87P14-Lady, Lady, I Did It!

by Ed McBain

  Willis put the report into the Kling Case folder and then said to Brown, who was sitting at the next desk, “That’s great, ain’t it? A goddamn hophead. How do we find out where a hophead was living? Probably in Grover Park underneath a goddamn bench! How do we find the friends and relatives of a goddamn hophead?”

  Brown considered this pensively for a moment. Then he said, “Maybe it’s a break, Hal. This may have been the one he wanted. Hopheads get mixed up in a lot of crazy things.” He nodded again, emphatically. “Maybe this is a break.”

  And maybe it was.

  Monday morning came.

  It always does.

  On Monday morning you sit back and take a look at things, and things look lousy. That’s a part of Monday, the nature of the beast. Monday should be a fresh beginning, a sort of road-company New Year’s Day. But, somehow, Monday is only and always a continuation, a familiar awakening to a start that is really only a repetition. There should be laws against Monday morning.

  Arthur Brown didn’t like Monday morning any more than anyone else did. He was a cop, and only incidentally a Negro, and he lived in a colored ghetto close to the office. He had a wife named Caroline, and a daughter named Connie, and they shared a four-room flat in a building weary with time. Happily, when Brown got out of bed on the morning of October 16, the floors were not cold. The floors were usually cold around this time of year, despite the city ordinance that made it mandatory to provide steam heat beginning on the fifteenth of October. This year, with Indian summer swinging her hot little behind through the city, the landlords were enjoying a reprieve, and the tenants didn’t have to bang on the radiators. Brown was grateful for the warm floors.

  He got out of bed quietly, not wanting to wake Caroline, who was asleep beside him. He was a big man with close-cropped black hair and brown eyes and a deep-brown complexion. He had worked on the docks before he joined the force, and his arms and shoulders and chest still bulged with the muscles of his youthful labor. He had been sleeping in his pajama bottoms, Caroline curled beside him in the over-large top. After he silently slipped out of bed, he walked bare-chested into the kitchen, where he filled a kettle with water and put it on the stove. He turned on the radio very softly and listened to the news broadcast as he shaved. Race riots in the Congo. Sit-in demonstrations in the South. Apartheid in South Africa.

  He wondered why he was black.

  He often wondered this. He wondered if idly, and with no real conviction, that he was black. That was the strange part of it. When Arthur Brown looked in the mirror, he saw only himself. Now he knew he was a Negro, yes. But he was also a Democrat, and a detective, and a husband, and a father, and he read The New York Times—he was a lot of things. And so he wondered why he was black. He wondered why, being this variety of things besides being black, people would look at him and see Arthur Brown, Negro—and not Arthur Brown, detective, or Arthur Brown, husband, or any of the Arthur Browns who had nothing to do with the fact that he was black. This was not a simple concept, and Brown did not equate it in simple Shakespearian-Shylock terms, which the world had long outgrown.

  When Brown looked into his mirror he saw a person.

  It was the world who had decided that this person was a black man. Being this person was an extremely difficult thing, because it meant living a life the world had decided upon, and not the life he—Arthur Brown—would particularly have chosen. He, Arthur Brown, did not see a black man or a white man or a yellow man or a chartreuse man when he looked into his mirror.

  He saw Arthur Brown.

  He saw himself.

  But superimposed upon this image of himself was the external concept of black man-white man, a concept that existed and that Brown was forced to accept. He became a person playing a complicated role. He looked at himself and saw Arthur Brown, Man. That’s all he wanted to be. He had no desire to be white. In fact, he rather liked the warm, burnished color of his own skin. He had no desire to go to bed with a creamy-skinned blonde. He had heard colored friends of his state that white men had bigger sex organs than Negroes, but he didn’t believe it, and he felt no envy. He had encountered prejudice in 101 subtle and unsubtle ways from the moment he was old enough to understand what was being said and done around him, but the intolerance never left him feeling angry—it only confused him.

