by Ed McBain
“I don’t know what I thought, but why not? Why can’t it be suicide?”
“Don’t get sore with me, Steve-oh.”
“I’m not sore.”
“What do you want, magic? Okay! Abba-ca-dabbra, whimmity-wham! I see… just a moment, the crystal ball is clearing…”
“Go to hell, Sam.”
“I’ve got nothing to compare any of these damn pills against!” Grossman shouted. “Who the hell’s going to bother looking for nonvolatile poisons when they’ve got an obvious case of carbon monoxide poisoning? You know how many stiffs are waiting for autopsy at the morgue? Ahhh, please.”
“Somebody should have bothered,” Carella shouted.
“That’s not my department!” Grossman shouted back. “And you happen to be wrong! Nobody should have bothered because it would have taken weeks, for Christ’s sake, and what would you have got, anyway? So what if they were drugged?”
“That could indicate homicide!”
“It could indicate balls! It could indicate they went to the drugstore and bought some pills and took them that’s what it could indicate. Don’t get me sore, Steve.”
“Don’t get me sore!” Carella shouted. “Somebody goofed at the hospital, and you know it!”
“Nobody goofed, and anyway get off my back! Call the goddamn hospital! You want to fight, call them. Did you call me up to fight?”
“I called you up because I sent you fourteen bottles of sleeping pills, and I thought you could help me with them. Obviously, you can’t help me, so I’ll just say good-bye and let you go back to sleep.”
“Look, Steve…”
“Look, Sam…”
“Ahhh, the hell with it. The hell with it. There’s no talking to a bull. I’ll never learn. Miracles. You all want miracles. The hell with it.”
Both men fell silent.
At last, Grossman asked, “What do you want me to do with these bottles?”
“You know what you can do with them,” Carella said.
There was another pause, and then Grossman began laughing. Carella, on the other end of the wire, couldn’t suppress his own grin.
“Take my advice,” Grossman said, “forget about calling the hospital. They did their job, Steve.”
Carella sighed.
“Steve?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Forget the pills you sent me, too. They’re almost all brand names, anyway. Some of them, you don’t even need a prescription. Even if the morgue had done those tests and come up with something, you’d be dealing with a pill anybody in the city could have got hold of. Forget it. Take my advice, forget it.”
“All right,” Carella said. “I’m sorry I blew my stack.”
“This is a tough one, huh?”
“Very.” Carella paused. “I’m about to hand in my jock.”
“You’ll settle for suicide?”
“I’ll settle for disorderly conduct.”
“Not you,” Grossman said simply.
“Not me,” Carella answered. “Thickheaded. My mother used to call me a thickheaded wop.” He paused. “Come on, Sam, help me with those pills. Give me an answer.”
“Steve-oh, I don’t have any.”
“We’re even,” Carella said. He sighed. “You think it was homicide? You still think so?”
Grossman paused for a long time. Then he said, “Who knows? Throw it in the Open File. Come back to it in a few months, in a year.”
“Would you throw it in the Open File?” Carella asked.
“Me? I’m thick-headed,” Grossman said. “My mother used to call me a thick-headed kike.” He paused again. “Yes, I still think it’s a homicide.”
“So do I,” Carella said.
* * * *
By the time he left the squadroom at five forty-five that night, he had called every remaining insurance company on his list in an attempt to find out whether Tommy Barlow had been insured. He had drawn a negative response from each company. As he walked to his car parked across the street from the precinct (the sun visor down, the hand-lettered placard clipped to the visor and announcing that this particular decrepit automobile belonged to a cop; please, officer on the beat, do not tag it), he wondered if Tommy Barlow had been insured by a company outside the city. And then he wondered again whether they simply weren’t chasing a suicide right into the ground.
He started the car and began driving home toward Riverhead, reviewing the facts of the case as he drove, driving very slowly and with the windows open because this was April and sometimes-especially in April-Carella felt like seventeen. Jesus, he thought, to die in April. I wonder what the figures on suicide are for April.
Let’s examine this thing, he thought. Let’s take it from the top for what it obviously is- a suicide. Let’s forget there’s any such thing as homicide. For the moment, let’s simply consider two people who are about to take their own lives, okay? Let’s piece it together that way, because none of the other ways seem to fit.
The first thing they had to do was decide they were going to kill themselves, which would seem like an odd thing to decide since they’d already made plans for…
No, no, wait a minute, he warned himself. Try to find the good reasons for suicide, okay? Try to find the things that spell suicide for Tommy Barlow and Irene Thayer, and not what stinks in this case because the things that stink are already there and suffocating me. Jesus, I wish I could take a deep breath. I wish that poor little girl hadn’t jumped, I wish to God I could change it, I wish I could reach out and hold her in my arms and say, Honey, please don’t jump, honey, please don’t throw it all away.
He stopped for a red light.
