Lightning

by Ed McBain

  “No, no. Every three weeks.”

  “Then you did not have your hair cut on Saturday, September third?”

  “I did not.”

  “When’s the last time you had it cut?” Hawes asked.

  “Last Tuesday,” Benson said.

  “That would be October fourth,” Carella said, looking at the calendar.

  “I suppose.”

  “And three weeks before that would have been September thirteenth.”

  “If that’s what the calendar says.”

  “And three weeks before that would have been August twenty-third.”

  “Where’s all this going, would you mind telling me? Do I need another haircut?”

  “Mr. Benson, you said you left your robe in Miss Schaffer’s apartment on September fifth, the last time you saw her.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you haven’t seen her since.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “You didn’t see her on September fifteenth, did you? Two days after you’d had a haircut?”

  “I did not.”

  “You didn’t see her on October sixth, did you? Again, two days after you’d had a haircut?”

  “I didn’t see her on either of those days. The last time I saw her—”

  “Yes, you told us. Labor Day.”

  “Why are you lying to us?” Hawes asked gently.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Mr. Benson,” Carella said, “our laboratory report indicates that you had your hair cut forty-eight hours before it was deposited on that robe. You say you left the robe there on Labor Day, but you didn’t have your hair cut on September third, so either you left the robe there after an earlier haircut, or else you left it there after a later haircut, but you couldn’t have left it there on September fifth, which you say is the last time you saw Marcia Schaffer.”

  “So why are you lying to us?” Hawes asked.

  “Maybe I saw her after Labor Day,” Benson said. “What was that date you mentioned? The haircut before this last one?”

  “You tell me,” Carella said.

  “Whenever it was. The fourteenth, the fifteenth. Whenever.” He lifted his martini glass and took a quick swallow of it.

  “But not this past week, huh? Not October sixth.”

  “No, I’m sure of that.”

  “You did not see Marcia Schaffer on October sixth, two days after you had your most recent haircut? You did not forget your robe in her apartment on October sixth?”

  “I’m positive I didn’t.”

  “Where were you on October sixth, Mr. Benson?”

  “What day was that?”

  “A Thursday. Thursday last week, Mr. Benson.”

  “Well, I’m sure I was at work.”

  “All day Thursday?”

  “Yes, all day.”

  “You didn’t see Miss Schaffer on Thursday night, did you?”

  “No, I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “How about Wednesday night?”

  Benson sipped at his martini again.

  “Did you see her on Wednesday night?” Hawes asked.

  “The fifth of October?” Carella asked.

  “Mr. Benson?” Hawes said.

  “Did you see her that night?” Carella said.

  “All right,” Benson said, and put down his glass. “All right, I saw her last Wednesday night, I was with her last Wednesday night. I went there right after work, we had dinner together and spent the…the rest of the night…”

  The detectives said nothing. They waited.

  “…in bed, I guess you’d say,” Benson said, and sighed.

  “When did you leave the apartment?” Carella asked.

  “The next morning. I went directly to work from there. Marcia was on her way to school.”

  “This was Thursday morning, October sixth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that when you forgot the robe?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time was that, Mr. Benson?”

  “I left the apartment at about eight-thirty.”

  “And you’d had your hair cut at four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a time span of about forty hours,” Carella said to Hawes.

  “Close enough,” Hawes said, nodding.

  “Where were you Thursday night at approximately seven o’clock?” Hawes asked.

  “I thought nobody was saying I killed her,” Benson said.

  “Nobody’s said it yet.”

  “Then why do you want to know where I was Thursday night? That’s when she was killed, isn’t it? Thursday night?”

  “That’s when she was killed.”

  “So where were you Thursday night?” Carella asked.

  “At seven o’clock, give or take,” Hawes said.

  “I was having dinner with a friend of mine.”

  “What friend?”

  “A woman I know.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Why do you have to drag her into this?”

  “What’s her name, Mr. Benson?”

  “She’s just a casual acquaintance, someone I met at the agency.”

  “She works at the agency?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s her name?” Hawes asked.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  Hawes and Carella looked at each other.

  “How old is this one?” Hawes asked.

  “It isn’t that. She’s not underage.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Benson shook his head.

  “Was it only dinner last Thursday night?” Carella asked.

  “It was more than dinner,” Benson said softly.

  “You went to bed with her,” Hawes said.

  “I went to bed with her.”

  “Where?”

  “My apartment.”

  “On Boulder Street.”

  “Yes, that’s where I live.”

  “You had dinner with her at seven…”

  “Yes.”

  “And got back to the apartment at what time?”

  “About nine.”

  “And went to bed with her.”

  “Yes.”

  “What time did she leave the apartment?”

  “At about one, a little later.”

  “What’s her name, Mr. Benson?” Hawes asked.

  “Look,” Benson said, and sighed.

  The detectives waited.

  “She’s married, okay?” Benson said.

  “Okay,” Hawes said, “she’s married. What’s her name?”

  “She’s married to a cop,” Benson said. “Look, I don’t want to get her in trouble, really. We’re talking about murder here.”

  “You’re telling us?” Carella said.

