by Ed McBain
“You can see what a bind I’m in. I’ve got to ask you to do me the favor, Frankie.”
“Whatever you say, Pete.”
“Would you check that apartment? The lab’s already been through it, but I want one of my own boys to go over it thoroughly. Will you?”
“Sure. What’s the address?”
“Four fifty-seven Franklin Street.”
“I’ll just have some breakfast and get dressed, Pete. Then I’ll go right over.”
“Thanks. Will you phone in later?”
“I’ll keep in touch.”
“Okay, fine. Frankie, you know, you’ve been on the case with Steve, you know what his thinking on it has been, so I thought…”
“I don’t mind at all, Pete.”
“Good. Call me later.”
“Right,” Hernandez said, and he hung up.
Hernandez did not, in truth, mind being called on his day off. To begin with, he knew that all policemen are on duty twenty-four hours a day every day of the year, and he further knew that Lieutenant Byrnes knew this. And knowing this, Byrnes did not have to ask Hernandez for a favor, all he had to do was say, “Get in here, I need you.” But hehad asked Hernandez if he’d mind, he had put it to him as a matter of choice, and Hernandez appreciated this immensely. Too, he had never heard the lieutenant sound quite so upset in all the time he’d been working for him. He had seen Peter Byrnes on the edge of total collapse, after three days without sleep, the man’s eyes shot with red, weariness in his mouth and his posture and his hands. He had heard his voice rapping out orders hoarsely, had seen his fingers trembling as he lifted a cup of coffee, had indeed known him at times when panic seemed but a hairsbreadth away. But he had never heard Byrnes the way he sounded this morning. Never.
There was something of weariness in his voice, yes, and something of panic, yes, and something of despair, but these elements did not combine to form the whole; the whole had been something else again, the whole had been something frightening which transmitted itself across the copper telephone wires and burst from the receiver on the other end with a bone-chilling sentience of its own. The whole had been as if—as if Byrnes were staring into the eyes of death, as if Byrnes were choking on the stench of death in his nostrils, as if Byrnes had a foreknowledge of what would happen to Steve Carella, a foreknowledge so strong that it leaped telephone wires and made the blood run suddenly cold.
In his tenement flat, with the sounds of the city coming alive outside his window, Frankie Hernandez suddenly felt the presence of death. He shuddered and went quickly into the bathroom to shower and shave.
JOEY, THE DOORMAN,recognized him as a policeman instantly.
“You come about mypaisan, huh?” Joey asked.
“Who’s yourpaisan?” Hernandez asked.
“Carella. The cop who got his block knocked off upstairs.”
“Yes, that’s who I’ve come about.”
“Hey, you ain’t Italian, are you?” Joey asked.
“No.”
“What are you, Spanish or something?”
“Puerto Rican,” Hernandez answered, and he was instantly ready to take offense. His eyes met Joey’s, searched them quickly and thoroughly. No, there would be no insult.
“You want to go up to the apartment? Hey, I don’t even know your name,” Joey said.
“Detective Hernandez.”
“That’s a pretty common Spanish name, ain’t it?”
“Pretty common,” Hernandez said as they went into the building.
“The reason I know is I studied Spanish in high school,” Joey said. “That was my language there.Habla usted Español?”
“Sí un poquito,”Hernandez answered, lying. He did not speak Spanish only slightly. He spoke it as well as any native of Madrid—no, that was false. In Madrid, the Spanish were pure, and ac or az before certain vowels took ath sound. In Puerto Rico, the sound became ans . The word for “five,” for example—spelledcinco in both Spain and Latin America—was pronouncedtheen-koh in Spain andseen-koh in Puerto Rico. But he spoke the language like a native when he wanted to. He did not very often want to.
“I know Spanish proverbs.” Joey, said. “You know any Spanish proverbs?”
“Some,” Hernandez said as they walked toward the elevator.
“Three years of high-school Spanish, and all I can do is quote proverbs,” Joey said. “What a drag, huh? Here, listen.No hay rosas sin espinas. How about that one? You know what that one means?”
“Yes,” Hernandez said, grinning.
“Sure. There ain’t no roses without thorns. Here’s another one, a very famous one.No se ganó Zamora en una hora . Is that right?”
“That’s right,” Hernandez said. “Your pronunciation is very good.”
“Rome was not built in a day,” Joey translated. “Man, that one kills me. I’ll bet I know more Spanish proverbs than half the people in Spain. Here’s the elevators. So the guy who said he was John Smith wasn’t John Smith, is that right?”
“That’s right,” Hernandez said.
“So now the only real question is which of those two guys was John Smith? The blond guy with the hearing aid? Or the old duffer who used to come to the apartment and whose picture your lieutenant showed to me. That’s the question, huh?”
“The old manwas John Smith,” Hernandez said. “And whatever the blond’s name is, he’s wanted for criminal assault.”
“Or maybe murder if mypaisan dies, huh?”
Hernandez did not answer.
“God forbid,” Joey said quickly. “Come on, I’ll take you up. The door’s open. There was guys here all last night taking pictures and sprinkling powder all over the joint. When they cleared out, they left the door open. You think Carella’s gonna be all right?”
