Ax

by Ed McBain

  Hawes grinned a peculiar shark grin of his own. “Neither do I,” he said.

  Spedino shrugged and went out of the squadroom.

  The funny part about Spedino’s story was that it seemed to check out. He was working in a bookstore called The Bookends in Riverhead, and the owner of the store—a Mr. Matthew Hicks—told Carella that Spedino did handle the store’s cash and did keep an eye out for petty thefts which, apparently, he was expert at spotting. Hicks paid him $85 before taxes for his duties, and Spedino seemed happy with the job and happy with his wife and happy with his two children, one of whom was married to a carpenter, the other of whom was going to college and studying pharmacy.

  Carella hung up and relayed the information to Hawes, who nodded grimly and pulled the telephone directory from its drawer in his desk. They found a listing for a Sigmund Reuhr on Bartlett Street, and they checked out a police sedan and drove down there to kill the morning. On the way down, Hawes again brought up the fact that George Lasser had been able to afford a son in a fancy-shmancy prep school and a wife in a private mental institution, all on what a janitor was earning back in 1939.

  “Well, where the hell was he getting the money?” Carella answered somewhat testily.

  “Hey, what did I do?” Hawes asked, surprised.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Carella said. “This case is beginning to bug me, that’s all. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s puzzles.”

  “Maybe Mr. Reuhr will solve all the puzzles for us,” Hawes said, and smiled.

  “I hope so,” Carella said. “I certainly hope somebody will solve all the puzzles.”

  Mr. Reuhr, as it turned out, wasn’t solving any puzzles for them that morning. Mr. Reuhr was a man of about sixty-five with a thin wiry frame and a bald head and piercing brown eyes. He was wearing a brown cardigan sweater over a plaid woolen sports shirt, and he admitted them to his apartment after they’d identified themselves and then asked what he could do for them.

  “You can tell us all about the crap games in the basement of 4111 South 5th,” Carella said, laying it right on the line.

  “The what games?” Reuhr asked.

  “Mr. Reuhr, we’re not in a mood to fool around,” Carella said, figuring he’d come this far already, so what the hell? “Gambling’s only a misdemeanor, but homicide’s the worst felony you’d want to get mixed up in. Now how about telling us what you were doing at those games, and who else was there, and why…”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reuhr said.

  “The crap games, Mr. Reuhr.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The murder of George Lasser, Mr. Reuhr.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay, I told you we didn’t feel like kidding around. Get your hat, Mr. Reuhr.”

  “Are you arresting me?” Reuhr asked.

  “We’re going to have a private little lineup, Mr. Reuhr. We’re going to walk you in front of another dice player and ask him to identify you. How about that, Mr. Reuhr?”

  “I hope you know there are laws in this city against false arrest,” Reuhr said.

  “Oh? Are you a lawyer, Mr. Reuhr?”

  “I’ve done work for law firms.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Accounting.”

  “Do you have your own firm, or do you work for someone?”

  “I’m retired now,” Reuhr said. “I used to work for Cavanaugh and Post here in the city.”

  “Good. In that case you won’t be losing any time.”

  “I want to call a lawyer,” Reuhr said.

  “Mr. Reuhr, we are not arresting you,” Carella said. “We are asking you politely to accompany us to the precinct, a request which is within our rights as police officers investigating a murder. Once we get to the station, we will hold you only a reasonable length of time before either releasing you or booking you on a specific charge. All legal and nice, Mr. Reuhr.”

  “What’s a reasonable length of time?” Reuhr asked.

  “There are several people we have to contact,” Carella said. “As soon as they arrive, we’ll have our lineup, okay? It shouldn’t take very long at all.”

  “I’m going with you under protest,” Reuhr said, and he put on his coat.

  “Mr. Reuhr,” Carella advised him, “this is not a baseball game.”

  When they got back to the squadroom, Carella called Danny Gimp and told him he had picked up Reuhr and was thinking of picking up Spedino as well.

  “How come?” Danny asked.

  “I want your contact to identify them.”

  “Why? Did they say they weren’t at those games?”

  “That’s right.”

  “They’re full of it. This was straight goods, Steve. The guy I got it from had no reason to snow me.”

  “Okay, would he be willing to come up here and identify them?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t realize he was handing this info to the cops, you dig?”

  “Well, break the news to him, will you?”

  “I still don’t think he’d come up, Steve.”

  “We can always pinch him.”

  “That’d louse me up just dandy. Besides, it’s academic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You want to pinch him, you’ll have to get extradition papers.”

  “Why? Where is he?”

  “He went down to Jamaica Saturday.”

  “When’s he coming back?”

  “When the season’s over. After Easter.”

  “That’s great,” Carella said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Argh, the hell with it,” Carella said, and hung up. He stared at the phone for several moments and then went through the gate in the wooden railing and walked down the corridor to where Hawes was waiting with Reuhr in what was loosely called the Interrogation Room. He opened the frosted glass door, went into the room, sat on the edge of the long table, and said, “I promised a reasonable length of time, right, Mr. Reuhr? How long have you been here now? Ten minutes?”

