Lullaby

by Ed McBain

  Or, to be more exact, two people typing.

  HI HON, he typed, GA.

  The words appeared on both his display line and the one Teddy was watching at her kitchen counter all the way up in Riverhead. It was magic. Moreover, a printer on each machine simultaneously printed out the message on the roll of paper. GA was the abbreviation for Go Ahead. On many TDD units - as was the case with theirs - a separate GA key was on the right-hand side of the keyboard. To save time, TDD users often abbreviated commonly used words or expressions.

  Teddy typed HI SWEETIE HV U GOT A MIN GA.

  Carella typed FOR U I HV HRS GA.

  RMBR BERT/EILEEN TONITE, Teddy typed, GA.

  Carella typed YES 8 O'CLOCK GA.

  PLS WEAR TIES, Teddy typed, GA.

  They continued talking for the next several moments. When Carella pulled the printout from the machine later, the twenty-character lines looked like this:

  HI HON GA HI SWEETIE

  HV U GOT A MIN GA FO

  R U I HV HRS GA RMBR

  BERT/EILEEN TONITE G

  A YES 8 O'CLOCK GA PL

  S WEAR TIES GA I'LL

  TELL BERT HV TO GO N

  OW SEE YOU LTR LUV Y

  OU SK LUV YOU TOO SK

  SK

  The letters SK were also on a separate key. SK meant Signing Off.

  They were both smiling.

  * * * *

  Peter Hodding hadn't gone back to work yet.

  'I don't think I could stand looking into people's eyes,' he told Carella. Knowing they know what happened. I had a hard enough time at the funeral.'

  Carella listened.

  The sky outside was darkening rapidly, but the Hoddings had not yet turned on the lights. The room was succumbing to shadows. They sat on the living room couch opposite Carella. Hodding was wearing jeans, a white button-down shirt, a cardigan sweater. His wife Gayle was wearing a wide skirt, a bulky sweater, brown boots.

  'He'll go back on Monday,' she said.

  'Maybe,' Hodding said.

  'We have to go on,' she said, as if to herself.

  'I wonder if you can tell me,' Carella said, 'whether Annie Flynn ever mentioned a boy named Scott Handler.'

  'Gayle?' Hodding said.

  'No, she never mentioned anyone by that name.'

  'Not to me, either,' Hodding said.

  Carella nodded.

  He and Meyer were eager to talk to the Handler boy - if they could find him. But where the hell was he? And why had he fled? Carella did not tell the Hoddings that they'd been looking for the boy for the past two days. There was no sense in building false hopes and even less sense in implicating someone before they'd even talked to him.

  Gayle Hodding was telling him how strange life was.

  'You make plans, you . . .'

  She shook her head.

  Carella waited. He was very good at waiting. He sometimes felt that ninety percent of detective work was waiting and listening. The other ten percent was luck or coincidence.

  'I quit college in my junior year,' she said, 'oh, this was seven, eight years ago, I went into modeling.'

  'She was a very good model,' Hodding said.

  Carella was thinking she still had the good cheekbones, the slender figure. He wondered if she knew Augusta Kling, Bert's former wife. He did not ask her if she did.

  'Anyway,' she said, 'about a year and a half ago, I decided to go back to school. Last September a year ago. How long is that, Peter?'

  'Sixteen months.'

  'Yes,' she said, 'sixteen months. And I was about to enroll for the new semester in September when the agency called and my whole life changed again.'

  'The modeling agency?' Carella said.

  'No, no, the adoption agency.'

  He looked at her.

  'Susan was adopted,' she said.

  'I'd better put some lights on in here,' Hodding said.

  * * * *

  He'd had to come down from the roof.

  Security in the building, he knew this, twenty-four-hour doorman, elevator operator, no way to get in unobserved through the front door.

  You had to do gymnastics. Go up on the roof of the connecting building, no security there after midnight, go right on up in the elevator, break the lock on the roof door, cross the roof and climb over the parapet to the building you wanted, 967 Grover.

  Down the fire escapes.

