Eight Black Horses

by Ed McBain

  Gopher Nelson had caused the power failure.

  The power failure lasted exactly one minute.

  Gopher caused it by throwing a switch pinpointed on the ‘Composite Feeder Plate Map’ the Deaf Man had provided. The map was one of four the Deaf Man had given Gopher, explaining that he’d acquired them—along with several others—years ago, when he was planning to place a bomb under the mayor’s bed. Gopher wondered why the Deaf Man planned such peculiar things, but he didn’t ask; the money was good.

  The first map was stamped ‘Property of Metropolitan Light & Power Company’ and was titled ‘60-Cycle Network Area Designations and Boundaries Upper Isola.’ It showed the locations of all the area substations in that section of the city. The area in which the 87th Precinct station house was located was designated as ‘Grover North.’ Into this substation ran high-voltage supply cables, also called feeders, from switching stations, elsewhere on the transmission system.

  The second map, similarly stamped, was titled ‘System Ties,’ and it was a detailed enlargement of the feeder system supplying any given substation. The substation on the first map had been labeled ‘No. 4 Fuller.’ By locating this on the more detailed map, Gopher and the Deaf Man were able to identify the number designation for the feeder: 85RL9.

  Which brought them to the third map, titled simply ‘85RL9’ and subtitled ‘Location Grover North Substation.’ This was a rather long, narrow diagram of the route the feeders, or supply cables, traveled below the city’s streets, with numbers indicating the manholes that provided access to the cables themselves. The cable-carrying manhole closest to the 87th Precinct station house was three blocks way on Grover Avenue and Fuller Street. On the ‘Composite Feeder Plate Map’ it was numbered ‘R2147-120’ESC-CENT.’

  The manhole was a hundred and twenty feet east of the southern curb of Fuller in the center of the street—hence the designation ‘120’ESC-CENT’—just opposite the bronze statue of John G. Fuller, the noted balloonist. The cables were five feet below the surface of the street, protected by a three-hundred-pound manhole cover. Gopher set up a Big Ipple manhole stand, raised the manhole cover with a crowbar, went down into the manhole, found the cable switch, opened it, and then closed it a minute later. The lights in the 87th Precinct station house—and indeed in all the surrounding residential houses—were out for only that amount of time. But that was all the time Gopher needed for his purposes.

  It was four-fifteen when he arrived at the muster desk, wearing a G. I. P. & L tag pinned to his coveralls. He presented his phony credentials to the desk sergeant and told him he was here to see about the power failure. The sergeant looked across the desk at this little guy with the floppy brown mustache and the blue watch cap and told him there hadn’t been any real power failure, lights just went out for a minute or so, that was all. Gopher said, ‘A minute or so is a power failure to us.’

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ the sergeant asked. He was thinking that a sergeant from the Eight-Four was having a big bash at his house tonight, and he was hoping it’d still be going strong when he got there. He’d be relieved at a quarter to twelve. Figure fifteen minutes to change in the locker room, another half hour to get crosstown...

  ‘I gotta put a voltage recorder on the line,’ Gopher said.

  ‘What’s the big fuss?’ the sergeant said. ‘We got lights, don’t we?’

  ‘For now? Gopher said. ‘You want them to go out again when you got some big ax murderer in here?’

  The desk sergeant didn’t even want them to go out when they had some little numbers runner in here. The desk sergeant was thinking about pulling on a funny hat and blowing a horn.

  “That your voltage recorder there?’ he asked, peering over the top of the desk to the wooden box at Gopher’s feet. Gopher hoisted the box onto the desk. It was about the size of a small suitcase. It looked like a larger version of the sort of box one might use to carry roller skates, with metal edges and a handle and clasps to open the lid. But on the lace of the box there was a rectangular dial with a yellow band, a red band, and a green band. The yellow band was marked at the end farthest left with a stamped metal tag reading ‘60 volts.’ The green band was marked at its center point with a similar tag reading ‘120 volts.’ The red band was marked at the end farthest right with a tag reading ‘200 volts.’ A needle was behind the glass covering the dial. Three knobs were under the dial.

  ‘So what’s that for?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘It’s got a tape disc and graph paper inside it,’ Gopher said. ‘It monitors the incoming voltage, lets us know we’re getting any surges or fluctuations in the...’

  ‘I’m sorry I asked,’ the sergeant said. ‘Go do your thing.’

  Gopher started up the iron-runged steps to the squadroom.

  There was no graph paper or tape disc inside the wooden box.

  The dial was real enough—Gopher had taken it from a genuine voltage recorder—but it was connected to nothing, and the knobs beneath it, used on a genuine recorder to calibrate the meter, had absolutely no function.

