by Ed McBain
Her story this Wednesday was the same story she had been telling every Wednesday for the past four years. Willis took down the information and promised they would do everything in their power to bring this insane womanizer to justice. Sadie the Nut left the squadroom pleased and excited, doubtless anticipating next week’s nocturnal visit.
At a quarter to ten that morning, a woman came in to report that her husband was missing. The woman was perhaps thirty-five years old, an attractive brunette wearing a green overcoat that matched her Irish eyes. Her face was spanking pink from the cold outside, and she exuded health and vitality even though she seemed quite upset by her husband’s disappearance. Upon questioning her, though, Meyer learned that the missing man wasn’t her husband at all, he was really the husband of her very best friend who lived in the apartment next door to her on Ainsley Avenue. And upon further questioning, the green eyed lady explained to Meyer that she and her very best friend’s husband had been having “a relationship” (as she put it) for three years and four months, with never a harsh word between them, they were that fond of each other. But last night, when the green-eyed lady’s best friend went to play Bingo at the church, the green-eyed lady and the husband had had a violent argument because he had wanted to “do it” (as she again put it) right there in his own apartment on the living-room couch with his four children asleep in the other room, and she had refused, feeling it would not be decent, and he had put on his hat and coat and gone out into the cold. He had not yet returned, and whereas the green-eyed lady’s best friend figured he was out having himself a toot, the husband apparently being something of a drinking man, the green-eyed lady missed him sorely and truly believed he had vanished just to spite her, had she known he would do something like that she certainly would have let him have his way, you know how men are.
Yes, Meyer said.
So whereas the wife felt it would not be necessary to report him missing and thereby drag policemen into the situation, the green-eyed lady feared he might do something desperate, having been denied her favors, and was therefore asking the law’s assistance in locating him and returning him to the bosom of his family and loved ones, you know how men are.
Yes, Meyer said again.
So he took down the information, wondering when it was that he’d last attempted to lay Sarah on the living-room couch with his own children asleep in their respective rooms, and realized that he had never tried to lay Sarah on the living-room couch. He decided that he would try to do it tonight when he got home, and then he assured the green-eyed lady that they would do everything in their power to locate her best friend’s husband, but that probably there was nothing to worry about, he had probably gone to spend the night with a friend.
Yes, that’s just what I’m worried about, the green-eyed lady said.
Oh, Meyer said.
When the green-eyed lady left, Meyer filed the information away for future use, not wanting to bug the Bureau of Missing Persons prematurely. He was beginning to type up a report on a burglary when Detective Andy Parker came into the squadroom with Lewis the Pickpocket. Parker was laughing uncontrollably, but Lewis did not seem too terribly amused. He was a tall slender man with a bluish cast to his jowls, small sharp penetrating blue eyes, thinning sandy-colored hair. He was wearing a beige trench coat and brown leather gloves, and he carried an umbrella in the crook of his arm and scowled at everyone in the squadroom as Parker continued laughing uproariously.
“Look who I got!” Parker said, and burst into a choking, gasping fit.
“What’s so special?” Meyer said. “Hello, Lewis, how’s business?”
Lewis scowled at Meyer. Meyer shrugged.
“Best pickpocket in the precinct!” Parker howled. “Guess what happened?”
“What happened?” Carella asked.
“I’m standing at the counter in Jerry’s, you know? The luncheonette?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, with my back to the door, you know? So guess what?”
“What?”
“I feel somebody’s hand in my pocket, fishing around for my wallet. So I grab the hand by the wrist, and I whip around with my gun in my other hand, and guess who it is?”
“Who is it?”
“It’s Lewis!” Parker said, and began laughing again.
“The best pickpocket in the precinct, he chooses a detective for a mark!”
“I made a mistake,” Lewis said, and scowled.
“Oh, man, you made a big mistake!” Parker bellowed.
“You had your back to me,” Lewis said.
“Lewis, my friend, you are going to prison,” Parker said gleefully, and then said, “Come on down, we’re going to book you before you try to pick Meyer’s pocket there.”
“I don’t think it’s funny,” Lewis said, and followed Parker out of the squadroom, still scowling.
“I think it’s pretty funny,” Meyer said.
A man appeared at the slatted rail divider just then, and asked in hesitant English whether any of the policemen spoke Italian. Carella said that he did, and invited the man to sit at his desk. The man thanked him in Italian and took off his hat, and perched it on his knees when he sat, and then began telling Carella his story. It seemed that somebody was putting garbage in his car.
“Rifiuti?“ Carella asked.
“Sì, rifiuti,“ the man said.
