Lightning

by Ed McBain

  “Oh,” Perez said.

  “Comes the dawn,” Ollie said. “You got them receipts someplace?”

  “In d’cashier’s office. Lass night’s tickets, you mean?”

  “That’s what we’re talking about here, last night. You also stamp those tickets, don’t you? With the time the guy came in, and the time the guy comes back to claim his car. Okay, I want to see every ticket for anybody came in around eight o’clock and left around a quarter to ten. Now that’s easy, ain’t it? In fact, that’s what my friends here shoulda done last night, but better late than never, right? Show me the tickets.”

  “The cashier hass them,” Perez said. “In the office.”

  The cashier was a black girl in her late twenties. She looked up when the detectives came into the small office. Ollie winked at Carella and then said, “Hello, sweetie.”

  “I ain’t your sweetie nor nobody else’s,” the girl said.

  “You mean you ain’t my little chocolate Tootsie Roll?”

  “What is this?” she said.

  “Police officers, Miss,” Hawes said, and showed her his shield. “We have reason to believe—”

  “We want to see your ticket stubs for last night,” Ollie said. “Anything that came in at eight, a little before eight, and left around a quarter to ten.”

  “We don’t file them that way,” the girl said. “By time.”

  “How do you file them?”

  “By the numbers on the tickets.”

  “Okay,” Ollie said, “drag out all the tickets, we’ll look through them ourselves.”

  “Here?” the girl said. “I got work to do here.”

  “So do we,” Ollie said.

  The work took them close to two hours. They divided the tickets between them, isolated all those that had been stamped with an “in” time of 7:30 or later, and then went through these for any with an “out” time between 9:45 and 10:00. They came up with three tickets and three license plate numbers.

  One of the tickets was marked: Chev-38L4721.

  The second was marked: Benz-604J29.

  The third was marked: CadSav-WU3200.

  “The rest is duck soup,” Ollie said.

  Eileen Burke did not like this job. First of all, she did not like being a woman other than herself. Next, she did not like living in another woman’s apartment. And lastly, she did not like a masquerade that made it impossible for her to see Bert Kling. Annie had told her that she could not see Bert while she was posing as Mary Hollings. If the rapist spotted her in the company of a man he had not previously seen, he might just possibly smell a trap. This would not do. Eileen was the bait. If the rat sniffed anything rancid about the offered piece of cheese, he just might run for the hills.

  Mary’s apartment was done in what Eileen would have called Victorian cum Peter Lorre. That was to say it somewhat resembled Count Dracula’s castle, lacking only its warmth. The walls throughout were painted a green that was the exact color to be found in any squadroom in the city. The rugs on the floors in the living room and bedroom were tattered Orientals that had known better snake charmers tootling their flutes upon them. The living room draperies resembled the ones Miss Haversham refused to open in Great Expectations although Eileen had to admit they were somewhat less dust-laden. And the clutter was unimaginable—even if it was Eileen’s own.

  The clutter was deliberate.

  In the several days Eileen had spent in orientation with Mary before her departure for Long Beach, she had come to learn that the woman was a slob. Perhaps it had to do with having been divorced. Or perhaps it had to do with having been raped. Either way, it was unimaginable. On her first visit to the apartment, Eileen saw panties, slips, blouses, sweaters, and slacks piled in heaps on the floors, sofas, backs of chairs, shower curtain rods, and dresser tops. Socks and pantyhose and nylons like a horde of snakes whose backs had been broken. “I usually tidy up on Saturday or Sunday,” Mary explained. “There’s no sense trying to keep up with it during the week.” Eileen had simply nodded. She’d been there to learn about the woman, not to criticize her. That first meeting had taken place on Wednesday morning, October 12. They had met again the next day, Eileen familiarizing herself with the apartment and with Mary’s everyday routine. On the fourteenth, Mary left for California, leaving behind her what appeared to be the debris of a vast army of very unsanitary women. On Saturday, Eileen had cleaned up the mess.

  That was five days ago.

  The clothes that littered the apartment now were her own; she had carried them in over a period of days, usually in shopping bags lest anyone watching might become suspicious of suitcases. The dirty dishes in the sink were dishes she herself had used. But this was only Thursday, and Mary did not normally clean up the apartment until Saturday or Sunday. If someone was watching, Eileen wanted everything to look the same as it always did. If someone was watching. She could not be sure. She hoped he was. That’s why she was here.

  On the living room side—the one featuring Miss Haversham’s fine musty drapes—the windows faced the street twelve stories below. Eileen had opened the drapes the moment she’d moved in, the better to be seen—if anyone was watching. It was easier to watch on the bedroom side of the apartment. The window there, covered with venetian blinds that hadn’t been cleaned since Venice was but a mere trickle from a leaky water faucet, opened onto a wide areaway and a building some twenty feet opposite this one. Anyone behind any of the windows or on the roof could easily see into the apartment. Eileen hoped he had binoculars. Eileen hoped he was getting a good look, and she further hoped that he would make his move soon. On Saturday, she would pick up the clothing she had deliberately scattered all over the apartment and take it down to the washing machines in the basement. On Sunday, she would start all over again with a clean slate, so to speak. But she didn’t know how long she could go on living in the midst of all this disorder. Her own apartment, by comparison, was as spartan as a monk’s cell.