  “My point…the point is…This thing is getting a lot of attention. The one last night—”

  “Oh, you know about the one last night?” Hawes asked.

  “Yes, it was on television this morning. If a cop’s wife seems to be involved…”

  “Involved how?” Carella asked. “Is she involved?”

  “I’m talking about dragging her name into it. Suppose the newspapers found out? A cop’s wife? They’d have a field day with it.”

  “We’ll keep it a secret,” Carella said. “What’s her name?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Where does her husband work?” Hawes asked. “This cop?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Where were you last night?” Hawes asked, and suddenly leaned into Benson.

  “What?” Benson said.

  “Last night, last night,” Hawes said. “When the hell was last night, Steve? You’ve got the calendar there.”

  “What?” Carella said. He’d heard Hawes, he wasn’t asking what Hawes had said. He was simply surprised by the sudden anger in Hawes’s voice. So okay, Benson was bedding a cop’s wife. Not entirely unheard of in the annals of the department, witness Bert Klin
g’s recent divorce premised on exactly such a situation. So why the sudden anger?

  “What?” he said again.

  “Last night’s date,” Hawes said impatiently. “Give it to him.”

  “October thirteenth,” Carella said.

  “Where were you last night, October thirteenth?” Hawes asked.

  “With…her,” Benson said.

  “The cop’s wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “In bed again?”

  “Yes.”

  “You like to live dangerously, don’t you?” Hawes said, the same anger in his voice, his blue eyes flashing, his red hair looking as if it had suddenly caught fire. “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t want to tell you that.”

  “What’s her fucking name?” Hawes said, and grabbed Benson’s arm.

  “Hey,” Carella said, “come on.”

  “Her name,” Hawes said, tightening his grip on Benson’s arm.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Benson said.

  Carella sighed heavily. “Mr. Benson,” he said, “you realize—”

  “Let go of my arm,” Benson said to Hawes.

  “You realize, don’t you,” Carella said, “that Marcia Schaffer was killed last Thursday night…”

  “Yes, damn it, I know that! Let go of my arm!” he said to Hawes again, and tried to yank it away. Hawes’s fingers remained clamped on it.

  “And that your alibi for that night—”

  “It isn’t an alibi!”

  “—and for last night, when yet another person was—”

  “I didn’t kill either of them!”

  “The only one who can verify—”

  “Her name is Robin Steele, damn it!” Benson said, and Hawes let go of his arm.

  There were times when Cotton Hawes wished he really was named Great Farting Bull Horse. He hated the name Hawes. It was hard to say. Hawes. It sounded like yaws, a disease of some kind, he hated the name. He hated the name Cotton, too. Nobody on earth was named Cotton except Cotton Mather, and he’d been dead since 1728. But Hawes’s father had been a religious man who’d felt that Cotton Mather was the greatest of the Puritan priests and had named his son in honor of the colonial God-seeker who’d hunted witches with the worst of them. Conveniently, Hawes’s father had chalked off the Salem trials—his father had been very good at chalking off things—as the personal petty revenges of a town feeding on its own ingrown fears. Jeremiah Hawes (why hadn’t he named Hawes “Jeremiah, Jr.”?) simply exonerated Cotton Mather and the role the priest had played in bringing the delusion to its fever pitch, naming his son in the man’s honor. Why hadn’t he named him “Lefty” instead? Hawes wasn’t left-handed, but he would have preferred “Lefty” to “Cotton.” Lefty Hawes. Scare the shit out of any cheap thief on the street.

  There were also times when Hawes hated anyone who wasn’t a cop. This went for cops’ wives or girlfriends, too. If they weren’t on the force, then they didn’t know what the hell it was all about. You double-dated with another cop and his girlfriend, you sat there trying to tell the women that you almost got shot that afternoon, they wanted to talk about their nails instead. Some new nail polish that made your nails grow long. Guy with a .357 Magnum tries to blow you away three hours earlier, and they want to talk about their nails. If they weren’t on the force, they just didn’t understand. Hawes once told Meyer that Star Wars had it all wrong. It shouldn’t have been, “May the force be with you.” What it should have been, instead, was, “May you be with the force.”

  Anybody who wasn’t on the force didn’t really want to hear about what it was like being a cop. They all agreed that this city was a nice place to visit, but who’d want to live here? Even though they lived here, they complained about living here. But the things they complained about weren’t the things that made it really difficult to live here—and impossible to work here, if you happened to be a cop. They didn’t know about the underbelly. They didn’t want to hear about the underbelly in this city or in any city. The underbelly was pale white, and it was slimy, and maggots clung to it. The underbelly was a working cop’s life, day in and day out.

  Cops’ wives and girlfriends understood that their men looked at the underbelly twenty-four hours a day, but they didn’t want to hear the underbelly defined. They said novenas in church, praying that their men wouldn’t get hurt out there, but they didn’t want to know about the underbelly, not really. Sometimes they prayed that they wouldn’t have to hear about it, know about it, that pale white, maggoty-crawling underbelly. Sometimes, they tried to forget about it by going to bed with somebody who wasn’t a cop. Later, they prayed forgiveness for their sins—but at least they hadn’t had to touch that pale white underbelly and get its slime all over their fingers.

