by Ed McBain
“About what?”
“The shooting.” She shrugged. “Are you going to arrest me? I didn’t take anything. I’ll die if you take me to prison.” She paused and then blurted, “I’ve got a fever.”
“Then you better get back to bed,” Carella said.
“You’re letting me go?”
“Go on, get out of here.”
“Thanks,” Cynthia said quickly, and then vanished before they had a chance to change their minds.
Carella sighed. “You want to take this room? I’ll get the other.”
“Okay,” Hawes said. Carella went into the other room. Hawes began looking through the dresser Cynthia had already inspected. He was working on the second drawer when he heard the sound of roller skates in the hallway outside. He looked up as the little girl from the second floor landing skated into the room.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” Hawes answered.
“Did you just move in?”
“No.”
“Are you going someplace?”
“No.”
“Then why are you taking all your clothes out of the bureau?”
“They’re not my clothes,” Hawes said.
“Then you shouldn’t be doing that.”
“I guess not.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because I’m trying to find something.”
“What are you trying to find?”
“I’m trying to find the name of the man who lives in this apartment.”
“Oh,” the little girl said. She skated to the other side of the room, skated back, and then asked, “Is his name in the bureau?”
“Not so far,” Hawes said.
“Do you think his name is in the bureau?”
“It might be. Here, do you see this?”
“It’s a shirt,” the little girl said.
“That’s right, but I mean here, inside the collar.”
“Those are numbers,” the little girl said. “I can count to a hundred by tens, would you like to hear me?”
“Not right now,” Hawes said. “Those numbers are a laundry mark,” Hawes said. “We may be able to get the man’s name by checking them out.”
“Gee,” the girl said and then immediately said, “Ten, twenty, thirty, fifty…”
“Forty,” Hawes corrected.
“… forty, fifty, sixty, thirty…”
“Seventy.”
“I better start all over again. Ten, twenty…” She stopped and studied Hawes carefully for a moment. Then she said, “You don’t live here, do you?”
“No.”
“I thought you did at first. I thought maybe you just moved in or something.”
“No.”
“I thought maybe Petie had moved out.”
“No,” Hawes said. He put a pile of shirts onto the dresser and then reached into his back pocket for a tag.
“Why do you need a laundry mark to tell you what Petie’s name is?” the little girl asked.
“Because that’s the only way we…” Hawes paused. “What did you say, honey?”
“I don’t know. What did I say?”
“Something about… Petie?”
“Oh, yeah, Petie.”
“Is that his name?”
“Whose name?”
“The man who lives here,” Hawes said.
“I don’t know. What does it say inside his shirts?”
“Well, never mind his shirts, honey. If you know his name, you can save us a lot of time.”
“Are you a bull?” the little girl asked.
“Now what makes you ask that?”
“My poppa says bulls stink.”
“Is Petie your poppa?”
The little girl began laughing. “Petie? My poppa is Dave, that’s who my poppa is.”
“Well… well, what about Petie?”
“What about Petie?”
“Is that his name?”
“I guess so. If that’s what it says inside the shirts, then that must be his name.”
“Petie what?”
“What Petie what?”
“His second name. Petie what?”
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” the girl said, and she began giggling. “Do you know how to skate?”
“Yes. Honey, what’s Petie’s second name?”
“I don’t know. My second name is Jane. Alice Jane Horowitz.”
“Did he ever tell you his second name?”
“Nooooo,” the girl said, drawing out the word cautiously.
“How do you know his first name?”
“Because he showed me how to use a skate key.”
“Yeah? Go ahead.”
“That’s all. I was sitting on the steps, and the skate wouldn’t open, and he was coming downstairs, and he said, ‘Here, Petie’ll fix that for you,’ and then he fixed it, so that’s how I know his name is Petie.”
“Thanks,” Hawes said.
The little girl studied him solemnly for a moment and then said, “You are a bull, aren’t you?”
* * * *
The six bulls who met in the squadroom that night after dinner were not in the mood for a raid on a shooting gallery. Carella and Meyer wanted to be home with their wives and children. Andy Parker had been trying to get to a movie for the past week, but instead he’d been involved in this surveillance. Bert Kling wanted to finish a book he was reading. Cotton Hawes wanted to be with Christine Maxwell. Lieutenant Byrnes had promised his wife he’d take her to visit her cousin in Bethtown. But nonetheless, the six detectives met in the squadroom and were briefed by Parker on the location and setup of the apartment he’d had under surveillance for the past three weeks.