  You see, he thought, I’m me, Arthur Brown. Now what is all this white man-black man crap? I don’t understand what you want me to be. You are saying I’m a Negro, you are telling me this is so, but I don’t know what Negro means, I don’t know what this whole damn discussion is all about. What do you want from me, exactly? If I say, why yes, that’s right, I’m a Negro, well, then what? What the hell is it you want, that’s what I’d like to know.

  Arthur Brown finished shaving, rinsed his face, and looked into the mirror.

  As usual, he saw himself.

  He dressed quietly, drank some orange juice and coffee, kissed his daughter as she lay sleeping in her crib, woke Caroline briefly to tell her he was off to work, and then went cross town to the neighborhood where Joseph Wechsler had run a hardware store.

  It was purely by chance that Meyer Meyer went to see Mrs. Rudy Glennon alone that Monday morning, the chance having been occasioned by the fact that Steve Carella had drawn Lineup duty. Things might have worked out differently had Carella been along, but the police commissioner felt it was necessary to acquaint his working dicks with criminals every Monday to Thursday inclusive. Carella, being a working dick, took the Lineup duty like a man and sent Meyer to Mrs. Glennon’s apartment alone.

  Mrs. Glennon was the name supplied by Dr. McElroy at Buenavista Hospital, the woman with whose family Claire Townsend had been personally involved. She lived in one of the worst slum sections in Isola, some five blocks from the station house. Meyer walked over, found the apartment building, and climbed the steps to the third floor. He knocked on the door to the apartment and waited.

  “Who is it?” a voice called.

  “Police,” Meyer called.

  “What do you want? I’m in bed.”

  “I’d like to talk to you, Mrs. Glennon,” Meyer said.

  “Come back next week. I’m sick. I’m in bed.”

  “I’d like to talk to you now, Mrs. Glennon.”

  “What about?”

  “Mrs. Glennon, would you open the door, please?”

  “Oh, for the love of Mary, it’s open,” she shouted. “Come in, come in.”

  Meyer turned the knob and stepped into the apartment. The shades were drawn and the room he entered was dim. He peered into the apartment.

  “I’m in here,” Mrs. Glennon said. “The bedroom.”

  He followed the voice into the other room. She was sitting in the middle of a large double bed, propped against the pillows, a small faded woman wearing a faded pink robe over her nightgown. She looked at Meyer as if even the glance sapped all her energy. Her hair was stringy, threaded with gray strands. Her cheeks were gaunt.

  “I told you I was sick,” Mrs. Glennon said. “What is it you want?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Glennon,” Meyer said. “The hospital told us you’d been released. I thought—”

  “I’m convalescing,” she interrupted. She said the word proudly, as if she had learned it at great expense.

  “Well, I’m awfully sorry. But if you feel you can answer a few questions, I’d appreciate it,” Meyer said.

  “You’re here now. I might as well.”

  “You have a daughter, Mrs. Glennon?”

  “And a son. Why?”

  “How old are the children?”

  “Eileen is sixteen and Terry is eighteen. Why?”

  “Where are they now, Mrs. Glennon?”

  “What’s it to you? They haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “I didn’t say they had, Mrs. Glennon. I simply—”

  “Then why do you want to know where they are?”

  “Actually, we’re trying to locate—”

  “I’m here
, Mom,” a voice behind Meyer said. The voice came suddenly, startling him. His hand automatically went for the service revolver clipped to his belt on the left—and then stopped. He turned slowly. The boy standing behind him was undoubtedly Terry Glennon, a strapping youth of eighteen, with his mother’s piercing eyes and narrow jaw.

  “What do you want, mister?” he said.

  “I’m a cop,” Meyer told him before he got any wild ideas. “I want to ask your mother a few questions.”

  “My mother just got out of the hospital. She can’t answer no questions,” Terry said.

  “It’s all right, son,” Mrs. Glennon said.

