by Ed McBain
Then ask them, and stop assuming that all strippers are—
Carella interrupted her with a roar that almost woke the children. “Assuming! Who’s assuming?” he bellowed, finally involved in the argument he’d been seeking ever since he came home, a curious sort of argument in that Teddy’s hands moved unemotionally, filled with words, while he yelled and ranted to her silent fingers. “What does a girl have to do before I figure her for rotten? For all I know, she knocked off this guy Chirapadano and won’t be happy until she’s dropped his hands and his legs and his heart and his liver into the little paper sacks all over town! I won’t be surprised if she cuts off his—”
Don’t be disgusting, Steve, Teddy cautioned with her hands.
“Where the hell is she? That’s what I’d like to know,” Carella said. “And where’s Chirapadano? And whose damn hands are those? And where’s the rest of the body? And what’s the motive in this thing? There had to be a motive, doesn’t there? People just don’t go around killing other people, do they?”
You’re the detective. You tell me.
“There’s always a motive,” Carella said, “that’s for sure. Always. Dammit, if we only knew more. Did Bubbles and the drummer go off together? Did she dump the sailor because she wanted the drummer? And if so, did she get tired of him and knock him off? Then why cut off his hands, and where’s the rest of the body? And if they aren’t his hands, then whose are they? Or are Bubbles and the drummer even connected with the hands? Maybe we’re off on a wild goose chase altogether. Boy, I wish I was a shoemaker.”
You do not wish you were a shoemaker, Teddy told him.
“Don’t tell me what I wish,” Carella said. “Boy, you’re the most argumentive female I’ve ever met in my life. Come here and kiss me before we start a real fight. You’ve been looking for one ever since I got home.”
And Teddy, smiling, went into his arms.
The very next day, Carella got the fight he was spoiling for.
Oddly, the fight was with another cop.
This was rather strange because Carella was a fairly sensible man who realized how much his colleagues could contribute to his job. He had certainly avoided any trouble on the squad prior to this, so it could only be assumed that the Hands Case—as the men had come to call it—was really getting him down.
The fight started very early in the morning, and it was one of those fights that seem to come about full-blown, with nothing leading up to them, like a summer storm that suddenly blackens the streets with rain. Carella was putting a call in to Taffy Smith, the other girl who’d shared the apartment with Bubbles Caesar. He mused that this damned case was beginning to resemble the cases of television’s foremost private eye, with voluptuous cuties popping out of the woodwork wherever a man turned. He could not say he objected to the female pulchritude. It was certainly a lot more pleasant than investigating a case at an old ladies’ home. At the same time, all these broads seemed to be leading nowhere, and it was this knowledge that rankled in him, and which probably led to the fight.
Hernandez was sitting at the desk alongside Carella’s, typing a report. Sunshine sifted through the grilled windows and threw a shadowed lacework on the squadron floor. The door to Lieutenant Byrnes’s office was open. Someone had turned on the standing electric fan, not because it was really hot but only because the sunshine—after so much rain—created an illusion of heat.
“Miss Smith?” Carella said into the phone.
“Yes. Who’s this, please?”
“Detective Carella of the 87th Detective Squad.”
“Oh, my goodness,” Taffy Smith said.
“Miss Smith, we’d like to talk to you about your missing roommate, Bubbles Caesar. Do you suppose we could stop by sometime today?”
“Oh. Well, gee, I don’t know. I’m supposed to go to rehearsal.”
“What time is your rehearsal, Miss Smith?”
“Eleven o’clock.”
“And when will you be through?”
“Gee, that’s awfully hard to say. Sometimes they last all day long. Although maybe this’ll be a short one. We got an awful lot done yesterday.”
“Can you give me an approximate time?”
“I’d say about three o’clock. But I can’t be sure. Look, let’s say three, and you can call here before you leave your office, okay? Then if I’m delayed or anything, my service can give you the message. Okay? Would that be okay?”
