then shouted, “That son of a bitch! Does he think I’m a slut, telling everybody in the world I spent the goddamn night with him?”

  And that was it.

  The reputation of Carmela Fresco may have emerged in a somewhat blemished condition. But the alibi of Newton Hall was clean, and glistening, and shining, and gleaming.

  Hawes called him and told him he was free to go back to Boston any damn time he wanted to—the sooner the better, in fact.

  3.

  ON THE NIGHT OF June twenty-sixth, when Sy Kramer was murdered, a passer-by came upon the body lying on the pavement and immediately telephoned the police. The call was taken by a patrolman who sat at one of the two Headquarters switchboards with a pad of printed forms before him. He took down the information exactly as it was excitedly delivered to him.

  He rolled the complaint form into its metal carrier and sent it by pneumatic tube into the radio room, where a dispatcher put his number into the appropriate space, consulted the huge precinct map on the wall behind him, and then dispatched a radio motor-patrol car to the scene of the crime. He indicated the time of the dispatch on the form, and then added it to the pile of forms on one side of his desk. The patrolman who’d taken the call meanwhile informed the Detective Division of the 87th Precinct, and asked them to report back if it was truly a homicide so that he could then inform Homicide South.

  The detectives who caught the squeal were Carella and Hawes, and so the case was officially theirs.

  They were, of course, free t
o call upon other members of the Squad for assistance if they needed it, provided Detective Lieutenant Byrnes—who commanded the Squad—felt he could spare those men. And Homicide South would begin its own investigation while noisily advising the 87th that homicide was not a precinct squad’s cup of tea. In truth, whether the two homicide squads (North and South) chose to admit it or not, they would have been completely swamped had they tried to handle the city’s flood of homicide cases unaided. So whereas they bore the official titles and whereas they made a lot of noise about squad interference in murder cases, they tacitly agreed that the majority of homicide cases could be handled (and were, in fact, being handled) by the detective squads of the precincts in which the murders had taken place. The role of the two homicide squads, except in rare cases, was usually advisory, sometimes supervisory. Busily, noisily, they went about trying to convince themselves that they alone were qualified to handle homicide cases. Secretly, quietly, they realized they were like job foremen watching other men digging a trench, watching other men doing the actual labor.

  The case, then, for all actual purposes, belonged to Carella and Hawes.

  They had been out of the office when Mario Torr arrived with his theories about the shooting, and so Kling had naturally spoken to the man, later passing on the information to his colleagues. At bull sessions in the office, he would feel free to air any theories he had about the slaying, putting his two cents into the pot. The men of the 87th Squad worked well together. Each had his two cents’ worth to deliver on any case being investigated—and it doesn’t take long for two cents from each man to add up to a sound dollar.

  On Saturday, June twenty-ninth, Cotton Hawes—one of the two detectives officially investigating the untimely demise of Sy Kramer—went to bed with the erstwhile mistress of Kramer, and made an amazing discovery about himself.

  He discovered that he could fall in and out of love with consummate ease. He discovered this personality defect—or asset, as the case might be—with some trepidation, some amusement, and some speculation.

  Kramer’s ex-mistress, he supposed, was partly to blame. But Hawes had never been a man to hide behind a woman’s skirts, and he would not do so now. When it was all over, he accepted his equal share of the blame—or the credit, as the case might be—and congratulated himself upon what he considered an honorable seduction. He had used his shield as neither a threat nor an inducement. Cotton Hawes the man had gone to bed with this woman, not Cotton Hawes the cop. He had, in fact, even waited until he was off-duty before consummating the distinct and definite animal awakening he had felt that afternoon while questioning her.

  The girl’s name was Nancy O’Hara.

  Her hair was red, but none of her friends or relations called her Scarlett. Passing strangers, passing drunks, had been known to say to her, “O’Hara, huh? Now, could it be Scarlett O’Hara?” as if they had originated the wittiest remark of the century. Nancy usually answered such devastating wit with a slightly embarrassed smile and the quietly spoken answer, “No, I’m John O’Hara. The writer.”

  She was, in truth, neither Scarlett O’Hara nor John O’Hara.

  She was Nancy O’Hara, and she had been the mistress of Sy Kramer.

  Cotton Hawes had fallen in love with her the moment she opened the door of her Jefferson Avenue apartment, even though she was not dressed in a manner that was conducive to falling in love. She was, in fact, dressed like a slob.

  She was wearing dungarees, the bottoms of which were wet to the knee. She wore a man’s dress shirt, the tails hanging over the dungarees, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She had bright-green eyes, and her full mouth was on the edge of panic, and she didn’t at all look like an extortionist’s mistress, whatever an extortionist’s mistress looks like.

  She opened the door, and immediately said, “Thank God you’re here! It’s this way. Come with me.”

  Hawes followed her through a luxurious living room, and then into an equally luxurious bedroom, and then through that into a bathroom that—at the moment—had all the charm of a small swimming pool.

