Lead With Your Left

by Ed Lacy

  As I put the bag on the desk Reed said, “This is Detective Austin from Homicide. You've met Detective Hayes; this is his partner, Detective Wintino. They, were the first of my squad to reach Owens.”

  Austin nodded at me and said, “You must have shrunk since you took the physical.- Never figured you for five eight.” He had a booming clear voice that went with his beefy good looks.

  “I was wearing elevator shoes at the time. They send you up here to check my height?” I asked.

  Austin winked at Reed. “Rough little stud.”

  “Tries to be, anyway. And at times he is. Captain Lampkin wants you to have a talk with Mrs. Owens. That's about the only angle we haven't covered thoroughly. I suggest you go over to her flat now. I'm sending Hayes downtown to the line-up to look over a rubber check artist we're interested in, so take Wintino with you.” Reed glanced at the wall clock. “Unless she gives you something, be back here around ten.”

  “Anything you say, Lieutenant. Frankly I don't believe it will get us anywheres, but it will make the old lady feel we're on the job,” Austin said, getting to his feet.

  He wasn't so big, it was just the sharp fit of the suit and his big face. He picked up a pork pie hat I would have liked —if I ever wore a hat. I whispered to Danny, “You're lucky, I'm stuck with glamour boy. Dresses like this is the FBI.”

  Danny smiled, showing his stubby teeth. “Glamour boy? Didn't you look in the mirror this morning? I ought to be back from downtown by noon, Dave. Maybe we'll have Chinese food for lunch.”

  I got a car downstairs and drove Austin up to the Bronx. He said, “Getting warm. I don't like heat unless I'm in a bathing suit. Reed say that colored boy was your partner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That's rough. I always say they should—”

  “What's rough about it?” I cut in, knowing what was coming. “Danny's a hard worker and smart—that's all I ask of a partner. Have you seen Owens' old partner, Al Wales?”

  “No, but I hear he looks like a creep.”

  “Seems they made an important collar back in 1930. Got a guy who killed a hot-shot goon named Boots Brenner. Ever hear of Brenner?”

  Austin nodded as he took out a pack of butts, offered me one. “I remember reading about Brenner someplace. Punk who wanted to be a second Vince Coll, tougher than tough stuff. Want a smoke?”

  “I don't smoke. Thanks.”

  “You must have made a fortune when you were in the army. Or weren't you old enough to be in during the war?”

  “I did my time after the war. What about this Boots Brenner?” I asked, a little steamed.

  “Like I told you, a punk. Started to cut into the big pie but got himself killed before the big boys took much notice of him. What's he got to do with Owens?”

  “I don't know, yet. I'd like to have another talk with Wales. Of course the guy they rapped for killing Boots sat in the chair, but I have a feeling we ought to dig deeper into their arrest record,” I said turning into 145th Street and stopping for a light. I didn't have the siren on.

  I wouldn't have minded so much if Austin had laughed. He chuckled. “Don't go off the deep end, shortie. This wasn't any revenge killing, it was a stick-up and a lousy one. If anybody had merely wanted to plug Owens they wouldn't have bothered walking him into an alley on West End Avenue.”

  “If it was a stick-up Owens would have put up a fight and he didn't.”

  “How do we know he would have?”

  “Wales says Owens was handy with a gun and his hands.”

  Austin chuckled again. “Maybe years ago, but yesterday Owens was an old man. And no matter how tough a guy is, a jittery stick-up character may squeeze the trigger first and talk later. Tell you the truth, we're only going through the motions. Know when this will be solved? In a year or two or three we'll pick up some junkie or a loony on another charge, probably another killing, and in the course of grilling him he'll confess to killing Owens. Cases like this follow a pattern.”

  “No. I have a... a... feeling this was more than a hold-up. The worthless bonds, the torn pockets, for example, make me uneasy.”

  Austin let me have the chuckle again. “You sound like a song, 'that old feeling.' Better gag than anything I've seen on TV this week. Keep your feelings for your girl friends.”

  I shut up. When we reached Third Avenue I turned downtown and then east again and we were in a neighborhood of run-down wooden private houses, most of them with tiny lawns bordered by a struggling bush or even flowers. It was like a couple of blocks of some hick town set down in New York City. I pulled up before one that had a few busted chairs on the porch, chairs that had been left out all winter, a lot of winters. It was a squat two-family house, badly in need of paint and new shingles. I said, “This is it.”

  “Some dump.” Austin took out his notebook, checking the address. “Imagine a guy ever wanting to buy one of these joints? Let's get it over with.”

  The Owens apartment was the bottom one and the woman who opened the door was dressed in a clean worn house dress that looked too heavy for May. She was plump, lots of veins in her fat legs, and her moon-shaped flabby face was topped with dirty gray hair braided around her head. Her eyes were red and the skin around them looked raw. Austin took off his hat as he asked, “Mrs. Edward Owens?”

  “Yes, but if you're reporters I—”

  “I'm Detective Austin and this is Detective... Winston.”

  “Wintino, David Wintino, Mrs. Owens,” I told her.