  She had complained to Kling about the mess not half an hour ago—on the telephone, of course. He had listened patiently. He had told her he hoped this job would be over soon. He had told her he missed her. He had asked how long Annie expected to keep her in that apartment, wearing another woman’s nightgown to bed…

  “I wear my own nightgown,” Eileen had said.

  “So suppose he’s watching you?” Kling asked. “He sees a different nightgown, he figures ‘Uh-oh, this is an imposter in there.’”

  “Mary could have bought some new nightgowns,” Eileen said. “All she does all morning long is shop, anyway. Until noon. Mary gets up at nine every morning and Mary takes two hours to shower and dress, is what Mary does. Don’t ask me what takes Mary two hours to shower and dress. I’ve had the lieutenant call me at home on emergencies, and I was out of the place in ten minutes flat, fresh as a daisy and looking neat as a pin.”

  “To coin a couple of phrases,” Kling said.

  “Nobody likes a smart-ass,” Eileen said. “Anyway, Mary leaves her apartment at eleven o’clock every morning, and she shops until one. I was in four department stores this morning, Bert. I almost bought you a very sexy pair of undershorts.”

  “Why almost? An almost gift isn’t a gift at all.”

  “I figured if he was watching me, he’d wonder why I was buying a pair of men’s undershorts.”

  “Have you caught any glimpse of him yet?”

  “No. But I have a feeling he’s around.”

  “What kind of feeling?”

  “Just a feeling, you know? While I was having lunch—Mary has lunch at one o’clock sharp every day—every weekday, that is. On Saturdays, she doesn’t set the alarm, she just sleeps as late as she likes. Sundays, too.”

  “Maybe I’ll sneak over there on Sunday morning, pretend I’m the guy come to fix the plumbing or something.”

  “Good idea,” Eileen said. “My plumbing can use some fixing, believe me. Anyway, while I was having lunch today…”

  “Yeah, what happened?”<
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  “I had a feeling he was there.”

  “In the restaurant?”

  “Mary doesn’t eat in restaurants. Mary eats in health food joints. I have had more damn bean sprouts in the past week…”

  “But he was there, huh?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just saying it was a feeling. The place was full of mostly women, but there were maybe six guys in there and at least three of them could’ve been him. I mean, according to the description we got from the victims. White, thirty-ish, six feet tall, a hundred and eighty pounds, brown hair, blue eyes, no visible scars or tattoos.”

  “Could be anybody in the city.”

  “Don’t I know it?”

  There was a long silence on the line.

  “I have a great idea,” Kling said.

  “About the rapist?”

  “No, about us.”

  “Oh-ho,” she said.

  “Want to hear it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why don’t you go take a shower…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And then put on your nightgown…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And then get into your nice, warm bed…”

  “Mary’s bed, you mean.”

  “Mary’s bed, right. And then I’ll call you back. How does that sound?”

  “I don’t want to go to bed yet,” Eileen said. “It’s only ten o’clock.”

  “So? Mary gets up at nine o’clock every weekday morning, doesn’t she? Besides, I didn’t say you should go to sleep, I just said you should go to bed.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Eileen said. “You want to make an obscene phone call, right?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call it exactly that,” Kling said.

  “What would you call it exactly, you dirty old man?”

  “Dirty, yes. Old, no. What do you say?”

  “Sure, give me half an hour or so.”

  “Half an hour? Didn’t you tell me you sometimes get calls from your lieutenant on emergencies or something and you’re showered and dressed in ten minutes flat? What’s gonna take you half an hour now?”

  “If I’m gonna get an obscene phone call, I want to put on some perfume,” Eileen said, and hung up.

  She was in the shower when the phone rang again. She was surprised; it wasn’t like Bert to call back five minutes after she’d asked him to give her a half-hour. She decided to let the phone ring. It kept ringing. And ringing. And ringing. She got out of the shower, wrapped a bath towel around herself, and went back into the bedroom—sidestepping the piles of debris she had littered all over the floor in an attempt at simulating Mary’s lifestyle—and then went into the living room, where the phone was still ringing. She picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Eileen?”

  A woman’s voice.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Mary Hollings.”

  “Oh, hi,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize your voice.”

  “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  “I was just in the shower,” Eileen said. “That’s what took me so long to get to the phone. Are you calling from California?”

  “Yes. This is an imposition, I know, but…”

  “Not at all,” Eileen said. “What is it?”

  “Well…I’m supposed to pay my rent on the fifteenth of the month. And the thing is…I took my small checkbook out here to pay any bills that were forwarded…”

  “You asked the post office to forward your mail?” Eileen asked at once.

  “Well…yes.”

  There was a silence on the line.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Mary asked.

  “No, no, that’s fine,” Eileen said.

