Ghosts

by Ed McBain

  “Then he came here with it,” Carella said.

  Hillary closed her eyes again, and again spread her fingers wide, and pressed her palms against the empty air. “Looking for something,” she said. “Something.”

  It was Cotton Hawes who caught the flak from Warren Esposito. The flak was perhaps well deserved; Hawes might have encountered the same indignation in any major city of the world, Peking and Moscow not excluded. Whatever the politics of a nation, the fact remained that if you knocked off somebody in the public eye, that murder was going to get more attention from the police than the murder of a wino or a scaly-legs hooker. Marian Esposito was neither a drunk nor a prostitute; she was, in fact, the secretary for a firm that specialized in selling gift items via direct mail. But there was no doubting the fact that she was somewhat less important than Gregory Craig, the best-selling writer. As her husband, Warren, paced the squadroom floor and raged at him, Hawes wondered whether they’d have given her case the same attention they were giving Craig’s had she been the one found with nineteen knife wounds in her and he’d been the one lying outside the building with a single stab wound. He decided the priorities would have been the same. Craig was “important”; Marian Esposito was only another corpse in a city that grew corpses like mushrooms.

  “So what the hell are you doing?” Esposito shouted. He was a tall, hulking man with thick black hair and penetrating brown eyes. He was dressed on this Friday afternoon in blue jeans and a turtleneck sweater, a fleece-lined car coat open and flapping as he paced the floor. “There hasn’t even been a single cop to see me, for Christ’s sake! I had to make six phone calls before I discovered where they’d taken her! Is that what happens in this city? A woman is stabbed to death in front of her own apartment building and the police sweep her under the rug as if she never existed?”

  “There’s a companion case,” Hawes said lamely.

  “I don’t give a damn about your companion case!” Esposito shouted. “I want to know what you’re doing to find my wife’s murderer.”

  “It’s our guess—”

  “Guess?” Esposito said. “Is that what you’re doing up here? Guessing?”

  “It’s our opinion—”

  “Oh, now it’s an opinion.”

  “Mr. Esposito,” Hawes said, “we think the person who killed Gregory Craig only accidentally killed your wife. We think he may have been—”

  “Accidentally? Is it an accident when somebody sticks a knife in a woman’s heart? Jesus Christ!”

  “Perhaps that was an unfortunate choice of words,” Hawes said.

  “Yes, perhaps,” Esposito said icily. “My wife is dead. Somebody killed her. You have no real reason to believe it was the same person who killed that writer on the third floor. No real reason at all. But he’s a celebrity, right? So you’re concentrating all your efforts on him, and meanwhile, whoever killed Marian is running around loose someplace out there,” he said, and whirled and pointed toward the windows, and then swung around to face Hawes again, “and I can’t even find out where her body is so I can make funeral arrangements.”

  “She’s at the Buena Vista Morgue,” Hawes said. “They’re finished with the autopsy. You can—”

  “Yes, I know where she is. I know now, after six phone calls and a runaround from everybody in the Police Department. Who do you have answering your phones up here? Mongolian idiots? The first two times I called no one had even heard of my wife! Marian Esposito, sir? Who’s that, sir? Are you calling to report a crime, sir? You’d think somebody’s goddamn bicycle was stolen, instead of—”

  “Most calls to the police are handled downtown at Communications,” Hawes said. “I can understand your anger, Mr. Esposito, but you can’t really expect a dispatcher, who handles hundreds of calls every hour, to know the intimate details of—”

  “Okay, who does know the intimate details?” Esposito said. “Do you know them? They told me downstairs that you’re the detective handling my wife’s case. So, all right, what are you—?”

  “My partner and I, yes,” Hawes said.

  “So what the hell are you doing?” Esposito said. “She was killed yesterday. Have you got any leads, do you even know where to start?”

  “We start the same way each time,” Hawes said. “We start the way you yourself would start, Mr. Esposito. We have a corpse—in this case, two corpses—and we don’t know who made it a corpse, and we try to find out. It’s not like in the movies or on television. We don’t ask trick questions, and we don’t get sudden flashes of insight. We do the legwork, we track down everything we’ve got, however unimportant it may seem, and we try to find out why. Not who, Mr. Esposito, we’re not in the whodunit business here. There are no mysteries in police work. There are only crimes and the person or persons who committed those crimes. With an armed robbery, we know the why even before we answer the telephone. With a murder, if we can find out why, we can often find out who—if we get lucky. We’ve got three hundred unsolved murders in the Open File right this minute. Next year we may crack a half dozen of them—if we get lucky. If not, the murderer will stay loose out there someplace”—and here he pointed to the windows, as Esposito had done earlier—“and we’ll never get him. Murder is a one-shot crime except where the killer is a lunatic or a criminal who kills in the commission of another felony. Your average murderer kills once, and never again. Either we catch him and put him away, and he never gets the chance to kill again, or else he folds his tent and disappears.”

  Esposito was staring at him.