  Past windows where you could see people still partying, having a good time. He'd ducked low on each landing, sidling past the lighted windows. Counting the floors. Eighteen floors in the building, he knew which window he wanted, a long way down.

  Fourth-floor rear.

  He'd eased the window open.

  The baby's bedroom.

  He knew this.

  Dark except for a shaft of light spilling through the open doorway from somewhere else in the apartment. The living room. Silence. He could hear the baby's soft, gentle breathing. Two o'clock in the morning. The baby asleep.

  The master bedroom was at the other end of the apartment.

  He knew this.

  In the middle, separating the sleeping wings, were the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room.

  He leaned in over the crib.

  Everything changed in the next several seconds.

  In the next several seconds, the baby was screaming.

  And a voice came from the living room.

  'Who is it?'

  Silence.

  'Who's there?'

  More silence.

  And suddenly there she was. Standing there. Standing in the door to the baby's room, a knife in her hand.

  He had to go for the knife.

  * * * *

  4

  Ostensibly, Kling was eating and enjoying the cannelloni on his plate while listening to Carella tell him about the several approaches he and Meyer were taking to the Hodding-Flynn murders. But he caught only snatches of what Carella was telling him. His mind and his ears were on what Eileen was saying to Teddy.

  He had never heard her so bitter.

  They sat on opposite sides of the round table.

  Eileen with her red hair and her green eyes, blazing now, her hands flying all over the place as the words tumbled from her mouth.

  Teddy listening, her head cocked to one side, dark hair falling over one cheek, brown eyes open wide and intently watching Eileen's mouth.

  '. . . find this Handler kid,' Carella was saying, 'then maybe we can . . .'

  'And your cop comes home at last,' Eileen said, 'and he's watching television after a long, hard day of dealing with a wide variety of victimizers, and he sees a news broadcast about the rioting in this or that prison wherever in the United States, and the convicts are saying the food's terrible and there aren't enough television sets and the equipment in the gymnasium is obsolete, and the cells are overcrowded, and you know what that cop thinks, Teddy?'

  From the corner of his eye, Kling saw Teddy shake her head.

  '. . . cause why would he have run if he hasn't got something to hide?' Carella asked. 'On the other hand . . .'

  'That cop sits there shaking his head,' Eileen said, 'because he knows how to rid the streets of crime, man, he knows how to make sure the guy he arrested two years ago isn't out there again right this minute doing the same damn thing all over again, he knows exactly how to get kids thinking that serving up burgers at a drive-in is more attractive than a life of criminal adventure - and, by the way, the answer isn't Just Say No. That's bullshit, Teddy, Just Say No. That lays the guilt trip on the victim, don't you see? If only you'd have said No, why then you wouldn't have got addicted to heroin, and you wouldn't have been molested by some weirdo in the street . . .

  Here it comes, Kling thought.

  '. . . and you wouldn't have been raped or murdered, either. All you have to do is just say no. Have a little willpower and nobody'll hurt you. Where the hell does Mrs Reagan live? On the moon? Did she think the streets of America were in Disneyland? Did she think al
l it ever came to was politely saying No, thank you, I've already had some, thank you? I'm telling you, Teddy, someone should have just curtsied and said no to her, told her that cute little slogan of hers sucked, lady, that just isn't the way it is.'

  Teddy Carella sat there listening, wide-eyed.

  Knowing.

  Realizing that Eileen was talking about her own rape. The time she'd got cut. The time she'd said Yes. Because if she'd have said No, he'd have cut her again. Just say no, my ass.

  'Every cop in this city knows how to keep criminals off the street,' Eileen said. 'You want to know the answer?'

  And now she had Carella's attention, too.

  He turned to her, fork in mid-air.

  'Make the time impossible to do,' Eileen said. 'Make all time hard time. Make it back-breaking time and mind-numbing time. Make it senseless, wasted time. Make it the kind of time where you carry a two-hundred-pound boulder from point A to point B and then back to point A again, over and over again, all day long, day in and day out, with no parole, Charlie.'

