Ax

by Ed McBain

  “So what kind of action does your friend crave?” Corey asked, stressing the word “friend” and making it clear he knew Carella’s “friend” was really Carella.

  “Cards,” Carella said. “Dice. Anything where he can parlay a small stake into some quick cash.”

  “Oh,” Corey said. “I see.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Gambling action, you mean.”

  “Mmm.”

  The men fell silent.

  Corey drew in on his cigarette.

  Carella waited.

  “Gee, Steve,” Corey said at last, “I wouldn’t know how to help your friend.”

  “You wouldn’t, huh?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “That’s a shame,” Carella said.

  “Yeah. But, you know, there’s no gambling on my beat.”

  “No.”

  “No. Not to my knowledge, anyway,” Corey said, and smiled.

  “Mmm,” Carella said.

  “Yeah,” Corey said, and drew in on his cigarette again, and again the men were silent.

  “That’s too bad,” Carella said, “because I had hoped maybe you’d know of a game.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “So I guess I’ll have to scout one up on my own,” Carella said. He grinned. “That can get expensive, of course, since I’d have to do it on my own time.”

  “Yeah,” Corey said, “I see what you mean.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “I could…uh…ask around, I guess. Maybe some of the boys know.”

  “Well, I don’t think the boys would know without your knowing, too, would they, Ralph?”

  “Sometimes,” Corey said. “You’d be surprised.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said I’d be surprised.”

  “Well,” Corey said, rising, “I’ll ask around, Steve, and see what I can get for you.”

  “Sit down a minute, Ralph,” Carella said. He smiled. “Another cigarette?”

  “No. No, thanks, I’m trying to cut down.”

  “Ralph,” Carella said, “would you like to tell me about the game in the basement of 4111 South 5th?”

  You had to hand it to Corey, Carella thought. His face did not change, he did not bat an eyelash. He simply sat opposite Carella and looked at him serenely for several moments and then said, “4111?”

  “Mmm.”

  “South Fifth?”

  “Mmm,” Carella said.

  “Don’t think I know the game you’re referring to, Steve.” Corey looked sincerely interested. “Is it a card game?”

  “Nope. Craps,” Carella said.

  “I’ll have to look into it. That’s on my beat, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. Sit down, Ralph. We’re not finished yet.”

  “I thought—”

  “Yes, sit down.” Carella smiled again. “Ralph, the man who was cutting the game wound up with an ax in his head. Name’s George Lasser, the super of the building. Do you know him, Ralph?”

  “Sure, I do.”

  “I think there may be a connection between the game and the murder, Ralph.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. That makes it a big-time game, doesn’t it? That makes it a game involved in homicide.”

  “I suppose it does. If there’s a connection between the two.”

  “Ralph, if there’s a connection between the two, and if it turns out that somebody on the force deliberately withheld information about that game in the basement of 4111 where a man got murdered, that can be pretty serious, Ralph.”

  “I suppose it can.”

  “Did you know about the game, Ralph?”

  “No.”

  “Ralph?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re going to find out.”

  “Steve?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve been a cop too long. Never shit a shitter, huh?” Corey smiled. “The guy who was running the game is dead. If I was cutting that game, Steve, and I’m only saying if— if I was cutting that game, the only guy who’d know about it besides me would be the guy who was running the game, right? And he’s dead, Steve. He got killed with an ax, Steve. So who are you trying to con?”

  “I don’t like you, Corey,” Carella said.

  “I know that.”

  “I haven’t liked you from the minute I first saw you.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “If you’re connected with this…”

  “I’m not.”

  “If you’re connected with this, Corey, if you’re making my job tougher, if you’re hindering this case…”

  “I don’t know anything about your crap game,” Corey said.

  “If you do, and if I find out that you do, I’m going to put your ass through the wringer, Corey. You’re never going to look the same again.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Corey said.

  “Now get the hell out of here.”

  “Big detective,” Corey said, and he went out of the squadroom.

  He was smiling.

  But he was worried.

  The tenants of a building in a slum area do not much give a damn about whether or not cops solve the cases they are working on. As a matter of fact, if one were to take a poll of any tenement building at any given time of the year, one would probably discover that 99 percent of the tenants would like it if every cop in the world immediately dropped dead. Well, perhaps not in April. In April, the air is mild and the breezes are balmy, and brotherly love prevails, even toward cops. In April, it is possible that the tenants might only express the desire for every cop in the city to get hit by a bus—maimed, but not killed.

  It was January.

  Cotton Hawes had his hands full.

  To begin with, the man would not let him into the basement.

  He had never seen the man before. He was a giant of a man, perhaps sixty years old, with a European accent Hawes could not accurately place. He stood at the top of the steps leading to the basement and wanted to know just what the hell Hawes wanted, and there seemed to be about him a perfection of parts: the immense head with its thatch of unruly, sandy-colored hair; the bulbous nose and large blue eyes and strong mouth and jaw; the thick neck and wide shoulders and chest, the muscular arms and huge hands—even the blue turtlenecked sweater under the brass-buttoned blue coveralls, all seemed of a piece, as though this man had been sculpted by someone with an excellent eye for proportion.

