by Ed McBain
He waited while Carella absorbed this.
“The tract passed into the brain as deep as the left cerebral peduncle,” he said. “Now, the reason this is interesting, such a wound will rarely cause instant death. Absent concussion of the brain, we’ve had victims surviving for as long as five days after an assault.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, Carl.”
“I’m saying there are cases on record of victims walking long distances from the scene of the trauma. Eventually, there’ll be either subcortical or subdural hemorrhaging from the wound, with subsequent compression of the brain and resultant death. Butbefore then …”
“Before then, she could’ve walked to the park, is that it?”
“Yes. Or someone could have transferred her there from wherever the trauma occurred. In either case, I’m merely stating as a positive fact that she was stabbed first. With an ice pick.”
“When will I have those prints?” Carella asked.
“They’re on the way now,” Blaney said.
THE PRINTS REACHED CARELLA by messenger at three-seventeen that afternoon. A half-hour later, AFIS—the automated fingerprint identification system—got back to him with a hit on a United States Army lieutenant named Cassandra Jean Ridley.
3 .
THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY gave them a listing for a C J Ridley on South Ealey Street in Silvermine. Carella and Ollie went there at once. They had phoned ahead and a pair of technicians from the Mobile Crime Unit were waiting for them downstairs. The building was a twelve-story red brick a block away from the oval. They introduced themselves to the doorman, and asked to speak to the superintendent, a man named Peter Dooley, who immediately took them up to apartment 9C and unlocked the door for them.
Carella and Ollie stayed out in the hall with Dooley while the techs got to work. The super was a tall, wide-shouldered man with a shock of black hair and piercing blue eyes. He was wearing wide-wale blue corduroy trousers and a navy blue sweater vest over a red plaid shirt. He told them the woman lived here alone, took the apartment in November, was gone for a little while, came back again early in December. He figured she was worth a little something, the fur coats and all, don’t y’know.
“When’s the last time you saw her?” Carella asked.
“She was in and out a lot the past few days,” Dooley said. “Doing her Christmas shopping, I guess. This the same case as the other one?”
Carella and Ollie looked at each other, puzzled.
“Had some detectives from the Eight-Seven here the other day,” Dooley said.
“Oh? When was that?” Ollie asked.
“The other day. Thursday.”
“What do you mean by the other case?” Carella asked.
“The break-in. We had a patrol car come by and then two detectives.”
“No, this has nothing to do with that.”
“I thought… well … Miss Ridley and all.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was her apartment got broken into. She had me change the lock on the door the very next day.”
“Let me get this straight,” Carella said.
“There was a burglary here?” Ollie said.
“On Thursday, yes, sir. I changed the lock on this door only yesterday.”
“Because the apartment was broken into?” Ollie said.
“Yep. I was outside with the doorman when your two detectives come by to investigate,” Dooley said. “One of them a redhead, the other one this short little fellow with curly black hair. Doorman called upstairs, Miss Ridley told him to send them right up.”
“Who were they, do you know?”
“Thought you might.”
Carella was already on the cell phone.
“Anybody else here for the lady in recent days?” Ollie asked.
“Not that I noticed. I’m busy in the office most of the time.”
“Bert?” Carella said. “This is Steve. Can you check with the Loot, see if Willis and Hawes responded to a burglary here on South Ealey this past Thursday?” He listened. “321,” he said. “Apartment 9C. Sure.” He turned to Ollie. “Kling. He’s checking.”
“Did you see anyone coming out of the building with Miss Ridley late last night, early this morning?” Ollie asked the super.
“I go home at six,” Dooley said. “You’re lucky you caught me.”
“Which doorman was on last night, would you know?”
“Same one as now.”
“Can you send him up, please?”
“Sure,” Dooley said, and walked off toward the elevator.
“Yeah,” Carella said into the phone. “Just what I thought. Are either of them there now? Put him on, willya?” He turned to Ollie. “Willis and Hawes were here around four Thursday,” he said. “He’s getting Willis now.”
They waited.
The apartment seemed suddenly very still.
“Hal, hi, it’s Steve,” he said. “Bert tells me you investigated a burg here at 321 South Ealey this past Thursday. Can you tell me a little about it?” He listened. “No, this is a homicide. Right. The lady got stabbed with an ice pick and thrown into the lion exhibit at the zoo. No, I’m dead serious. Can you give me the back story?” He listened. “A sable worth forty-five grand, right. And a mink stole worth six. Initials in both of them, CJR. Is that it? Okay, good, thanks a lot.” He hit the end button, flipped the lid shut, turned to Ollie. “You heard?” he said.
“I heard.”
