Eight Black Horses

by Ed McBain

  Four police hats.

  Five walkie-talkies.

  Six police shields.

  Seven wanted flyers.

  Eight black horses.

  Nine patrol cars.

  Ten D.D. forms.

  Eleven Detective Specials.

  Twelve roast pigs.

  And then, at eleven on Christmas morning, while Carella was typing up the report on their interview with Henkins, and Brown was on the phone with a parole officer seeking a last-known address for Arthur Drits, a delivery boy arrived at the slatted wooden railing that separated the squadroom from the corridor outside. He was carrying a package wrapped in green paper. It was a rather bulky package, and he was having difficulty holding it in both arms.

  ‘Is there a Detective Stephen Louis Carella here?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m Carella,’ Carella said.

  ‘Di Fiore Florist,’ the delivery boy said.

  ‘Come in,’ Carella said.

  ‘Well ... somebody wanna help me with the latch here?’ the delivery boy said.

  Carella helped him with the latch. The delivery boy struggled the package into the squadroom, looked around for a place to put it, and set it down on Genero’s vacant desk. Carella wondered if he was expected to tip the delivery boy. He dug in his pocket and handed him a quarter.

  ‘Can you spare it?’ the delivery boy said. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he added sourly and walked out.

  Carella tore the green wrapping from the package.

  He was looking at what he expected was supposed to be a pear tree. He didn’t know if it was a real pear tree, but at any rate there were pears hanging on it. They weren’t real pears, but they were clearly pears. Little wooden pears hanging all over the tree.

  There was also an envelope hanging on the tree.

  The envelope was addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella.

  He tore open the envelope.

  The card inside read:

  Carella searched the tree for a partridge.

  A little package wrapped in red foil was hanging on the tree. Carella unwrapped the package. Something decorated with feathers was inside it. It was not a partridge, but it looked like a bird of some sort, feathers glued all over it. Chicken feathers, they looked like. But it was not a chicken either, too small for a chicken. He took a closer look.

  The thing was a severed human ear.

  Carella dropped it at once.

  * * * *

  On December 26, the second day of Christmas, two nightsticks arrived at the squadroom. They were wrapped in Christmas paper, and they were addressed to Carella.

  The detectives looked at the nightsticks.

  They did not appear to be new ones. Both of them were scarred and battered.

  ‘Still he could’ve bought them,’ Kling said.

  In this city a police officer was responsible for the purchase of every piece of equipment he wore or carried, with the exception of his shield, which came free with the job—the pin used to hold the shield to the uniform cost him fifty cents. Each officer was given a yearly allowance of three hundred and seventy dollars for his uniform. He bought his own gun—usually a Colt .38 or a Smith & Wesson of the same caliber—and his own bullets—six in the gun and twelve on his belt—and his own whistle, which these days was selling for two dollars. He also bought his own shoes. A foot patrolman wore out at least two pairs of shoes a year. A two-foot-long wooden nightstick cost the police officer two dollars and fifty cents, plus another forty cents for the leather thong. His short rubber billy cost three dollars and fifty cents with—again—another forty cents for the thong. Handcuffs were currently selling for twenty-five dollars.

  Most policemen bought their gear from the Police Equipment Bureau downtown near the Police Academy, but there were police supply stores all over the city. Kling himself was wearing a Detective Special he had bought in one of those stores. He’d had to identify himself when purchasing the pistol, but he’d bought uniform shirts and even handcuffs when he was a patrolman, and no one had even asked him his name. He was also wearing, at the moment, one of the ties Eileen Burke had bought him for Christmas. It was a very garish tie, but no one was looking at it. They were still looking at the nightsticks.

  ‘Better run them through for latents,’ Meyer said.

  ‘Won’t be any on them,’ Brown said.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Carella said. ‘He sends us a note with two pictures of a nightstick on it, and then he sends us two nightsticks. Do you get it?’

  He was addressing all of them, but only Hawes answered.

  ‘He’s crazy,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t have to make sense.’

  ‘So tomorrow we get three pairs of handcuffs, right? And the day after that...’

  ‘Let’s see what happens tomorrow,’ Meyer said.

  * * * *

  On December 27 they caught up with Arthur Drits.

  Carella and Brown talked to him in the Interrogation Office.

  Drits had been inside interrogation offices before. He knew that the mirror he faced was a one-way mirror, and he suspected that someone was sitting in the adjoining office, watching his every move. Actually the adjoining office was empty.

  Brown laid it flat out.

  ‘What were you doing in Gruber’s department Store the night it was held up?’

  ‘This is the first I’m hearing of any holdup,’ Drits said.

  ‘You don’t read the papers?’ Carella said.

