87P14-Lady, Lady, I Did It!

by Ed McBain

  “Are you the owner of this shop?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the man said. “Please look at the others. Back there. Is an ambulance coming? A wild man, a wild man. Look at the others, please. They may be alive. One of them is a woman. Please look at them.”

  Kling nodded and walked to the back of the shop. He found the third man bent double over one of the counters, an open book beside him; he had undoubtedly been browsing when the shots were loosed. The man was dead, his mouth open, his eyes staring sightlessly. Unconsciously, Kling’s hands went to the man’s eyelids. Gently he closed them.

  The woman lay on the floor beside him.

  She was wearing a red blouse.

  She had undoubtedly been carrying an armful of books when the bullets took her. She had fallen to the floor, and the books had fallen around her and upon her. One book lay just under her extended right hand. Another, open like a tent, covered her face and her black hair. A third leaned against her curving hip. The red blouse had pulled free from the woman’s black skirt as she had fallen. The skirt had risen over the backs of her long legs. One leg was bent, the other rigid and straight. A black high-heeled pump lay several inches away from one naked foot. The woman wore no stockings.

  Kling knelt beside her. Oddly, the titles of the books registered on his mind: Patterns of Culture and The Sane Society and Interviewing: Its Principles and Methods. He saw suddenly that the blouse was not a red blouse at all. A corner that had pulled free from the black skirt showed white. There were two enormous holes in the girl’s side, and the blood had poured steadily from those wounds, staining the white blouse a bright red. A string of tiny pearls had broken when she had fallen, and the pearls lay scattered on the floor now, tiny luminescent islands in the sticky coagulation of her blood. He felt pain looking at her. He reached for the book that had fallen open over her face. He lifted the book, and the pain suddenly became a very personal, very involved thing.

  “Oh my Jesus Christ!” he said.

  There was something in his voice that caused Steve Carella to run toward the back of the shop immediately. And then he heard Kling’s cry, a single sharp anguished cry that pierced the dustfilled, cordite-stinking air of the shop.

  “Claire!”

  He was holding the dead girl in his arms when Carella reached him. His hands and his face were covered with Claire Townsend’s blood, and he kissed her lifeless eyes and her nose and her throat, and he kept murmuring over and over again, “Claire, Claire,” and Steve Carella would remember that name and the sound of Kling’s voice as long as he lived.

  Detective-lieutenant Peter Byrnes was having dinner with his wife and his son when Carella called him. Harriet, who had been a policeman’s wife for a long time, knew immediately that it was someone from the squad. The men of the 87th called only when the family was in the middle of dinner. No, that wasn’t quite true. They sometimes called in the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep.

  She said, “I’ll get it,” and she rose from the table and walked into the foyer, where the telephone rested on the hall table. When she recognized Carella’s voice, she immediately smiled. She could still remember clearly a time not so long ago when Carella had been very personally involved in a situation that had threatened the entire Byrnes family. While investigating the case, Carella had been shot in Grover Park by a narcotics peddler, and she could remember that long Christmas Eve vigil when it seemed he would die. He had lived, and now when she heard his voice she smiled immediately and unconsciously, as if constantly pleased and surprised and grateful for his presence.

  “Harriet,” he said, “may I talk to Pete, please?”

  There was an undertone of urgency to his voice. She said simply, “Of course, Steve,” and walked instantly from the phone and into the dining room. She said, “It’s Steve.”

  Byrnes pushed back his chair. He was a compact man who moved economically, his movements seeming to be a direct translation of thought into energy. The chair went back, his napkin came down onto the table, he moved briskly and rapidly to the phone, picked up the receiver, spoke the instant it was close to his mouth.

  “Yeah, Steve?”

  “Pete, I…I…”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Pete…”

  “What is it, Steve?”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line. For a moment Byrnes thought Carella was…crying? He held the phone close to his ear, listening, waiting. A slight tic began near his left eye.

  “Pete, I’m…I’m at a bookshop on Culver and…and…”

  There was a pause. Byrnes waited. He could hear Carella asking someone where the bookshop was. He could hear a muffled voice giving Carella the information.

  “North Forty-ninth,” Carella said into the phone. “The name is The Brow…The Browser. That’s the name of the shop, Pete.”

  “All right, Steve,” Byrnes said. He waited.

  “Pete, I think you better come down here.”

  “All right, Steve,” Byrnes said. Still he waited.

  “Pete, I…I can’t handle this right now. Kling is...Pete, this is a terrible thing.”

  “What happened?” Byrnes asked gently.

  “Somebody came in…and…sh…shot up the store. Kl…Kl…Kl…Kl…”

  He could not get the word out. The stammering filled the line like subdued machine-gun fire. Click, click, click, click, and Byrnes waited. There was silence.

  In a rush, Carella said, “Kling’s girl was here. She’s dead.”

  Byrnes caught his breath in a quick, small rush. “I’ll be right there,” he said, and he hung up rapidly. For a moment, he felt only intense relief. He had expected worse: he had expected injury to Carella’s wife or children. But the relief was short-lived because it was followed immediately by guilt. Kling’s girl, he thought, and he tried to construct an image of her; but he’d never met her. And yet she seemed real to him because he had heard the squadroom jokes about Kling’s romance with the young social worker, the corny goddamn squadroom jokes…She was dead…Kling…

  There.

