87P14-Lady, Lady, I Did It!

by Ed McBain

“Please, Bert, I don’t want to—”

  “But you said it was a guy. You said—”

  “All right,” she answered. “All right, Bert.” She bit down on her lip. “All right, there was a guy. And I was in love with him. I was seventeen—just like Jeannie Paige—and he was nineteen. We hit it off right away…Do you know how such things happen, Bert? It happened that way with us. We made a lot of plans, big plans. We were young, and we were strong, and we were in love.”

  “I…I don’t understand,” he said.

  “He was killed in Korea.”

  Across the river, the sign blared: SPRY FOR FRYING.

  The tears. The bitter tears, starting slowly at first, forcing their way past clenched eyelids, trickling silently down her cheeks. Her shoulders began to heave, and she sat as still as a stone, her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders heaving, sobbing silently while the tears coursed down her face. He had never seen such honest misery before. He turned his face away. He did not want to watch her. She sobbed steadily for several moments, and then the tears stopped as suddenly as they had begun, leaving her face looking as clean as a city street after a sudden summer storm.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be.”

  “I should have cried a long time ago.”

  “Yes.”

  The waiter brought the drinks. Kling lifted his glass. “To a new beginning,” he said.

  Claire studied him. It took her a long time to reach for the drink before her. Finally her hand closed around the glass. She lifted it and touched the rim of Kling’s glass. “To a new beginning,” she said. She threw off the drink quickly.

  She looked across at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. The tears had put a sparkle into her eyes. “It…it may take time, Bert,” she said. Her voice came from a long way off.

  “I’ve got all the time in the world,” he said. And then, almost afraid she would laugh at him, he added, “All I’ve been doing is killing time, Claire, waiting for you to come along.”

  She seemed ready to cry again. He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “You’re…you’re very good, Bert,” she said, her voice growing thin, the way a voice does before it collapses into tears. “You’re good, and kind, and gentle, and you’re quite beautiful, do you know that? I…I think you’re very beautiful.”

  “You should see me when my hair is combed,” he said, smiling, squeezing her hand.

  “I’m not joking,” she said. “You always think I’m joking, and you really shouldn’t, because I’m…I’m a serious girl.”

  “I know.”

  “Bert,” she said. “Bert.” And she put her other hand over his, so that three hands formed a pyramid on the table. Her face grew very serious. “Thank you, Bert. Thank you so very, very much.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He felt embarrassed and stupid and happy and very big. He felt about eighty feet tall.

  She leaned forward suddenly and kissed him, a quick sudden kiss that fleetingly touched his mouth and then was gone. She sat back again, seeming very unsure of herself, seeming like a frightened little girl at her first party. “You…you must be patient,” she said.

  “I will,” he promised.

  The waiter suddenly appeared. The waiter was smiling. He coughed discreetly. “I thought,” he said gently, “perhaps a little candlelight at the table, sir? The lady will look even more lovely by candlelight.”

  “The lady looks lovely just as she is,” Kling said.

  The waiter seemed disappointed. “But…”

  “But the candlelight, certainly,” Kling said. “By all means, the candlelight.”

  The waiter beamed. “Ah, yes, sir. Yes, sir. And then we will order, yes? I have some suggestions, sir, whenever you’re ready.” He paused, his smile lighting his face. “It’s a beautiful night, sir, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a wonderful night,” Claire answered...

  Alone in the night, alone in the light-blinking silence of his furnished room, he tried to tell himself she was not dead. He had spoken to her this afternoon. She had told him about her new bra. She was not dead. She was still alive and vibrant. She was still Claire Townsend.

  She was dead.

  He sat staring through the window.

  He felt numb and cold. There was no feeling in his hands. If he moved his fingers, he knew they would not respond. He sat heavily, shivering in the warm October breeze, staring through the window at the myriad lights of the city, how gently the curtain rustled in the caressing wind, he felt nothing but an empty coldness, something hard and rigid and frighteningly cold at the pit of his stomach, he could not move, he could not cry, he could not feel.