“They’re shooting up in there, that’s for sure,” Parker said. “But I think something unusual happened last night. A guy came with a suitcase for the first time since I’ve been on the plant. And he left without it. I think a big delivery was made, and if we hit them tonight, we may be able to nab them with the junk.”
“It’s worth a try,” Byrnes said. “The least we’ll net is a few hopheads.”
“Who’ll be out on the street again by tomorrow,” Carella said.
“Depending on how much they’re holding,” Hawes said.
“Someday, this city is going to get some realistic laws about narcotics,” Carella said.
“Aluvai,” Meyer put in.
“Let’s get moving,” Byrnes said.
They traveled in one sedan because they wanted to arrive together, wanted to get out of the car and hit the apartment before the telegraphing grapevine was able to warn of the presence of cops in the neighborhood. As it was, their margin was a close one. The instant they pulled up in front of the tenement, a man sitting on the front stoop ran inside. Parker ran after him into the hallway and collared the man as he was knocking on a ground floor door. Parker hit him only once and without hesitation, a sharp rabbit punch at the base of the man’s neck.
“Who’s there?” somebody inside the apartment called.
“Me,” Parker said, and by that time the other five detectives were in the hallway.
“Who’s me?” the voice inside said, and Parker kicked in the door.
Nobody was shooting up that night. The apartment may have been filled with addicts on the other nights of Parker’s surveillance, but tonight there was only a fat old man in an undershirt, a fat old woman in a house dress, and a young kid in a T shirt and dungarees. The trio was standing at the kitchen table, and they were working over what seemed to be eight million pounds of pure heroin. They were cutting it with sugar, diluting the junk for later sale to addicts from here to San Francisco and back again. The old man reached for a Luger in the drawer of the table the moment the door burst inward. He changed his mind about firing the gun because he was suddenly looking at an army of cops armed with everything from riot guns to Thompsons.
“Surprise!” Parker said, and the old man answered, “Drop dead, you cop bastard.”
Parker, naturally,
hit him.
The men got back to the squadroom at about eight-thirty. They all had coffee together, and then Cotton Hawes drove uptown to Christine Maxwell’s apartment.
* * * *
16
He loved to watch her strip. He told himself that all he was, after all, was a tired businessman who couldn’t afford the price of a musical comedy on his meagre salary, who chose to watch Christine Maxwell rather than a stageful of chorus girls-but he knew he was not the ordinary voyeur, knew there was something rather more personal in his joy. He was tired, true, and perhaps he was only a businessman whose business happened to be crime and punishment. But sitting on the couch across the room from her, a glass of Scotch in his big hands, his bare feet resting on a throw pillow, he watched Christine as she took off her blouse, and he felt something more than simple anticipation. He wanted to hold her naked in his arms, wanted to make love to her, but she was more to him than a promised bed partner; she provided for him a haven, she was someone to whom he returned at the end of a long and difficult day, someone he was always happy to see and who, in turn, always made him feel welcome and wanted.
She reached behind her now and unclasped her brassiere, releasing the full globes of her breasts, and then carrying the bra to the chair over whose back she had draped the blouse. She folded the bra in two over the blouse, unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it, folded that onto the seat of the chair, and then stepped out of her half slip and put that on top of the skirt. She took off her black, high-heeled pumps and put them to one side of the chair, and then ungartered her stockings, rolled them off her legs, and put those on the chair, too. She smiled unselfconsciously at him in the dimness of the room, removed her panties, threw them onto the chair and then, wearing only her garter belt, walked to where he was stretched out on the couch.
“Take that off, too,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I like to leave something for you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” She grinned and kissed him on the mouth. “I don’t like to make it too easy.” She kissed him again. “What’d you do today?”
“Shot it out with a killer,” he said.
“Did you get him?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Went back to talk to his landlady.”
“Any help?”
“Not much. A little girl gave us the guy’s first name, though.”
“Good.”
“Petie,” he said. “How many Peties do you think there are in this city?”
“Two million, I would suspect.”
“Your mouth is nice tonight,” he said, and he kissed her again.
“Mmmm.”
“We went on a dope raid just before I came here. Got a whole suitcase of the stuff, about forty pounds of it, worth something like twelve million bucks.”
“Did you bring some with you?”
“I didn’t know you were a junkie,” Hawes murmured.
“I’m a secret junkie,” Christine whispered in his ear. “That’s the worst kind.”
“I know.” He paused, grinning in the darkness. “I’ve got a few sticks of marijuana in my desk at the office. I’ll bring them next time I come.”