  “I know you've been under a terrific strain, an ordeal, but we're on police business and would appreciate it if you would answer a few questions.” The sugar in Austin's voice sounded phony as hell.

  “I understand. I'm sorry I wasn't able to talk much last night. Last night... God, I still can't believe it. Step inside, please,” Mrs. Owens said, holding the door open. Her hands were short and covered with spots like large freckles.

  We walked into an old-fashioned neat living room: a clumsy big radio set with a million dials that probably still ran on A and B batteries, an old seven-inch TV set in a large cabinet, an upright piano, two leather chairs, a couple of plain ones, and a couch that looked hard. Atop the piano there was a picture of a plain-faced girl with fat cheeks, about eighteen, and a cracked picture in a gold frame of a towheaded boy of about twelve.

  Mrs. Owens pointed to the leather chairs and we put it down and she sat on the couch and said, “I suppose you want to know about Ed.” She spoke in a faraway voice.

  “As a police officer's wife, you know we need all the information we can get to help us track down your husband's killer,” Austin said like an idiot, as though he was selling something. “Do you live here alone, Mrs. Owens?”

  “I do now. The Sarasohns who live upstairs have been most helpful, they did all they could for me last night. I even slept up there. My daughter Susan is down in Venezuela. She's wired she's flying up for the funeral. Our son, Edward Junior,” she nodded toward the picture on the piano, “was taken from us many years ago. Now Ed... I just can't seem to think straight or believe it. He is dead, isn't he?”

  “Yes, he is. I understand what you're going through and I'll try to make the questioning brief as possible. Now...”

  “That's all right. I can talk about things. Only at times... Well, when Junior died it was bad but Ed was at my side. Now without Ed I feel lost, alone... kind of empty.” She looked around the room helplessly. “I was in the kitchen when you rang. You know his garden tools are still beside the tub where he left them yesterday morning. Said he might use them in the evening before it got too dark.”

  “What gardening tools?” Austin asked.

  “A spade and a rake. We have a nice little back yard and Ed loved to raise flowers and things. It's time for planting. Ed always had a green thumb. That's what he dreamt about, retiring to a place in California where he could really grow things.”

  “We all want a house in the country,” Austin said. “Now about—”

  “But we've
been dreaming about it for so many years,” Mrs. Owens said, as if talking to herself. “From way back when Ed was first appointed. Then the children came. We put money aside for their education but that went for Junior's burial, although Susan finished business school. But children, payments on the house, not much left out of a policeman's salary. Not that I complained but... I'm sorry, all this is no concern of yours. Ed always joked about my chattering too much. What is it you want to ask me?”

  “A few routine questions. We're sure Mr. Owens was the victim of a nervous stick-up punk but we're not overlooking any other possibilities, of course. £)id your husband have any enemies? Did he seem worried?”

  “You wouldn't ask that if you'd known my Ed. He was always an easygoing man. His only troubles were financial and he never let them get him down. If anything he was in better spirits than ever lately. A few weeks ago he came home and started dancing me around. 'Janie,' he says, 'we have that California cottage, be raising oranges soon.' He's—was—in a gay mood all the time lately.”

  “About this cottage, do you think he came into some money?” I asked, although as junior man it was up to Austin to do the questioning.

  “No. You see Ed had one vice, he loved to play the horses. I didn't mind, a person has to relax some way, I say. Whenever he had a spare dollar or two he would make a bet. Naturally most times he lost but whenever he won, maybe five or ten dollars, he was like a small boy who thinks he has the world by the tail. I imagine Ed must have made himself a few dollars and was talking big. That's all it was.”

  Austin asked, “Is it possible Mr. Owens was playing the races big and might have gotten in over his head with a gambling mob?”

  The old lady stroked her coiled braids. “I hope I haven't given you a bad impression of Ed. He wasn't a gambler. He merely played a few dollars now and then like I play bingo or even put a few pennies on a number if I have a dream.”

  “Did he drink much?”

  “No, sir, beer was all my Ed touched and not much of that. I never saw Edward Owens drunk except once, when sickness took our Junior. Now Al—Mr. Wales—he began to drink something frightful and Ed was always on him to stop it. That was after his dear wife died of cancer back in nineteen and forty-nine. Al's a good man but a strange one. He never seemed too emotional about things but he went to pieces when Dora passed on. That was one reason why Ed got him to work at the brokerage house. Did Al a world of good, although he still goes off on toots at times. Poor Al, he talked to me on the phone last night and actually cried.”

  “About this brokerage house, did your husband like the job? Was he happy there?”

  Mrs. Owens tried to smile. “He liked the job very much. I think Ed liked most the idea that he didn't have to work. We needed the few dollars he made but we could have gotten along without them, too. It was more like it gave him something to do. He was always nosy and liked going to these big offices, the rich houses.”

  “Why did he carry a gun?”

  She looked puzzled. “My goodness, Ed's worn a gun every day for as long as I can remember. Be like asking why he wore pants.”

  “Did your husband usually drop into any bars around here, for a beer, and perhaps talk about the bonds he was carrying, some of the rich homes he'd been to?”