  There was the thing. His first concern had been for Carella, because he looked upon him as the eldest son in a family business. But now he thought of Kling, young and blond and wideeyed in a business where you could not flinch.

  Byrnes did not want to think this way. I’m a cop, he told himself; I run a squad, I’m the boss, I’m the skipper, I’m the old man, they call me the old man. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t get involved with the personal lives of the men on that squad, I am not their father, goddamn it!

  But he strapped on his gun, and he put on his hat, and he kissed Harriet and touched his real son, Larry, on the shoulder, and there was a troubled and concerned look on his face as he went out of the house because he was involved with these men, had been involved with them for a long time now, and maybe this involvement did not make him a better cop, but it most certainly made him a better man.

  There were six detectives from the 87th waiting outside the bookshop when Byrnes got there. Meyer Meyer had been relieved and had brought two men from the oncoming graveyard shift with him. Cotton Hawes and Andy Parker had been off duty, but the catcher on the graveyard shift had called to tell them what had happened, and they had rushed over to the bookstore. Bob O’Brien had been on special assignment in a barbershop four blocks away when a patrolman had brought him the news. He had run all the way to the bookstore.

  The men stood on the sidewalk uneasily as Byrnes got out of his car. Two of the men had every right to be there since they were technically manning the squadroom. The rest were there voluntarily, and they stood in the slightly stupid posture of volunteers everywhere, not sure why they were there, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Two Homicide cops were outside with them, smoking, chatting with the police photographer. An ambulance was at the curb and four patrol cars blocked the street. A dozen patrolmen were on the sidewalk, trying to keep back curious onlookers. A few reporters who had been hanging out
in the wire room opposite Headquarters downtown had got the flash from the dispatcher manning the police radio and had come racing uptown to see what all the shouting was about.

  Meyer broke away from the knot of men the moment he saw the lieutenant. He walked to him quickly and fell into step beside him.

  “Where’s Steve?” Byrnes asked.

  “Inside.”

  “And Bert?”

  “I sent him home.”

  “How is he?”

  “How would you be?” Meyer asked, and Byrnes nodded. “I had to force him to leave. I sent two patrolmen with him. The girl…Ah, Pete, this is a mess.”

  They stood to one side as a pair of ambulance attendants went past with a man on a stretcher.

  “That’s the last one,” Meyer said. “One of them was still alive when they got here. Don’t know how long he’ll be that way. The ME thinks his spine was shattered.”

  “How many altogether?” Byrnes asked.

  “Four. Three dead.”

  “Was…was Kling’s girl…?”

  “Yeah. Dead when they got here.”

  Byrnes nodded briefly. Before he went into the bookstore, he said, “Tell O’Brien he’s supposed to be in that barbershop. Tell the others to go home; we’ll call them if we need them. Whose squeal is this, Meyer?”

  “It came in about a half hour before relief. You want us to stay on it?”

  “Who relieved?”

  “Di Maeo, Brown, and Willis.”

  “Where’s Di Maeo?”

  “Back at the squad, catching.”

  “Tell Willis and Brown to stick around. Did you have anything important for tonight?”

  “No. I’d like to call Sarah, though.”

  “Can you stay around for a while?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks,” Byrnes said, and he went into the shop.

  The bodies were gone. Only their chalked outlines remained on the floor and on the bookstalls. Two men from the police laboratory were dusting the shop for latent prints. Byrnes looked around for Carella and then thought of something. He went quickly to the door of the shop.

  “Willis!” he said.

  Hal Willis moved away from the men on the sidewalk. He was a small man, barely clearing the five-foot-eight height requirement for policemen. He walked with graceful precision, a smallboned man who had devoted half his life to the study and practice of judo, a man constantly aware of weight and balance, an awareness that showed in every move he made. He came up alongside the lieutenant and said, “Yeah, Pete?”

  “I want you to get over to the hospital. Take Brown with you. See if you can get anything from that man who’s still alive.”

  “Right, Pete.”

  “He’s in a bad way,” Byrnes said. “A dying declaration is admissible in court—remember that.”

  “Yeah,” Willis said. “Which hospital?”

  “Meyer knows. Ask him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not for now. If they won’t let you see him, raise a stink. Call me at the squad if you get anything. I’ll be there.”

  “Right.”

  Byrnes went into the shop again. Steve Carella was sitting on a high stool in one corner of the shop. His hands, clasped together, were dangling between his knees. He was staring at the floor when Byrnes approached him.

  “Steve?”

  He nodded.

  “You all right?”

  He nodded again.

  “Come on.”

  “What?”

  “Come on; snap out of it.”

  Carella raised his head. His eyes were dead. He looked straight at Byrnes, and straight through him.

  “This is a lousy rotten job,” he said.

  “All right, it’s—”

  “I don’t want it, I don’t want it,” Carella said, his voice rising. “I want to go home and touch my kids and not have blood on my hands.”

  “All right—”

  “I don’t want the stink of it!” Carella shouted.

