Ghosts

by Ed McBain

  “At six-fifteen?”

  “Six-fifteen, right.”

  “Was Esposito still there when she left?”

  “He was still there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He asked me for another Rob Roy, and he also commented that those were the biggest tits he ever saw in his life.”

  “Good, so now it’s six-fifteen,” Carella said. “Was he still there at six-thirty?”

  “I gave him his tab at six-thirty.”

  “How do you know it was six-thirty?”

  “Because the news was going off.”

  “Did he leave when you gave him his tab?”

  “He paid it first.”

  “And then did he leave?” Hawes asked.

  “He left,” Brogan said, and nodded.

  “At six-thirty?”

  “A few minutes after six-thirty, it musta been.”

  “How do you know it was Esposito who left?”

  “He gave me a five-dollar tip. He said the five bucks was for the floor show.”

  “Why couldn’t you remember all this when we first asked you?” Hawes said.

  “Because everything in life has a beginning, a middle, and an end,” Brogan said, and shrugged philosophically.

  He had, at long last, established Warren Esposito’s alibi. The man had been at Elmer’s, drinking and watching an impromptu ecdysiastical performance, just about when his wife was being stabbed to death on the sidewalk outside their building.

  They were back at the beginning again, and the middle and end seemed nowhere in sight.

  At 6:00 that night, car Boy Seven of the 12th Precinct was dispatched to 1134 Llewlyn Mews to investigate what the caller had described as “screaming and hollering in the apartment.” It was a peculiar fact of police nomenclature in this city that precincts like the 87th and the 63rd were familiarly and respectively called the Eight-Seven and the Six-Three, whereas all precincts from the 1st to the 20th were called by their full and proper designations. There was no One-Six in this city; it was the 16th. Similarly, there was no One-Two; the men who responded to the call in the Quarter that day after Christmas were cops from the 12th.

  They got out of the RMP car, stepped over the bank of snow at the curb, and gingerly made their way across the slippery sidewalk to a sculpted black wrought-iron fence surrounding a slate courtyard. They opened the gate in the fence and went through a small copse of Australian pines to the bright orange front door of the building. One of the patrolmen lifted the massive brass knocker on the door and let it fall. He repeated the act four times and then tried the knob. The door was locked. There was no sound from within the place now; they assumed at once that they’d be calling in with a 10-90—an “Unfounded.” But being conscientious law enforcement officers, they went around the side of the building and through a small garden banked high with snow, and rapped on the back door, and then peered through a window into a kitchen, and then rapped on the door again, and tried the knob. This door was open.

  One of the patrolmen stuck his head into the kitchen and yelled, “Police officers. Anybody home?”

  There was no answer.

  He looked at the other patrolman. The other patrolman shrugged. Tentatively they entered the apartment, somewhat uncertain of their rights, knowing only that they were responding to a call and supposing it was their duty to investigate thoroughly, especially in view of the unlocked back door—which they guessed they could say indicated forced entry, if push came to shove.

  In the wood-paneled library they found a dead man wearing a red smoking jacket with a black velvet collar.

  The detective/2nd from the Twelfth Squad was a man named Kurt Heidiger, who responded to the homicide alone because his partner was home sick with the flu and because the squadroom was a madhouse today and nobody could be spared to accompany him. He established at a glance that the probable cause of death was multiple stab wounds, and he learned from the neighbor across the mews—the woman who’d placed the Emergency 911 call—that the dead man’s name was Daniel Corbett, and that he worked for a publishing firm called Harlow House.

  Heidiger was a smart cop and a prodigious reader. When the city’s papers weren’t on strike, and that was rarely, he read all three of them from first page to last every day of the week. He recalled reading on Friday about the death of a writer named Gregory Craig—whose book Deadly Shades he had also read—and he remembered seeing a black-edged in memoriam notice on the book page of this morning’s edition of the city’s more literary newspaper; the notice had been placed by a publisher called Harlow House. Primarily he remembered that Craig had been the victim of a brutal stabbing. There probably was no connection, but Heidiger was too smart and too experienced to allow even the smallest of possibilities to go unexplored. When he was through with all the Medical Examiner-lab technician-Homicide Division bullshit at the scene, he went back to the office and checked with Headquarters for the name of the detective investigating the Craig murder. He called the 87th Precinct, was connected with the squadroom upstairs, and was told by a detective named Bert Kling that Carella had gone home at a little after four. He reached Carella in the Riverhead house at a quarter past 8:00. Carella listened attentively and then told Heidiger he’d meet him at the scene in an hour.

  It looked as if they had another companion case.

  Jennifer Groat was a tall bony blonde in her late forties, her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, the front of her long blue robe stained with what looked like either mayonnaise or custard. She explained that she was just getting ready for bed. The holidays had simply exhausted her, and now this had to happen. She made it plain from the moment she admitted the detectives to her apartment that she was sorry she’d called the police at all. In this city, it was best to mind your own business and go your own way.

  “When you called 911,” Heidiger said, “you mentioned that you heard screaming and hollering in the Corbett apartment…”

  “Yes,” Jennifer said, and nodded.