  She was dead.

  No, he told himself, and he allowed a faint smile to turn the corners of his mouth; no, don’t be ridiculous. Claire dead? Don’t be ridiculous. I spoke to her this afternoon. She called me at the squadroom, the way she always calls. Meyer was making jokes about it. Carella was there—he could tell you. He remembers. She called me, and they were both there, so I know I wasn’t dreaming, and if she called me she must be alive, isn’t that so? That’s only logical. She called me, so I know she’s alive. Carella was there. Ask Carella. He’ll tell you. He’ll tell you Claire is alive.

  He could remember talking to Carella once not too long ago in a diner, the plate-glass window splashed with rain. There had been an intimacy to the place, a rained-in snugness as they had discussed the case they were working, as they had lifted steaming coffee mugs. And into the intimate mood of the moment, into the rain-protected comfort of the room, Carella had said, “When are you going to marry that girl?”

  “She wants to get her master’s degree before we get married,” Kling said.

  “Why?”

  “How do I know? She’s insecure. She’s psychotic. How do I know?”

  “What does she want after the master’s? A doctorate?”

  “Maybe.” Kling had shrugged. “Listen, I ask her to marry me every time I see her. She wants the master’s. So what can I do? I’m in love with her. Can I tell her to go to hell?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Well, I can’t.” Kling had paused. “You want to know something, Steve?”

  “What?”

  “I wish I could keep my hands off her. You know, I wish we didn’t have to…well, you know, my landlady looks at me cockeyed every time I bring Claire upstairs. And then I have to rush her home because her father is the strictest guy who ever walked the earth. I’m surprised he’s leaving her alone this weekend. But what I mean is…well, damn it, what the hell does she need that master’s for, Steve? I mean, I wish I could leave her alone until we were married, but I just can’t. I mean, all I have to do is be with her, and my mouth goes dry. Is it that way with…well, never mind, I didn’t mean to get personal.”

  “It’s that way,” Carella had said.

  She’s alive, Kling reasoned.

  Of course, she’s alive. She’s going for her master’s degree. She’s already doing social field work. Why, just today, on the telephone, she told me she’d be a little late: I have to pick up some texts.

  Interviewing: Its Principles and Methods, he thought.

  Patterns of Culture, he thought.

  The Sane Society, he thought.

  She’s dead, he thought.

  “NO!”

  He screamed the word aloud into the silence of the room. The scream brought him physically out of the chair, as if the force of its explosion had lifted him.

  “No,” he said again, very softly, and he walked to the window, and he rested his head against the curtain, and he looked down into the street, looking for Claire. She should have been here by now. It was almost…What time was it? What time? He knew her walk. He would recognize her the moment she turned into the block—a white blouse, she had said; that and a black skirt—yes, he would know her instantly. He wondered abruptly what the bra looked like, and again he smiled, the curtain soft and reassuring ag
ainst his cheek, the lights of the restaurant across the way staining his face in alternating red and green neon.

  I wonder what’s keeping her, he thought

  Well, she’s dead, you know, he thought.

  He turned away from the window. He walked to the bed, and he looked at it unseeingly, and then he walked to the dresser, and he stared down at its cluttered top, and picked up the hairbrush, and saw strands of her black hair tangled in its bristles, and put down the brush, and looked at his watch, and did not see the time.

  It was almost midnight.

  He walked back to the window and stared down into the street again, waiting for her.

  By 6:00 A.M. the next morning he knew she was not coming.

  He knew he would never see her again.

  A police precinct is a small community within a community. There were 186 patrolmen attached to the precinct and sixteen detectives attached to the squad. The men of the precinct and the squad knew each other the way people in a small town do: there were close friendships, and nodding acquaintanceships, and minor feuds, and strictly formal business relationships. But all of the men who used the station house as their office knew each other by sight, and usually by name, even if they had never worked a case together.

