Pusher

by Ed McBain

  "No. Gonzo said I should wait until I got the word on that. He said I should keep quiet until then. This cop…" She frowned.

  "What?"

  "He said… he said maybe Aníbal didn't commit suicide."

  "What did you say?"

  Maria shrugged. "He must have committed suicide." She paused. "Didn't he?"

  "Sure, he did," the man said. He held her tighter now. "Maria…"

  "No. No, wait. My brother. He… he didn't die because of this deal, did he? This deal had nothing to do with… I said wait!"

  "I don't want to wait," he told her.

  "Did he commit suicide?" she asked, trying to hold him away from her.

  "Yes. Yes, damnit, he committed suicide!"

  "Then why are you so interested in making me lie to the cops? Was my brother killed? Was my… oh! Stop, you're hurting me!"

  "Goddamn you, can't you shut your mouth!"

  "Stop!" she said. "Stop, please, you're hurting…"

  "Then shut up about whether he was killed or he wasn't killed, who the hell gives a damn about that? What kind of a whore are you anyway?"

  "He was killed, wasn't he?" she asked, bearing his weight now, the pain disappearing. "Who killed him? Did you kill him?"

  "No."

  "Did you?"

  "Shut up! For Christ's sake, shut up!"

  "Did you kill my brother? If you killed him, I'll never lie. If you killed him for one of your deals…" She felt something warm on the side of her face quite suddenly, but she didn't know what it was and so she kept talking. "… I'll go straight to the cops. He may have been a crumb, but he was my brother, and I'm not going to lie to…"

  There was more warmth on her face, and then her throat. She reached up suddenly and then, over his body, she studied her hand, and her eyes went wide with terror when she saw the blood. He's cut me, she thought. Oh God Jesus, he's cut me!

  He backed away from her, arching his body, and she saw the knife in his right hand, the blade open, and then he slashed at her breasts and she rolled with all her strength, flinging him off her. He caught her arm and flung her back into the room, coming at her with the knife again. She held out her hands to ward off his blows, but he slashed, and then slashed back, and she began screaming as he continued swinging the knife, cutting the palms and fingers of her hands. She rushed to the door, groping with the lock, her fingers slashed, fumbling with the lock and unable to open it because her fingers would not do what she wanted them to do.

  He swung her around, and she saw him pull back the knife, and then thrust forward with it, and she felt the blade when it tore skin just below her rib cage and then ripped across her body and slashed upwards. She fell back against the door, and he slashed at her neck and her face, and then he shouted. "You don't have to lie for me, you bitch! You don't have to say another word, anymore!" He threw her away from the door, and he unsnapped the lock, and then he scooped his coat from the bed, and went to her and stood staring at her for a moment, staring at the blood-smeared caricature that had once been Maria Hernandez, and then maliciously he thrust the knife deep into her breast and brought it across her body, sure he had struck her heart. He watched as she fell to the floor, and then he ran through the door and out of the building.

  She lay in a pool of her own blood, thinking He killed my brother and now he has killed me. He killed my brother because of his deal, I was to lie, I was to say Byrnes and Aníbal argued, Gonzo told me that, a good deal he said, he gave me twenty-five dollars, more to come, he killed my brother.

  And miraculously, she crawled to the open doorway, naked, running blood every inch of the way, and she crawled into the hallway, not screaming because there was no strength in her to scream with, crawling the long, long length of the hallway while her life drained out of her, running red into the bare brown wooden floor of the building, and then into the entryway with its mailboxes, and she reached up and managed to hold the doorknob in her tattered fingers, and managed to twist the doorknob, and then fell face forward onto the sidewalk, still bleeding.

  A patrolman named Alf Levine found her a half hour later as he was making his round. He called an ambulance immediately.

  Chapter Ten

  There were four bulls in the Squad Room of the 87th on the night Maria Hernandez was stabbed.

  Detectives Meyer and Willis were sitting at one of the desks, drinking coffee. Detective Bongiorno was typing up a DD report to be turned over to the Safe and Loft Squad. Detective Temple was sitting at the telephone, catching.