  She didn’t think it was so fine. Every morning, as part of the routine Mary had described to her, she’d gone down to the mailbox, surprised to find only third-class mail—magazines, solicitations, and so on. No first-class mail. This had seemed odd to her; even if no friends or relatives ever sent Mary a letter, there surely should have been bills. Now she had the answer. Mary had asked the post office to forward her mail to Long Beach, undoubtedly specifying that the order applied to first-class mail only. But if the rapist had been watching Mary before she’d gone to California, would he have seen her when she went to the post office? And if he’d followed her inside, would he have seen her filling out a change of address card? And if so, did he now know that the woman living in Mary Hollings’s apartment wasn’t Mary Hollings at all? Eileen didn’t like it one damn bit. The silence on the phone lengthened.

  At last, Mary said, “I thought I’d paid the rent before I left. I usually try to pay it two or three days before it’s due. I sent it to this company that manages the building, they’re called Reynolds Realty, Inc.”

  “Uh-huh,” Eileen said.

  “But I took only my small checkbook out here, the one I usually carry in my handbag…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And what I normally do is I pay the rent from the big checkbook. The one with three checks on a page, do you know the kind I mean?”

  “Uh-huh,” Eileen said.

  “So I have no way of checking,” Mary said, “on whether I paid the rent or not. I wouldn’t want to come home and discover I’ve been dispossessed or something.”

  “So…uh…what is it?” Eileen said.

  “I wonder if you’d do me a favor.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re in the living room, aren’t you? That’s where the phone is, so that’s where I guess you are.”

  “That’s where I am,” Eileen said.

  Dripping all over your Oriental rug, she thought, but did not say. “Well, in the desk where the phone is…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The bottom drawer on the right-hand side…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There’s my big checkbook. The one I didn’t take out here. Because I figured I could pay any forwarded bills from my small checkbook.”

  “Okay,” Eileen said.

  “Would you mind terribly looking at the checkbook, the big one, and seeing if I paid the rent? If I paid it, it would be around October twelfth or thirteenth, sometime around then. Could you please look?”

  “Sure, just a sec,” Eileen said.

  She opened the bottom drawer on the right-hand side of the desk, rummaged around under some folders and loose sheets of paper and found the checkbook.

  “I’ve got it,” she said, “let me take a look.”

  She pulled the chair out from the kneehole, sat, turned on the desklamp, and opened the checkbook.

  “October twelfth or thirteenth,” she said.

  “Around then,” Mary said.

  “October seventh,” she said aloud, turning the pages of stubs in the binder, “October ninth…What was the name of the place again?”

  “Reynolds Realty, Inc.”

  “October eleventh,” Eileen said, “October…Here it is. October twelfth, Reynolds Realty, Inc., six hundred and fourteen dollars. The stub is marked ‘Rent due October fifteenth.’ I guess you paid it, Mary.”

  “What a relief,” Mary said. “I really was worried that they’d change the lock on the door or something. I’d get home and find…” She hesitated. “When do you think that’ll be?” she asked. “My coming home, I mean. Have you had any luck yet?”

  “Not a nibble,” Eileen said.

  “Because…My sister’s a lovely person, and she’s very happy to see me and all…But I’ve been here almost a week now…”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And I have the feeling I’m overstaying my welcome a bit.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Not that she’s said anything to me…”

  “I understand.”

  “But you begin to sense things, you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “So…When do you think you’ll be finished there? I mean, how long will you keep doing this? If he doesn’t show up, I mean.�
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  “I’ll have to discuss that with Detective Rawles,” Eileen said. “I don’t know how long she plans to keep the job running. Can I get back to you sometime tomorrow?”

  “Oh sure, there’s no rush. I mean, my sister isn’t throwing me out into the street or anything. I was just wondering, that’s all.”

  “I’ll try to find out. And I’ll get back to you.”

  “You have the number here in Long Beach, don’t you?”

  “Yes, you gave it to me.”

  “Well,” Mary said. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Goodbye now.”

  “Goodbye, Mary.”

  There was a click on the line. Eileen replaced the receiver on its cradle, and looked at her watch. If she didn’t hurry, she’d miss the first obscene phone call she’d ever had in her life. She was heading back for the bedroom when the phone rang again. She looked at her watch again. Bert? Fifteen minutes early? Mary again, asking her to look up something else in the checkbook? She went back to the desk and lifted the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Eileen?”

  She recognized the voice at once.

  “Hello, Annie,” she said, “how are you?”

  “The question is how’re you?”

  “Surviving,” Eileen said. “What’s up?”

  “Have you got a minute?”

  “Barely,” she said, and looked at her watch again.

  “Oh?” Annie said. “Plans for tonight?”

  “Sort of,” Eileen said.

  She did not think it wise to explain to Detective First/Grade Anne Rawles exactly what those plans were. The plans, in fact, were somewhat vague in her own mind. But she had read books, ah yes, she had read books. All sorts of fantasies were dancing through her head.

  “You going out or something?” Annie asked.

  “No, not tonight. I was out last night. I went to a movie.”

  “Any sign of him?”

  “No.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “As alone as anyone can be,” Eileen said.