  “We have the call clocked in at five-fifty-three, is that about right?”

  “Yes, it was a little before six.”

  “What kind of hollering and screaming did you hear?”

  “What kinds of hollering and screaming are there?” Jennifer said. “Hollering and screaming is hollering and screaming.”

  “By screaming…”

  “Somebody screaming at the top of his lungs.”

  “And by hollering?”

  “I don’t know what the person was hollering.”

  “Was he hollering for help?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was it the same person doing both the hollering and the screaming?”

  “I don’t know. I heard the noise over there, and I called the police. There’s always noise over there, but this was worse than usual.”

  “What do you mean?” Carella asked at once. “What kind of noise?”

  “Parties all the time. People drinking and laughing at all hours of the night. Well, you know. With the kind of friends Mr. Corbett had…” She let the sentence trail.

  “What kind of friends were they?” Heidiger asked.

  “You know.”

  “No, I’m sorry, we don’t.”

  “Pansies,” she said. “Fruits. Faggots. Gay people,” she said, stressing the word “gay” and pulling a face.

  “Homosexuals,” Carella said.

  “Queers,” Jennifer said.

  “And they were partying all the time, is that it?”

  “Well, not all the time. But enough of the time. I’m a telephone operator, I work the midnight shift, I try to catch a little nap before I leave the house each night. With all the noise over there, it’s impossible. I was about to take my nap now, in fact. If it isn’t one thing, it’s always another,” she said, and again grimaced.

  “These friends of Mr. Corbett’s,” Carella said, “how do you know they were homosexuals?” He was remembering that Corbett’s alibi for his whereabouts at
the time of the Craig murder was a married woman named Priscilla Lambeth who had entertained him on her office couch.

  “One of them came here just the other night,” she said, “looking for the big party.” She lisped the word “party” and accompanied it with a mincing limp-wristed gesture. “He didn’t realize Mr. Corbett lived on the other side of the mews.”

  “Did he give you his name?” Heidiger asked.

  “Who?”

  “The man who came here looking for Corbett.”

  “Man? Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Did he give you his name?”

  “Why would he? He asked for Danny“—and again she lisped the word and hung her limp wrist on the air—“and I told him this was 1136, and what he wanted was 1134. He thanked me kindly and went flitting across the courtyard.”

  “This was when, did you say?”

  “Christmas Eve. Mr. Corbett had a big Christmas Eve party. I had to work on Christmas Eve, I was trying to get some sleep. Instead, I got a fruit knocking on the door asking for Danny.”

  “Did you see anyone entering the courtyard tonight?” Carella asked.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I mean, before you heard the screaming.”

  “Nobody. I was in the tub, in fact, when I heard all the fuss. What I like to do is take a bath before dinner. Then I eat a little something, take my nap, which I should be doing now,” she said, and glanced at the clock, “and then get dressed and go to work.”

  “Did you see anybody in the courtyard after you heard the screams?”

  “I stayed in the tub.”

  “You mean you didn’t immediately call the police?”

  “No, I called them when I got out of the tub. There’s always noise over there. If I called every time I heard noise, it’d be a full-time job.”

  “What time was it when you heard the screams?”

  “I don’t wear a watch in the tub.”

  “How long did you stay in the tub? After you heard the screams, I mean.”

  “About fifteen minutes, I guess.”

  “The call came in at five-fifty-three,” Heidiger said. “That means you heard the screams at…” He hesitated, doing his mental calculation, and then said, “Approximately twenty to six, somewhere in there.”

  “I would guess.”

  “When you got out of the tub,” Carella said, “did you see anyone in the courtyard? Anyone near the Corbett apartment?”

  “I didn’t look. I went to the phone and called the police. I figured if I didn’t do something about it, the noise would go on all night. And I wanted to have my dinner and take my nap in peace.”

  “Was the screaming still going on?”

  “No, it had stopped by then.”

  “But you called the police anyway.”

  “Who knew when it might start again? You know how those people are,” she said.

  “Mm,” Carella said. “Well, thank you very much, Miss Groat. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  In the street outside, Heidiger lighted a cigarette, belatedly offered one to Carella, who refused, and then said, “Ever talk to this Corbett guy?”

  “Last Saturday,” Carella said.

  “Strike you as being a fag?”

  “Seemed straight as an arrow.”

  “Who can tell these days, huh?” Heidiger said. “How about Craig?”

  “He was living with a beautiful twenty-two-year-old girl.”

  “Mm,” Heidiger said. “So what do you make of it? Any connection here, do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Knife in both murders.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If the witch in there was right, this one might’ve been a lovers’ quarrel.”

  “Maybe. But we’ve only got her word for what Corbett was. Did she strike you as a particularly reliable character witness?”

  “She struck me as a particularly reliable character,” Heidiger said dryly. “You want a beer or something? Officially I’m still on duty, but fuck it.”

  “Shooflies are heavy around the holidays,” Carella said, smiling.

  “Fuck the shooflies, too,” Heidiger said. “I’ve been with the department twenty-two years, I never took a nickel from anybody in all that time. Just let them bring charges for a glass of beer, I’d like to see them do that.”