“That’d be fine.”
“Unless you want me to leave the key. Then you could go in and make yourself a cup of coffee. Would you rather do that?”
“No, that’s all right.”
“Okay, then, I’ll see you at three, okay?”
“Fine,” Carella said.
“But be sure to call first, okay? And if I can’t make it, I’ll leave a message. Okay?”
“Thank you, Miss Smith,” Carella said, and he hung up.
Andy Parker came through the slatted rail divider and threw his hat at his desk. “Man, what a day,” he said. “Supposed to hit seventy today. Can you imagine that? In March? I guess all that rain drove winter clear out of the city.”
“I guess so,” Carella said. He listed the appointment with Taffy on his pad and made a note to call her at 2:30 before leaving the squadroom.
“This is the kind of weather you got back home, hey, Chico?” Parker said to Hernandez.
Frankie Hernandez, who’d been typing, did not hear Parker. He stopped the machine, looked up, and said, “Huh? You talking to me, Andy?”
“Yeah. I said this is the kind of weather you got back home, ain’t it?”
“Back home?” Hernandez said. “You mean Puerto Rico?”
“Sure.”
“I was born here,” Hernandez said.
“Sure, I know,” Parker said. “Every Puerto Rican you meet in the streets, he was born here. To hear them tell it, none of them ever came from the island. You’d never know there was a place called Puerto Rico, to hear them tell it.”
“That’s not true, Andy,” Hernandez said gently. “Most Puerto Ricans are very proud to have come from the island.”
“But not you, huh? You deny it.”
“I don’t come from the island,” Hernandez said.
“No, that’s right. You were born here, right?”
“That’s right,” Hernandez said, and he began typing again.
Hernandez was not angry, and Parker didn’t seem to be angry, and Carella hadn’t even been paying any attention to the conversation. He was making out a tentative schedule of outside calls that he hoped he and Hawes could get to that day. He didn’t even look up when Parker began speaking again.
“So that makes you an American, right, Chico?” Parker said.
This time, Hernandez heard him over the noise of the typewriter. This time, he looked up quickly and said, “You talking to me?” But whereas the words were exactly the words he’d used the first time Parker had spoken, Hernandez delivered them differently this time, delivered them with a tightness, an intonation of unmistakable annoyance. His heart had begun to pound furiously. He knew that Parker was calling upon him to defend The Cause once more, and he did not particularly feel like defending anything on a beautiful morning like this one, but the gauntlet had been dropped, and there it lay, and so Hernandez hurled back his words.
“You talking to me?”
“Yes, I am talking to you, Chico,” Parker said. “It’s amazing how you damn people never hear anything when you don’t want to hear—”
“Knock it off, Andy,” Carella said suddenly.
Parker turned toward Carella’s desk. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he said.
“Knock it off, that’s all. You’re disturbing my squadroom.”
“When the hell did this become your squadroom?”
“I’m catching today, and it looks like your name isn’t even listed on the duty chart. So why don’t you go outside and find some trouble in the streets, if trouble is what you want?”
>
“When did you become the champion of the people?”
“Right this minute,” Carella said, and he shoved back his chair and stood up to face Parker.
“Yeah?” Parker said.
“Yeah,” Carella answered.
“Well, you can just blow it out your—”
And Carella hit him.
He did not know he was going to throw the punch until after he had thrown it, until after it had collided with Parker’s jaw and sent him staggering backward against the railing. He knew then that he shouldn’t have hit Parker, but at the same time he told himself he didn’t feel like sitting around listening to Hernandez take a lot of garbage on a morning like this, and yet he knew he shouldn’t have thrown the punch.
Parker didn’t say a word. He shoved himself off the railing and lunged at Carella who chopped a short right to Parker’s gut, doubling him over. Parker grabbed for his midsection and Carella delivered a rabbit punch to the back of Parker’s neck, sending him sprawling over the desk.