  'No parole?' Carella said, and raised his eyebrows.

  'Ever,' Eileen said flatly. 'You catch the time, you do the time. And it's hard, mean time. You want to be hard and mean? Good. Do your hard, mean time. We're not here to teach you an honest job. There are plenty of honest jobs, you should've found one before you got busted. We're here to tell you it doesn't pay to do what you did, whatever you did. You wouldn't be here if you hadn't done something uncivilized, and so we're going to treat you like the barbarian you are.'

  'I'm not sure that would . . .'

  But Eileen was just gathering steam, and she cut Carella off mid-sentence.

  'You want to go out and do another crime after you've served your time? Good, go do it. But don't let us catch you. Because if we catch you for the same crime again, or a different crime, whatever crime you do, why, the next time you're going to do even harder time. You are going to come out of that prison and you are going to tell all your pals on the street that it doesn't pay to do whatever illegal thing they're thinking of doing. Because there's nothing funny or easy about the kind of time you've going to do in any slammer in the country, you are going to do hard, hard time, mister. You are going to carry this ten-thousand-pound rock back and forth all day long, and then you are going to eat food you wouldn't give a dog to eat, and there'll be no television, and no radio, and no gym to work out in, and you can't have visitors and you're not allowed to write letters or make phone calls, all you can do is carry that goddamn rock back and forth and eat that rotten food and sleep in a cell on a bed without a mattress and a toilet bowl without a seat. And then maybe you'll learn. Maybe once and for all you'll learn.'

  She nodded for emphasis.

  Her eyes were shooting green laser beams.

  Carella knew better than to say anything.

  'There isn't a cop in this city who wouldn't make prison something to dread,' she said.

  Carella said nothing.

  'Mention the word prison, criminals all over this city would start shaking. Mention the word prison, every criminal in the United States would just say no, Mrs Reagan! No! Not me! Please! Do it to Julia! Please!'

  She looked at Carella and Kling.

  Daring either of them to say a word.

  And then she turned to Teddy, and her voice lowered almost to a whisper.

  'If cops had their way,' she said.

  There were tears in her eyes.

  * * * *

  On her doorstep Eileen said, 'I'm sorry.'

  'That's okay,' Kling said.

  'I spoiled it for everyone,' she said.

  'The food was lousy anyway,' he said.

  Somewhere in the building, a baby began crying.

  'I think we ought to stop seeing each other,' she said.

  'I don't think that's such a good idea.'

  The baby kept crying. Kling wished someone would go pick it up. Or change its diaper. Or feed it. Or do whatever the hell needed to be done to it.

  'I went to see somebody at Pizzaz,' Eileen said.

  He looked at her, surprised. Pizzaz was the way the cops in this city pronounced PSAS, which initials stood for the department's Psychological Services and Aid Section. Calling it Pizzaz gave it a trendy sound. Made it sound like the In thing to do. Took the curse off psychiatric assistance, which no cop liked to admit he needed. Psychiatric assistance often led to a cop losing his gun, something he dreaded. Take away a cop's gun, you were putting him out to pasture. The Tom-Tom Squad. Indians with bows and arrows, no guns.

  'Uh-huh,' Kling said.

  'Saw a woman named Karin Lefkowitz.'

  'Uh-huh.'

  'She's a psychologist. There's a pecking order, you know.'

  'Yes.'

  'I'll be seeing her twice a week. Whenever she can fit me in.'

  'Okay.'

  'Which is why I thought you and I . . .'

  'No.'

  'Just until I get my act together again.'

  'Did she suggest this?'

  He was already beginning to hate Karin Lefkowitz.

  'No. It's entirely my idea.'

  'Well, it's a lousy idea.'

  'I don't think so.'

  'I do.'

  Eileen sighed.

  'I wish somebody would pick up that fucking baby,' Kling said.

  'So,' Eileen said, and reached into her bag for her key. He could see the butt of her revolver in the bag. Still a cop. But she didn't think so.

  'So what I'd like to do,' she said, 'if it's okay with you . . .'