  "I don't like coffee in containers," Meyer said to Willis. Meyer was a Jew whose father had a hilarious sense of humor. And since Meyer had been a change-of-life baby, which in a sense, had been a big practical joke on the old man, the old man had decided to play his own little joke on his son. And since his son's surname was Meyer, he could think of nothing more side-splitting than to make his son's given name Meyer, too. In those days, babies were born at home, delivered by midwives. There was none of the hospital pressure to name a child. Meyer's father withheld his choice of a name until the briss. He announced it just as the moile was performing the circumcision, and the resultant shock almost caused him to have a castrated son.

  Fortunately, Meyer Meyer emerged intact, if not altogether triumphant. A name like Meyer Meyer is a difficult burden to bear, especially if you live in a neighborhood where kids were wont to slit your throat if you happened to have blue eyes. Remarkably, considering the Meyer Meyer handle, and considering the unfortunate coincidence that had provided Meyer with blue eyes, he had managed to survive. He attributed his survival to an almost supernaturally patient attitude. Meyer Meyer was the most patient man in the world. But when a man bears the burden of a double-barreled name, and when a man is raised as an Orthodox Jew in a predominantly Gentile neighborhood, and when a man has made patience his credo, something's got to give. Meyer Meyer, though he was only thirty-seven years old, was as bald as a cue ball.

  "It simply doesn't taste like coffee," he expanded.

  "No? Then what does it taste like?" Willis asked, sipping.

  "It tastes like cardboard, if you want to know. Now, don't misunderstand me. I like cardboard. My wife often serves cardboard for dinner. She has some wonderful recipes for cardboard."

  "She must have got them from my wife," Temple called over.

  "Well," Meyer said, "you know how wives are. Always exchanging recipes. But my point is that I wouldn't want you to believe I'm prejudiced against cardboard. Not at all. In fact, I might honestly say that the taste of cardboard is a taste cultivated among gourmets and civilized humans all over the world."

  "Then what's your beef?" Willis asked, smiling.

  "Expectancy," Meyer said patiently.

  "I don't get it," Willis said.

  "Hal, when my wife serves dinner, I expect the taste of cardboard. We have been married, God bless her, for twelve years now and she has never disappointed me on the matter of dinner. I expect the taste of cardboard, and it is the cardboard taste I get. But when I order coffee from the local luncheonette, my taste buds are geared to enjoy the tongue-tingling tang of coffee. As you might say, my face is fixed for coffee."

  "So?"

  "So the disappointment, after the great expectations, is almost too great to bear. I order coffee, and I'm forced to drink cardboard."

  "Who's forcing you?" Willis asked.

  "To tell you the truth," Meyer said, "I'm beginning to forget what coffee in a cup tastes like. Everything in my life tastes like cardboard now. It's a sad thing."

  "I'm weeping," Temple said.

  "There are compensations, I suppose," Meyer said wearily.

  "And what are they?" Willis asked, still smiling.

  "A friend of mine has a wife who has cultivated the knack of making everything taste like sawdust." Willis laughed aloud, and Meyer chuckled and then shrugged. "I suppose cardboard is better than sawdust, already."

  "You should switch wives every now and then," Temple advised. "Break the monoton
y."

  "Of the meals, you mean?" Meyer asked.

  "What else?" Temple said, shrugging grandly.

  "Knowing your filthy mind," Meyer began, and the telephone on Temple's desk rang. Temple lifted the receiver.

  "87th Squad," he said, "Detective Temple." He listened. The Squad Room was silent. "Uh-huh," he said. "Okay, I'll send some men. Right." He hung up. "Knifing on South 14th," he said. "Levine's already called an ambulance. Meyer, Hal, you want to take this?"

  Meyer went to the clothes rack and began shrugging into his coat. "How come," he wanted to know, "you're always catching when it's cold outside?"

  "What hospital?" Willis asked.

  "General," Temple said. "Call in later, will you? This looks pretty serious."