  “What took you so long?” Nancy said. “A person could drown by the time—”

  “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

  “I told you on the phone. I can’t turn off the shower. Something’s stuck. The whole damn apartment’ll float away unless we turn it off.”

  Hawes took off his jacket. Nancy glanced at the shoulder holster and the sturdy butt of the .38 protruding from the leather.

  “Do you always carry a gun?” she asked.

  “Always,” he said.

  She nodded soberly. “I always suspected plumbing was a hazardous profession.”

  Hawes had already reached into the tub. Grasping the knobs on the fixtures, he said, “They’re stuck.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Did you call a plumber?”

  “If you’re not the plumber,” she said, “you entered this apartment under false pretenses.”

  Hawes tugged at the stubborn fixtures. “I never said I was a plumber. I’m getting wet.”

  “What are you?”

  “A cop.”

  “You can get right out of the bathroom,” Nancy said.

  “Shhh, it’s beginning to turn, I think.”

  “You’re supposed to have a warrant before—”

  “There it goes,” Hawes said. “Now all I’ve got to—OW!” He pulled his hand back and began shaking it.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I must have turned off the cold water. I burned myself.”

  Steam was beginning to pour into the small bathroom.

  “Well, do something,” Nancy said. “For God’s sake, you’ve made it worse.”

  “If I can turn up that nozzle…” Hawes said, half to himself. He reached up and directed the spray of hot water toward the far tile wall. “There.” And then he began struggling with the hot water knob. “It’s giving,” he said. “How’d you manage to get them stuck?”

  “I was going to take a shower.”

  “In your dungarees?”

  “I put these on after I called the plumber.”

  “There it goes,” Hawes said. He twisted the knob, and the water suddenly stopped. “Phew.”

  Nancy looked at him. “You’re soaking wet,” she said.

  “Yes.” Hawes grinned.

  She studied him, and then reluctantly said, “Well, take off your shirt. You can’t walk around all dripping like that. I’ll get you something to wear.”

  “Thanks,” Hawes said. Nancy left the bathroom. He unstrapped the holster and laid it across the top of the toilet tank. Then he pulled his shirt out of his trousers and unbuttoned it. He was pulling his tee shirt over his head when Nancy came back.

  “Here,” she said. “It’ll probably be small for you.” She handed him a pale-blue, long-sleeved sports shirt with the monogram SK over the left breast pocket.

  “Mr. Kramer’s?” Hawes asked, putting on the shirt.

  “Yes.” Nancy paused. “That’s an expensive shirt, imported from Italy. But I don’t think he’ll mind your wearing it.”

  Hawes put on the shirt and rolled up the sleeves. The shirt was tight across his broad chest, skimpy where his shoulders threatened the luxurious cloth. He picked up his jacket, his wet clothes, and his shoulder rig.

  “Give me the clothes,” she said. “I have a dryer.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You can sit in the living room,” she told him.

  “Thanks.”

  “There’s whisky in the cabinet.”

  “Thanks.”

  She went into a small alcove off the kitchen. Hawes went into the living room and sat. He could hear her starting the automatic dryer. She came into the room and stood looking at him.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Detective Hawes.”

  “Have you got a warrant, Mr. Hawes?”

  “I only want to ask some questions, Miss O’Hara. I don’t need a warrant for that.”
<
br />   “Besides, you did fix my shower.” She had a sudden idea. “I better phone the super and tell him to call off the plumber. Excuse me a minute.” She stopped on the way out of the room. “I better change my pants, too. Don’t you want a drink?”

  “Not allowed,” Hawes said.

  “Oh, bull,” she answered, and left.

  Hawes walked around the room. A framed picture of Sy Kramer was on the grand piano. A humidor with six pipes in it rested on a table near one of the easy chairs. The room was a masculine room. He felt quite at home in it, and, curiously, he began to admire the late Sy Kramer’s expensive good taste.

  When Nancy returned, she had tucked the man’s shirt into a pair of striped tapered slacks.

  “Typical petty officialdom,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “The super. I told him not to bother sending the plumber. He said, ‘What plumber?’ I could be lying drowned for all he cares. I owe you my thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Won’t you have a drink?”

  “No, thanks, I’m really not supposed to.”

  “Nobody does what he’s supposed to these days,” Nancy said. “What do you drink?”

  “Scotch,” he said.

  “Sy had good Scotch, I understand. I never drink Scotch, but I understand it’s good.” She poured a glass for him. “Anything in it?”

  “Just some ice.”

  She dropped the cubes into the glass, and then poured herself some gin over one ice cube. “Am I rushing the season?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Gin.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She brought him his drink. “Here’s to the plumbers of America,” she said.

  “Cheers.”

  They drank.

  “What questions did you want to ask, Mr. Hawes?”

  “Just some routine stuff.”

  “About Sy?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you get to me?”

  “Were you and he supposed to be a secret?” Hawes asked.

  “No,” she said. “I expected the police. I just wondered…”

  “We asked around.”

  “Well, what do you want to know?”

  “How long had you been living together?”