  “How much longer will it—”

  “You can go home,” Carella said. Reuhr looked up at him in surprise. “Go ahead, you heard me. Go home.”

  Reuhr rose without saying a word. He put on his hat and coat and walked out of the room.

  The call from Detective-Lieutenant Sam Grossman came at 2:30 that afternoon. A blustery wind was blowing in over Grover Park, lashing the meshed squadroom windows, whistling under the eaves of the old building. Carella listened to the roar of the wind and beneath that, like a warm breeze from somewhere south, the gentle voice of Sam Grossman.

  “Steve, I may have something on this ax murder,” Grossman said.

  “Like what?” Carella asked.

  “Like a motive.”

  For a moment Carella was silent. The window panes rattled beneath a new furious gust of wind.

  “What did you say?” he asked Grossman.

  “I said I think I may have a motive.”

  “For the killing?”

  “Yes, for the killing. What did you think? Of course for the killing. Did you think for the bar mitzvah?”

  “I’m sorry, Sam. This case has been—”

  “Okay, you want to hear this or not? I’m a busy man.”

  “Shoot,” Carella said, smiling.

  “I think the motive is robbery,” Grossman said.

  “Robbery?”

  “Yeah. What’s the matter with you? You going a little deaf or something? Robbery is what I said.”

  “But what was there to rob in that basement?”

  “Money,” Grossman said.

  “Where?”

  “Can I tell it in sequence?”

  “Sure, go ahead,” Carella said.

  “We don’t usually like to mess around with deduction here at the lab,” Grossman said. “We leave that to you masterminds who are out in the field. But—”

  “Yeah, ma
sterminds,” Carella said.

  “Listen, would you mind not interrupting?”

  “Go ahead, go ahead,” Carella said. “I’m sorry, sir, terribly sorry, believe me. I mean that sincerely, sir.”

  “Yeah, up yours, too,” Grossman said. “I’m trying to tell you that Cotton’s call set off a train of thought down here, and I think it all adds up now.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Carella said.

  “Well, there’s a workbench near the furnace. I guess you saw that.”

  “Over behind the coal bin?”

  “I think so. You’d be better at locating it than I. All I’ve got is pictures. You were down there.”

  “Well, go ahead, Sam.”

  “Okay. There are three shelves over the workbench. They’re crammed with jars and tin cans, all of which are full of screws, nuts, bolts, nails, the usual junk you expect to find near a workbench. They’re also full of dust.”

  “Cotton’s told me all this,” Carella said.

  “Right. Then you also know that two shelves are covered with dust, but shelf number three, the middle one, has been wiped clean.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, what’s the obvious reason?”

  “Fingerprints.”

  “Sure. Every schoolboy knows that. So I send John Di Mezzo down for another look, with instructions to study each and every jar and can on that shelf. Johnny does. He’s a very good man.”

  “And?”

  “Why did I ask him to study those jars and cans?” Grossman asked.

  “What is this? A police quiz?”

  “I’m checking up,” Grossman said.

  “Because you figured if somebody wiped that shelf, he must have been after something on the shelf and—once he got it—was afraid he’d left prints behind. Since the shelf contained only jars and cans, what he was after must have been in the jars or cans.”

  “Brilliant,” Grossman said.

  “Elementary,” Carella answered.

  “In any case, Johnny goes over that middle shelf very carefully and discovers that most of the jars and cans on it are also covered with a layer of nice basement dust. Except one. This single can has been wiped clean, too, just like the shelf. Maxwell House.”

  “What?”

  “The can. It was a Maxwell House Coffee can.”

  “Oh. Is that important?”

  “No, but I thought you might be interested. In any case, Johnny figures maybe we’d better get that can down here and give it a once-over. So he wraps it carefully and lugs it downtown, and we’ve been going over it. It was full of nuts and bolts and screws and whatnot, you know, just like everything else on the shelf. But after examining it, we have reason to believe the nuts and bolts and junk were put into the can after it was wiped clean. Which brings up the possibility that the can contained something else before it was wiped.”

  “Hold it, hold it. You’re losing me,” Carella said.

  “I’ll start from the beginning,” Grossman said. “Middle shelf wiped clean of dust, got it?” “I’ve got it.”

  “Maxwell House Coffee can wiped clean of dust, got it?”

  “Got—”

  “But full of nuts and bolts and junk.”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay. We empty the can of nuts, bolts, junk, and what do we find?”

  “What?”

  “The inside of the can is wiped spotlessly clean, too. Why bother wiping the inside of the can if the can is full of junk?”

  “Why indeed?” Carella asked.

  “Because it wasn’t full of junk. That was put in after the can was wiped.”

  “What was it full of?”

  “You want my guess? Money.”

  “Anything to back that?”

  “Not a thing. Except your own report on the deadman. You said he picked up extra money by selling firewood to some of the tenants in the building.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, it’s conceivable he kept his receipts in an old coffee can in the basement.”

  “Come on, Sam. How much money could he have had in there? A couple of bucks?”