  “Go on without me,” Carella said. “There’s somebody I want to talk to.”

  “Keep in touch,” Heidiger said, and shook hands with him, and walked off up the street. In the phone booth on the corner, Carella checked the Isola directory for a Priscilla Lambeth listing, found none under her name, but two for a Dr. Howard Lambeth—one for his office and one for his residence. The residential number was Higley 7-8021, which sounded like the number Carella had dialed from Corbett’s apartment last Saturday. He dialed the number now. A woman answered the phone; her voice sounded familiar.

  “Mrs. Lambeth?” Carella said.

  “Yes?”

  “Priscilla Lambeth?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Detective Carella, we talked last Saturday, do you re—”

  “I asked you not to call here again,” she said.

  “Daniel Corbett has been murdered,” Carella said. “I’d like to talk to you. I can come there, or we can meet someplace.”

  There was a long silence on the line.

  “Mrs. Lambeth?” he said.

  The silence lengthened.

  “Which would you prefer?” Carella said.

  “I’m thinking.” He waited. “Give me half an hour,” she said. “I’ll be walking the dog in half an hour. Can you meet me on Jefferson and Juniper at…What time is it now?”

  “Close to ten.”

  “Make it ten-thirty,” she said. “He’s a golden retriever.”

  As befitted an editor of children’s books, Priscilla Lambeth was a petite brunette with a pixie face and wide, innocent eyes. There was a huge dog at the end of her leash, a hound intent on racing through the city streets in headlong search of yet another lamppost to sniff, dragging Priscilla willy-nilly behind him. Carella was hard put to keep up.

  Priscilla was wearing a dark blue ski parka over blue jeans and boots. She was hatless, and the wind caught at her short dark hair, bristling it about her head and giving her the appearance of someone who’d just been unexpectedly startled out of her wits—rather close to the truth. She told Carella at once that she’d been truly shocked by what he’d revealed on the telephone. She still couldn’t get over it. Danny murdered? Incredible! Who would want to kill a sweet, loving person like Danny?

  Jefferson Avenue at this hour of the night was largely deserted, the shopwindows shuttered, a fierce wind tossing up eddies of snow from the banks along the curbs. To the north, on Hall Avenue, there were still strollers, still browsers in the bookshops that remained open till midnight in hope of catching the after-theater crowd drifting southward from the Stem and the theatrical district. Even those hardy souls were small in number on a night like this, with the wind howling in over the River Harb and the temperature hovering at twenty-four degrees Fahrenheit. Carella walked with his hands in his pockets, the collar of his coat pulled high on his neck, his shoulders hunched. The dog trotted ahead of them like the lead dog on a sled team, tugging at the leash, yanking Priscilla behind him and by association Carella as well.

  “Mrs. Lambeth,” he said, “Daniel Corbett told us you and he had been intimate. The thing I want to—”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say that,” Priscilla said. Her voice was tiny, the voice of an eight-year-old trapped in a thirteen-year-old’s pubescent body. He wondered briefly what kinds of books she edited. Picture books? Had his daughter, April, read any of the books that crossed Priscilla Lambeth’s desk? The dog stopped at another lamppost, sniffed it, found it to his liking, and lifted his hind leg.

  “But it’s true, isn’t it?” Carella said.

  “Yes, it’s true. It’s just that when you put it that way…”

/>   The dog was off again, almost yanking her arm out of its socket. She held gallantly to the leash, out of breath, racing along behind the dog. Carella trotted beside her. His face was raw from the wind, his nose was running. He took a handkerchief from the pocket of his coat, hoped he wasn’t coming down with something, and blew his nose.

  “Mrs. Lambeth,” he said, out of breath himself, “I’m not particularly interested in how you and Daniel Corbett passed the time of day. But he was murdered tonight, and a neighbor intimated—look, would you do me a favor, please? Would you tie that dog to a lamppost so we can stand still for a minute and talk?”

  “He hasn’t pooped yet,” she said.

  Carella looked at her.

  “Well, all right,” she said.

  She yanked her gloves off, tucked them under her arm, and tied the leash around the stanchion of a no parking sign. The dog began howling at once, like Fang, Son of Claw. Carella led her to the sheltered doorway of a men’s clothing store, waited while she put on her gloves again, and then said, “Was Daniel Corbett a homosexual?”

  She seemed genuinely startled. Her eyes opened wider. They were green, he now noticed. They searched his face as though eager for him to assure her he’d just told a bad joke.

  “Was he?” Carella asked.

  “He didn’t seem to be,” she said in the same tiny voice, almost a whisper now.

  “Any indication at all that he might have been?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Mrs. Lambeth, you’ve been intimate with him for the past month or so, according to what he—”

  “Yes, but not that often.”

  “Two or three times, is that right?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose.”

  “What I want to know is if during any of your meetings…”

  “He performed adequately, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “No, that’s not what I want to know.”

  “I find this embarrassing,” Priscilla said.

  “So did Corbett. But murder is the biggest embarrassment of them all. During any of your meetings did he in any way indicate to you that he might also be interested in men?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever bring a man along with him?”