  “You let me handle this, Mom. You better go, mister.”

  “Well, I’d like to ask—”

  “I think you better go,” Terry said.

  “I’m sorry, sonny,” Meyer said, “but I happen to be investigating a homicide, and I think I’ll stay.”

  “A homi...” Terry Glennon swallowed the information silently. “Who got killed?”

  “Why? Who do you think got killed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  “I don’t know. You said a homicide, so I naturally asked—”

  “Uh-huh,” Meyer said. “You know anyone named Claire Townsend?”

  “No.”

  “I know her,” Mrs. Glennon said. “Did she send you here?”

  “Look, mister,” Terry interrupted, apparently making up his mind once and for all, “I told you my mother’s sick. I don’t care what you’re investigating—she ain’t gonna—”

  “Terry, now stop it,” his mother said. “Did you buy the milk I asked you to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I put it on the table.”

  “Well, what good is it gonna do me on the table, where I can’t get at it? Put some in a pot and turn up the gas. Then you can go.”

  “What do you mean, go?”

  “Downstairs. With your friends.”

  “What do you mean, my friends? Why do you always say it that way?”

  “Terry, do what I tell you.”

  “You gonna let this guy tire you out?”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “You’re sick!” Terry shouted. “You just had an operation, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Terry, don’t swear in my house,” Mrs. Glennon said, apparently forgetting that she had profaned Christ’s mother earlier, when Meyer was standing in the hallway. “Now go put the milk up to heat and go downstairs and find something to do.”

  “Boy, I don’t understand you,” Terry said. He shot a petulant glare at his mother, some of it spilling onto Meyer, and then walked angrily out of the room. He picked up the container of milk from the table, went into the kitchen, banged around a lot of pots, and then stormed out of the apartment.

  “He’s got a temper,” Mrs. Glennon said.

  “Mmmmm,” Meyer commented.

  “Did Claire send you here?”

  “No, ma’am. Claire Townsend is dead.”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tch,” Mrs. Glennon said. She tilted her head to one side and then repeated the sound again. “Tch.”

  “Were you very friendly with her, Mrs. Glennon?” Meyer asked.

  “Yes.” Her eyes seemed to have gone blank. She was thinking of something, but Meyer didn’t know what. He had seen this look a great many times before, a statement triggering off a memory or an association, the person being interrogated simply drifting off into a private thought. “Yes, Claire was a nice girl,” Mrs. Glennon said, but her mind was on something else, and Meyer would have given his eyeteeth to have known what.

  “She worked with you at the hospital, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Glennon said.

  “And with your daughter, too.”

  “What?”

  “Your daughter. I understand Claire was friendly with her.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “The intern at Buenavista.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Glennon nodded. “Yes, they were friendly,” she admitted.

  “Very friendly?”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

  “What is it, Mrs. Glennon?”

  “Huh? What?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing. I’m answering your questions. When…when did…When was Claire killed?”

  “Friday evening,” Meyer said.

  “Oh, then she—” Mrs. Glennon closed her mouth.

  “Then she what?” Meyer asked.

  “Then she…she was killed Friday evening,” Mrs. Glennon said.

  “Yes.” Meyer watched her face carefully. “When was the last time you saw her, Mrs. Glennon?”

  “At the hospital.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “Eileen? I…I don’t know when she saw Claire last.”

  “Where is she now, Mrs. Glennon? At school?”

  “No. No, she…she’s spending a few…uh…days with my sister. In Bethtown.”

  “Doesn’t she go to school, Mrs. Glennon?”

  “Yes, certainly she does. But I had the appendicitis, you know, and…uh…she stayed with my sister while I was in the hospital… and…uh…I thought I ought to send her there for a while now, until I can get on my feet. You see?”

  “I see. What’s your sister’s name, Mrs. Glennon?”

  “Iris.”

  “Yes. Iris what?”

  “Iris—why do you want to know?”

