Eight Black Horses

by Ed McBain

  Carella hoped he would not sneeze.

  ‘We gave her a wonderful reference,’ Holberry said.

  ‘She left for another job, is that it?’ Brown asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here in the city?’

  ‘No. Washington, D.C

  The detectives looked at each other. They were thinking she had left for Washington in February, and she was back here in October—dead.

  ‘Would you know when she came back here?’ Brown asked.

  ‘Gentlemen, I didn’t know she was back until I got your request for information. You can’t know how shocked I was.’ He shook his head. ‘Lizzie was such a ... kind, generous, soft-spoken ... elegant person, that’s the word, elegant. To think of her life ending in violence ...’ He shook his head again. ‘Shot, you said?’

  ‘Shot, yes,’ Carella said.

  ‘Unimaginable.’

  Her sister had used the same word.

  ‘Mr. Holberry,’ Brown said, ‘we’ve talked to the super at her building and also to many of her neighbors, and they told us she was living there alone...’

  ‘I really wouldn’t know about that,’ Holberry said.

  ‘They described her as a very private sort of person, said they’d rarely seen her with friends of any kind, male or female...’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that, either,’ Holberry said. ‘She was certainly outgoing and friendly here at the bank. Gregarious, in fact, I would say.’

  ‘You didn’t know her on a social level, did you, sir?’ Carella asked.

  ‘No, no. Well, that wouldn’t have been appropriate, you know. But ... gentlemen, it really is difficult to describe Lizzie to someone who didn’t know her. She was simply a ... marvelous person. Always a kind word for everyone, always a smile on her face. Crackerjack at her job, never complained about anything, nothing was too big for her to tackle. When she told me she was leaving for Washington, I was shattered. Truly. She could have gone quite far with this bank. Quite far. Excuse me,’ he said, and blew his nose again, and again Carella winced.

  ‘You say she asked for a reference,’ Brown said.

  ‘Yes. Actually she’d told me beforehand she was looking for employment elsewhere. It was not in Lizzie’s nature to lie about anything. She was unhappy here, she said, and she...’

  ‘Unhappy, why?’ Carella asked at once.

  ‘She felt she wasn’t advancing rapidly enough. I told her these things took time, we all had our eye on her, and we knew what a valuable employee she was ... but you see, she’d been offered an assistant managership in Washington, and I can understand how that must have appealed to her.’

  ‘Which bank was that, sir?’

  ‘The Union Savings and Trust.’

  ‘Would you know which branch?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no.’

  ‘But it’s your understanding that when she left here last February, it was to become an assistant manager at a Union Savings and Trust bank in Washington?’

  ‘Well, yes. Of course. That’s what I’ve been saying, isn’t it?’

  ‘What I meant, sir,’ Carella said, ‘is whether to your knowledge she actually took the job she’d been offered.’

  ‘I would have no way of knowing that. I assume...’

  ‘Because you see, sir, she was here in this city nine months later...’

  ‘Oh, yes, I see what you mean. I’m sorry, but I don’t know. I suppose ... I really don’t know. Perhaps she was unhappy in Washington. Perhaps she came back to ... I don’t know.’ He paused. ‘This city has a way of luring people back, you know.’

  A sneeze was coming.

  Carella wanted to run for the underground bunker.

  Holberry grabbed for a tissue.

  Carella hunched up his shoulders.

  The sneeze did not come. Holberry blew his nose.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Would you know where she was living when she worked here?’ Brown asked.

  ‘I’m sure we have the address in our files,’ Holberry said, and picked up the telephone receiver. ‘Miss Conway,’ he said, ‘can you bring in the file on Elizabeth Turner, please?’ He put the phone back on its cradle. ‘It’ll just be a moment,’ he said.

  Carella knew exactly where Brown was headed.

  In this city the new phone books came out on the first day of September each year. From past investigations the detectives knew that the closing date for any new listing was June 15. If a phone had not been installed by that date, it would not be listed in the new September 1 directory. Elizabeth’s name, address, and number, however, were listed in the directory when her sister arrived here on October 27—even though Elizabeth had left the city on February 4. Which meant she’d either kept her old apartment and her old phone when she’d left the city or...

  The door to Holberry’s office opened.

  A woman came in and put a file folder on his; desk.

  He opened it.

  He began leafing through papers, stopped to blow his nose, and then began leafing again.

  ‘Yes, here it is,’ he said, and looked up. ‘Twelve twenty-four Dochester Avenue.’

  Which meant that Elizabeth Turner had taken a new apartment when she’d come back to the city—sometime before June 15, the closing date for the telephone directory. The carton of sour milk in her refrigerator had been stamped with an October 1 sell-by date. In this city the legal shelf life for milk was eight to ten days; she had to have bought it sometime between September 22 and October 1. On October 29 the super at 804 Ambrose had told Inge Turner that he hadn’t seen her sister in three or four weeks. That would make it about right. She had packed her bags and flown the coop, either temporarily or for good, sometime at the beginning of October.

