by Ed McBain
The cop led me straight to the desk and said, “I’ve got Cordell, Ed. Want to tell the lieutenant?”
“Go on in,” the cop behind the desk said. “Lieutenant’s expecting you.”
The big cop nodded, shoved me ahead of him down a hallway near the front of the station. He opened a door for me about halfway down the hall, gestured with his thumb and then added another shove to make sure I went the right way.
The plainclothes man sitting behind the desk stood up when I came in. He nodded at the cop and said, “All right, Jim. I’ll take it from here.” Jim saluted smartly, like a rookie after corporal’s stripes, and then left me alone with the plainclothes man. A plaque read: Detective-Lieutenant Gunnisson.
“What’s it all about, Lieutenant?” I asked.
Gunnisson was a smallish cop with a balding head and weary eyes. His mouth echoed the weariness by drooping loosely down to an almost invisible chin. He looked more like the caretaker in a museum than a police lieutenant. I wondered which Congressman his family had known.
“You’re Matt Cordell, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Got a complaint, Cordell.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He lifted his brows quickly, and his brown eyes snapped to my face. “Don’t get snotty, Cordell. We’re just itching to jug you.”
“On what charge?”
“Practicing without a license.”
“Where’d you dream that one up?”
“We got a complaint.”
“Who from?”
“Phone call. Clocked at—” he glanced at a paper on his desk “—four forty-five.”
“Who from?”
“Caller wouldn’t give a name. Said you were investigating a case and thought we should look into it. What about it, Cordell?”
“It’s all horse manure.”
“You’re not on a case?”
“A case of Scotch, maybe. Who’d hire me, Lieutenant?”
“That’s the same question I asked.”
“Well, you got your answer. Can I go now?”
“Just a second. Not so fast.” His manner relaxed, and he sat down behind the desk, offered me a cigarette. I took it, and he lit it for me and then smiled.
“What you been doing, Cordell?” he asked.
“Spending my winters in Florida. Don’t I look it?”
He seemed about to get sore, but then the smile flitted onto his face again, becoming a small chuckle in a few seconds. “Tell you the truth,” he said abruptly, “I think you were right, Cordell. That bastard had it coming to him.”
I didn’t say anything. I watched his face warily.
“Fact,” he went on, “you should have given him more. How’d you catch him, Cordell?”
“What do you mean?”
“What happened? The papers said you went into the bedroom and found him loving your wife? That right? What was the bastard doing?” His eyes were gleaming brightly now. “Was she really in a nightgown? Did he…”
I leaned over the desk and grabbed the lapels of his suit in both my hands. “Shut up!” I said. My face was tight and I was ready to tear this filthy weasel into little pieces.
“Listen, Cordell…” Some of his old manner was back, some of the hard shell of the policeman.
“Shut up!” I shoved him hard and he flew back into his chair, and then the chair toppled over and fell to the floor. He blinked his eyes, and all the filth in his mind crowded into his face, leaving a small man hiding behind the skirts of a big job. He scrambled to his knees and flicked open the bottom drawer of his desk. His hand crawled into the drawer like a fast spider. He was pulling his hand out when I stepped behind the desk and kicked the drawer shut.
He would have screamed, but I kicked out again and this time it was where he lived, and he doubled up in pain, his face twisted into a horrible, distorted grimace.
I stood over him with my fists clenched. He’d forgotten all about the gun in the bottom drawer now. He had something more important to be concerned with.
“I’m leaving,” I told him.
“You stinking…”
“You can send one of your boys after me if you like, Lieutenant. Unless you’re afraid of walking down dark streets at night.”
“You’re not getting away with this,” he gasped. “You’re…”
“Assault and battery, resisting arrest…what else? I’ll serve the sentence, Lieutenant, while you prepare your will.”
“You threatening me, Cordell?”
I stood over him, and the look in my eyes told him I wasn’t kidding. “Yes, Lieutenant, I’m threatening you. My advice is to forget all about this. Just forget I was even here.”
He got to his feet and was about to say something when the door sprang open. The big cop, Jim, looked at the lieutenant and then at me.
“Everything all right, sir?” he asked.
Gunnisson hesitated a moment, and then his eyes met mine and he turned his face quickly. “Yes,” he said sharply. “Goddamned chair fell over.” He passed his hand over his scalp and said, “Show Mr. Cordell out. He was just leaving.”
I smiled thinly, and Detective-Lieutenant Gunnisson picked up the chair and sat in it, busying himself with some reports on his desk. Jim closed the door behind him and I asked, “Did you really get a complaint?”
“Sure. What the hell you think—we got nothing better to do than play around with a monkey like you?”
I didn’t answer him. I walked straight to the front door, down the front steps and out into the street.
* * *
Dusk crouched on the horizon, and then night sprang into its place, leaping into the sky like a black panther. The stars pressed inquisitive white noses against the black pane of darkness, and the moon beamed like a balding old man.
The neon flickers stabbed the darkness with lurid reds and greens, oranges, blues, giving spring her evening clothes. There was still a warm breeze in the air, and inside The Dewdrop I could hear a throaty tenor sax doing crazy things with How High The Moon.