“Marijuana,” Christine said. “That’s kid stuff.”
“You’re on heroin, huh?”
“Absolutely.” She bit his ear and then said, “Maybe we can work out something here. You must go on a lot of those raids, don’t you?”
“Every now and then. Usually, we leave them to the Narcotics Squad.”
“But you do get a certain amount of heroin, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Hawes said.
“Maybe we can trade,” Christine said.
“Maybe.” He kissed her on the neck and said, “Take off your pants.”
“My pants are off,” she answered.
“Your thing then, your garter belt.”
“You do it.”
He pulled her to him, his hands going behind her back to the clasps on the flimsy garment. He frowned suddenly and said, “Now, what the hell?”
“Yes?”
“I thought of something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know it went in my mind, and then right out again. That’s funny, isn’t it?”
“Do you want me to help you with that?”
“No, I can do it.” He frowned again. “That’s funny, I… what are you doing with this thing on, anyway?”
“What?” Christine said, puzzled.
“Well, how… ?” He shook his head, “Never mind,” he said, and he unclasped the garter belt and threw it across the room at the chair, missing.
“Now it’s on the floor,” Christine said.
“You want me to go pick it up?”
“No. You stay right here.”
She kissed him, but his mouth was tight and she touched his face in the darkness and felt the frown still there, covering it like a mask.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Must be that guy today. Petie. Whatever his name is.”
“What about him?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Something… I just… maybe not him. Something, though.”
“Something about what?”
“I don’t know. But something just… just popped into my mind, and I thought all at once, Of course! And then the thing went away and… something… something with murder.”
“Then it must be that man today. The one you were shooting at.”
“Sure, it must be, but…” He shook his head. “I’ll be damned, to just run out of my mind like that.” He pulled her close and kissed her throat, and then ran his hand down her thigh and then sat up suddenly and said, “The… the… the…”
“What?” she said. “What is it?”
“What do you take off?” he blurted.
“What?”
“Come on, Christine!” he said angrily, wanting her to understand immediately, and annoyed when she did not.
“What is it?”
“First!” he said. “What do you take off first!”
“When? What are you… ?”
“Does anybody wear pants under a garter belt? Does any woman?”
“Well, no, how could they?”
“Then how the hell…”
“Unless… well, I suppose…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless the panties were very brief. But still, it would be terribly awkward, Cotton. I don’t see why any woman would…”
“They weren’t.”
“What?”
“Brief. They weren’t. And, damnit, the garter belt was on the chair!”
“What garter belt? It’s on the floor, Cotton. You just threw it there yourself a few min…”
“Not yours! Irene’s!” he shouted, and he rose from the couch suddenly.
“Who?”
“Irene Thayer! Her garter belt was on that chair with the rest of her clothes, but she was wearing her pants, Christine! Now how the hell did she manage that?”
“The suicide, do you mean? The one you were working on last month?”
“Suicide, my foot! How’d she manage to get that garter belt off without taking off her pants first, would you mind telling me?”
“I… I don’t know,” Christine said. “Maybe she got undressed and then… then felt chilly or something, and put the panties on again. Really, she could have…”
“Or maybe somebody put them on for her! Somebody who didn’t know the first thing about dressing or undressing a woman!” He looked at her wildly and then nodded and then punched his fist into the open palm of his other hand. “Where are my shoes?” he said.
* * * *
Too much has been said about the guilt complex of the American people. Too much has been said about the Puritan heritage, and a culture seemingly designed to encourage all sorts of anxiety. Hawes didn’t know whether the average American male carried guilt around in him like a stone, nor did he much g
ive a damn about the average American male on the night he went to make his arrest. He did know that a guilty criminal is an American who is carrying guilt in him like a stone, and he further knew he didn’t have a chance in hell of cracking a case that was already in the Open File unless he made use of that guilt. There were probably a hundred easy explanations for why Irene Thayer was found dead with her panties on and her garter belt off. Christine had provided one at the drop of a hat, and a clever murderer could possibly provide another dozen if pressed only slightly. So Hawes didn’t go to the house in Riverhead with the idea of thrashing out the correct procedure for removing a woman’s undergarments. He went there with a lie as big as the house itself, a lie designed to bring the guilt to the surface immediately. He went to that house to make an arrest, and everything in his manner indicated he knew all the facts of the case and wasn’t ready to listen to any nonsense. As a start, he rapped on the door of the house with his drawn .38.