  "How so?" Meyer asked.

  "It may turn into a homicide."

  Meyer had never liked the smell of hospitals. His mother had died of cancer in a hospital, and he would always remember her pain-wracked face, and he would always remember the smells of sickness and death, the hospital smells that had invaded his nostrils and entrenched themselves there forever.

  He did not like doctors, either. His dislike of doctors probably had its origin in the fact that a doctor had originally diagnosed his mother's malignant cancer as a sebaceous cyst. But aside and apart from this indisputably prejudiced viewpoint, he also found doctors unbearably conceited and possessed of, to Meyer, a completely unwarranted sense of self-importance. Meyer was not a man to scoff at education. He himself was a college graduate who happened to be a cop. A medical man was a college graduate who happened to have a doctorate. The doctorate, in Meyer's mind, simply meant four years of additional schooling. These years of schooling, necessary before a physician could begin practice, were akin to the years of apprenticeship any man had to serve in any given field before he became a success in that field. Why then did most doctors feel superior to, for example, advertising men? Meyer would never understand it.

  He supposed it broke down to the basic drive for survival. A doctor allegedly held survival in his hands. Meyer's impression, however, was that the physicians had inadvertently and quite unconsciously correctly labeled the pursuit of their chosen profession: practice. As far as Meyer was concerned, all doctors were doing just that: practicing. And until they got perfect, he would stay away from them.

  Unfortunately the intern in whose hands the life of Maria Hernandez lay did not help to raise Meyer's opinion of medical men in general.

  He was a young boy with bright blond hair clipped close to his scalp. His eyes were brown, and his features were regular, and he looked very handsome and very clean in his hospital tunic. He also looked very frightened. He had perhaps seen cut-up cadavers in medical school, but Maria Hernandez was the first live person he'd seen so mutilated. He stood in the hospital corridor, puffing nervously on a cigarette, talking to Meyer and Willis.

  "What's her condition now?" Willis asked.

  "Critical," the young doctor said.

  "How critical? How much longer has she got?"

  "That's… that's hard to say. She's… she's very badly cut. We've… we've managed to stop the blood, but there was so much loss before she got to us…" The Doctor swallowed. "It's hard to say."

  "May we talk to her, Doctor Fredericks?" Meyer asked.

  "I… I don't think so."

  "Can she talk?"

  "I… I don't know."

  "For Christ's sake, pull yourself together!" Meyer said irritably.

  "I beg your pardon?" Fredericks said.

  "If you have to vomit, go ahead," Meyer said. "Then come back and talk sensibly."

  "What?" Fredericks said. "What?"

  "All right, listen to me," Meyer said very patiently. "I know you're in charge of this great big shining hospital, and you're probably the world's foremost brain surgeon, and a little Puerto Rican girl bleeding her guts out over your floors is an inconvenience. But—"

  "I didn't say—"

  "But," Meyer continued, "it so happens that someone stabbed that little girl, and our job is to find whoever did it so that it won't happen again and cause you further inconvenience. A dying declaration is competent evidence. If the person has no hope of recovery, and if we get a declaration, the courts will admit it. Now—is that little girl going to live, or isn't she?"

  Fredericks seemed stunned.

  "Is she?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Then may we talk to her?"

  "I would have to check that."

  "Well then, would you please, for the love of God, go check it?"

  "Yes. Yes, I'll do that. You understand, the responsibility is not mine. I couldn't grant permission for questioning the girl without check—"

  "Go, go, already," Meyer said. "Check. Hurry."

  "Yes," Fredericks said, and he hurried off down the corridor in a fury of sudden starched energy.

  "You know the questions we're supposed to ask?" Willis said. "To make this admissible?"

  "I think so. You want to run over them?"

  "Yeah, we'd better. I think we should get a stenographer up here, too."

  "Depends on how much time there is. Maybe there's a loose secretary hanging around the hospital. A police stenographer would take—"

  "No, not enough time for that. We'll ask Fredericks if someone can take shorthand. Think she'll be able to sign?"