  Inside the box there was a timer with a seven-day dial. The timer was normally used for programming heating, air-conditioning, and ventilating equipment, as well as lights, pumps, motors, and other single-phase to three-phase loads. Seven sets of trippers, supplied with the timer, enabled its user to set a different on/off program for each day of the week. The timer looked like this:

  When the swing-away cover was moved to the left, the terminals looked like this:

  This was December 31, a Saturday. The timer was already programmed for next Thursday, which would be January 5.

  It was set for 8:15 p.m., at which time it would turn on whatever electrical appliance its wires were connected to.

  Its wires were not connected to any electrical appliance.

  There was a five-pound charge of dynamite inside the box. There was a plastic bag of black powder inside the box. One of the wires from the terminal led to a ground. The other wire was loosely twisted around the first wire. At 8:15 p.m. next Thursday, when the timer triggered the on switch, a surge of electricity would arc through the loosely twisted wires and cause a spark, which would ignite the black powder and subsequently the fuse leading to the dynamite charge. All Gopher had to do now was plug his phony voltage recorder into an ordinary 110-volt outlet and set the present time on the timer.

  The rest would take care of itself.

  In the squadroom upstairs the detectives were discussing the wanted flyers that had arrived in that day’s mail.

  ‘These have got to be the real article,’ O’Brien said.

  ‘Could’ve got ‘em from a post office,’ Fujiwara said.

  ‘Beautiful crowd, ain’t they?’ Willis said. ‘Rape, arson, armed robbery, kidnapping...’

  ‘You don’t think he’s pinpointing them, do you?’

  ‘Pinpointing who?’

  ‘The ones who did the Gruber’s job with him.’

  ‘What he’s doing,’ O’Brien said, ‘he’s telling us he can go into any goddamn squadroom in this city and do whatever the fuck he wants inside them.’

  ‘If he got them from a squadroom,’ Fujiwara said.

  ‘That’s where he got them, all right,’ Willis said.

  Gopher stopped at the slatted rail divider separating the squadroom from the corridor outside.

  ‘Electric company,’ he said. ‘Got to put a voltage recorder on your line.’

  ‘Come on in,’ O’Brien said.

  ‘Where’s your fuse box?’ Gopher asked.

  ‘Who knows?’ Willis said.

  Gopher had no reason to locate the fuse box. He simply wanted an excuse to look the place over. He set the box down near one of the desks and began poking around. Plenty of outlets all over the room, but he needed someplace to plant his incendiaries.

  ‘What’s in here?’ he asked, his hand on a doorknob.

  ‘Supply closet,’ Fujiwara said.

  A naked light bulb with a pull chain was ha
nging inside the closet. Gopher pulled the chain. A 40-watt bulb, amazing these guys could see anything in here.

  ‘Mind if I smoke?’ he asked.

  ‘Long as you don’t set fire to the joint,’ O’Brien said.

  Gopher laughed.

  He checked the closet baseboard for outlets. Usually you didn’t find an outlet in a closet, but some of these old buildings, they divided a big room by throwing up walls wherever they felt like. He found a double outlet on the rear wall of the closet. Good. He could plug in his box right here, where there was plenty of flammable shit. Give it a roaring start with his incendiaries, should have a nice little blaze in minutes flat. Nice old wood all around the room. Oh, this would be a very pretty fire.

  ‘I’ll be through in a minute here,’ Gopher said. ‘You got an ashtray?’

  ‘Just grind it out on the floor,’ O’Brien said.

  It took Gopher a minute and a half to carry his box into the closet, set it on the floor under a shelf at the rear, and plug it in.

  It took him three minutes to set the timer with the present time, which he read off the squadroom clock.

  ‘I have to bring some other stuff up here,’ he said. ‘Some chemicals to keep the closet dry. Otherwise, the recorder won’t give us a true reading. I’ll stack them on the shelves, out of your way.’

  He went downstairs for his incendiaries.

  He stacked three innocent-looking cardboard cartons in the supply closet, one on each of three shelves above the box. As he worked, he listened to the detectives.

  ‘So why’s he trying to tell us he can get into squadrooms?’ Fujiwara said. ‘If that’s what he’s trying to tell us.’

  ‘‘Cause he’s crazy,’ Willis said.

  * * * *

  Over the past several years it had become a ritual. On New Year’s Eve, before they left the house for whatever party they were going to, Carella and Teddy made love. And when they returned to the house again, in the New Year this time, they made love again.

  Once a long time ago Carella had been told by a detective of Scottish ancestry that in the northern parts of Great Britain the custom of first-footing is still honored on the first day of the New Year. A dark-eyed, dark-haired person—presumably because Britain’s enemies in days of yore were fair-haired and light-eyed—carries a symbolic gift, usually a piece of coal and a pinch of salt, over the doorsill of a friend’s house. The gift bearer is the first person to set foot in the house in the New Year: hence, first-footing. His or her gift is a wish for health and prosperity throughout the coming year.