It was ten o’clock.
I walked up the block quickly, the way a young girl anxious to meet her lover would walk. My heels clicked on the pavement, echoing in the darkness of the tree-lined street. I turned left on Burke, reached the elevated structure, took the steps up two at a time. I walked to the change booth, slipped a quarter under the grilled panel.
“What time’s the next downtown train pull in?” I asked the attendant.
He glanced up at the clock. “About ten-oh-nine.”
“Thanks,” I said. I collected my change, shoved my way through the turnstile. The clock on the wall said ten-oh-six. I climbed the steps to the Downtown side. I reached the platform and waited, and in a few minutes a downtown express pulled in. The doors slid open, and I stepped into the train, starting to look immediately for a conductor. I was going to take a narrow gamble, and even if it paid off I didn’t know where to go from there. But the gamble was necessary because so far I’d slammed into blank wall after blank wall—and Freddie was still loose somewhere in the city.
I found the conductor in one of the middle cars reading a morning newspaper. I sat down next to him and he glanced at me sideways and then went back to the paper.
“Are you the only conductor on the train?” I asked.
He looked up suspiciously. “Yes. Why?”
“Have you had the night shift long?”
“Past month. Why?”
The train rumbled into the Allerton Avenue station, and he got up to press the buttons that would open the doors. He stood between the cars, waiting for the passengers to load and unload, and then he came back to his seat.
“Why?” he asked immediately.
I fished the picture out of my jacket pocket. “Know this girl?”
He stared at the picture curiously, and then looked at me as if I were nuts. “Can’t say that I do.”
“Look at it hard,” I said. “Look at it damned hard. She got on at Burke Av
enue two or three times during the week. She always caught this train. Look at the goddamned picture!”
He looked at the picture hard, and the train rumbled toward the next station. He still hadn’t said a word when we pulled into Pelham Parkway and he got up to press his buttons again. When he came back, he continued to look at the picture.
“We’ll be in Grand Central before you make up your mind.”
“I already made up my mind. I never seen her before.” He paused. “Why do you want her?”
“Look at it again,” I told him, almost reaching out for his throat. “She was a happy sort of kid. Smiling all the time. Goddamn it, mister, remember!”
“There’s nothing to remember. I just never seen her before.”
I slapped the picture against the palm of my hand. “Jesus! Who else works on this train?”
“Just me and the motorman, that’s all.”
“Where’s the motorman? First car?”
“Listen, you can’t bother him with that…”
“Open your doors, mister. Here’s Bronx Park East.”
He turned to say something, then realized the train was already in the station. I left him as he stepped between the cars, and I ran all the way to the first car. I was wild now, reaching for straws, but someone had to remember—someone! The train was just starting up again when I reached the motorman’s little compartment and yanked open the door.
He was a small man with glasses, and he almost leaped out of the window when I jabbed the picture at him.
“Do you know this girl?”
“What!”
“Look at this picture! Do you know this girl? Have you ever seen her before, riding on this train?”
“Hey!” he said, “you ain’t allowed in here.”
“Shut up and look at this picture.”
He glanced at it quickly, switching his eyes back to the track ahead almost instantly. “No, I don’t know her.”
“You never…”
“I watch the tracks,” he said dutifully, “not the broads that get on and off.…”
I slammed the door on his soliloquy and started toward the back of the train again. I was ready to beat the old man’s head against the metal floor if he didn’t start remembering damned soon. When I reached him, he shouted, “You get off this train! You get off this train or I’ll get help at the next station.”
I took a quick evaluation of his chances of ever remembering Betty, and when the train pulled into 180th Street I got off with the conductor swearing behind me. I crossed under the platforms and came up on the Uptown side. Then I took the next train back to Burke Avenue.
There were three cabs parked in the hack stand. I showed Betty’s picture to each of the three drivers. None of them recognized her.
It was like a big merry-go-round with me grabbing at the brass ring and always missing. I was ready to call it quits again, ready to chuck the whole stinking mess back into Rudy’s lap. But there was one person I wanted to see again. She’d given me almost everything I knew about Betty Richards, and I had a hunch I could get more information from her if I really tried.
I hoped she’d be at The Dewdrop, and I was happy to see her behind the counter when I walked in. The jukebox was bashing out some rock ’n’ roll masterpiece, and the place was packed with teenaged boys and girls. I walked over to Donna and said, “Dance?”
She looked up and gave me a half-smile. “You still haven’t shaved, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
The smile widened.
“Have you got a minute?” she said.
“Lots of them.”
“It’s time I had a cigarette break. Meet me outside, will you?”
She walked over to the owner of the joint, the guy with the mustache. He didn’t seem too happy about her leaving him alone with the rock ’n’ rollers. I watched through the plate-glass window as he pulled a sour face. And then, like most bosses, he let her go anyway. She was lighting a cigarette as she stepped outside. She leaned against the brick wall of the next-door building and said, “Phew!” She blew out a stream of smoke. “I’m glad you, came, Matt,” she said. “Those kids were beginning to get in my hair.”