“I hope so.”
“Me, too,” Joey said, and he sighed and set the elevator in motion.
“How often was the old man here?” Hernandez asked.
“That’s hard to say. You’d see him on and off, you know.”
“Was he a hardy man?”
“Healthy, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, he seemed pretty healthy to me,” Joey said. “Here’s the sixth floor.”
They stepped out into the corridor.
“But the apartment was rented by the blond one, is that right? The deaf man? He was the one who called himself John Smith?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Why the hell would he use the old man’s name unless he was hiding from something? And even then…” Hernandez shook his head and walked down the hall to apartment 6C.
“You gonna need me?” Joey asked.
“No, go on.”
“’Cause our elevator operator is sick, you know. So I got to run the elevator and also take care of the door. So if you don’t mind…”
“No, go right ahead,” Hernandez answered. He went into the apartment, impressed at once by the expensive modern furniture, overwhelmed at once by the total absence of sound, the silence that pervades every empty apartment like an old couple living in a back room. He walked swiftly to the arch between the living room and the bedroom corridor. The rug there was stained with dried blood. Carella’s. Hernandez wet his lips and walked back into the living room. He tabulated the units in the room which would warrant a thorough search: the drop-leaf desk, the hi-fi and liquor cabinet, the bookcases, and—that wasit for the living room.
He took off his jacket and threw it over one of the easy chairs. Then he pulled down his tie, rolled up his sleeves, crossed to the windows and opened them, and began working on the desk. He searched the desk from top to bottom and found nothing worth a second glance.
He shrugged, straightened up, and was walking toward the hi-fi unit when he noticed that something had fallen from his inside jacket pocket when he’d tossed it over the back of the chair. He walked across the room and stooped at the base of the chair, picking up the photograph encased in lucite, the photo of the dead man who had been id
entified as John Smith. He scooped his jacket from the back of the chair and was putting the picture into the pocket again when the front door opened suddenly.
Hernandez raised his eyes.
There, standing in the doorway, was the man whose picture he’d been looking at a moment before, the dead man named John Smith.
15.
“WHO ARE YOU?” the man in the doorway said. “What do you want here?”
He was wearing a sailor’s uniform, and he took a step into the room as Hernandez’s hand dropped the photograph and reached for the Police Special holstered at his side. The sailor’s eyes widened.
“What?” he started, and he turned toward the door again.
“Hold it!” Hernandez snapped.
The sailor stopped. Cautiously, he turned to face the .38.
“Wh—what’s the gun for?” he asked.
“Who are you?” Hernandez asked.
“John Smith,” the sailor replied.
Hernandez moved closer to him. The voice had been young, and the man’s body was trim and youthful in the tight-fitting Navy blues. Hernandez blinked, and then realized he was not looking at a reincarnation of the dead man they’d found in Grover Park, but he was damn well looking at a spitting image of him, some forty years younger.
“Where’s my father?” Smith said.
“John Smith your father?”
“Yes. Where is he?”
Hernandez didn’t want to answer that question, not just yet he didn’t. “What made you think you’d find him here?” he asked.
“This is the address he gave me,” the young John Smith said. “Who areyou?”
“When did he give you the address?”
“We’ve been writing to each other. I was down in Guantanamo Bay on a shakedown cruise,” Smith said. His eyes narrowed. “You a cop or something?”
“That’s what I am.”
“I knew it. I can smell fuzz a mile away. Is the old man in some trouble?”
“When did you hear from him last?”
“I don’t know. Beginning of the month, I guess. What’s he done?”
“He hasn’t done anything.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Your father’s dead,” Hernandez said flatly.
Smith backed up against the wall as if Hernandez had hit him. He simply recoiled from Hernandez’s words, inching backward until he collided with the wall, and then he leaned against the wall, and he stared into the room, without seeing Hernandez, simply stared into the room blankly, and said, “How?”
“Murdered,” Hernandez said.
“Who?”
“We don’t know”
The room was silent.
“Who’d want to kill him?” Smith asked the silence.
“Maybe you can tell us,” Hernandez said. “What was his last letter about?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” Smith said. He seemed dazed. He kept leaning against the wall, his head tilted back against the plaster, looking up at the ceiling.
“Try,” Hernandez said gently. He holstered the .38 and walked to the bar unit. He poured a stiff hooker of brandy and carried it to Smith. “Here. Drink this.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Take it.”
Smith took the glass, sniffed it, and tried to hand it back. Hernandez forced it to his mouth. Smith drank, almost gagging. He coughed and pushed the glass away from him.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“Sit down.”
“I’m all right.”
“Sit down!”
Smith nodded and went to one of the modern easy chairs, sinking into it. He stretched out his long legs. He did not look at Hernandez. He kept studying the tips of his highly polished shoes.
“The letter,” Hernandez said. “What did it say?”
“I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”
“Did he mention a girl named Lotte Constantine?”
“No. Who’s she?”
“Did he mention anyone called the deaf man?”
“No.” Smith looked up. “Thewhat?”
“Never mind. Whatdid he say in the letter?”
“I don’t know. I think he started off by thanking me for the shoes. Yeah, that’s right.”
