"A lot of the tenants do that," he said.
"Especially the older ones. Saves them a trip downstairs. And I don't mind. Things are slow around here at night, and it gives me someone to talk to, something to do."
"Does Otherton ever miss calling you?"
"Not that I remember. Every night during the week, like clockwork."
"Between, say, nine and nine-thirty?"
"That's right."
"Do you remember her calling on a Friday night four weeks ago-the night of that terrific rainstorm?"
"I can't remember that particular night. All I know is that she hasn't missed a night since I been working here, and that's almost three years now." … Thank you, Charles." Upstairs again, Estrella said, "Sylvia, as far as I'm concerned, you're cleared-and that's what I'm going to put in my report."
He thought that would please her, but instead she looked like she was about to cry.
"Does that mean I won't be seeing you anymore?" He touched her shoulder.
"No," he said gently, "it doesn't mean that.:: "Good, she said happily.
"Brian, would you like to try the Ouija board again? Maybe it will help you find out who did it." Sure," he said, "let's try."
They sat as they had before, the board between them on the cocktail table. Sylvia put her fingers lightly on the planchette and closed her eyes.
"Doctor Ellerbee," Detective Brian Estrella said in a hollow voice, "was the person who killed you a stranger?"
The planchette did not move.
Estrella repeated his question.
The planchette jerked wildly. It spelled out KGXFRD, then stopped.
"Doctor Ellerbee," the detective tried once more, "was the person who killed you a stranger?"
The planchette moved slowly. It pointed to N and then to 1.
NI. Then it stopped.
"Sylvia," Brian said softly, "I don't think we're getting anywhere. It spelled out NI. That doesn't mean anything."
She opened her eyes.
"Maybe he's just not getting through to me tonight. His spirit may be busy with another medium."
"That could be it," Estrella acknowledged.
"But we'll try again, won't we, Brian?" she asked anxiously.
"Absolutely," he said.
On Saturday afternoon, Delaney, Boone, and Jason held a council of war.
They shuffled through all the reports that had come in during the week and discussed reassignments.
"Estrella says Otherton is clean," Delaney said.
"You willing to accept that?"
"I am, sir, " Jason said promptly.
"He did a thorough job on her-checked all her friends and neighborhood stores. It was just by luck that he got onto the phone call to the lobby clerk.
I think she's clean."
"Boone?"
"I'll go along with Jose, sir."
"What's this Ouija board nonsense in his report? It's the second time he's mentioned that. Is the man a flake?"
"No, sir," Jason Two said.
"He's a steady, serious kind of guy. But his wife is very sick, and maybe he's got that on his mind."
"Oh," Delaney said.
"I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear it. Does he want a leave of absence?"
"No, he says he wants to keep on working."
"Probably the best thing," Delaney said.
"All. right, let's clear Otherton. She may be a nut case, but I can't see her as a killer. Now about this report from Detective Venable…
That is interesting. Sounds to me like Mrs. Yesell has been leading us up the garden path."
"Her story sure needs work," Sergeant Boone said.
"if Otherton is cleared, how about switching Estrella to Joan Yesell? He can work with Helen on finding the members of Mrs. Yesell's bridge club."
"Yes," Delaney said, "let's do that. Boone, you're working with Calazo on Ronald J. Bellsey?"
"Every chance I get."
"And, Jason-you and Keisman are covering Harold Gerber?"
"That's right, sir. Nothing new to report."
"And Konigsbacher has nothing new to report on Symington. But I've got something new that may interest you."
He told them about Detective Parnell's report-that Dr. Simon Ellerbee's will had specifically canceled all his patients' outstanding bills.
"Now what the hell do you suppose that means?" he asked the two officers.
They both shook their heads.
"Beats me," Boone said.
"Probably nothing," Jason said.
"Probably," Delaney said, sighing.
"We've sure got a lot of probabilities in this case and damned little we can sink our teeth in. Well, what can I tell you except to keep plugging and Pray for a break."
After they left, he returned to the study to paw through the scattered reports again. He was in a sour, dispirited mood.