  “I know I don’t have to remind you of the many murders that have been committed for a couple of cents in this fair city of ours.”

  “No, you don’t have to remind me.”

  “Okay. I’m suggesting to you, Steve, that somebody took something out of that can, and that most likely the something was money. Then, in all probability, the thief remembered all those movies he’d seen about leaving fingerprints behind, so he wiped off the can inside and out, and then figured an empty can would look pretty funny on a shelf with full cans. So he reached into all of the open cans on the other shelves, taking a few nuts from this one, a few bolts from that one, until he had enough to fill the coffee can. Then he wiped off the shelf for good measure.”

  “Not too smart, is he?” Carella said.

  “No, not too smart,” Grossman answered. “Who says murders have to be smart? That’s for the comic books. This particular murderer was pretty stupid, in fact. He wipes off one can and one shelf, leaving the others all covered with dust. He couldn’t have caught our attention more effectively if he’d erected a big neon arrow over the workbench.”

  “Maybe he wanted to catch our attention,” Carella suggested.

  “Uh-uh.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he made another mistake.”

  “Which was?”

  “After all his careful wiping and dusting, he left a goddamn fingerprint on the can.”

  “What!”

  “Yeah, how about that?”

  “Where?”

  “On the rim. Part of a thumbprint. He probably left it when he was putting the can back on the shelf.”

  “Can you get it over to me right away?”

  “I’ve already checked it through BCI, Steve. No make.”

  “What about the FBI?”

  “I can send it directly from here,” Grossman said. “Save a little time.”

  “I’d appreciate it.” Carella paused. “Maybe I ought to go down and take a look at the basement again myself,” he said.

  “You can’t lose anything,” Grossman said.

  “What do you figure came first? The murder or the theft?”

  “You’re buying my theory?”

  “I’m buying anything anyone is selling these days,” Carella said, and smiled. “What do you think the chronology was?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the murder came first. That would explain the mistakes. Our man might not be so stupid after all. Maybe he simply panicked after the murder.”

  “You think he knew where that money was kept?”

  “No sign of any ransacking, so he must have known.”

  “Mm.”

  “What do you think, Steve?”

  “I’ll tell you something,” Carella said. “For an eighty-seven-year-old cockuh…excuse me, do you understand Yiddish?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I understand Yiddish,” Grossman said.

  “For an eighty-seven-year-old cockuh, this Lasser character is sure turning out to be a mystery man.”

  “Everybody’s a mystery man,” Grossman said philosophically. “It takes murder to bring out all the hidden elements, that’s all.”

  “Well, thank you anyway for a nice alley to explore and a nice fingerprint to compare against a suspect, if we ever get a suspect. Thank you very much, Sam.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Grossman said. “And don’t worry. You’ll crack this one, too.”

  “You think so, Sam?”

  “Of course I think so! What do you think’s going to happen? The bad guy’s going to win? Don’t be ridiculous!”

  On Tuesday morning Cotton Hawes went downtown to 1107 Ganning Street where the accounting firm called Cavanaugh and Post maintained its offices. Sigmund Reuhr had told the detectives he’d once been an accountant with that firm, and Hawes went there in an attempt to learn a little more about the respectably retired, s
ixty-five-year-old man who attended crap games in slum basements and who lied about them later.

  Uptown, in a slum basement, one cop missed death by four inches and another cop missed staying alive by four inches.

  The person Hawes spoke to in the firm of Cavanaugh and Post was none other than Mr. Cavanaugh himself, who was a portly gentleman with a handlebar mustache and a florid complexion. Sitting opposite him, Hawes found it difficult to accept Cavanaugh as an American businessman who had been born in Philadelphia and raised on that city’s brotherly South Side. Cavanaugh resembled a colonel of English cavalry, and Hawes fully expected him to yell “Charge!” at any moment and then push on to storm the Turkish bastions.

  “You want to know about Siggie, huh?” Cavanaugh said. “Why? Is he in some kinda trouble?”

  “None at all,” Hawes said. “This is a routine check.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What does what mean?” Hawes said.

  “A routine check. What do you mean by ‘routine check’?”

  “We’re investigating a murder,” Hawes said flatly.

  “You think Siggie killed somebody?”

  “No, that’s not what we think. But certain aspects of our information don’t seem to jibe, Mr. Cavanaugh. We have reason to believe Mr. Reuhr is lying to us, which is why we felt we should look into his background somewhat more extensively.”

  “You talk nice,” Cavanaugh said appreciatively.

  Hawes, embarrassed, said, “Thank you.”

  “No, I mean it. Where I was raised, if you talked that way you got your head busted. So I talk this way. I got one of the biggest accounting firms in this city, and I sound like a bum, don’t I?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then what do I sound like?”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “A bum, right?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Okay, we won’t argue. Anyway, you talk nice. I like a guy who talks nice. What do you want to know about Siggie?”

  “How long did he work here?”

  “From 1930 until just last year when he retired.”

  “Was he honest?” Hawes asked.

  “Right away he hits the bull’s-eye,” Cavanaugh said.