  “Nobody does! Snap out of it!”

  “Snap out of what? Of seeing that poor damn girl laying twisted and broken and bleeding on the floor? Of Bert holding her in his arms, covered with blood, and rocking her, rocking her…Jesus Christ!”

  “Nobody asked you to be a cop,” Byrnes said.

  “You’re goddamn right, nobody asked me! Okay. Okay! Nobody asked.” His eyes had filled with tears. He sat on the high stool with his hands clasped tightly together, as if he were clinging to his sanity with them. “Bert kept…kept saying her name over and over again, rocking her. And I touched her arm and tried to…to let him know I was there. Just there, do you know? And he turned to me, but he didn’t know who I was. He just turned to me and asked, ‘Claire?’ As if he was asking me to deny it, to tell him that this…this dead person he held in his arms wasn’t his girl, do you know, Pete? Pete, do you know?” He began sobbing. “Oh, that son of a bitch, that rotten son of a bitch.”

  “Come on,” Byrnes said.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Come on, Steve, I need you,” Byrnes said.

  Carella was silent.

  “I can’t use you this way,” Byrnes said.

  Carella sighed deeply. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. He put the handkerchief back into his pocket, his eyes avoiding Byrnes’s, and he nodded and got off the stool, and then he sighed again.

  “How…how’s Bert?” he asked.

  “Meyer sent him home.”

  Carella nodded.

  “Did you question anybody?” Byrnes asked.

  Carella shook his head.

  “I think we ought to,” Byrnes said.

  DETAILS

  Martin Fennerman is owner and operator of The Browser, a bookstore located at address above. Home address 375 Harris Street in Riverhead. Fennerman is forty-seven years old, divorced; two children living with remarried wife, Olga (Mrs. Ira) Trent in Bethtown. Fennerman has owned and operated bookshop at above location for twelve years. Store was held up in 1954, thief apprehended, see D.D. Report #41 F-38, sentenced Castleview, released good behavior January, 1956, returned to home in Denver, respectably employed there.

  Mr. Fennerman states as follows:

  The shop is open every day but Sunday. He comes to work at nine in the morning, closes at six except on Saturday when he stays open until eight P.M. Except for the holdup in 1954, he has never had any trouble at this location, even though neighborhood is not ideal for bookshop. There were seven people in the shop this evening when the killer entered. Mr. Fennerman keeps count of the people as they come in. He sits behind a high counter just inside the entrance doorway, checks out purchases as customers leave. There is a cash register on the counter, paper bags for wrapping purchases under the counter. Fennerman’s system of keeping count was designed to avoid petty theft, he says. In any case, there were seven people in the store when the killer came in. Fennerman says this was at five-ten P.M. One of stray bullets shattered clock on rear wall of shop, stopping it at five-seven P.M. According to Fennerman, the killer began shooting the moment he entered the shop, so E.T.A. would be five-five or five-six.

  The man was tall, perhaps six feet, perhaps more. He was wearing a tweed overcoat, a gray fedora, sunglasses, black gloves. Fennerman especially remembers the black gloves. He thinks the overcoat may have been blue, but he is not certain. The killer came into the store with his hands in his pockets, stopped just beyond the cash register, pulled his hands from his pockets, and began firing. He carried two guns. He kept shooting into the aisle of the shop until both guns were empty, Fennerman says, and then turned and ran out. He said nothing to Fennerman and nothing to any of the patrons. The four people he shot were standing in the aisle running back from the cash register. The other three people in the store were in the other aisle, to the left of the entrance. Fennerman says none of them even knew what was happening until it was all over. One of the women fainted as the killer ran out. Names and disposition of the se
ven people in the store at time of killing follow, exclusive of Fennerman.

  Claire Townsend D.O.A.

  Anthony La Scala D.O.A.

  Herbert Land D.O.A.

  Joseph Wechsler Hospitalized--Neck Wound

  Myra Klein Hospitalized--Shock

  Barbara Deering Returned to residence

  James Woody Returned to residence

  Byrnes was in the middle of signing his name to the report he had typed himself when the telephone rang. He lifted the receiver. “87th Squad, Byrnes here.”

  “Pete, this is Hal. I’m still at the hospital.”

  “Get anything?” Byrnes asked.

  “The guy just died,” Willis said.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Only one word, Pete. He repeated it several times.”

  “What was the word?”

  “Carpenter. He kept saying it, maybe four, five times before he died. Carpenter.”

  “That’s all he said?”

  “That’s all.”

  “All right,” Byrnes said, “see if they’ll let you talk to the woman they have there. Name’s Myra Klein. She’s the one who fainted in the shop. They’re treating her for shock.”

  “Right,” Willis said, and he hung up. Byrnes completed his signature.

  Myra Klein was wearing a white hospital gown and complaining bitterly about the city’s public servants when Willis came into her room. Apparently the police had sent Miss Klein off to the hospital against her wishes, and apparently she was being kept there now against her wishes. She swore at the nurse who was trying to administer a sedative, turned to the door as Willis opened it, and shouted, “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to—”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “No, ma’am—”

  “How do I get out of this madhouse?” Miss Klein shouted. “Who are you?”