  “Oh, just for the record,” Meyer said. “I don’t want you to bother her, mister. She’s got troubles enough of her own. She doesn’t even know Claire. I wish you wouldn’t bother her.”

  “I don’t intend to, Mrs. Glennon.”

  Mrs. Glennon frowned. “Her name is Iris Mulhare.”

  Meyer jotted the name into his pad. “And the address?”

  “Look, you said—”

  “For the record, Mrs. Glennon.”

  “1131 56th Street.”

  “In Bethtown?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you. And you say your daughter Eileen is with her, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did she go there, Mrs. Glennon?”

  “Saturday. Saturday morning.”

  “And she was there earlier, too, is that right? While you were in the hospital.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did she meet Claire, Mrs. Glennon?”

  “At the hospital. She came to visit me one day while Claire was there. That’s where they met.”

  “Uh-huh,” Meyer said. “And did Claire visit her at your sister’s home? In Bethtown?”

  “What?”

  “I said I suppose Claire visited her at your sister’s home.”

  “Yes, I…I suppose so.”

  “Uh-huh,” Meyer said. “Well, that’s very interesting, Mrs. Glennon, and I thank you. Tell me, haven’t you seen a newspaper?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Then you didn’t know Claire was dead until I told you, is that right?” “That’s right.”

  “Do you suppose Eileen knows?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Well, did she mention anything about it Saturday morning? Before she left for your sister’s?”

  “No.”

  “Were you listening to the radio?”

  “No.”

  “Because it was on the air, you know. Saturday morning.”

  “We weren’t listening to the radio.”

  “I see. And your daughter didn’t see a newspaper before she left the house?”

  “No.”

  “But, of course, she must know about it by now. Has she said anything about it to you?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve spoken to her, haven’t you? I mean, she does call you. From your sister’s?”

  “Yes, I…I speak to her.”

  �
��When did you speak to her last, Mrs. Glennon?”

  “I…I’m very tired now. I’d like to rest.”

  “Certainly. When did you speak to her last?”

  “Yesterday,” Mrs. Glennon said, and she sighed deeply.

  “I see. Thank you, Mrs. Glennon, you’ve been very helpful. Shall I get you that milk? It’s probably warm enough by now.”

  “Would you?”

  Meyer went into the kitchen. The stove was set alongside a cabinet and a wall. A small cork bulletin board was nailed to the wall. A telephone rested on the cabinet. He took the pot of milk from the stove just as it was ready to over-boil. He poured a cupful and then called, “Do you want a lump of butter in this?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He opened the refrigerator, took out the butter dish, found a knife in the cabinet drawer, and was slicing off a square when he saw the hand-lettered note pinned to the bulletin board. The note read:

  CLAIRE

  SATURDAY

  271 SOUTH 1ST STREET

  He nodded once, briefly, silently copied the address into his pad, and then carried the buttered milk to Mrs. Glennon. She thanked him for his kindness, asked him again not to bother her sister, and then began sipping at the cup.

  Meyer left the apartment, wondering why Mrs. Glennon had lied to him. He was still wondering about it when he reached the first-floor landing.

  The attack came swiftly and silently.

  He was totally unprepared for it. The fist came flying out of the darkness as he turned the bend in the banister. It struck him on the bridge of his nose. He whirled to face his attacker, reaching for his holstered revolver at the same moment, and suddenly he was struck from behind with something harder than a fist, something that collided with the base of his skull and sent a fleeting wave of blackness across his eyes. He pulled the gun quickly and easily, something else hit him, there were more than two people, again he was struck, he heard his own revolver going off, but he had no knowledge of pulling the trigger. Something dropped to the floor with a clanging metallic sound, they were using pipes, he felt blood trickling into his eye, a pipe lashed out of the neardarkness, striking his mouth, he felt the gun dropping from his hand, felt himself falling to his knees under the steady silent onslaught of the unrelenting lead pipes.