  "I don't know. What about the questions?"

  "The name and the address first," Willis said.

  "Yes. Then, Do you now believe that you are about to die?"

  "Yeah," Willis said. "What comes next?"

  "Jesus, I hate this, you know?" Meyer said.

  "Something about Do you hope to recover…?"

  "No, no, it's Have you no hope of recovery from the effects of the injury you have received?" Meyer shook his head. "Jesus, I hate this."

  "And then the business about Are you willing to make a true statement of how you received the injury from which you are now suffering? That's all of it, isn't it?"

  "Yes," Meyer said. "Jesus, that little girl in there…"

  "Yeah," Willis said. Both men fell silent. They could hear the quiet thrum of the hospital all around them, like a giant white heart pumping blood. In a little while, they heard footsteps echoing down the corridor.

  "Here's Fredericks now," Willis said.

  Dr. Fredericks approached them. He was sweating, and his tunic looked rumpled and soiled.

  "How about it?" Meyer said. "Did you get us permission?"

  "It doesn't matter," Fredericks said.

  "Huh?"

  "The girl is dead."

  Chapter Eleven

  Because the room in which Maria Hernandez kept her fatal assignation with a person or persons unknown was the last known place to have enclosed her murderer, it was open to particular scrutiny by the police.

  This scrutiny was of a non-theoretical nature. The laboratory technicians who descended upon the premises were not interested in exercising their imaginations. They were interested solely in clues that might lead to the identity of the person or persons who had wantonly slashed and murdered the Hernandez girl. They were looking for facts. And so, after the room had been sketched and photographed, they got down to business, and their business was a slow and laborious one.

  Chance impressions are, of course, fingerprints.

  The three kinds of chance impressions are:

  Latent prints—these are invisible. Sometimes they can be picked up with the naked eye unaided, provided they are on a smooth surface and provided indirect lighting is used.

  Visible prints—which happen to be visible only because the person who left them behind was a slob. And, being a slob, he'd allowed his fingers to become smeared with something containing color. The color was usually provided by dirt or blood.

  Plastic prints—which, as the definition implies, are left in some sort of a plastic material like putty, wax, tar, clay, or the inside of a banana peel.

  Naturally, plastic prints a
nd visible prints are the nicest kinds of chance impressions to find. At least, they entail the least amount of location work. But chance impressions being what they are—that is, fingerprints inadvertently and unconsciously left behind—the person leaving them is not always so considerate as to leave the easiest kind to find. Most chance impressions are latent prints, and latent prints must be made visible through the use of fine-grained, lumpless powders before they can be photographed or transferred on foils. This takes time. The lab boys had a lot of time, and they also had a lot of latents to play around with. The room in which Maria Hernandez had been slashed, you see, was a room used to the steady going and coming of men. Patiently, slowly, the lab boys dusted and dusted, and photographed and transferred, coming up with a total of ten different men who had left good clear latents around the room.

  They did not know that none of these men was the one who'd killed Maria. They could not have known that Maria's murderer had worn gloves until he'd climbed into bed with her that night. They did not know, and so they passed the prints on to the detectives, who checked them through I.E. and then indulged in a time-consuming round-up of available possible killers, all of whom had readily accessible (and generally true) alibis. Some of the prints had been left by persons who had never had a brush with the police. The I.E. could not identify those prints. Those men were never pulled in for questioning.

  Considering the nature of the murder room, the lab boys were not surprised to find a good many naked footprints here and there, especially in the dust-covered corners near the bed. Unfortunately, the I.E. did not keep an active footprint file. These footprints then were simply put away for possible comparison with suspects later on. One of the footprints, unsurprisingly, had been left by Maria Hernandez.

  The lab boys could find no usable shoe impressions in the room.

  They found many head hairs and several pubic hairs on the bloodstained sheets of the bed. They also found semen stains. The blanket that had been on the bed was vacuumed, and the dust collected on filter paper. The dust was then examined and analyzed carefully. The technicians found nothing in the dust that proved helpful to them.