  By 7:45 the next morning, when a third of the precinct patrolmen were relieved on post, when the three detectives upstairs were officially relieved, there was not a single man in the precinct—uniformed or plainclothes—who did not know that Bert Kling’s girl had been killed in a bookstore on Culver Avenue.

  Most of the cops didn’t even know her name. To them, she was a vague image, real nonetheless, a person somewhat like their own wives or sweethearts, a young girl who took on personality, who because flesh and blood only by association with their own loved ones. She was Bert Kling’s girl, and she was dead.

  “Kling?” some of the patrolmen asked. “Which one is he?”

  “Kling’s girl?” some of the detectives asked. “You’re kidding! You mean it?”

  “Man, that’s a lousy break,” some of them said.

  A police precinct is a small community within a community.

  The cops of the 87th Precinct—uniformed and plainclothes— understood that Kling was one of them. There were men among the patrolmen who knew him only as the blond bull who had answered a squeal while they were keeping a timetable. If they’d met him in an official capacity, they would have called him “sir.” There were other men who had been patrolmen when Kling was still walking a beat, and who were still patrolmen, and who resented his promotion somewhat because he seemed to be just a lucky stiff who’d happened to crack a murder case. There were detectives who felt Kling would have made a better shoe clerk than a detective. There were detectives who felt Kling was indispensable on a case, combining a mature directness with a boyish humility, a combination that could pry answers from the most stubborn witness. There were stool pigeons who felt Kling was tight with a buck. There were prostitutes on La Via de Putas who eyed Kling secretly and who admitted among themselves that for this particular cop they wouldn’t mind throwing away a free one. There were shop owners who felt he was too strict about city ordinances concerning sidewalk stands. There were kids in the precinct who knew that Kling would look the other way if they turned on a fire hydrant during the summer. There were other kids in the precinct who knew that Kling would break their hands if he caught them fiddling with narcotics, even with something as harmless as mootah. There were traffic cops who called him “Blondie” behind his back. There was one detective on the squad who hated to read any of Kling’s reports because he was a lousy typist and a worse speller. Miscolo, in the Clerical Office, had a suspicion that Kling didn’t like the coffee he made.

  But all of the cops of the 87th, and many of the citizens who lived in the precinct territory, understood that Kling was one of them.

  Oh, there was none of that condolence-card sentiment about their understanding, none of that “your loss is my loss” horse manure. Actually, Kling’s loss was not their loss, and they knew it. Claire Townsend was only a name to most of them, and not even that much to some of them. But Kling was a policeman. Every other cop in the precinct knew that he was a part of the club, and you didn’t go around hurting club members or the people they loved.

  And so, whereas none of them agreed to it, whereas all of them discussed the crime but none of them discussed what he personally was going to do about it, a curious thing happened on October 14. On October 14 every cop in the precinct stopped being a cop. Well, he didn’t turn in his badge and his service revolver—nothing as dramatic as that. But being a cop in the 87th meant being a lot of things, and it meant being them all of the time. On October 14 the cops of the 87th still went about their work, which happened to be crime prevention, and they went about it in much the same way as always. Except for one difference.

  They arrested muggers, and pushers, and con men, and rapists, and drunks, and junkies, and prostitutes. They discouraged loitering and betting on the horses and unlawful assembly and crashing red lights and gang warfare. They rescued cats and babies and women with their heels caught in grates. They helped school children across the street. They did everything just the way they always did it. Except for the difference.

  The difference was this: their ordinary daily chores, the things they did every day of the week—their work—became a hobby. Or an avocation. Or call it what you will. They were doing it, and perhaps they did it well, but under the guise of working at all the petty little infractions that bugged cops everywhere, they were really working on the Kling Case. They didn’t call it The Bookstore Case, or The Claire Townsend Case, or The Massacre Case, or anything of the sort. It was The Kling Case. From the moment their day started to the moment their day ended, they were actively at work on it, listening, watching, waiting. Although only four men were officially assigned to the case, the man who’d done that bookshop killing had 202 policemen looking for him.

