Killer's Payoff

by Ed McBain

  “Did you send it to a man named Seymour Kramer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “What difference does it make? He’s dead.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Hawes said.

  “It’s over now,” Schlesser said. “Are you like a priest? Or a doctor? Does what I tell you remain confidential?”

  “Certainly. In any case, it won’t get outside the department.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You don’t. Did you trust Sy Kramer?”

  “No,” Schlesser said. “If I’d trusted him, I wouldn’t have been sending him checks.”

  “This wasn’t the first check?”

  “No, I—” Schlesser stopped. “Who will you tell this to?”

  “Two people. My partner on the case, and my immediate superior.”

  Schlesser sighed again. “I’ll tell you,” he said.

  “I’m listening, sir.”

  “I run this business,” Schlesser said. “It’s not a big one, but it’s growing. There’s competition, you know. It’s hard to buck the big companies. But my business is growing, all the time. I’ve got money in the bank, and I’ve got a nice house in Connecticut. My business is here, but I live in Connecticut. I make good soft drinks. Our orange is particularly good. Do you like orange?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll give you a case when you leave. If you like it, tell your friends.”

  “Thank you,” Hawes said. “What about Kramer?”

  “We had an accident a little while ago. In the bottling plant. Not too serious, but a thing like that, if it gets around…This is a small business. We’re just beginning to make a mark, people are just beginning to recognize our bottle and the name Schlesser. A thing like this…”

  “What happened?”

  “Somehow, don’t ask me how, a freak accident—a mouse got bottled into one of the drinks.”

  “A mouse?” Hawes asked incredulously.

  “A tiny little thing,” Schlesser said, nodding. “A field mouse. The bottling plant is in a field, naturally. Somehow the mouse got in, and somehow he got into one of the bottles, and somehow it went through the plant and was shipped to our distributors. A bottle of sarsaparilla as I recall.”

  Hawes wanted to smile, but apparently this was a matter of extreme seriousness to Schlesser.

  “Somebody bought the bottle of soda. It was the large family size, the economy size. This person claimed he drank some of the soda and got very sick. He threatened to sue the company.”

  “For how much?”

  “A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  Hawes whistled. “Did he win the case?”

  “It never got to court. The last thing we wanted was a trial. We settled for twenty-five thousand dollars out of court. I was glad to have it over with. There wasn’t a peep in the papers about it. It could have ruined me. People remember things like that. A mouse in a bottle of soda? Jesus, you can be ruined!”

  “Go on,” Hawes said.

  “About a month after we’d settled, I got a telephone call from a man who said he knew all about it.”

  “Kramer?”

  “Yes. He threatened to turn a certain document over to the newspapers unless I paid him money to withhold it.”

  “Which document?”

  “The original letter that had come from the claimant’s attorney, the letter telling all about the mouse.”

  “How’d he get it?”

  “I don’t know. I checked the files, and sure enough it was gone. He wanted three thousand dollars for the letter.”

  “Did you pay him?”

  “I had to. I’d already paid twenty-five thousand dollars to keep it quiet. Another three wouldn’t hurt me. I thought it would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. He’d had photostated copies of the letter made. He asked for an additional three hundred dollars a month. Each time I sent him my check, he’d send back another photostated copy. I figured he’d run out sooner or later. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. He’s dead.”

  “He may have friends,” Hawes said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A partner, a cohort, someone who’ll pick up right where he left off.”

  “In that case, I’ll keep paying the three hundred dollars a month. It comes to thirty-six hundred dollars a year. That’s not so much. I spend sixty thousand dollars a year advertising my soft drinks. All that would go down the drain if that letter got to the newspapers. So another thirty-six hundred a year isn’t going to kill me. If Kramer has a partner, I’ll keep paying.”

  “Where were you on the night of June twenty-sixth, Mr. Schlesser?” Hawes asked.

  “What do you mean? You mean the night Kramer was killed?”

  “Yes.”