Parker got up and faced Carella with new respect and with renewed malice. It was as if he’d forgotten for a moment that his opponent was as trained and as skilled as he himself was, forgotten that Carella could fight as clean or as dirty as the situation warranted, and that the situation generally warranted the dirtiest sort of fighting, and that this sort of fighting had become second nature.
“I’m gonna break you in half, Steve,” Parker said, and there was almost a chiding tone in his voice, the tone of warning a father uses to a child who is acting up.
He feinted with his left and as Carella moved to dodge the blow, he slammed a roundhouse right into his nose, bringing blood to it instantly. Carella touched his nose quickly, saw the blood, and then brought up his guard.
“Cut it out, you crazy bastards,” Hernandez said, stepping between them. “The skipper’s door is open. You want him to come out here?”
“Sure. Steve-oh doesn’t care, do you, Steve? You and the skipper are real buddies, aren’t you?”
Carella dropped his fists. Angrily, he said, “We’ll finish this another time, Andy.”
“You’re damn right we will,” Parker said, and he stormed out of the squadroom.
Carella took a handkerchief from his back pocket and began dabbing at his nose. Hernandez put a cold key at the back of his neck.
“Thanks, Steve,” he said.
“Don’t mention it,” Carella answered.
“You shouldn’t have bothered. I’m used to Andy.”
“Yeah, but I guess I’m not.”
“Anyway, thanks.”
Hawes walked into the squadroom, saw Carella’s bloody handkerchief, glanced hastily at the lieutenant’s door, and then whispered, “What happened?”
“I saw red,” Carella said.
Hawes glanced at the handkerchief again. “You’re still seeing red,” he said.
Taffy Smith was neither voluptuous, overblown, zoftik, nor even pretty. She was a tiny little girl with ash blonde hair trimmed very close to her head. She had the narrow bones of a sparrow, and a nose covered with freckles, and she wore harlequin glasses, which shielded the brightest blue eyes Carella or Hawes had ever seen.
There was, apparently, great Freudian meaning to this girl’s penchant for making coffee for strangers. Undoubtedly, as a child, she had witnessed her mother clobbering her father with a coffeepot. Or perhaps a pot of coffee had overturned, scalding her, and she now approached it as a threat to be conquered. Or perhaps she had been raised by a tyrannical aunt in Brazil where, so the song says, coffee beans grow by the millions. Whatever the case, she trotted into the kitchen and promptly got a pot going while the detectives sat down in the living room. The Siamese cat, remembering Hawes, sidled over to him and purred idiotically against his leg.
“Friend of yours?” Carella asked.
“I fed him once,” Hawes answered.
Taffy Smith came back into the living room. “Gee, I’m bushed,” she said. “We’ve been rehearsing all day long. We’re doing Detective Story at the Y. I’m playing the shoplifter. It’s an exhausting role, believe me.” She paused. “We’re all Equity players, you understand. This is just between jobs.”
“I understand,” Carella said.
“How do you like living with a pair of strippers?” Hawes asked.
“Fine,” Taffy said. “Gee, what’s wrong with strippers? They’re swell girls.” She paused. “I’ve been out of work for a long time now. Somebody’s got to keep up the rent. They’ve been swell about it.”
“They?” Carella said.
“Barbara and Marla. Of course, Barbara’s gone now. You know that. Listen, what does a B-sheet look like?”
“Huh?” Carella said.
“A B-sheet. It’s mentioned in the play, it takes place in a detective squadroom, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Sure, and a B-sheet is mentioned, and our prop man is going nuts trying to figure out what it looks like. Could you send me one?”
“Well, we’re not supposed to give out official documents,” Hawes said.
“Gee, I didn’t know that.” She paused. “But we got a real pair of handcuffs. They’re official, aren’t they?”
“Yes. Where’d you get them?”
“Some fellow who used to be a cop. He’s got connections.” She winked.