  'No, it's not okay with me.'

  'Well, I'm really sorry about that, Bert, but this is my life we're talking about here.'

  'It's my life, too.'

  'You're not drowning,' she said.

  She put her key into the latch.

  'So ... let me call you when I'm ready, okay?' she said.

  'Eileen . . .'

  She turned the key.

  'Good night, Bert,' she said, and went into the apartment. And closed the door behind her. He heard the lock being turned, the tumblers falling with a small oiled click. He stood in the hallway for several moments, looking at the closed door and the numerals 304 on it. A screw in the 4 was loose. It hung slightly askew.

  He went downstairs.

  The night was very cold.

  He looked at his watch. Ten minutes to ten. He wasn't due at the squadroom until a quarter to twelve.

  * * * *

  "What I think you should do,' Lorraine said, 'is go to the police.'

  'No,' he said.

  'Before they come to you.'

  'No.'

  'Because, Scott, it looks very bad this way. It really does.'

  Lorraine Greer was twenty seven years old. She had long black hair and a complexion as pale as moonstone. She claimed she had violet-colored eyes like Elizabeth Taylor's, but she knew they were really only a sort of bluish-gray. She affected very dark lipstick that looked like dried blood on her lips. She had good breasts and good legs, and she wore funky clothes that revealed them to good advantage. The colors she favored were red and yellow and green. She dressed like a tree just starting to turn in the fall. She figured this leggy, busty, somewhat tatterdemalion look would immediately identify her once she became a rock star.

  Her father, who was an accountant, told her there were thousands of busty, leggy girls in this country. Millions of them all over the world. All of them dressed in rags. All of them thinking they could be rock stars if only they got a break. Her father told her to become a legal secretary. Legal secretaries made good money, he said. Lorraine told him she was going to be a rock star. She'd never had any formal musical training, that was true, but he had to admit she had a good singing voice and besides she'd written hundreds of songs. The lyrics to them, anyway. Usually she worked with a partner who put music to her words. She was writing songs all the time, with this or that partner. She knew the songs were good. Even her father thought some of the songs were pretty good, maybe. />
  Years ago, she'd been Scott Handler's baby-sitter.

  She'd been fifteen, he'd been six. That was the age difference between them. Nine years. She used to sing him to sleep with lullabies she herself wrote. The lyrics, anyway. At that time her partner used to be a girl she knew from high school. Sylvia Antonelli, who when she was nineteen years old married a man who owned a plumbing supply house. Sylvia now had three children and two fur coats and she lived in a big Tudor-style house. She never wrote songs anymore.

  Lorraine's partner nowadays was a woman who'd been in Chorus Line. On Broadway, not one of the road companies. She'd played the Puerto Rican girl, whatever her name was, the one who sang about the teacher at Music and Art. Be a snowflake, remember? Gonzalez? Something like that. She wrote beautiful music. She wasn't Puerto Rican, she was in fact Jewish. Very dark. Black hair, brown eyes, she could pass easily for Puerto Rican, Lorraine could visualize her in the part. She had also played one of Tevye's daughters in a dinner-theater production of Fiddler. In Florida someplace. But her heart was in writing songs, not in singing or dancing. She was the one who'd told Lorraine she was robbing the cradle here. Starting up with a kid nine years younger than she was. Lorraine had merely shrugged. This was only last week.

  He'd come to her a few days after Christmas.

  She was living in an apartment downtown in the Quarter. Her father paid the rent, but he kept warning her that pretty soon he'd turn off the money tap. She knew he didn't mean it; she was the apple of his eye. She'd once written a song, in fact, called 'Apple of My Eye,' which she'd dedicated to her father. Rebecca - that was her new partner's name, Rebecca Simms, nee Saperstein - had written a beautiful tune to go with Lorraine's lyrics.

  Apple of my eye . . .

  Lovely child of yesterday . . .

  Little sleepy eye.

  Hear my lullaby . . .

  Sleepy girl as bright as May . . .

  Little lullaby.

  And so on.