  “I’m sorry,” Hawes said. “I didn’t mean to make a speech. We’re aware of your wife, Mr. Esposito, we are very much aware of her. But we feel the primary murder was the one in Apartment 304, and that’s where we’re starting. When we get Gregory Craig’s murderer, we’ll also have the person who killed your wife. That’s what we feel.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” Esposito said. His anger was gone; he stood there with his hands in the pockets of the fleece-lined coat and searched Hawes’s face for some reassurance.

  “If we’re wrong, we’ll start all over again. From the beginning,” Hawes said, and hoped to Christ they were not wrong.

  The call from Jerry Mandel, the schussing security guard, came just as Carella and Hawes were getting ready to go home. They had by then had a fruitless meeting with Lieutenant Byrnes, who told them he positively could not double-team his men at Christmastime and advised that they conduct the door-to-door canvass of Harborview all by their lonesomes even if it took till St. Swithin’s Day, whenever that was. He informed them, besides, that he had received a call from the attorney of one Warren Esposito, who claimed the murder of Gregory Craig was receiving preferential consideration over the murder of his client’s wife, and if some people didn’t start shaking their asses, they’d be hearing from a friend of the lawyer, who only just happened to work downtown in the district attorney’s office. Byrnes reminded them that in this fair city murder was perhaps the one great equalizer and that regardless of race, religion, gender, or occupation, one corpse was to be treated exactly as the next corpse—an admonition both Carella and Hawes accepted with a bit of salt.

  They had next received the autopsy reports on both Gregory Craig and Marian Esposito, but those learned medical treatises told them hardly anything they did not already know. They would have turned in their shields at once had they not at least suspected that the respective causes of death were multiple stab wounds in the case of Gregory Craig and a single stab wound in the case of Marian Esposito. The medical examiners were not paid to make guesses—not anywhere in the linked reports was there the slightest speculation that the same instrument might have been used in both murders. The reports did tell them that Gregory Craig had been drinking before his murder; the alcoholic concentration in the brain was 16 percent, and the milligrams of ethyl alcohol per milliliter of blood were 2.3. The brain analysis indicated that Craig had reached that stage of comparative intoxication in which “less sense of care” had been th
e physiologic effect. The blood analysis indicated that he had been “definitely intoxicated.” They made a note to check with the Spook—they had already begun calling her that—about whether Craig habitually drank while he worked. Carella remembered the two clean glasses alongside the decanter in the living room and wondered now whether the killer had washed them after the murder. The list of articles found in the bedroom did not include either a whiskey bottle or a glass.

  The call from Jerry Mandel came at 6:20 P.M. Carella was just taking his .38 Chiefs Special from the file drawer of his desk, preparatory to clipping it to his belt, when the phone rang. He snatched the receiver from its cradle and glanced up at the clock. He had been working the case since 8:00 this morning, and there was nothing more he could do on it today, unless he felt like rapping on the sixty doors in Harborview, which he did not feel like doing till morning.

  “87th Squad, Carella,” he said.

  “May I please speak to the detective handling the murders at Harborview?” the voice said.

  “I’m the detective,” Carella said.

  “This is Jerry Mandel. I heard on the radio up here—”

  “Yes, Mr. Mandel,” Carella said at once.

  “Yes, that Mr. Craig was killed, so I called the building to find out what happened. I talked to Jimmy Karlson on the six to midnight, and he said you people were trying to locate me. So here I am.”

  “Good, I’m glad you called, Mr. Mandel. Were you working the noon to six yesterday?”

  “I was.”

  “Did anyone come to the building asking for Mr. Craig?”

  “Yes, someone did.”

  “Who, would you remember?”

  “A man named Daniel Corbett.”

  “When was this?”

  “About five o’clock. It was just starting to snow.”

  “Did you announce him to Mr. Craig?”

  “I did.”

  “And what did Mr. Craig say?”

  “He said, ‘Send him right up.’”

  “Did he go up?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “You saw him go up?”

  “I saw him go into the elevator, yes.”

  “At about five o’clock?”

  “Around then.”

  “Did you see him come down again?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “You quit at six…”

  “At about a quarter after, when Jimmy relieved me. Jimmy Karlson.”

  “And this man—Daniel Corbett—did not come down while you were on duty, is that right?”

  “No, sir, he did not.”

  “Can you tell me what he looked like?”

  “Yes, he was a youngish man, I’d say in his late twenties or early thirties, and he had black hair and brown eyes.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “A dark overcoat, brown or black, I really don’t remember. And dark pants. I couldn’t see whether he was wearing a suit or a sports jacket under the coat. He had a yellow scarf around his neck. And he was carrying a dispatch case.”

  “Was he wearing a hat?”

  “No hat.”

  “Gloves?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Would you know how he spelled his name?”

  “I didn’t ask him. He said Daniel Corbett, and that was the name I gave Mr. Craig on the phone.”

  “And Mr. Craig said, ‘Send him right up,’ is that correct?”

  “Those were his exact words.”

  “Where are you if I need you?” Carella asked.

  “The Three Oaks Lodge, Mount Semanee.”

  “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.”

  “I liked Mr. Craig a lot,” Mandel said, and hung up.

  Carella put the receiver back on the cradle, turned to Hawes with a grin, and said, “We’re getting lucky, Cotton.”

  Their luck ran out almost at once.