“Well, maybe we can send you a B-sheet,” Carella said. “If you don’t tell anyone where you got it.”
“Gee, that would be swell,” Taffy answered.
“About your roommate. Barbara. You said she was nice to live with. Didn’t she seem a little wild at times?”
“Wild?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, did she break dishes? Something like that?”
“No. I meant men.”
“Barbara? Wild?”
“Yes. Didn’t she entertain a lot of men here?”
“Barbara?” Taffy grinned infectiously. “She never had a man in this apartment all the while I’ve been living here.”
“But she received telephone calls from men, didn’t she?”
“Oh, sure.”
“And none of these men ever came here?”
“I never saw any. Oh, excuse me. That’s the coffee.”
She went into the kitchen and returned instantly with the coffeepot and three cardboard containers.
“You’ll have to excuse the paper cups,” she said, “but we try to keep from washing too many dishes around here. We usually get a mob in every night for coffee, kids from all over who feel like talking or who just feel like sitting on a comfortable chair. We’ve got a nice place, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“I love to make coffee,” Taffy said. “I guess I got in the habit when I was first married. I used to think that was the dream of marriage, do you know? I had the idea that marriage meant you could make a cup of coffee in your own house whenever you wanted to.” She grinned again. “I guess that’s why I’m divorced right now. Marriage is a lot more than making coffee, I suppose. Still, I like to make coffee.”
She poured, went back to the kitchen with the pot, and then returned with cream, sugar, and wooden spoons.
“At these midnight get-togethers,” Carella said, “where you make coffee—did Barbara hang around?”
“Oh, sure.”
“And she was friendly?”
“Oh, sure.”
“But she never brought any men here?”
“Never.”
“Never entertained any men here?”
“Never. You see, we only have the three rooms. The kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom. The bedroom has two beds, and this sofa opens into a bed, so that makes three beds. So we had to figure out a sort of a schedule. If one of the girls had a date and she thought she might be asking him in for a drink later, we had to keep the living room free. This really wasn’t such a problem because Barbara never brought anyone home. So only Marla and I had to worry about it.”
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br /> “But Barbara did date men?”
“Oh, sure. Lots of them.”
“And if she felt like asking someone in for a drink, she didn’t ask them in here, is that right?”
“That’s right. Some more coffee?”
“No, thank you,” Hawes said. He had only taken a sip of the first cup.
“Then where did she take them?” Carella asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Her boy friends, where did she go with them?”
“Oh, all over. Clubs, theaters, wherever they wanted to take her.”
“I meant, for that nightcap.”
“Maybe she went to their apartments.”
“She couldn’t have gone to Androvich’s apartment,” Carella said out loud.
“What was that?”
“There are hotels all over the city, Steve,” Hawes said.
“Yeah,” Carella said. “Miss Smith, did Barbara ever say anything that would lead you to believe she had another apartment?”
“Another one? Why would she need another one? Do you know how much apartments cost in this city?”
“Yes, I do. But did she ever mention anything like that?”
“Not to me, she didn’t. Why would she need another apartment?”
“Apparently, Miss Smith, Barbara was seeing a few men and was on…rather friendly terms with them. An apartment shared with two other girls might have…well, limited her activities somewhat.”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” Taffy said. She thought about this for a moment. Then she said, “You’re talking about Barbara? Bubbles?”
“Yes.”
Taffy shrugged. “I never got the idea she was man-crazy. She didn’t seem that interested in men.”
“She was ready to run off with one when she disappeared,” Carella said. “And it’s possible she disappeared with a second one.”
“Barbara?” Taffy said. “Bubbles?”
“Barbara, yes. Bubbles.” Carella paused for a moment. “I wonder if I could use your phone, Miss Smith?”
“Go right ahead. You can use this one, or the extension in the bedroom. Forgive the mess in there. My roommate is a slob.”
Carella went into the bedroom.
“Marla told me all about you,” Taffy said to Hawes in a whisper.