“What shoes?”
“I got a pair of shoes for him from ship’s service. I’m on a destroyer, we were just commissioned last month up in Boston. So my father sent me his shoe size and I picked up a pair for him in the ship’s store. They’re good shoes, and I get them for something like nine bucks, he couldn’t come anywhere near that price on the outside.” Smith paused. “There’s nothing dishonest about that.”
“Nobody said there was.”
“Well, there ain’t. I paid money for the shoes. It ain’t as if I was cheating the government. Besides, it’s all one and the same. Before he got this job, his only income came from the government, anyway. So it’s six of one and half a dozen of—”
“What job?” Hernandez asked quickly.
“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. In his last letter, he was telling me about some job he got.”
“What kind of job?”
“As a night watchman.”
Hernandez leaned closer to Smith. “Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t he say where?”
“No.”
“Hemust have said where!”
“He didn’t. He said he was working as a night watchman, but that the job would be finished on May first, and after that he could afford to retire. That’s all he said.”
“What did he mean?”
“I don’t know. My father always had big ideas.” Smith paused. “None of them ever paid off.”
“Afford to retire,” Hernandez said, almost to himself. “On what? On a night watchman’s salary?”
“He only just got the job,” Smith said. “He couldn’t have meant that. It was probably something else. One of his get-rich-quick schemes.”
“But he said he’d only be working until May first, is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t give the name of the firm? He didn’t say where he was working?”
“No, I told you.” Smith paused. “Why’d anyone want to kill him? He never hurt a soul in his life.”
And suddenly he began weeping.
THE COSTUME RENTAL SHOPwas in downtown Isola on Detavoner Avenue. There were three dummies in the front window. One was dressed as a clown, another was dressed as a pirate, and the third and last was dressed as a World War I pilot. The window was grimy, and the dummies were dusty, and the costumes looked moth-eaten. The inside of the shop looked grimy, dusty, and moth-eaten, too. The owner of the shop was a jovial man named Douglas McDouglas who’d once wanted to be an actor and who had settled for the next best thing to it. Now, rather than creating fantasies on stage, he helped others to create fantasies by renting the costumes they needed for amateur plays, masquerade parties and the like. He was no competition for the bigger, theater rental shops nor did he wish to be. He was simply a man who was happy doing the kind of work he did.
The deaf man entered the shop, and Douglas McDouglas recognized him at once.
“Hello there, Mr. Smith,” he said. “How’s every little thing?”
“Just fine,” the deaf man answered. “And how are things with you?”
“Couldn’t be better,” McDouglas answered, and he burst into contagious laughter. He was a fat man, and the layers of flesh under his vest rippled when he laughed. He put his hands on his belly as if to control the pulsating flesh, and said. “Are you here for the costumes?”
“I am,” the deaf man said.
“They’re ready,” McDouglas said. “Nice and clean. Just got them back from the cleaners day before yesterday. What kind of a play is this one, Mr. Smith?”
“It’s not a play,” the deaf man said. “It’s a movie.”
“With ice-cream men in it, huh?”
“Yes.”
/> “And night watchmen, too huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“The two night watchmen uniforms. The one you got ’way back, and the one you came in for near the beginning of the month. Ain’t they for the movie, too?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” the deaf man said.
“Will you be returning them all together?”
“Yes,” he lied. He had no intention of returning any of the costumes.
“What’s the movie called?” McDouglas asked.
The deaf man smiled. “The Great Bank Robbery,” he answered.
McDouglas burst into laughter again. “A comedy?”
“More like a tragedy,” the deaf man said.
“You filming it here in Isola?”
“Yes.”
“Soon?”
“We start shooting tomorrow.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“I think it will be. Would you get me the costumes, please? I don’t want to rush you, but…”
“Sure thing,” McDouglas said, and he went into the back of the shop.
The Great Bank Robbery, the deaf man thought, and he grinned. I wonder what you would say, fat boy, if you really knew. I wonder what you will think when you hear the news over your radio. Will you feel like an accessory before the fact? And will you rush to the police with a description of “John Smith,” the man who rented these costumes? But then, John Smith is dead, isn’t he?
And you don’t know that, Mr. McDouglas, do you?
You don’t know that John Smith, garrulous old John Smith, was shot to death while wearing a costume hired from this very shop, now do you? Garrulous old John Smith who, we discovered, was dropping just a few hints too many about what is going to take place tomorrow. A dangerous man to have about, that John Smith. And he remained talkative even after we’d warned him, and so Goodbye, Mr. Smith, it was lovely having you in our friendly little group, but speech is silver, Mr. Smith, and silence, ahhh, silence is golden, and so we commit you to eternal silence, BAM!
The deaf man grinned.
And then, of course, it was necessary to dispose of the costume. It would not have been necessary were you not such an organized man, Mr. McDouglas. But stamped into the lining of each of your costumes is the name of your shop, and we couldn’t have run the risk of the police stripping down a corpse and then coming here to ask you questions about it, now could we, Mr. McDouglas? No, no, it was far better the way we did it. Strip the uniform from the body, cart it to Grover Park, and leave it there as naked as the jay birds.