  ‘Not too often,’ Drits said.

  What he read were the advertisements for children’s clothing, the ones showing little girls in short dresses.

  ‘You watch television?’ Brown asked.

  ‘I don’t have a television,’ Drits said.

  ‘So you don’t know Gruber’s was held up on Christmas Eve, is that right?’

  ‘I just heard it from you a minute ago.’

  ‘You know anybody named Elizabeth Turner?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She used to work in the cashier’s office at Gruber’s.’

  They had already confirmed this with the personnel manager. Elizabeth Turner had begun working there on August 8 and had left the job on October 7—seventeen days before her murder.

  ‘Never heard of her,’ Drits said.

  ‘How about Dennis Dove?’

  ‘Him neither.’

  ‘Charlie Henkins?’

  Drits blinked.

  ‘Ring a bell?’ Brown said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Drits said.

  ‘Met him at Castleview, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where you were doing time for First-Degree Rape.’

  ‘So they said.’

  ‘See him again since you got out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How about Christmas Eve? Did you see Henkins on Christmas Eve?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you in the sixth-floor men’s room at Gruber’s on Christmas Eve?’

  ‘Yeah?’ Drits said, looking puzzled.

  ‘Did you see a Santa Claus in the men’s room?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Did he look like Henkins?’

  ‘No, he looked like Santa Claus.’

  ‘That was Henkins.’

  ‘Coulda fooled me,’ Drits said.

  ‘What were you doing in the men’s room at Gruber’s?’ Brown asked.

  ‘Washing my face. This guy come out of the booth, the stall there, he was wearing a Santa Claus suit same as me. I nearly shit.’

  ‘You were wearing a Santa Claus suit, too?’ Carella said.

  ‘Well, sure.’

  The detectives looked at each other. They thought Charlie Henkins had been lying about Drits and the Santa Claus suit, but now...

  ‘As part of the job?’ Brown asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘The holdup called for two guys in Santa Claus suits?’

  ‘What?’ Drits said.

  ‘What the fuck were you doing in a Santa Claus suit?’ Brown asked.

 
; ‘I worked for the store,’ Drits said. ‘I was the store’s Santa Claus.’

  Both detectives looked at him.

  ‘I was a very good Santa,’ Drits said with dignity.

  ‘And you never heard of anyone named Elizabeth Turner? Never met her?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Or Dennis Dove?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Did you hand Charlie Henkins a gun in the men’s room at Gruber’s?’

  ‘I didn’t hand him anything. I didn’t even know he was Henkins till you told me. I was surprised to see another guy in a Santa Claus suit, is all. He looked surprised, too. He just ran out.’

  ‘What’d you do?’

  ‘I dried my face, I put on my beard again, and I left the store.’

  ‘To go where?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Which is where?’

  ‘I live in a hotel on Waverly.’

  ‘Were you outside the store when Henkins got shot?’

  ‘I didn’t know Henkins got shot.’

  ‘Didn’t see the shooting, huh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did you see? When you came out of the store?’

  ‘Who remembers what I saw? People. I saw people.’

  ‘Who? What people?’

  ‘People. Some guy selling watches, another guy selling scarves, some nutty Salvation Army guy...’

  ‘What do you mean by “nutty”?’

  ‘Nuts, you know? He told me, “Here.”’

  ‘He told you what?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘H-e-a-r?’

  ‘No, h-e-r-e. I think. Who knows with nuts?’

  ‘Here? What’d he mean?’

  ‘I don’t know what he meant.’

  ‘What’d you think he meant?’

  ‘I think he was nuts. He asked me where the bag was.’

  ‘What’d he look like?’ Carella asked at once.

  ‘Tall guy in a Salvation Army uniform. Nuts.’

  ‘What color was his hair?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was wearing a hat.’

  ‘Was he wearing a hearing aid?’

  ‘He had ear muffs on.’

  Carella sighed. Brown sighed, too.

  ‘All right, keep your nose clean,’ Brown said.

  ‘I can go?’ Drits said.

  ‘Why?’ Brown said. ‘Did you do something?’

  ‘No, no, hey,’ Drits said.

  ‘See that you don’t,’ Carella said.

  * * * *

  That afternoon three pairs of handcuffs arrived.

  They had already questioned George Di Fiore, the proprietor of Di Fiore Florists, about the man who’d ordered the pear tree, and he’d told them first of all that it wasn’t a real pear tree, it was in fact a Ficus Benjamina, but they were all out of pear trees when the man came in asking for one. Di More had also told them that the man had personally picked out the little wooden pears to fasten to the tree, and then had personally affixed the card and the little wrapped package to the tree. Di Fiore hadn’t known what was in the little wrapped package, and did not consider it his business to ask. Carella wanted to ask if Di Fiore—which meant ‘of the flowers’ in Italian—had chosen his profession because of his name. He knew an anesthesiologist named Dr. Sleepe—although he pronounced it Slehpuh—and a chiropractor named Hands. Instead he asked what Di Fiore’s pear-tree customer had looked like.