  But why?

  And where had she gone?

  ‘Thank you very much, sir,’ Carella said, ‘you’ve been very helpful.’

  Holberry rose and extended his hand.

  Carella felt he was gripping the hand of a plague victim.

  * * * *

  There were a lot of parks in the city, most of them inadequately lighted after sundown and therefore prime locations for anyone wishing to dispose of a corpse. That this particular park—directly across the street from the Eight-Seven’s station house—had been chosen was a matter of some concern to the detectives. It indicated either daring or insanity.

  Elizabeth Turner had been found naked in the park across the street.

  Elizabeth Turner had worked for a bank in Los Angeles, had worked for another bank in this city, and had left employment here to work for yet another bank in Washington, D.C.

  The Deaf Man’s specialty was banks.

  Something was in the wind.

  And it smelled mightily of the Deaf Man.

  Something was in the mail as well, and it arrived in the squadroom that Friday afternoon, while Carella was on the phone with the manager at the main branch of Union Savings and Trust in Washington.

  When Carella saw the white envelope in Sergeant Murchison’s hand, he almost lost track of the conversation. Murchison was wearing a long-sleeved blue woolen sweater over his uniform shirt, a sure sign that Indian summer was gone. Outside the squadroom windows the sky was gray and a sharp wind was blowing. The forecasters had promised rain. Shitty November was here at last. And so was another envelope from the Deaf Man, if that’s what it was. From the look of Murchison’s face, that’s what it was.

  ‘... clash of personalities, you might say.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Carella said. ‘What did you... ?’

  ‘I said you might describe the differences between Miss Turner and Mrs. Hatchett as a clash of personalities.’

  ‘And Mrs. Hatchett, as I understand it, is a manager with Union Savings and Trust?’

  ‘Yes, at our Sixteenth Street branch.’

  ‘And, as such, was Miss Turner’s immediate superior?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Murchison was waving the white envelope in Carella’s
face. Carella covered the mouthpiece, said, ‘Thanks, Dave,’ and uncovered the mouthpiece again.

  ‘It’s him again,’ Murchison whispered.

  Carella nodded sourly. His name was staring up at him from the envelope. Why me? he wondered.

  ‘I recognize the typewriter,’ Murchison whispered.

  Carella nodded again. Murchison kept hanging around, curious about what was in the envelope. Into the phone Carella said, ‘What sort of personality clash was this, Mr. Randolph?’

  ‘Well, Miss Turner was a very gentle person, you know, soft-spoken, easygoing, very ... well ... different in every way from Mrs. Hatchett. Mrs. Hatchett is ... uh ... aggressive, shall we say? Competitive? Abrasive? Sharp-edged? Appropriately named, shall we say?’

  Carella was sure he detected a smile in Randolph’s voice.

  ‘In any event,’ Randolph said, ‘it became apparent almost immediately that Miss Turner and she would not get along. It was merely a matter of time before the tension between them achieved its full potential, that’s all.’

  ‘How long did it take?’

  ‘Well, longer than most. Miss Turner gave us notice in April.’

  ‘Left the job in April?’

  ‘No. Told us she was quitting. Gave us two weeks’ notice in April.’

  ‘And left when?’

  ‘At the beginning of May.’

  ‘Then she was there in Washington for three months.’

  ‘Yes. Well, a little less actually. She began work here on the seventh of February. Actually it was something of a record. We’ve had nine assistant managers working under Mrs. Hatchett in the past eighteen months.’

  ‘She sounds like a dreamboat, your Mrs. Hatchett.’

  ‘She’s the daughter-in-law of one of our board directors.’

  ‘Oh,’ Carella said.

  ‘Yes,’ Randolph said drily.

  ‘And that was the only reason Elizabeth Turner left the job? This personality clash with Mrs. Hatchett?’

  ‘Well, Mr. Carella, I’m afraid you’d have to know Mrs. Hatchett in order to appreciate the full horror of a personality clash with her.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Yes,’ Randolph said, again drily.

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Randolph,’ Carella said. ‘I appreciate your time.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Randolph said, and hung up.

  Carella replaced the receiver on its cradle and looked at the white envelope. Murchison was still standing by his desk.

  ‘So open it,’ Murchison said. ‘It ain’t a bomb.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Carella said, and nudged the envelope with his pencil. It suddenly occurred in him that the Deaf Man was something of a sideshow for the cops of the Eight-Seven, something that broke the monotony of routine. The Deaf Man arrived, and suddenly the circus was back in town. With a small shock of recognition he realized that he himself was not immune to the sense of excitement the Deaf Man promised. Almost angrily he picked up the envelope and tore off the end on its long side.

  Murchison was right. It wasn’t a bomb. Instead, it was:

  And suddenly it began raining outside.