Dooley was back with a man wearing a blue uniform with gold trim, blue hat with a shiny black peak. He looked Hispanic to Ollie, but Dooley introduced him as Muhammad Hassid, which meant he had just arrived from the Sahara and was plotting to blow up the nearest municipal building. Ollie asked him if he’d seen Miss Ridley leaving the building with anyone anytime last night.
“No, sir, I have seen no one,” Hassid said.
“What time did you leave here?” Ollie asked.
“I was relieved at eleven-forty-five,” Hassid said.
“Who came on after you?”
“Manuel Escovar.”
“We’ll want his address and phone number,” Carella told Dooley.
“I have them in the office,” Dooley said. “Will you be needin either of us any further?”
“Not right now,” Ollie said. “We’ll stop by on our way out.”
“Good luck to you, lads,” Dooley said.
“Thank you, sirs,” Hassid said.
IT TOOK A GOOD HOUR AND A HALF for the techs to vacuum the place for fibers and hair and to dust for fingerprints. The lights were on when Carella and Ollie finally went in to join them.
“Got some nice latents,” one of the techs said. “How urgent is this?”
“It’s a fuckin homicide,” Ollie said. “What do you mean, how urgent is it?”
“Cause what I can do …”
“The fuckin lady got chewed to bits by lions!” Ollie said.
“I can run the prints for you, was what I was gonna suggest, save a little time,” the tech said, unruffled. “Call you if I get a make.”
“That’d be a help,” Carella said.
“My name’s Murphy, here’s my card,” he said. “Probably be late tonight, early tomorrow morning.”
“Gee, that’s abig fuckin help,” Ollie said.
Murphy looked at him.
“Talk to you later,” he said to Carella and walked out shaking his head.
The apartment was a one-bedroom with a good-sized living room and a utility kitchen. They started in the bedroom, which was where they hoped to learn the most about the woman.
Three furs were hanging in the closet there: an ankle-length sable, a mink stole, and a red fox jacket. The initials in each of the furs were CJR.
Ollie turned to Carella.
“Didn’t you say … ?”
“That’s what Willis told me.”
“So what are they doing here?”
“Maybe she had two of each.”
“Maybe m
y aunt has balls,” Ollie said.
There were also two woolen cloth coats in the closet, and a fleece-lined brown-leather flight jacket. The jacket had a silver bar on each shoulder and a diamond-shaped leather name patch over the left breast: Lt. C. J. Ridley. Hanging lengthwise on trouser hangers were two pairs of blue jeans and three pairs of tailored slacks. Hanging in the rest of the closet were dresses, skirts, and several bulky sweaters.
The clothes in her dresser drawer were laid out like soldiers lined up for inspection, rolled nylons and pantyhose in one drawer, tank tops and cotton panties in another, T-shirts and sweaters in the bottom drawer, all precisely stored away.
In the top drawer of the night table on the left hand side of the bed, they found a candy tin with a floral design on its lid. They opened the tin. Inside the box was a stack of photographs, several airmail letters, and a small black ring box that contained a slender gold wedding band. The letters were from a Captain Mark William Ridley—the return address indicated he was stationed with the U.S. Air Force in Germany—to a woman named Cassandra Jean Ridley in Eagle Branch, Texas.
“Probably her husband,” Ollie said. “Got killed over there in Germany for some reason or other, and the letter’s from a chaplain or somebody, telling her he was dead and returning the wedding band.”
“Very romantic,” Carella said.
“Let’s read ’em.”
“Also there’s no war going on in Germany right this minute.”
“Be the only place there isn’t,” Ollie said.
They opened one of the letters.
It was dated November 13 of this year, and it was from the dead woman’s brother. He was telling her he’d just received a Dear John letter from his wife back in Montana, and he was sending their wedding band to Cassandra Jean to dispose of because he couldn’t bear doing that himself, nor could he bear even looking at it ever again.
“That’s romantic, too,” Ollie said.
The letter went on to say that the job his sister had lined up for the early part of December sounded good to him, “so long as you won’t be flying anything that might get you in trouble.”
“Might’ve got her in a wholelot of trouble,” Carella said.
“Let’s take these, read ’em all later.”
Sitting on the living room desk was an appointment calendar for the current year. They immediately flipped to the week of December 3. Someone—presumably Cassandra Jean Ridley—had scrawled the wordMexico into the box for Sunday the third. An inked arrow ran over the boxes for the next four days, its point leading to the box for December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, where the wordsEnd Mexico were written in the same hand. The single wordEast was written in the box for December 8.
In the top drawer on the right hand side of the kneehole, they found a checkbook from Chase, another for Midlands, and a savings account passbook from a bank called First Peoples. For yet another bank called Banque Française, they found a safe deposit box key in a little red packet with a snap catch.