  ‘Tall blond man wearing a hearing aid,’ Di Fiore told him.

  So now the three pairs of handcuffs.

  They all looked brand-new.

  They could have been purchased, as Kling again suggested, at any police-supply store in town.

  December 27, the third day of Christmas, and three pairs of handcuffs.

  Tomorrow, Carella knew for certain, four police hats would arrive.

  * * * *

  And they did.

  Arrived by United Parcel delivery, all boxed and wrapped in festive Christmas paper.

  The hats were definitely not new.

  Their sweat bands were greasy, and their leather peaks were cracked with age. Moreover, they had police shields pinned to them. And unlike the pictures they’d received earlier, these shields had numbers on them.

  There were four different numbers on the shields.

  Carella called Mullaney at Personnel and asked him to identify the shields for him.

  ‘This Coppola again?’ Mullaney said.

  When he came back onto the line, he told Carella that those shields, and presumably the hats to which they were pinned, belonged to four different police officers at four different precincts. He asked Carella if he wanted the patrolmen’s names—one of them, actually, was a female cop, but in Mullaney’s world all police officers were patrolmen. Carella took down the names and then called each precinct. The desk sergeant on duty at each precinct told Carella that yes, indeed, such and such an officer worked out of this precinct, but he—or, in the case of the woman, she—had not reported having lost his, or her, hat. One of the sergeants asked Carella if this was a joke. Carella told him he guessed it wasn’t a joke.

  But if it wasn’t a joke, then what the hell was it?

  Carella grunted and picked up one of the police hats.

  The man or woman who’d worn it had dandruff.

  * * * *

  ‘Those are police walkie-talkies,’ Miscolo said. ‘Standard issue.’

  Miscolo was a clerk and not a detective, but it didn’t take a detective to see that each of the walkie-talkies that arrived by United Parcel delivery on the fifth day of Christmas, December 29, were marked with plastic labeling tape of the sort you printed up yourself with a lettering gun. Each of the walkie-talkies had two strips of tape on it. The first strip was identical in each case. It read:

  RETURN TO CHARGING RACK

  The second strips differed. One read:

  PROPERTY OF 21ST PRECINCT

  Another read:

  PROPERTY OF 12TH PRECINCT

  And so on:

  PROPERTY OF 61ST PRECINCT

  PROPERTY OF MIDTOWN EAST

  PROPERTY OF 83RD PRECINCT

  Five different walkie-talkies from five different precincts.

  ‘Those were stolen from five different precincts,’ Miscolo said. ‘This man is entering police precincts all over town.’

  * * * *

  The six police shields that arrived on December 30, a Friday and the sixth day of Christmas, similarly belonged to police officers from six different precincts. None of the officers had reported his shield missing or stolen; a cop does not like to admit that somebody ripped off his goddamn potsie. Moreover, the six precincts from which the shields had been stolen—Carella was sure by now that they’d been stolen—were not any of the precincts from which the walkie-talkies or the police hats were stolen. In short, fifteen precincts had been entered—four police hats, five walkie-talkies, and six shields for a total of fifteen—and police equipment had been removed from them under the very eyes of the police themselves. There were twenty precincts in Isola alone. Some of the police equipment had been stolen from precincts in Calm’s Point and Majesta. None had been stolen from either Bethtown or Riverhead. But someone had been very busy indeed, even assuming that neither the nightsticks nor the handcuffs were similarly stolen, which would have brought to twenty-four the number of precincts whose security had been breached.

  For what purpose? Carella wondered.

  Toward what end?

  * * * *

  The seventh day of Christmas was New Year’s Eve, a Saturday.

  Naturally seven wanted flyers arrived in that morning’s mail.

  And naturally there was a power failure at three-thirty that afternoon, fifteen minutes before the eight-to-four was scheduled to be relieved. It would not have been New Year’s Eve unless something happened to prevent the out-going shift from leaving when it was supposed to. The day shift detectives, eager to get the hell out of the squadroom to start the festivities, knew only that somehow the Grea
ter Isola Power & Light Company (formerly the Metropolitan Light & Power Company) had screwed up yet another time, and they would not be able to complete their paperwork before four o’clock. What they did not know was that Greater Isola Power & Light—known to its millions of dissatisfied customers as the Big (for Greater) Ipple (for I. P. L.)—was totally innocent of any malfeasance this time around.