"Keep plugging." That was stupid, unnecessary advice to give his aides.
They were experienced police officers and knew that plugging was the name of the game.
What always bemused Delaney in cases like this was the contrast between the grand passion that incited the murder of a human being and the pedestrian efforts of the police to solve it.
In a crazy kind of way, it was like solving the mystery of a Rembrandt by analyzing pigments, brush strokes, and the quality of the canvas, and then saying, "There! Your mystery's explained." It wasn't, of course.
Mystery was mystery. It defied rational explication.
Even if the Ellerbee homicide was closed, Delaney suspected the solution would merely be a resolution of the facts.
The enigma of human behavior would remain hidden.
Two weeks before Christmas, and the city had never been more enchanting.
The "city" being Manhattan, and more particularly midtown Manhattan, with streets glowing with lights and tinsel. Amplified carols rang out everywhere, along with the jingle of bells and cash registers. The annual shopping frenzy was in full swing, stores mobbed, the spending fever an epidemic.
"Take my money, miss-please!"
But downtown, on Seventh Avenue South, there were no lights, no tinsel, no carols. Just some foul remains of the last snowfall, clotted with garbage and dog droppings. Harold Gerber's tenement showed no festive trappings. Paint peeled, plaster fell away, the bare, lathed walls oozed a glutinous slime that smelled of suppuration.
"Oh little town of Bethlehem," Detective Robert Keisman sang.
"How about "Come, All Ye Faithful'?" Jason suggested.
The two detectives were lounging around Gerber's ruinous pad, working on a six-pack of Schaefer. The two black officers were wearing drifter duds, and all three men were bundled in down jackets, with caps and gloves. It was damp, and cold enough to see their breath.
"Let's go through it once more," Jason Two said.
"Oh, Jesus," Gerber said, "do we have to?"
"Sure we have to," Keisman said lazily.
"You're aching to get your ass locked up, aren't you? Spend a nice warm holiday in durance vile-right?
You say you snuffed Doc Ellerbee. Well, yeah, that may be so, but on the other hand you may just be jerking us around." I "See, Harold," Jason said, "we run you in, and it turns out you're just a bullshit artist wasting everyone's time-well, that don't look so good on our records."
"Shit," Gerber said, "you write out any kind of a confession you like-put anything in it you want-and I'll sign it."
"Nah," the Spoiler said, "that's not how it's done, Harold.
You got to tell us in your own words. You say you took a cab over to Ellerbee's townhouse on that night?"
Gerber: "That's right."
Jason: "What kind of cab? Yellow, Checker, gypsy?"
Gerber: "I don't remember."
Keisman: "How long did it take you to get there?"
Gerber: "Maybe twenty minutes."
Jason: "Where did the cabby drop you?"
Gerber: "Right in front of Ellerbee's office."
Keisman: "How did you get in?"
Gerber: "Rang the bell. When he answered, I told him I was in a bad way and had to see him. He let me in."
Jason: "You were carrying the hammer?"
Gerber: "Sure. I carried it with me for the express purpose of killing Ellerbee. It was a premeditated murder."
Keisman: "Uh-huh. Now tell us again where you got the hammer."
Gerber: "I boosted it from that hardware store near Sheridan Square."
Jason: "Just put it under your jacket and walked out?"
Gerber: "That's right."
Keisman: "We checked with them. They lose a lot to shoplifters, but no ball peen hammers."
Gerber: "They don't know their ass from their elbow."
Jason: "All right, now you're inside Ellerbee's townhouse, carrying a hammer. What did you do next?"
Gerber: "Walked upstairs."
Keisman: "You were wearing your boots?"
Gerber: "Sure, I was wearing boots. It was a fucking wet night."
Jason: "You see anyone else in the townhouse?"
Gerber: "No. Just Ellerbee. He let me into his office."
Keisman: "He was alone?"
Gerber: "Yeah, he was alone."
Jason: "Did you talk to him?" Gerber: "I said hello. He started to say,
"What are you doing-' and then I hit him."