  Robin Steele’s husband worked out of the Two-Six downtown.

  He was a patrolman.

  He’d been on the force for three years, hardly enough time to get burned out, especially in a soft precinct like the Two-Six.

  But Robin Steele had been sleeping with Martin J. Benson for the past six months now.

  She confirmed that she had been with Benson on the night of October sixth, while her husband was riding shotgun in a radio motor patrol car. She confirmed that she was with him again last night, while her husband was again occupied on the city streets. She asked them please not to tell her husband any of this. She told Carella that she loved her husband very much and wouldn’t want to see him hurt in any way. She knew he was in a dangerous job, and she didn’t want him to have any worries on his mind when he was out there doing whatever it was he did. When Hawes asked her if she knew she wasn’t the only woman in Benson’s life, she said, “Oh, sure, that doesn’t matter.”

  None of it mattered, Hawes guessed.

  Except that somebody was hanging young girls from lampposts.

  He guessed he called Annie Rawles because he wanted to be near a woman who was a cop. He wanted to be able to relax with somebody without having to explain what the hell a duty chart was. He wanted to be with someone who would automatically understand about the underbelly. At first he thought he might take a whack at Dorothy Hudd of the hanging pearls and roaming fingers. He went so far as to look up her name in the Isola directory, finding a listing for a D. Hudd (why did women use only the initial of their first name in telephone directories, a sure invitation to heavy breathers?), dialed the first two numbers, and then hung up, figuring he did not want to be with a civilian on a day when a good suspect had come up with an excellent alibi.

  He called the Departmental Directory instead, identified himself as a working cop, told the clerk who took his rank and shield number that he was working a case with Detective Rawles of the Rape Squad, and got her home phone number in minutes. She’s probably married, Hawes thought as he dialed the number. But he hadn’t seen a wedding band on her hand. Maybe Rape Squad cops didn’t wear wedding bands. He listened to the phone ringing on the other end.

  “Hello?” a woman’s voice said.

  “Miss Rawles?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Cotton Hawes,” he said.

  “Who?” she said.

  “Hawes. The Eight-Seven. You were up there last week about a rape case, we talked briefly…”

  “Oh, yes, hi,” Annie said. “Hawes. The redheaded one.”

  “Yes,” Hawes said.

  “You got him, is that it?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The rapist.”

  “No, no,” Hawes said. “Eileen Burke was in late this afternoon, I gather she’s been assigned…”

  “Yes.”

  “But I don’t think she’s beginning till tomorrow.”

  “That’s right. I just thought lightning may have struck.”

  “No such luck.”

  There was a long silence on the line.

  “So…uh…what is it?” Annie asked.

  Hawes hesitated.

  “Hello?” Annie said.

  “Hello, I’m
still here.” He hesitated again. “You’re not married or anything, are you?”

  “No, I’m not married,” Annie said. He thought he detected a smile in her voice.

  “Have you had dinner yet? I know it’s past seven, maybe you’ve already…”

  “No, I haven’t had dinner yet,” she said. He was sure she was smiling now. “I just got in a few minutes ago, in fact.”

  “Would you…uh…?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Want to pick me up here, or shall we meet someplace?”

  “Eight o’clock sound all right?” Hawes asked.

  They had dinner in a Chinese restaurant and went back to Annie’s place later on. She lived in an old brick building on Langley Place, near the Three-One, which was one of the oldest precincts in the city, and which still had a coal-burning furnace in the basement. She told him that she was sure her presence in the building accounted for the fact that there hadn’t been a burglary here in three years. She figured word had got around that a lady cop lived in the building. She told him this while she was pouring cognac into brandy snifters.

  She was wearing a simple blue dress and blue patent-leather high-heeled pumps; he doubted she’d been dressed for work that way. She looked like any pretty civilian might look—black wedge-cut hair, brown eyes behind black-rimmed eyeglasses, the simple blue dress, a gold chain and pendant—well, no. A civilian in this city wouldn’t risk wearing a gold chain. A lady cop with a .38 in her handbag might take the chance. But otherwise, she didn’t look like a cop; some of the lady cops in this city resembled hog callers at a county fair, big guns on their hips, cartridge belts hanging, big fat asses. Annie Rawles looked like a schoolgirl. Word had it that she had blown away two hoods trying to rob a bank, but Hawes couldn’t visualize it. Couldn’t see her in a policeman’s crouch, leveling the gun and squeezing off however many shots it had taken to deck the bastards. He tried to imagine the scene. As he accepted the brandy snifter from her, he realized he was staring.

  “Something?” she said, and smiled.

  “No, no,” Hawes assured her. “Just remembering you’re a cop.”

  “Sometimes I wish I could forget it,” Annie said.

  She sat beside him on the couch, tucking her legs up under her. The room was pleasantly furnished, a Franklin stove laid with cannel coal on the wall opposite the sofa, framed prints on all of the walls, a pass-through counter leading into a tidy kitchen hung with copper-bottomed pots and pans. The furniture looked like quality stuff; he remembered she earned $37,935 a year as a detective/first. He sipped at the cognac.