  “I’m a police officer,” Hawes said. “I want to have another look at that basement.”

  “Let me see your badge,” the man said.

  “Who are you?” Hawes asked.

  “My name’s John Iverson. I’m superintendent of the building next door, 4113.”

  “Well, what are you doing here, if you’re the super over there?”

  “Mr. Gottlieb—he’s the landlord—he asked me if I could help out for a few days. Until he found somebody to take George’s job.”

  “Help out doing what?”

  “Tend the furnace, get the garbage cans out in the morning. Same as I do next door.” Iverson paused. “Let me see your badge.”

  Hawes showed Iverson his shield and then said, “I’m going to be in the building most of the day, Mr. Iverson, part of the time here in the basement and part of the time questioning the tenants.”

  “Okay,” Iverson said, as though he were granting Hawes permission to remain. Hawes made no comment. Instead, he went down to the basement. Iverson followed him down the steps.

  “Time to check the heat,” he said almost cheerfully and then went over to the black cast-iron furnace sitting in one corner of the basement. He glanced at a gauge, picked up a shovel standing against the wall of the coal bin, and lifted open the furnace door with the blade of the shovel. He threw a dozen shovelfuls of coal into the furnace, slammed the door shut with the shovel, put the shovel back against the wall, and then leaned against the wall himself. Hawes stared at him across the length of
the basement room.

  “If you’ve got something else to do,” he said, “don’t let me hold you up.”

  “I got nothing to do,” Iverson said.

  “I thought maybe you wanted to go back next door and check the furnace there.”

  “I done that before I come here,” Iverson said.

  “I see. Well…” Hawes shrugged. “What’s this back here?” he asked.

  “George’s workbench.”

  “What kind of work did he do?”

  “Oh, odds and ends,” Iverson said.

  Hawes studied the bench. A broken chair was on its top and alongside that a partially completed rung that would have replaced the broken one. There were three shelves hanging on the basement wall over the bench, all dust-covered, all crammed full of jars and tin cans containing nails, screws, and assorted hardware. Hawes looked at the shelves again. They were not, as he had first thought, all dust-covered. The middle one, in fact, had been wiped clean of dust.

  “Anybody been down here since Friday?” he asked Iverson.

  “No, I don’t think so. They wouldn’t let anyone come down. They were taking pictures, you know.”

  “Who was?”

  “The police.”

  “I see,” Hawes said. “Well, was anyone down here this morning?”

  “Not from the police, no.”

  “Anyone from the building?”

  “Tenants come down here all the time,” Iverson said. “There’s a washing machine down here, same as in my building next door.”

  “Where’s that? The washing machine.”

  “Over there. No, behind you.”

  Hawes turned and saw the machine standing against one wall, its door open. He walked over toward it.

  “Then anyone could have come down here this morning, is that right?” he asked. “To use the machine?”

  “That’s right,” Iverson said.

  “Did you see anyone come down?”

  “Sure, I seen lots of tenants down here.”

  “Which ones? Would you remember?”

  “No.” “Try.”

  “I don’t remember,” Iverson said.

  Hawes grunted, barely audibly, and walked back to the workbench. “Was Lasser working on this chair?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Iverson said. “I guess so. If it’s on his workbench, then I guess he was working on it.”

  Hawes looked at the middle shelf again. It had definitely been wiped clean. He pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket, tented it over his hand, and pulled open one of the drawers under the workbench. The drawer was cluttered with old pencils, a straightedge, thumbtacks, a plumber’s snake, a broken stapler, rubber bands, and a dusty package of Chiclets. Hawes closed the drawer. It went halfway into the bench and then refused to move. He shoved at it again, cursed mildly, and then got on his hands and knees and crawled under the bench. He looked up at the drawer. The plumber’s snake had caught on one of the cross supports, snagging the drawer. With one hand on the basement floor, close to the right rear leg of the bench, Hawes reached up and shoved at the snake, coiling it back into the drawer. He slid out from under the bench, dusted off his trousers, and closed the drawer.

  “Is there a sink down here?” he asked.

  “Over near the washing machine,” Iverson answered.

  He walked away from the workbench and over to the sink against the opposite wall. A small covered drain was set into the basement floor in front of the sink. Hawes stopped with his feet on the drain cover, turned on the faucet, and began washing his hands with a bar of laundry soap that was resting in the basin.

  “It gets dirty in basements,” Iverson said.

  “Yeah,” Hawes answered.

  He dried his hands on his handkerchief and then left the basement, walking directly out of the building and to the corner and into a candy store. From a pay phone he called the Police Laboratory and asked to talk to Detective-Lieutenant Sam Grossman.

  “Hello?” Grossman said.

  “Sam, this is Cotton Hawes. I’m here on South Fifth, just came from the basement. They tell me your boys were down there taking pictures.”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” Grossman said.