  There were no Daniel Corbetts listed in any of the city’s five telephone directories. On the off chance that Hillary Scott might have known him, they called her at the apartment and were not surprised when the phone was not answered there; not many people chose to remain overnight in an apartment where a murder had been committed. They called her office and spoke to a woman there who said everybody had gone home and she was just the cleaning woman. They searched the Isola directory for a possible second listing for Hillary Scott. There was none. They ran down the list of sixty-four Scotts in the book, hoping one of them might be related to the Spook. None of the people they called had the faintest idea who Hillary Scott might be.

  It would have to wait till morning after all.

  Hillary Scott called Carella at home at 8:30 Saturday morning. He was still in bed. He propped himself up on one elbow and lifted the receiver of the phone on the night table.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Were you trying to reach me?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I sensed it,” Hillary said. “What is it?”

  “How’d you get my phone number?” he asked.

  “From the phone book.”

  Thank God, he thought. If she’d plucked his home phone number out of thin air, he’d begin believing all sorts of things. There was, in fact, something eerie about talking to her on the telephone, visualizing her as she spoke, conjuring the near-duplicate image of his wife, who lay beside him with her arms wrapped around the pillow, her black hair spread against the pillowcase. Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute; she had not heard the ringing telephone; she did not now hear Carella’s conversation with the woman who looked so much like her. He wondered, abruptly, whether—if Teddy had a voice—it would sound like Hillary Scott’s.

  “You tried me at the apartment, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m here now,” she said. “I came back to get some clothes. The flux was strongest around the telephone.”

  “Yes, well, good,” he said. “Can you tell me where you’re staying now, so in case I need to…?”

  “You can reach me at my sister’s,” she said. “Her name is Denise Scott; the number there is Gardner 4-7706. You’d better write it down, it’s unlisted.”

  He had already written it down. “And the address?” he said.

  “3117 Laster Drive. What did you want, Detective Carella?”

  “The security guard who normally has the noon to six at Harborview called last night. Jerry—”

  “Jerry Mandel, yes.”

  “Yes. He said Mr. Craig had a visitor at five P.M. on the day he was murdered. A man named Daniel Corbett. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  There was a silence on the line.

  “Miss Scott?”

  “Yes. Daniel Corbett was Greg’s editor on Shades.”

  “He was described to me as a young man with black hair and brown eyes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Miss Scott, when we were in the apartment yesterday—”

  “Yes, I know what you’re about to say. The spirit I described.”

  “A young male, you said. Black hair and brown eyes.” Carella paused. “Did you have any reason for…?”

  “The flux was strongest at the desk.”

  “Aside from the flux.”

  “Only the flux,” she said.

  “But you do know Daniel Corbett.”

  “Yes, I know him.”

  “Is he, in fact, a young man?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “With black hair and brown eyes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do I reach him, Miss Scott?”

  “At Harlow House.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “That’s the name of the publishing firm. Harlow House. It’s on Jefferson and Lloyd.”

  “Today’s Saturday. Would you know his home number?”

  “I’m sure Greg has it in his book.”

  “Are you in the bedroom now?”

  “No, I’m in the living room.”

  “Could you go into the bedro
om, please, and look up the number for me?”

  “Yes, of course. But it wasn’t Daniel I was sensing yesterday. It wasn’t Daniel at all.”

  “Even so…”

  “Yes, just a minute, please.”

  He waited. Beside him, Teddy rolled over, and stirred, and then sat up and blinked into the room. She was wearing a cream-colored baby-doll nightgown he’d given her for her birthday. She stretched, and smiled at him, and then kissed him on the cheek, got swiftly out of bed, and padded across the room to the bathroom. No panties. The twin crescents of her buttocks peeped from below the lace hem of the short gown. He watched her as she crossed the room, forgetting for a moment that she was his own wife.

  “Hello?” Hillary said.

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  The bathroom door closed. He turned his full attention back to the medium on the telephone.

  “I’ve got two numbers for him,” Hillary said. “One in Isola, and the other in Gracelands, upstate. He has a place up there he goes to on weekends.”

  “Let me have both numbers, please.” In the bathroom, he heard the toilet flushing and then the water tap running. He wrote down the numbers and then said, “Thank you, Miss Scott, I’ll be in touch.”

  “It wasn’t Daniel,” she said, and hung up.

  Teddy came out of the bathroom. Her hair was sleep-tousled, her face was pale without makeup, but her dark eyes were sparkling and clear, and he watched her as she crossed to the bed and for perhaps the thousandth time thanked the phenomenal luck that had brought her into his life more years ago than he cared to remember. She was not the young girl he’d known then, she did not at her age possess the lithe body of a twenty-two-year-old like Hillary Scott, but her breasts were still firm, her legs long and supple, and she watched her weight like a hawk. Cozily she lay down beside him as he dialed the first of the numbers Hillary had given him. Her hand went under the blanket.

  “Hello?” a man’s voice said.

  “Mr. Corbett?”

  “Yes?” The voice sounded a trifle annoyed. Carella realized it was still only a little before 9:00 on a Saturday morning—the big Christmas weekend no less. Under the blanket, Teddy’s hand roamed familiarly.