  Schlesser began laughing. “That’s ridiculous. Do you think I’d kill a man for three hundred dollars a month? A lousy three hundred dollars a month?”

  “Suppose, Mr. Schlesser,” Hawes said, “that Kramer had decided to release that letter to the newspapers no matter how much you paid him? Suppose he just decided to be a mean son of a bitch?”

  Schlesser did not answer.

  “Now, Mr. Schlesser. Where were you on the night of June twenty-sixth?”

  5.

  THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S NAME was Ted Boone.

  His office was on swank Hall Avenue, and he knew the men of the 87th because a month ago they had investigated the murder of his ex-wife. The call to Boone was made by Bert Kling, who knew him best. And Kling was asking for a favor.

  “I hate to bother you,” he said, “because I know how busy you are.”

  “Has this got something to do with the case?” Boone asked.

  “No, no,” Kling said, “that’s closed—until the trial, at any rate.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I think it’s set for August.”

  “Will I be called?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Boone. That’s up to the district attorney.” He paused, remembering Boone’s young daughter. “How’s Monica?”

  “She’s fine, thanks. She’ll be coming to live with me this month.”

  “Give her my love, will you?”

  “I’ll certainly do that, Mr. Kling.”

  There was a long pause.

  “The reason I’m calling…” Kling said.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re working on something now, and I thought you might be able to help. You do a lot of fashion photography, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever use a model named Lucy Starr Mitchell?”

  “Lucy Starr Mitchell.” Boone thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. Do you know which agency she’s with?”

  “No.”

  “Is she hot now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, models have their ups and downs. They’re hot for a while, and then they cool off. Their faces get too well known. People begin to say, ‘Oh, there’s that exquisite redhead!’ instead of ‘Oh, there’s an exquisite dress.’ Do you understand me? The model begins selling herself instead of the product.”

  “I see.”

  “But the name doesn’t register with me. If she were active now, I’d recognize it. I use most of the topflight girls.”

  “I think she was modeling about twelve or thirteen years ago,” Kling said.

  “Oh. Then I wouldn’t know her. I haven’t been in the business that long.”

  “How would I find out about her, Mr. Boone?”

  “You can call the registries. They’ve got back records. They can pinpoint her in a minute. Meanwhile, if you like, I’ll ask around. I have friends who’ve been at this much longer than I. If they used her, they’ll probably remember.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “What was the number there again?”

  “Frederick 7-8024.”

  “Okay, I’ll check into it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Boone.”
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  “Not at all,” he said, and he hung up.

  The telephone would occupy Bert Kling for the rest of the afternoon. He would learn nothing from it. Or at any rate, he would learn a negative something.

  He would learn that none of the model registries had ever carried a girl named Lucy Starr Mitchell.

  MEYER MEYER did not mind being a tail, especially when the tail was tacked to the behind of Lucy Mencken. Lucy Mencken had a very nice behind.

  On July second, Meyer was parked up the street from the Mencken house in a plain pale blue sedan. At 8:05 A.M., a man answering the description of Charles Mencken left the house. At 9:37, Lucy Mencken went to the garage, backed out a red MG, and headed for the town of Peabody. Meyer followed her.

  Lucy Mencken went to the hairdresser, and Meyer waited outside.

  Lucy Mencken went to the post office, and Meyer waited outside.

  Lucy Mencken had lunch at a quaint exurban teashop, and Meyer waited outside.

  She went into a dress shop at 1:04.

  By 2:15, Meyer began to suspect the awful truth. He got out of the sedan, walked into the shop, and then through it to the other side. As he’d suspected, there was another doorway at the far end of the shop. Lucy Mencken, by accident or design, had shaken her tail. Meyer drove back to the Mencken house. He could see the garage at the far end of the curving driveway. The red MG was not in it. Sighing heavily, he sat back to await her return.

  She did not check in until 6:15.

  Meyer went to dinner and then phoned Lieutenant Byrnes. Shamefacedly, he admitted that an exurban housewife had shaken him for five hours and eleven minutes.