For the past week now, the man went on, someone had been opening his car at night and dumping garbage all over the front seat. All sorts of garbage. Empty tin cans and dinner leftovers and apple cores and coffee grounds, everything. All over the front seat of the car.
“Perchè non lo chiude a chiave?” Carella asked.
Well, the man explained, he did lock his car every night, but it didn’t do any good. Because the way the garbage was left in it the first time was that quello porco broke the side vent and opened the door that way in order to do his dirty work. So it didn’t matter if he continued to lock the car, the befouler continued to open the door by sticking his hand in through the broken flap window, and then he dumped all his garbage on the front seat, the car was beginning to stink very badly.
Well, Carella said, do you know of anyone who might want to put garbage on your front seat?
No, I do not know of anyone who would do such a filthy thing, the man said.
Is there anyone who has a grudge against you? Carella asked.
No, I am loved and respected everywhere in the world, the man said.
Well, Carella said, we’ll send a man over to check it out.
“Per piacere,” the man said, and put on his hat, and shook hands with Carella, and left the squadroom.
The time was 10:33 A.M.
At 10:35 A.M., Meyer called Raoul Chabrier down at the district attorney’s office, spent a delightful three minutes chatting with Bernice, and was finally put through to Chabrier himself.
“Hello, Rollie,” Meyer said, “what’d you find out?”
“About what?” Chabrier said.
“About the book I called to …”
“Oh.”
“You forgot,” Meyer said flatly.
“Listen,” Chabrier said, “have you ever tried handling two cases at the same time?”
“Never in my life,” Meyer said.
“Well, it isn’t easy, believe me. I’m reading law on one of them, and trying to get a brief ready on the other. You expect me to worry about some goddamn novel at the same time?”
“Well …” Meyer said.
“I know, I know, I know,” Chabrier said, “I promised.”
“Well …”
“I’ll get to it. I promise you again, Meyer. I’m a man who never breaks his word. Never. I promised you, and now I’m promising you again. What was the title of the book?”
“Meyer Meyer,” Meyer said.
“Of course, Meyer Meyer, I’ll look into it immediately. I’ll get back to you, I promise. Bernice,” he shouted, “make a note to get back to Meyer!”
“When
?” Meyer said.
That was at 10:39.
At five minutes to eleven, a tall blond man wearing a hearing aid and carrying a cardboard carton walked into the Hale Street Post Office downtown. He went directly to the counter, hefted the carton onto it, and shoved it across to the mail clerk. There were a hundred sealed and stamped envelopes in the carton.
“These all going to the city?” the clerk asked.
“Yes,” the deaf man replied.
“First class?”
“Yes.”
“All got stamps?”
“Every one of them.”
“Right,” the clerk said, and turned the carton over, dumping the envelopes onto the long table behind him. The deaf man waited. At eleven A.M., the mail clerk began running the envelopes through the cancellation machine.
The deaf man went back to the apartment, where Rochelle met him at the door.
“Did you mail off your crap?” she asked.
“I mailed it,” the deaf man said, and grinned.
John the Tailor wasn’t having any of it.
“I no wanna cops in my shop,” he said flatly and unequivocally and in somewhat fractured English.
Carella patiently explained, in English, that the police had definite knowledge of a planned holdup to take place on Friday night at eight o’clock but that it was the lieutenant’s idea to plant two men in the rear of the shop starting tonight in case the thieves changed their minds and decided to strike earlier. He assured John the Tailor that they would unobtrusively take up positions behind the hanging curtain that divided the front of the shop from the rear, out of his way, quiet as mice, and would move into action only if and when the thieves struck.
“Lei è pazzo!” John the Tailor said in Italian, meaning he thought Carella was crazy. Whereupon Carella switched to speaking Italian, which he had learned as a boy and which he didn’t get much chance to practice these days except when he was dealing with people like the man who had come in to complain about the garbage in his car, or people like John the Tailor, who was suddenly very impressed with the fact that Carella, like himself, was Italian.
John the Tailor had once written a letter to a very popular television show, complaining that too many of the Italians on that show were crooks. He had seventy-four people in his immediate family, all of them living here in the United States, in this city, for most of their lives, and none of them were criminals, all of them were honest, hard-working people. So why should the television make it seem that all Italians were thieves? He had received a letter written by some programming assistant, explaining that not all the criminals on the show were Italians, some of them were Jews and Irish, too. This had not mollified John the Tailor, since he was quite intelligent and capable of understanding the basic difference between the two statements Not all Italians are criminals and Not all criminals are Italians. So it was very plesant to have an Italian cop in his shop, even if it meant having to put up with strangers in the back behind the curtain. John the Tailor did not like strangers, even if they were Italian cops. Besides, the other stranger, the short one, definitely was not Italian, God knew what he was!