  Steve Carella was one of those policemen.

  He had gone home at midnight the night before. At 2:00, unable to sleep, he had called Kling.

  “Bert?” he had said. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” Kling had answered.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No,” Kling had said. “I was up.”

  “What were you doing, kid?”

  “Watching. Watching the street.”

  They had talked a while longer, and then Carella had said goodbye and hung up. He had not fallen asleep until 4:00 that morning. The image of Kling in his room, alone, watching the street, had kept drifting in and out of his dreams. At 8:00 he had awakened, dressed and driven down to the squadroom.

  Meyer Meyer was already there.

  “I want to try something on you, Steve,” Meyer said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you buy this guy as a fanatic?”

  “No,” Carella said immediately.

  “Me, neither. I’ve been up all night, thinking about what happened in that bookstore. I couldn’t sleep a wink.”

  “I didn’t sleep well either,” Carella said.

  “I figured if the guy is a fanatic, he’s going to do the same thing tomorrow, right? He’ll walk into a supermarket tomorrow and he’ll shoot four more people at random, am I right?”

  “That’s right,” Carella said.

  “But that’s only if he’s a lunatic. And it sounds like a madman doesn’t it? The guy walks into a store and starts blasting? He’s got to be nuts, right?” Meyer nodded. “But I don’t buy it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Instinct. Intuition. I don’t know why. I just know this guy is not a madman. I think he wanted somebody in that store dead. I think he knew his victim was going to be in that store, and I think he walked in and began blasting and didn’t give a damn who else he killed, so long as he killed the person he was after. That’s what I think.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” Carella said.

  “Good. So, assumin
g he got who he was after, I think we ought to—”

  “Suppose he didn’t, Meyer?”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Get who he was after.”

  “I thought of that, too, Steve, but I ruled it out. It suddenly came to me in the middle of the night—Jesus, suppose he was after one of the survivors? We’d better get police protection to them right away. But then I ruled it out.”

  “I did, too,” Carella said.

  “How do you figure?”

  “There were three areas in that shop,” Carella said. “The two aisles, and the high counter where Fennerman was sitting. If our killer wanted Fennerman, he’d have shot directly at him, at the counter. If he’d wanted somebody in the far aisles, where the other three survivors were standing, he’d have blasted in that direction. But, instead, he walked into the shop and began shooting immediately into the nearest aisle. The way I figure it, his victim is dead, Meyer. He got who he was after.”

  “There’re a few other things to consider, Steve,” Meyer said.

  “What?”

  “We don’t know who he was after, so we’ll have to start asking questions. But remember, Steve—”

  “I know.”

  “What?”

  “Claire Townsend was killed.”

  Meyer nodded. “There’s a possibility,” he said, “that Claire was the one he was gunning for.”

  The man in the seersucker suit was named Herbert Land.

  He taught philosophy at the university on the fringes of the precinct territory. He often went to The Browser because it was close to the school and he could pick up secondhand Plato and Descartes there at reasonable prices. The man in the seersucker suit was dead because he had been standing in the aisle closest to the door when the killer had cut loose with his barrage.

  Herbert Land… D.O.A.

  Land had lived in a development house in the nearby suburb of Sands Spit. He had lived there with his wife and two children. The oldest of the kids was six. The youngest was three. Herbert Land’s widow, a woman named Veronica, was twenty-eight years old. The moment Meyer and Carella saw her standing in the doorway of the development house they realized she was pregnant. She was a plain woman with brown hair and blue eyes, but she stood in the doorway with a quiet dignity that belied the tearstreaked face and the red-rimmed eyes. She stood and asked them quietly who they were, and then asked to see their identification, standing in the classic posture of the pregnant woman, her belly extended, one hand resting almost on the small of her back, her head slightly tilted. They showed their shields and their ID cards, and she nodded briefly and allowed them to enter her home.