  The lieutenant listened patiently. Then he said, “Stick with it. She’s probably home for the night. In any case, Willis’ll be out to relieve you soon. What do you suppose she did during those five hours?”

  “She could have done anything,” Meyer said.

  “Don’t take it so big,” Byrnes said. “Peabody hasn’t reported any homicides yet.”

  Meyer grinned. “I’ll be expecting Willis.”

  “He’ll be there,” Byrnes said, and he hung up.

  Meyer went back to his vigil in the sedan. At 9:30 P.M., Willis relieved him. Meyer went home to bed. His wife, Sarah, wanted to know why he looked so down in the mouth.

  “I’m a failure,” Meyer said. “Thirty-seven years old and a failure.”

  “Go to sleep,” Sarah said. Meyer rolled over. He did not once suspect that he himself had been tailed that afternoon, or that he’d led his follower directly to the home of Lucy Mencken.

  IT WAS WEDNESDAY MORNING, July third.

  A week had gone by since Sy Kramer had been shot from an automobile. The police had not learned very much during that week. They now knew where the monthly $500 and $300 deposits had originated. There was also a monthly $1,100 deposit in Kramer’s working account, but they had not yet learned from whom that had come—and possibly they would never learn.

  Nor did they know where the huge sums deposited in the other account had come from.

  A check of Kramer’s living habits had disclosed to the police that his taste was expensive, indeed. His suits were all hand-tailored, as were those of his shirts that had not been imported. His apartment had been furnished by a high-priced decorator. His whisky was the best money could buy. He owned two automobiles, a Cadillac convertible and a heavy-duty station wagon. The acquisitions were all apparently new ones, and this presented a puzzling aspect to the case.

  The monthly deposits in Kramer’s working account totaled $1,900. The withdrawals kept steady pace with the deposits. Kramer liked to live big, and he had been spending close to $500 a week. But the sum of $45,187.50 in the other account had not been touched. How, then, had he managed to buy the two automobiles, to pay for the furniture and the decorator, to afford the closetful of suits and coats?

  How do you buy things without money?

  You don’t.

  The Cadillac agency from which Kramer had purchased the automobile reported that it had been purchased during the latter part of the preceding September, and that Kramer had paid for it in cold, hard cash. The Buick station wagon had been purchased on the same day from an agency across the street in Isola’s Automobile Row. Again, the purchase had been made in cash.

  Kramer had rented his apartment in September. He had paid for the furniture and the decorator in cash. The total bill had come to $23,800. His suits had been ordered in September, delivered in October. They had cost him $2,000—and he had paid for them with green United States currency.

  Kramer, in short, had barefootedly run through $36,000 in cash in less than a month—and had managed to acquire a lovely mistress named Nancy O’Hara during that same wild spending spree. And then, on October twenty-third, he had deposited the staggering amount of $21,000 in his bank account!

  From where had that original $36,000 come?

  And from where had the subsequent deposits of $21,000 in October, $9,000 in January, and $15,000 in April come?

  And had that $15,000 deposit been intended as the last one? Or had more payments been scheduled to come? Who had been making the payments? Who had already paid a total of $81,000, and had this person been let off the hook only because Kramer was now dead?

  And had not the extortion of $81,000 been sufficient reason for murder?

  The body of Sy Kramer lying in the morgue seemed to indicate that it had indeed been reason enough.

  THE GRAND AND GLORIOUS Fourth came in with a bang.

  Some of the bulls of the 87th had the holiday off; the rest had to work. There was plenty to keep them occupied. In cooperation with the uniformed cops of the precinct, they tried to keep the day a safe and sane one. It was not.

  Despite the city’s law against fireworks, the importers had been busy, and everyone from six to sixty stood ready and anxious to apply a match to a fuse and then to stand back with his fingers in his ears. A kid on South Thirtieth lost an eye when another kid hurled a cherry bomb at his face. On Culver Avenue, two boys were shooting skyrockets from the roof. One fell over the edge and died the instant he hit the pavement.