He stared at the light for a long time, thinking of the young girl on the ledge twelve stories above the street, hearing again the scream that had faded down to the gutter, hearing again the dull empty sound of her body striking the pavement.
The light changed to green.
The image of the dead girl lingered in his mind. Deserted by a man she loved, no apparent reason for staying alive, she jumped. It has to look black. It has to look so goddamn black that there really is no other way; it has to appear that death is more comforting than life, it has to be that barren and that desperate, it has to say exactly what that note in the apartment did say, there is no other way.
All right, then, the decision. For some reason-what’s the reason?-for some reason, these two, Tommy and Irene have decided that there is no other way, they must end it, they must… what did the note say?… now we can end the suffering of ourselfs and others. All right, they had decided to end the suffering. What suffering? Nobody knew about it, damnit. Michael Thayer is a prime candidate for the cuckold of the year, he lets his wife come and go as she pleases, so who the hell knew about it, who were all these other suffering people? Nobody, that’s who. Barlow lived with his brother Amos, and Amos knew nothing at all about Irene, so he certainly wasn’t suffering. Anyway why should he have been suffering even if he did know about his brother’s girl? And Mary Tomlinson approved of the affair, so she wasn’t suffering, so nobody was sufferings so let’s take another chorus from the top.
Nobody’s suffering.
But the note says end the suffering of ourselfs… spelled wrong,, have to get some information about Tommy and Irene, the way they spelled, maybe look at some of their letters… end the suffering of ourselfs and others. But Tommy and Irene weren’t suffering because they were meeting every other week like rabbits, maybe more often, and nobody else was suffering, either, so the note doesn’t make any sense.
Unless a few people are lying.
Unless, for example, Thayer did know all about his wife’s little adventure with young Tommy there, and was all broken up about it, and maybe refused a divorce, and maybe was suffering a little. In which case, the note would be accurate, no other way out, suffering, good, we’ll turn on the gas.
Or maybe young Amos Barlow knew his brother was seeing Irene and didn’t like the idea, told him to stay away from a marri
ed woman, told him it broke his heart to see Tommy involved in anything as hopeless as this. In which case, the note would again be accurate, Amos would be suffering, no other way out, good, back to the kitchen and the stove.
Or maybe old Mary Tomlinson, the gentle old genial condoner of her daughter’s affair, so she says, maybe she didn’t like the idea, maybe she told her daughter divorce was a rotten thing, no matter how much of a bully and a boss Thayer was, maybe she said, Darling daughter, stick it through, work it out, this is senseless and it’ll break my heart. In which case, note, suffering, ditto, gas.
And in which case, also, everybody happens to be lying.
Which is unreasonable.
Why lie if there’s nothing to cover?
Why insist there’s been a homicide if they all know Tommy and Irene had good reason to kill themselves? You don’t lie to cover up a suicide.
No, wait a minute, I guess you could. I guess you could figure a suicide is a blot on the family escutcheon, something to live down, maybe something hereditary, maybe something that can rub off on all the relatives and friends. Nobody likes the taint of suicide, so maybe they are lying about it. Maybe they figure homicide is a much more socially acceptable way to go, a better status symbol. Yes, my poor daughter and her lover were murdered don’t you know? Yes, my poor wife was killed while having an affair, have you heard? Yes, my beloved brother was done in while making love to his mistress. Very posh. Murder is glamorous. Suicide is a drag.
Well, maybe it was a suicide, Carella thought. Maybe they went up there and took off all their cloths-no, not all their clothes, they both left their pants on Propriety. It wouldn’t do to be found dead naked, not stark naked. They took off some of their clothes, took them off very neatly, stacked them neatly, hung them neatly, of course. Two very neat people. They certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be found in a state of nudity. Certainly not. So they left their underwear on for decency’s sake, oh Jesus, I am sick to death of Tommy and Irene, I am sick to death of what I see everytime we turn that knob marked homicide and open that rotten goddamn door and find what’s inside. I am sick of it, I am sick of it. Why can’t they keep themselves private? Why must they parade themselves before everyone to see, exhibit themselves as poor pitiful confused human beings who haven’t yet mastered the art of living together? Why must they show the world and each other that all they know how to do is die together! Go into your room, lock your door, make your love, and leave us alone! Don’t confuse it with illuminating gas and explosions, don’t muddy it with blood, keep your goddamn privacy private!
He stopped for another light, and closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, his mind had clicked shut again. He was Detective 2nd Grade Stephen Louis Carella again, shield number 714-56-32.
Tommy got the apartment.
They went up there with two bottles of whisky.
They typed a suicide note.
They turned on the gas.
They took off most of their clothes.
They tried to get drunk, they tried to make love.
The gas reached them before they could accomplish either.
They died.
“This was no goddamn suicide!” Carella said aloud. His own voice startled him. This was no suicide, he repeated silently.