The tailor shop did a very thriving business, though Carella doubted it brought in anything near four hundred dollars a week, which was apparently La Bresca’s and Calucci’s estimate of the take. He wondered why either of the two men would be willing to risk a
minimum of ten and a maximum of thirty years in prison, the penalty for first-degree robbery, when all they could hope to gain for their efforts was four hundred dollars. Even granting them the minimum sentence, and assuming they’d be out on parole in three-and-a-half, that came to about a hundred and fifteen dollars a year, meager wages for any occupation.
He would never understand the criminal mind.
He could not, for example, understand the deaf man at all.
There seemed to be something absolutely lunatic about the enormous risk he had taken, a gamble pitting fifty thousand dollars against possible life imprisonment. Now surely a man of his intelligence and capabilities must have known that the city wasn’t going to reach into its treasury and plunk down fifty thousand dollars solely because someone threatened murder. The odds against such a payoff were staggering, and any shrewd manipulator of odds would have realized this. The deaf man, then, had not expected to be paid, he had wanted to kill the deputy mayor, as he had earlier killed the parks commissioner. But why? Whatever else the deaf man happened to be, Carella did not figure him for a thrill killer. No, he was a hardheaded businessman taking a calculated risk. And businessmen don’t take risks unless there’s at least some hope of a payoff. The deaf man had asked for five grand at first, and been refused, and committed murder. He had next asked for fifty grand, knowing full well he’d be refused again, and had again committed murder. He had then advised the newspapers of his unsuccessful extortion attempts, and had since remained silent.
So where was the payoff?
It was coming, baby, of that Carella was sure.
In the meantime, he sat in the back of John the Tailor’s shop and wondered how much a good pressing machine operator earned.
| Go to Contents |
* * *
Chapter 12
* * *
Mr. Carl Wahler
1121 Marshall Avenue
Isola
Dear Mr. Wahler:
If you treat this letter as a joke, you will die.
These are the facts. Read them carefully. They can save your life.
1) Parks Commissioner Cowper ignored a warning and was killed.
2) Deputy Mayor Scanlon ignored a warning and was killed.
3) JMV is next. He will be killed this Friday night.
What does all this have to do with you?
1) This is your warning. It is your only warning. There will be no further warnings. Remember that.
2) You are to withdraw five thousand dollars in small, unmarked bills from your account.
3) You will be contacted by telephone sometime within the next week. The man you speak to will tell you how and when and where the money is to be delivered.
4) If you fail to meet this demand, you too will be killed. Without warning.
Do not entertain false hopes!
The police could not save Cowper or Scanlon, although sufficiently forewarned. They will not be able to save JMV, either. What chance will you have unless you pay? What chance will you have when we strike without warning?
Get the money. You will hear from us again. Soon.
The letters were delivered to a hundred homes on Thursday. The deaf man was very cheerful that morning. He went whistling about his apartment, contemplating his scheme again and again, savoring its more refined aspects, relishing the thought that one hundred very wealthy individuals would suddenly be struck with panic come Saturday morning.
By five o’clock tonight, he could reasonably assume that most of the men receiving his letter would have read it and formed at least some tentative opinion about it. He fully expected some of them to glance cursorily at it, crumple it into a ball, and immediately throw it into the garbage. He also expected a handful, the paranoid fringe, to call the police at once, or perhaps even visit their local precinct, letter in hand, indignantly demanding protection. That part of his plan was particularly beautiful, he felt. The mayor was being warned, yes, but oh so indirectly. He would learn about the threat on his life only because some frightened citizens would notify the police.
And tomorrow night, forewarned, the mayor would nonetheless die.
Six months ago when the deaf man had begun the preliminary work on his scheme, several rather interesting pieces of information had come to light. To begin with, he had learned that anyone desiring to know the exact location of the city’s underground water pipes need only apply to the Department of Water Supply in Room 1720 of the Municipal Building, where the maps were available for public scrutiny. Similarly, maps of the city’s underground sewer system were obtainable at the Department of Pub
lic Works in the main office of that same building. The deaf man, unfortunately, was not interested in either water pipes or sewers. He was interested in electricity. And he quickly learned that detailed maps of the underground power lines were not, for obvious reasons, open to the public for inspection. Those maps were kept in the Maps and Records Bureau of the Metropolitan Light & Power Company, worked on by an office staffed largely by draftsmen. Ahmad had been one of those draftsmen.