A pile of rubber-banded hundred-dollar bills was resting on edge, at the right hand side of the drawer.
There were eighty of them.
$8,000 in cash.
They wished they could take a peek at her Banque Française safe deposit box, but this was the Saturday before Christmas Day, and the bank had closed at noon. Even a court order would not get it to open again before Tuesday morning, the twenty-sixth.
They went to see Manuel Escovar instead.
THE STREETS OF Little Santo Domingo were ablaze with light when they got there at eight that night. Stringed white lights hung from sidewalk to sidewalk, and dancing red and green lights flashed in every window overlooking the street. Spotlighted banners wishedFELIZNAVIDAD to the world. All up and down the street, pushcarts lighted with flashlights displayed last-minute gifts ranging from Louis Vuitton handbags to Hermès scarves and Rolex watches. Christmastime was the biggest thriller of the year, and the countdown had begun in earnest.
“All of this shit fell off the back of a truck,” Ollie commented.
They found Escovar in a little bar off Swift Street, where he was enjoying a few beers with his cronies before heading off to work at eleven. Nervously, he told them his shift began at midnight and ended at eight in the morning. Anything more than two beers would be dangerous, he told them, but he assured them he was all right with just two. Ollie suspected Mr. Escovar here did not have a green card. He suspected the man did not wish the slightest bit of trouble with the law. Which was why his hands were trembling as he smilingly explained that he was just a mellow little man with a sporty little mustache enjoying a few peaceful brews with his pals. My ass, Ollie thought. Instinctively, he knew Escovar had something to hide if only because he was a spic.
“There’s a woman who lives at 321 South Ealey,” Ollie said. “Her name’s Cassandra Jean Ridley. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“Miss Ridley, yes,” Escovar said, nodding at once. “Appar’menn nine C.”
“That’s the one,” Ollie said. “Did you see her leaving the building at anytime late last night, early this morning?”
Escovar thought this one over. Because he’s getting ready to lie, Ollie thought. He had never met anyone of Spanish descent who gave you a straight answer. Then again, he had never met any Jew, Chinaman, Polack, Irishman, or Wop, for that matter—present company excluded—who could look you in the eye and give you an unequivocal yes or no. Ollie was a consummate bigot. He knew that virtually everyone he met in this business was inferior to Detective/First Grade Oliver Wendell Weeks. That was simply the way it was, kiddies, take it or leave it. Otherwise, a fart on thee.
Escovar’s drinking buddies had moved from the bar to one of the booths, but they were watching the action here with intense interest now. Ollie glanced in their direction, and they all turned their heads away. He figuredthey didn’t have green cards, either. Escovar was still thinking.
“Take all the time you need, ah yes,” Ollie said, doing his world-famous W. C. Fields imitation.
Escovar took the suggestion to heart, the dumb little spic. The detectives waited.
“This might have been very early in the morning,” Carella suggested. “Four, five o’clock, around then.”
“I’m trine to remember,” Escovar said.
Try speaking a little English, Ollie thought.
“She might have seemed disoriented,” Carella said.
She might have had an ice pick in her forehead, Ollie thought.
“I thought she wass drunk,” Escovar said.
The way he finally tells it, Miss Ridley got out of the elevator at about four-thirty this morning, accompanied by two girls—he called them “gorls”—one on each side of her, each holding one of her arms to support her, it looked like to him.
“Can you describe these girls?” Carella asked.
“They wass big gorls. Very tall.”
“White? Black? Hispanic?”
“White,” Escovar said.
“What color hair? Black? Blond? Red?”
“It wass two blondies,” Escovar said.
Blondies, Ollie thought. Jesus.
“Skinny? Fat?” he asked.
“They wass wearin overcoats.”
Ollie wondered what the fuck that had to do with the question.
“You can still tell if a person’s skinny or fat,” he said. “Look at me. Am I skinny or fat?”
Escovar hesitated.
“Go ahead, you won’t hurt my feelings, I know I’m fat.”
“If you say so,” Escovar said shrewdly.
“In fact, I like being fat. It means I eat good.”
“Okay,” Escovar said.
“So were these two broads skinny or fat?”
“They wass healthy,” Escovar said.
“What does that mean, healthy? Big tits? Did they havetetas grandes, amigo?”
Escovar grinned.
“Bigtetas,huh?” Ollie said, grinning with him.
“Bigger than t
hey gorlfrenn, anyhow,” Escovar said, still grinning.
“How do you know she was their girlfriend?” Ollie asked. He was no longer grinning.
Neither was Escovar.
“How do you know Miss Ridley was their girlfriend?” Ollie asked.