I blinked at the darkness. “I really came to ask more questions,” I said.
“I don’t care why you’re here. You’re here, that’s all that counts.”
We were quiet again until she asked, “Are you any closer to him?”
“Not really,” I said. “I wanted to ask you more about him. Did she ever say anything that would…”
“Nothing, Matt. She talked about him like…well, you know how kids are. As if he were a knight or something. You know. She talked to me a lot. We hit it off right from the beginning. Those things happen sometimes.”
“Yeah,” I said. Donna knew nothing more about Freddie. Nothing.
This was the end of the trail. Curtain. Freddie was still a blank face with the hands of a strangler. Nothing more. I was ready to call it quits.
“I went over to her because she looked kind of lonely the first night she came in. We got to chatting and before the night was over we’d exchanged phone numbers. Never used them, but…”
“You still have the number?”
“Why, yes. I think so. Somewhere in my purse. She wrote it on a napkin.”
“You’d better let me have it,” I said. That was the coward’s way of doing it. I’d call Rudy and break it to him over the phone. Tell him I’d done my damnedest but I was tired and beaten, and the police would have to do the rest.
Donna sighed. “Now? I thought we might…”
“Now,” I said.
“I’ll be right back.”
She walked into the rectangle of light cast by the open door of the store and then stepped inside. She was back in a few minutes with her purse and the napkin. “Here it is. You’re not going, are you?”
“I have to make a call.”
“This is getting to be a habit, I know, but come back, Matt. This time I mean it. Please come back.”
“You didn’t mean it last time?”
She shrugged and smiled wistfully. “You know how it is. Come back to me, Matt. Come back.”
I left her standing in the amber rectangle of light, and I walked to the nearest candy store and settled myself in the booth. I looked at the numbers written on the napkin with a ballpoint pen, and then began to dial. Halfway through, it occurred to me that Rudy wouldn’t be home, not if he left for work at four-thirty in the afternoon. I finished dialing anyway, looking down at the scrawled numbers.
And all at once it hit, just like that, and I hung up quickly.
It made me a little sick, but it also made me feel a little better because it was all over now.
* * *
I was waiting for Freddie.
It was close to one-thirty in the morning, and the streets were deserted. Spring had retreated into a cold fog that clouded the lights from the lampposts and swirled underfoot like elusive ghosts.
I waited until he came around the corner of the big building, carrying his flashlight and his time clock. I listened to the clack of his heels against the sidewalk. The fog lifted a misty barrier between us, and he didn’t see me until he was almost on me.
“Hello, Freddie,” I said.
“Wh…” He stared at me.
He backed away a few paces, and his hand went to his mouth. He recognized me then, blinked his eyes several times, and said, “Matt. What are you doing here at this hour?”
“Waiting. Waiting for you.”
“Matt…”
“You’re a son of a bitch, Rudy,” I said.
“Matt…”
“She looked just the way your wife did at that age, didn’t she, Rudy? Isn’t that what you told me?”
“Matt, you’ve got this all wrong.”
“I’ve got it all right, Rudy. Why didn’t you leave her alone? Why couldn’t you leave her alone, you bastard?”
“Matt, listen to me…”
; “Why’d you hire me? Because you knew I was a stumblebum? Because your wife was hounding hell out of you to get a detective? Because you figured Matt Cordell was a drunkard who couldn’t solve his way out of a pay toilet? Is that why?”
“No, Matt. I came to you because…”
“Shut up, Rudy! Shut your filthy mouth before I close it for good. You didn’t have to kill her.”
He crumbled then. He leaned back against the wall, and his face slowly came apart. He raised a trembling hand to his mouth. His teeth chattered.
“What happened?” I asked. “Was she finally going to talk? Was she finally going to tell all about her mysterious lover? Was that it?”
Rudy closed his eyes, nodding.
“So you killed her. Snuffed her out, and then drove to Yonkers and dumped her there.”
“Stop it, Matt. Stop it! Please.”
“I’d never have found Freddie, Rudy. Never. But a friend of Betty’s gave me something in her handwriting, and I remembered something you’d showed me a while ago. The address of The Dewdrop, written in the same hand. And then I wondered why Betty had given you the address—and then I thought about your working hours and the time she always left the store. And then I realized why a seventeen-year-old kid was so anxious to keep her boyfriend a secret. Why’d she give you the address, Rudy? Why?”
“She…she wanted me to…pick her up there at first. This was after it had started…after our first time…after the first time we knew we were in love. I told her it was dangerous, but she gave me the address and we tried it a…a few times. Then I suggested that she meet me here at the warehouse. We…we used to go inside…Matt, don’t look at me that way. I loved her. Matt.”
“Sure. You loved her enough to kill her. And you loved her enough to hire a wino to find Freddie. Freddie—a nice code name. A convenient tag in case the kid wanted to talk about her friend.” I bit down on my lip. “Was it you who sicked the cops on me? Did I scare you when I came up with the code name?”
“I…I called the cops. I told them you were practicing illegally.”