  It was not a very hot Fourth—there had been hotter Fourths—but it was a very noisy one. The noise was an excellent cover for those citizens who wanted to fire revolvers. You couldn’t tell an exploding firecracker from an exploding .32 without a program, and nobody was selling programs that day. The police were busy chasing kids with fireworks, and turning off fire hydrants, and trying to stop burglaries that were being committed under cover of all the confusion and all the noise. The police were busy watching sailors who came uptown for a piece of exotica and very often went back downtown with a piece of their skulls missing. The police were busy watching the teen-age kids, who, now that school was over, now that time lay heavily on their hands, now that the asphalt streets and the concrete towers cradled them with boredom, now that there was nothing to do and plenty of time to do it in, were anxious for excitement, anxious for kicks, anxious for a little clean-living adolescent sport. They roamed the streets, and they roamed Grover Park, spoiling for action, and so the cops were kept busy.

  Everyone was celebrating but the cops.

  The cops were cursing because they had to work on a goddamn holiday.

  Each of them wished he’d become a fireman.

  AT THE FIREHOUSE in the 87th Precinct territory, the gongs were ringing and the men were sliding down poles and grabbing for helmets, because there’d be more damn fires today than on any other day of the year.

  And each of the firemen wished he’d become a cop.

  6.

  HAL WILLIS was a detective 3rd/grade.

  He earned $5,230 a year.

  He earned this whether he was being shot at by a thief, or whether he was typing up a report in triplicate back at the squad. He earned it even when he was tailing a woman who tried to hide the swell of her curves by wearing potato-sack suits. The potato-sack suits, he supposed, made it interesting—like watching a stripper
who never took off her clothes.

  I am getting sick, he thought. There are no strippers who never take off their clothes.

  In any case, and in any sense of the word, he did not mind the tail on Lucy Mencken. It had been agreeable work thus far, and he could not imagine how this charming housewife with a peekaboo body could possibly have shaken Meyer. Meyer is getting old, he thought. We’ll have to put him out to pasture. We’ll have to make him a stud bull. He will become the sire of a proud line of law-enforcement officers. They will erect a statue to him in Grover Park. The chiseled lettering at the base of the statue will read, MEYER MEYER, SIRE.

  Sick, Willis thought. Sick, for sure.

  He was a small man, Willis, barely clearing the five-foot-eight minimum-height requirement for policemen. Among the other detectives of the squad, he looked like a midget. But his deceptive height and his deceptively small bone structure did not fool any of the bulls who worked with him. There were not many men on the squad who wanted to fool with Willis. He was, you see, expert in the ways of judo. Hal Willis could, if you will allow your imagination to soar for a moment, seize the trunk of a charging elephant and—within a matter of seconds—cause that beast to sail through the air and land on his back with possible injury to his spinal column. Such was the might and the power of Hal Willis. Along more prosaic lines, and during the mundane pursuit of his chosen profession, Willis had disarmed thieves, dislocated bones, dispensed severe punishment, dispelled foolish notions about small men, disturbed virile giants who suddenly found themselves flat on their asses, dismayed crooks who did not realize bones could break so easily, and discovered that judo—good, clean fun that it was—could also become a way of life.

  Weight and balance, that was the secret. Fulcrum and lever. Wait for your opportunity, seize it, and you had the world on its back.

  Lucy Mencken was not, at the moment, on her back—although the thought, in all honesty, had often crossed Willis’s mind since he’d begun tailing her. He had been warned by Carella, and later by Meyer, that Mrs. Mencken bore all the characteristics of a camouflaged munitions dump. Both Carella and Meyer were respectable married men who rarely, if ever, thought lewd, lascivious, or obscene thoughts. If they had seen fit to warn Willis about the necessity for keeping his mind on his work, then Mrs. Mencken was indeed highly explosive.