  She shook her head. “No, sir, not Ed. Did his beer drinking right here while watching the TV. In the mornings he'd fool around in his garden. When he came home from work we'd have supper and watch TV, maybe play rummy, or he'd get out his books and booklets and try to figure a winner in the races. He was strictly a homebody, always was.”

  “Do you know where he placed his bets?”

  “No. Some cigar stand downtown. I imagine Al Wales could tell you, although Al never gambled.”

  “Now, Mrs. Owens, think carefully: was there anybody who had any reason, no matter how slight, to be angry at your husband? Or was Mr. Owens mad at anybody?”

  “Not a soul.”

  Austin stood up. “I think that's all. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Owens. And don't worry, we'll get the rats who did this.”

  “Yes, I suppose you will. But that won't bring Ed back, to me. Everyplace I look I see something of his, his tools, his clothes, his beers in the icebox,” Mrs. Owens said, getting up. “Would you like to see his garden?”

  “Best we run....”

  “I'd like very much to see it,” I said. Austin looked at me as if to say, “Shut up.”

  We followed her down a short hallway with two bedrooms opening off it, through a large clean kitchen, out to a back yard that was about twenty feet wide and maybe thirty feet long. Except for something growing under two old windows, it was just a lot of dirt to me.

  She pointed to the windows which were about six inches off the ground and walled in with loose bricks. “This is Ed's hothouse. I think he has some tulip bulbs growing there now. By the end of July he'll have this whole yard full of pansies and other flowers, maybe a few rows of carrots and some tomato vines. Once, he even raised some good corn here. One summer he spelled out 'Owens' across the yard in red, white and blue flowers. They had a picture of that in the Bronx Home News.”

  There was a moment of silence till I asked, “Mrs. Owens, did you like being a policeman's wife? The changing hours, little pay, the danger?”

  She looked astonished. “Why, of course I liked it, young man, it was my husband's job. Sometimes I worried a little about Ed but he could take care of himself. As for the pay, it wasn't much, but then what job pays enough? Best thing was it being steady, no lay-off. My father was a house painter and always working crazy hours. And near every winter there would be months when he didn't work and we'd be worried sick. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering,” I said stupidly.

  “Nice seeing your garden, Mrs. Owens, but we have to leave,” Austin said.

  “I don't want to keep you. The force has certainly changed, you two all dressed so smartly. And this young man who looks like he's a college student. Yes indeed, I liked Ed being a policeman, I felt he was helping people. Of course sometimes there were dirty jobs and long hours, but like I say, no job is all good. Wouldn't be a job if it was.”

  When we were in the car Austin asked, “What are you conducting, a lonely hearts column for cops' wives? 'Mrs. Owens, did you like being a policeman's wife? For crying out loud, Winstein, you're a prize dummy.”

  “The name is Wintino. What's so dumb about it? Everybody keeps yapping Owens was killed by a goon, a stick-up punk. Maybe. But he was in an alley and never went for his gun so it might have been with somebody he was friendly, like another woman.”

  Austin shook his head. “Naw, you and me might be lovers, but not the Owens type. How long you been on the force?”

  “Less than a year. So what?”

  “You'll learn we haven't time to investigate every cockeyed angle to a case. Most times the common-sense angles are the right ones. Owens was held up, and by an amateur, that's the common-sense angle. Look, by, this afternoon I'll be off the case and it will be left in the open files. They'll let it stand till we get a break. You want to speculate, a guy in a flying saucer might have dropped down and knocked off Owens?” “Are you satisfied with the case?”

  He gave me his superior smile. “Satisfied? This isn't a restaurant, it's a job. Not up to me to be satisfied or not satisfied. We do the best we can and that's the way the ball bounces.”

  “Okay, so if I'm not satisfied I keep digging till I come up with something that fits.”

  “Make sense, Winston. You can keep digging for the next three years. We haven't the time. In a few hours you'll be looking into a forced entry case, a mugging, something like that. And I'll be working on another killing.”

  “Maybe. But I'm going to keep sifting this one. When an ex-cop is killed it makes you think.” “It does? About what?”

  “About myself. I'll be retired like Owens was someday and I don't want to end up in an alley.” Nor in a run-down flat with an ancient radio and the same furniture I
had when I first moved in, I thought. Although Mom and Pa, their place is like the Owens', the inside of a poor museum. Wonder what a guy has to do to make a good buck in this crazy world without being a bastard. “You married?” I asked Austin. “You starting on me? Sure I'm married.”

  “Wife like your job?”

  “I never asked her. What's with you, Watson?” “Nothing. My wife isn't hot about my job.” He chuckled. “Wives need a slap across the teeth now and then. That's my best advice.”

  I didn't bother telling this dope where to stick his advice. As we waited for a light on the Concourse I considered shooting up to Ogden Avenue for a second, seeing Mom. Might have done it if I was alone or with Danny. Been near a month since I'd been up there. I didn't like to go up Without Mary because that was an admission on my part she wasn't comfortable around my folks.