  * * * *

  The rain lashed the windows of the bar on Jefferson Avenue, some three and a half miles southwest of the station house. The tall blond man with the hearing aid in his right ear had just told Naomi he was a cop. A police detective, no less. She didn’t know the police department was hiring deaf people nowadays. Antidiscrimination laws, she supposed. They allowed you to hire anybody. Next you’d have detectives who were midgets. Not that a hearing aid necessarily meant you were deaf. Not stone cold deaf anyway. Still she guessed any degree of hearing loss could be considered an infirmity, and she was far too polite to ask him how a man wearing a hearing aid had passed the physical examinations she supposed the police department required. Some people were sensitive about such things.

  He was good-looking.

  For a cop.

  ‘So what’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Steve,’ he said.

  ‘Steve what?’

  ‘Carella,’ he said. ‘Steve Carella.’

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Italian?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ Naomi said. ‘Half.’

  ‘What’s the other half?’

  ‘Wildcat,’ she said, and grinned, and then lifted her glass. She was drinking C.C. and soda, which she thought was sophisticated. She looked up at him seductively over the rim of her glass, which she had learned to do from one of her women’s magazines, where she had also learned how to have multiple orgasms, occasionally.

  Actually she was half-Italian and half-Jewish, which she guessed accounted for the black hair and blue eyes. The tip-tilted nose was Irish, not that her parents could claim any credit for that. The nose’s true father was Dr. Stanley Horowitz, who had done the job for her three years ago, when she was twenty-two years old. She’d asked him at the time if he didn’t think she should get a little something done to her boobs as well, but he’d smiled and said she didn’t need any help in that department, which she supposed was true.

  She was wearing a low-cut blue nylon blouse that showed her breasts to good advantage and also echoed the color of her eyes. She noticed that the deaf man’s eyes—what’d he say his name was?—kept wandering down to the front of her blouse, though occasionally he checked out her legs, too. She had good legs. That’s why she was wearing very high-heeled, ankle-strapped shoes, to emphasize the curve of the leg. Lifted the ass, too, the high heels did, though you couldn’t tell that when she was sitting. Dark blue shoes and smoky blue nylons. Sexy. She felt sexy. Her legs were crossed now, her navy blue skirt riding up over one knee.

  ‘I’m sorry, what was your name again?’ she asked.

  ‘Steve Carella,’ he said.

  ‘I got so carried away with your being Italian’ she said, rolling her eyes, ‘that I...’

  ‘A lot of people forget Italian names,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I certainly shouldn’t,’ Naomi said. ‘My mother’s maiden name was Giamboglio.’

  ‘And your name?’ he said.

  ‘Naomi Schneider.’ She paused and then said, ‘That’s what the other half is ... Jewish.’ She waited for a reaction. Not a flicker on his face. Good. Actually she enjoyed being a Big City Jewish Girl. There was something special about the Jewish girls who lived in this city—a sharpness of attitude, a quickness of tongue, an intelligence, an awareness that came across as sophisticated and witty and hip. If anybody didn’t like her being Jewish—well, half Jewish—then so long, it was nice knowing you. He seemed to like it, though. At least he kept staring into her blouse. And checking out the sexy legs in the smoky blue nylons.

  ‘So, Steve,’ she said, ‘where do you work?’

  ‘Uptown,’ he said, ‘At the Eight-Seven. Right across the street from Grover Park.’

  ‘Rotten neighborhood up there, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not the best,’ he said, and smiled.

  ‘You must have your hands full.’

  ‘Occasionally,’ he said.

  ‘What do you get up there? A lot of murders and such?’

  ‘Murders, armed robberies, burglaries, rapes, arsons, muggings ... you name it, we’ve got it.’

  ‘Must be exciting, though,’ Naomi said. She had learned in one of her women’s magazines to show an intense interest in a man’s work. This got difficult when you were talking to a dentist, for example. But police work really was interesting, so right now she didn’t have to fake any deep emotional involvement with a left lateral molar, for example.

  ‘Are you working on anything interesting just now?’ she asked.

  ‘We caught a homicide on the twenty-fifth,’ he said. ‘Dead woman in the park, about your age.’

  ‘Oh my,’ Naomi said.

  ‘Shot in the back of the head. Totally naked, not a stitch on her.’

  ‘Oh my,’ Naomi said again.

  ‘Not much to go on yet,’ he said, �
�but we’re working on it.’

  ‘I guess you see a lot of that.’

  ‘We do.’

  She lifted her glass, sipped at her C.C. and soda, looking at him over the rim, and then put the glass down on the bartop again, empty. The bar at five-thirty in the afternoon was just beginning to get crowded. She’d come over directly from work, the long weekend ahead, hoping she might meet someone interesting. This one was certainly interesting; she’d never met a detective before. Good-looking, too. A naked dead girl in the park, how about that?