Keisman: "He was facing you when you hit him?"
Gerber: "That's right."
Jason: "How many times did you hit him?"
Gerber: "Two or three. I forget."
Keisman: "Where did you hit him? His brow, top of his head, temples-where?"
Gerber: "Like on the hairline. Not on top of his head. High up on the forehead."
Jason: "He went down?"
Gerber: "That's right."
Keisman: "On his back?"
Gerber: "Yeah, on his back."
Jason: "Then what did you do?"
Gerber: "I saw he was dead, so 1-2' Keisman: "You didn't hit him again when he was down?"
Gerber: "What the hell for? The guy was fucking dead.
I've seen enough stiffs to know that. So I got out of there, walked over to York, and got a cab going south."
Jason: "And what did you do with the hammer?"
Gerber: "Like I told you-I pushed it in a trash can on Eighth Street."
Keisman: "Why did you kill him, Harold?"
Gerber: "Jesus, how many times do I have to tell you? He was a nosy fucker. After a while he knew too much about me.
Hey, let's have another brew; I'm thirsty."
The three sat there in silence, the two officers staring at the other man's wild, flan-dng eyes. As usual, Gerber needed a shave, and uncombed hair still spiked out from under his black beret.
"You going to take me in?" he asked finally.
"We'll think about it," Jason Two said.
"I did it. That's God's own truth. I'm guilty as hell."
They didn't reply.
"Hey, you guys?" Gerber said brightly, straightening. up.
"I'm moving. A city marshal showed up with an eviction notice. I've got to vacate the premises, as they say."
"Yeah?" the Spoiler said.
"Where you moving to?"
"Who the hell knows? I've got to look around. I want another place as swell as this one.".
"Need any help moving?" Jason offered.
"Moving what?" Harold Gerber said with a ferocious grin.
"I can carry all my stuff in a shopping bag. I'm going to leave a lot of shit right here. You guys want any books? I've got a pile of paperbacks over there under the sink. Some hot stuff.
Yore welcome to any or all." Yeah?" Jason said.
"Let's take a look. Maybe there's something my wife would like. She's always got her nose in a book." He squatted down at the sink, began to inspect the jumble of books. He pulled out a thick one.
"What's this?" he said.
"A Bible?"
"Oh, that…" Gerber said casually.
"I fished it out of a garbage can.
I flipped through it. A million laughs."
Jason inspected the book.
"Douay Version," he read aloud.
"That's a Catholic Bible, isn't it? You a Catholic, Harold?"
"I was. Once. What are you?"
"Baptist. Mind if I take this along?" Jason Two asked, holding up the Bible.
"Be my guest," Gerber said.
"Read the whole thing. I won't tell you how it comes out."
They sat around awhile longer before the two officers left, promising Gerber they'd tell him the next day whether or not they would arrest him.
They sat in Jason's car, the heater on, trying to get warm.
"He's full of crap," Keisman said.
"A complete whacko."
"Oh, yeah," Jason agreed.
"Doesn't even know how Ellerbee died."
"Why do you figure he wants to get busted?"
"I don't know for sure. Something to do with guilt, I suppose. What happened in Vietnam… It's too deep for me. "What's with the Bible?" the Spoiler asked, jerking a thumb at the book.
"Why did you glom on to that?"
"Look at it," Jason Two said, ruffling the pages.
"It's full of dog-ears. Someone's been doing some heavy reading. And I don't believe he found it in a garbage can. Nobody throws out a Bible."
"Jose, that's the Baptist in you talking."
"Maybe. But he says he used to be a Catholic, and this is a Catholic edition. Funny a backslid Catholic should find a Catholic Bible in a garbage can."
"God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform."' "Hey, Jason said admiringly, "there's more to you than Gucci after all, isn't there?"
"I was brought up right," Keisman said.
"Didn't go bad until-oh, maybe the age of six or so."
"Well…" Jason T. Jason said, staring down at the book in his hands,
"it may be nothing, but what say we give it the old college try?"
The Spoiler groaned.