He nodded in the near-darkness of the closed sedan.
This was no suicide.
I want to find out if Tommy Barlow was insured, he thought, and he made an abrupt left turn and began driving toward the house Tommy Barlow had shared with his brother Amos.
The house was dark and deserted when he pulled the curb in front of it. He thought this was odd because Barlow had told him he was home from work every night at six, and it was now six-thirty, but the house seemed empty and lifeless. He got out of the car. There was a silence to the street, and memory suddenly overtook him in a painfully sweet rush, the memory of his own boyhood street, deserted just before suppertime, a young boy walking toward the house his father owned, his mother calling again from the upstairs window, “Stevie! Supper!” and the slow smiling nod of his head, April. The buds would be opening. The world would be coming alive. He had once seen a cat run over by an automobile, the guts had been strewn all over the gutter, he had turned away in horror, April and the opening buds, April and a cat lying dead in the gutter, matted fur and… blood, and the smell of spring everywhere, green, opening.
Barlow’s street was quiet. From another block, Carella could hear the sound of the bells on an ice-cream truck. Too early, he thought. You should hit the street after supper, you’re too early. The lawn in front of the Barlow house was turning green: The grass was wet. He wanted to reach down suddenly and touch the wet grass. Up the street, he heard the sound of an automobile turning into the block. He went up the front walk and rang the doorbell. There was no answer. He tried it again. He could hear the chimes sounding somewhere deep inside the silent house. A car door slammed somewhere up the street. He sighed and rang the bell a third time. He waited.
Coming down the front steps, he backed several paces away from the house and looked up at the second-story windows. He wondered if Barlow hadn’t possibly gone directly into the shower upon returning home from work, and he began walking toward the side of the house, looking for a lighted bathroom window upstairs. He kept to the concrete ribbons of the driveway leading to the garage at the back of the house. A high hedge began on the right of the driveway, leading to the fence of the house next door. He went all the way to the back of the house, looking up at the windows. None of them were lighted. Shrugging philosophically, he started back for his car.
The hedge was on his left now, blocking his view of the street, an effective shield screening the back yard.
As he passed the hedge, he was struck.
The blow came suddenly, but with expert precision. He knew it wasn’t a fist, he knew it was something long and hard, but he didn’t have much time to consider exactly what it was because it struck him across his eyes and the bridge of his nose and sent him stumbling back against the hedge, and then someone shoved at him, pushing him beyond and behind the hedge as he tried to cover his face with one hand, tried to reach for his revolver with the other. Another blow came. There was a soft whistling sound on the early night air, the sound a rapier makes, or a stick, or a baseball bat. The blow struck him on his right shoulder, hard, and then the weapon came back again, and again there was the cutting whistle and he felt the sharp biting blow on his left shoulder, and his right hand suddenly went numb. His gun dropped to the ground. The end of the weapon gouged into his stomach like a battering ram, and then the sharp edge was striking his face again, repeatedly, numbingly. He lashed out at the darkness with his left hand, there was blood in his eyes, and a terrible pain in his nose. He felt his fist connect, and he heard someone shout, and then his assailant was running away from him, his shoes clattering on the concrete driveway strips, and then on the sidewalk Carella leaned against the hedge. He heard a car door slamming somewhere up the street, and then the sound of an engine, and then the shrieking of tires as the car pulled away from the curb.
License plate, he thought.
He went around to the other side of the hedge as the car streaked past. He did not see the plate. Instead, he fell forward flat on his face.
* * * *
11
They picked up Amos Barlow at ten o’clock that night, when he returned to his house in Riverhead. By that time Carella had been taken to the hospital where the intern on duty dressed his cuts and insisted, over his protests, that he spend the night there. Barlow seemed surprised by the presence of policemen. Neither of the arresting officers told him why the detectives of the 87th wanted to question him. He went along with the two patrolmen willingly and even agreeably, apparently assuming that something had turned up in connection with his brother.
Cotton Hawes greeted him in the squadroom and then led him to the small interrogation room off the entrance corridor. Detectives Meyer and Kling wer
e sitting there drinking coffee. They offered Barlow a cup, which he refused.
“Would you prefer some tea?” Hawes asked.
“No, thank you,” Barlow said. He watched the three men, waiting for one of them to say something important, but they were seemingly involved in a ritual they had no desire to disturb. They chatted about the weather, and they cracked a joke or two, but they were mostly intent on consuming their beverage. Hawes finished his tea before the other two men finished their coffee. He put down his cup, took the tea bag from the saucer and dropped it delicately into the cup, and then said, “Where were you all night, Mr. Barlow?”
“Were you trying to reach me?”
“Yes,” Hawes said pleasantly. “You told detectives Meyer and Carella that you’re usually home by six, but you seemed to be a little late tonight.”