  “Sam, have you got any pictures of the dead man’s workbench?”

  “Which one is this, Cotton? Which case?”

  “The ax murder. 4111 South 5th.”

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah. The workbench, huh? I think we’ve got some. Why?”

  “Have you looked them over yet?”

  “Only casually. I just got to the office a little while ago. My brother got married last night.”

  “Congratulations,” Hawes said.

  “Thanks. What about the workbench?”

  “Take another look at the pictures,” Hawes said. “I don’t know if it’ll show or not, but there are three shelves over the bench. The middle shelf’s been wiped clean of dust.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll take a look,” Grossman said. “If it’s anything, I’ll follow it up.”

  “Let us know, will you, Sam?”

  “Who’s working this with you?”

  “Steve Carella.”

  “Okay, I’ll get back to you. Cotton?”

  “I’m here.”

  “This may take a while.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll have to send a man down there, look over the place again, more pictures, maybe tests.”

  “Okay, just let us know.”

  “Right. Thanks a lot.”

  Hawes hung up and walked back to Lasser’s building. He wanted more than ever now to question the tenants in the building. Someone had wiped off that middle shelf, and he wondered who, and he wondered why.

  It was unfortunate that he was a cop who looked like a cop. That’s the worst kind of cop you can possibly be when you’re questioning people who dislike cops as a matter of principle. Hawes was six foot two inches tall, and he weighed 190 pounds. He had blue eyes and a square jaw with a cleft chin. His hair was red, except for a streak over his left temple where he had once been knifed and where the hair had curiously grown in white after the wound had healed. He had a straight, unbroken nose and a good mouth with a wide lower lip, but there was a look of arrogance on his face, even when he was in a good mood. He was not in a good mood when he began questioning the tenants in the building, and he was in a worse mood after he had gone through two and a half floors of snotty answers and surly attitudes.

  It was now 12:00 noon, and he was hungry, but he wanted to wrap up the third floor before he went to lunch, which would leave him three more floors to tackle in the afternoon. There were four apartments on each floor, and he had already questioned the tenants of 3-A and 3-B, which left 3-C and 3-D and then twelve more tenants on floors four to six inclusive. Some way to spend a Monday. The word had flashed through the building the moment he’d climbed the front stoop and entered the rank-smelling foyer, so everyone in the building knew that fuzz was on the scene, which wasn’t very surprising anyway, considering the fact that old Georgie Lasser had had his head opened for him on Friday afternoon last week. Nobody liked fuzz, especially on Monday, especially in January, so Hawes had his work cut out for him.

  He knocked on the door to 3-C and, getting no answer, knocked again. He was about to move on to 3-D when he heard a voice inside the apartment say, “Georgie? Is that you?”

  The voice was a young voice, and a weak one, and Hawes at first thought it belonged to someone who was sick, and then a couple of things occurred to him as he backed up to the door again. First, since everyone in the building knew John Law was here, why did that voice inside apartment 3-C ask if he was Georgie? And, second, Georgie who? The only Georgie that Hawes could think of at the moment was a dead man named George Lasser.

  He knocked on the door again.

  “Georgie?” the voice asked. The voice was still quiet, subdued. Hawes tried to remember where he had heard a similar voice before.


  “Yes,” he answered. “It’s Georgie.”

  “Just a minute,” the voice said.

  He waited.

  He heard footsteps approaching the door. Whoever did the walking was barefoot. He heard the rigid bar of a police lock being taken out of its plate screwed into the door, and then a chain being slipped out of its metal track, and then the door’s regular lock being turned, the tumblers falling, the door opening a crack.

  “You’re not—” the voice said, but Hawes’s foot was already in the door. Whoever was behind the door tried to slam it shut, but Hawes pushed his shoulder against it at just that moment and the door flew back and inward, and Hawes was inside the apartment.

  The apartment was dark. The shades were drawn, and there was the smell of urine and stale cigarette smoke and human perspiration and something else. The man standing before Hawes was in rumpled striped pajamas. A five-day stubble covered his face, and he was badly in need of a haircut. His feet were dirty and there were yellow stains on his fingers and on his teeth. Through the open door behind him, Hawes could see a bedroom and a bed with twisted sheets. A girl was on the bed. She was wearing only a soiled slip, the nylon pulled high up over one scarred thigh.

  If nothing else in the apartment spelled junkie, the girl’s thigh did.

  “Who the hell are you?” the man asked.

  “Police,” Hawes said.

  “Prove it.”

  “Don’t get smart, sonny boy,” Hawes said, pulling his wallet from his pocket. “From the looks of this, you’re in enough trouble already.”

  “Maybe you’re in trouble for unlawful entry,” the man said, looking at Hawes’s shield held up in front of his face. Hawes put the wallet back into his trouser pocket and walked to the kitchen window. He raised the shade and opened the window and, over his shoulder, said, “Have you given up breathing, or what?”