"You mean check every Catholic church in the city?"
"I don't think we'll have to do that. Just the ones in Greenwich Village. I'm hoping that poor son of a bitch was praying in some church on that Friday night."
"Man, you really dig the long shots, don't you?"
Because of previous arrests, there was a photo of Harold Gerber in his NYPD file, and Jason cajoled a police photographer into making two copies, one for himself, one for Keisman.
At the same time, Detective Calazo was having more serious photo problems. Apparently there was no shot of Ronald Bellsey in the files.
Calazo could have requested that a police photographer take a telephoto of Bellsey without the subject's knowledge-but that meant making out a requisition and then waiting.
The old, white-haired gumshoe had been around a long time, and knew a lot of ways to skin a cat in what he sometimes called the "Dick Biz." He looked up the name and address of a trade magazine, The Wholesale Butcher, and visited their editorial offices on West 14th Street.
Sure enough, they had a photograph of Ronald J. Bellsey in their files.
Calazo flashed his patsy and borrowed the shot, promising to return it.
He didn't bother asking them not to tell Bellsey about his visit. Let them tell the fink; it would do him good to sweat a little.
Then Benny, with the aid of Sergeant Boone, when he could spare the time, tailed the subject for almost a week. He discovered that Bellsey had three bars he favored: the Tail of the Whale on Eleventh Avenue, a tavern on Seventh Avenue near Madison Square Garden, and another on 52nd Street, just east of Broadway.
He also discovered that Bellsey got his ashes hauled two afternoons a week by a Chinese hooker working out of a fleabag hotel on West 23rd Street. She had a sheet a yard long, all arrests for loitering, solicitation, and prostitution. She was getting a little frazzled around the edges now, and Calazo figured she'd be lucky to get twenty bucks a pop.
He didn't
move on her-just made sure he put her name (Betty Lee), address, room, and phone number in his report to Boone. Then he turned his attention to those three hangouts Bellsey frequented.
All three were patronized by boxers, trainers, managers, agents, bookies, and hangers-on in the fight racket. And all three had walls covered with photos and paintings of dead and living pugs, along with such memorabilia as bloodied gloves, trunks, shoes, and robes.
Calazo then checked the records at Midtown North and Midtown South to see how many times the cops had been called to the three joints, and for what reasons. This would have been an endless task, but Benny had friends in every precinct in Manhattan, so, with a little help, the job took only two days.
After winnowing out incidents of public drunkenness, freefor-all donnybrooks, robberies, attempted rape, and one case of indecent exposure, Calazo was left with four unsolved cases of assault that pretty much followed the pattern of the attack on Detective Timothy Hogan.
In all four episodes, a badly beaten man had been found on the sidewalk, in an alley, or in the gutter near one of the three bars. None of the victims could positively identify his assailant, but all four had been drinking in one of Bellsey's favorite hangouts.
Showing the borrowed photo to owners, waiters, bartenders, and regular customers, Calazo learned a lot about Bellsey-none of it good. The detective was convinced the subject had been responsible for the four unsolved assaults, plus the attack on Tim Hogan. But he doubted if there would ever be enough evidence to arrest, let alone indict and convict.
His main problem, he knew, was to determine if Bellsey was really at home on the night Ellerbee was killed. Mrs. Lorna Bellsey had told Hogan that she hadn't actually seen her husband from eight-thirty to eleven o'clock. But that didn't necessarily mean he wasn't there.
In addition to solving that puzzle, Calazo was determined to do something about Hogan's beating. Big Tim was estupido, but still he was a cop, and that meant something to Benjamin Calazo.
Also, he hated guys like Ronald J. Bellsey who thought they could muscle their way through life and never pay any dues. So, in his direct way, Calazo began to plot how he might solve his problems and, at the same time, cut Bellsey off at the knees.
The fact that he would be retired, an ex-cop, in another three weeks, was also a factor. He would end his career gloriously by teaching a crud a lesson, avenging a fellow officer and, with luck, discovering who hammered in Dr. Ellerbee's skull.
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