  Carella didn’t know whether he was recalling the story faithfully or even if the Scotsman had been idling the truth. He suspected, however, that one doesn’t kid around when it comes to custom. He liked the story, and he wanted to believe that such a custom, in fact, existed. In a world where too many people came bearing death, it was comforting to know that in some remote little village far to the north, someone—on the very first day of the bright New Year—came bearing the gift of life: a piece of coal for the grate, a pinch of salt for the pot. In a sense, the Scotsman had said, the custom was a reaffirmation of life.

  For Carella love making was a similar affirmation of life.

  He loved this woman completely.

  This woman was his life.

  And holding her in his arms on New Year’s Day—dark-eyed, dark-haired people both, no enemies here in this bed—he silently wished her the best that life could afford.

  But New Year’s Day was also the eighth day of Christmas.

  And someone would come bearing tidings of death.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Before the Gruber’s holdup the Deaf Man had planned to hire someone else to do the horses—just as he had hired Gopher to do the cars and the squadroom. He did not enjoy messiness. Even cutting off the wino’s ear, a necessity if he was to make a point to the clods of the Eight-Seven, had been distasteful to him. The Deaf Man liked things clean and neat. Precise. The festivities he’d planned for the enjoyment of the detectives who worked out of the old station house on Grover Avenue were initially conceived as a fillip to the department store job. First let them know that he could do whatever the hell he wanted to in this precinct, pull off the job, get away clean, and then teach them once and for all that he would no longer tolerate their meddling in his affairs. End the relationship. Good-bye, boys.

  He changed his mind after the Gruber’s job ended in disaster.

  Again by accident.

  All that work for nothing.

  And now he was angry.

  He did not normally enjoy excesses of emotion. A woman in bed was not an object of love to him, but merely something to control. In his lexicon ‘to love’ meant ‘to risk.’ Elizabeth Turner had made the fatal mistake of falling in love with him and thereby risking all. She had pleaded with him not to execute the Gruber’s job, to change his way of livings move with her to another city, forget the past.

  The whiff of danger had been all-pervasive.

  Her love for him could have led her into dangerously unexpected paths: perhaps a visit to the police to warn them of the impending job, with a tearful scene later in which she would confess her indiscretion and beg him once again, now that she had made the job impossible, to give it up.

  She had never threatened him with such a course of action—she knew better than to threaten him—but he sensed in her shifting moods that she now regretted the information she had given him and, because she ‘loved’ him, might do something foolish to ‘protect’ him. What the Deaf Man dreaded most were the good intentions of well-meaning people, the fools of the world.

  Hut he had not killed her in anger.

  Anger was wasteful, a silly energy-consuming extravagance.

  He had, in fact, killed her immediately after making love to her, whatever that meant. Two people ‘making’ love. Two heavy-breathing individuals—although he hadn’t been breathing quite so heavily as she—together constructing a dripping edifice known as—ta-rah—love! The architect and the contractor in passionate collaboration, ‘making’ love.

  To make.

  The verb itself as many-faceted as a diamond, the way most words in the English language were.

  To make.

  To create, construct, form, or shape: I made a chair—or a bomb.

  To give a new form or use to: I made a silk purse from a sow’s ear—or a symbolic partridge from a wino’s ear.

  To earn: to make money—which I failed to do on Christmas Eve.

  To prepare and start: to make afire—which I will do on Twelfth Night.

  To force or compel: I made her do my bidding—which I thought Elizabeth Turner was doing until she began to have those fatal second doubts.

  To cause to become: I made her dead.

  But without anger.

  The kiss of death.

  When one pimply-faced teenager asks another similarly blossoming pal, ‘Did you make her last night?’ is he actually asking, ‘Did you force her to succumb?’

  The Deaf Man had not forced Elizabeth Turner to succumb.

  She had offered herself to him of her own volition, and he had casually shot her afterward—she on her knees before him, head bent, expecting God knew whatever further pleasure from behind.

  No anger.

  But now there was anger.

  * * * *

  The old brick armory on First Street and Saint Sebastian Avenue had been used to stable horses for longer than any of the neighborhood residents could remember. At one time in the city’s history as many as a hundred horses were kept there, all part of the then-elite Mounted Patrol. The Golden Nugget Squad, as the mounties were familiarly, derisively, and enviously called by their fellow police officers, had been slowly reduced in numbers over the years—two successive mayors believing that men on horseback were too reminiscent of cossacks—and was now virtually defunct. Cops on horseback were used only for ceremonial occasions or events expected to draw huge numbers of crowds. Th
ere had, for example, been twelve mounties on duty last night on the Stem downtown, where hundreds of thousands of people watched the red ball’s descent into the New Year. The horses those twelve cops were riding were all stabled in the armory up here in the 87th Precinct, together with another twelve, the two dozen being the remnants of a once-proud legion. Most of those horses were brown. Only ten of them were black.