by Ed McBain
“I don’t recall ever having seen my mother and father doing anything like that,” Kling said.
“You’ve blocked it out.”
“No, I just never saw them doing anything like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that,” Kling said.
“You can’t even say the word,” Cindy said, and began giggling. “You’ve so effectively blocked it out—”
“There’s one thing I hate about psychologists,” Kling said.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Cindy asked, still giggling.
“They’re all the time analyzing everything.”
“Which is exactly what you do every day of the week, only you call it investigation. Can’t you see the possibilities of this, Bert?” she asked, no longer laughing, her face suddenly serious, suddenly very tired-looking again. “Oh, I know I haven’t really developed it yet, but don’t you think it’s an awfully good beginning? The detective as voyeur, the detective as privileged observer of a violent scene he can neither control nor understand, frightening by its very nature, confusing at first, but becoming more and more meaningful until it is ultimately understood. It’ll make a good thesis. I don’t care what you think.”
“I think it’ll make a good thesis, too,” Kling said. “Let’s go work out the primal scene part of it.”
He looked down into her face just as she turned hers up, and their eyes met, and held, and neither said a word for several moments. He kept watching her, thinking how much he loved her and wanted her, and seeing the cornflower eyes edged with weariness, her face pale and drawn and drained of energy. Her lips were slightly parted, she took in a deep breath and then released it, and the hand holding the drink slowly lowered to hang limply alongside the arm of the chair. He sensed what she was about to say, Yes, she would say, Yes, she’d make love even though she didn’t feel like it, even though she was depressed and tired and felt unattractive, even though she’d much rather sit here and watch the skyline and sip a little more scotch and then doze off, even though she didn’t feel the tiniest bit sexy, Yes, she would, if that was what he wanted. He read this in her eyes and perched on her lips, and he suddenly felt like a hulking rapist who had shambled up out of the sewer, so he shrugged and lightly said, “Maybe we’d better not. Be too much like necrophilia,” and smiled. She smiled back at him, wearily and not at all encouragingly. He gently took the glass from her dangling hand and went to refill it for her.
But he was disappointed.
At 11:30 Wednesday morning, Anne Gilroy called the squadroom and asked to talk to Kling.
“Hello,” she said, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Well, no,” he said, “I’ve been here for quite some time.”
“Do you remember me?” she asked.
“Yes, sure.”
“Gilroy was here,” she said.
“Mm-huh.”
“I thought of something,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Remember, you said if I thought of anything I should give you a call?”
“Well, actually you said it,” Kling said.
“That’s right, I did. You have a very good memory.”
“Well,” he said, and waited.
“Don’t you want to know what I thought of?”
“Is this in reference to the Leyden case?”
“Of course. You don’t think I’d call you just to chat and waste your time, do you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Of course not,” Anne said, and he knew she was smiling. He was surprised, moreover, to discover that he was smiling, too.
“Well, what is it?” he asked. “What did you think of?”
“I was the one who called Rose Leyden last Friday.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not following you,” he said.
“I’m sorry you’re not following me, too,” she said, and the line went silent. “Hello?” she said.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Oh, good. Do you remember we got a wire from Mr. Leyden, asking the office to call his wife? About the checkbook?”
“Oh, yes,” Kling said.
“I was the one who called her.”
“I see.”
“Don’t you want to know what we talked about?”
“Yes, sure.”
“I can’t talk right now,” Anne said.
He almost said, Then why’d you call right now? But he didn’t. And then he wondered why he hadn’t.
“When can you talk?” he asked instead.
“I can meet you in a half hour,” she said. “We can discuss it over a nice long lunch.”
“I don’t take long lunches.”
“A short one, then. I’m very easy to get along with.”
“Even so, Miss Gilroy—”
“Call me Anne.”
“Even so, I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly meet you for lunch. Why don’t I stop by at the office later today, and we can—”
“I’ll meet you for a drink at five o’clock,” she said.
The line went silent.
“I know,” she said. “You’re not allowed to drink on duty.”
“I go off duty at four forty-five,” he said, and wondered why he’d said it.
“The Roundelay Bar on Jefferson,” she said. “Five o’clock.”
“Make it five-fifteen,” he said. “I’ll probably be coming straight from the squadroom.”
“Do bring your pistol,” Anne said, and hung up.
“Who was that?” Carella asked from his desk. “Cindy?”
“No,” Kling said, and debated lying. “It was the Gilroy girl.”
“What’d she want?”
“She was the one who talked to Rose Leyden last Friday.”
“Oh? Anything?”
“I don’t know. She hasn’t told me what they talked about yet.”
“Why not?”
“She couldn’t talk right then.”
“Then why’d she call right then?” Carella asked.
“To let me know.”
“Let you know what? She didn’t tell you anything.”
“I know. I’m going to see her later. She’ll fill me in then.”
“I’ll just bet she will,” Carella said, and paused. “Or vice versa,” he said, and opened the top drawer of his desk. He took his holstered .38 Detective’s Special from where it rested alongside a box of cartridges, and clipped it to his belt. “If you’re interested,” he said, “I was just talking to Pistol Permits. Nobody named Walter Damascus ever registered a .22 Iver Johnson.”
“Great,” Kling said.
“Let’s go,” Carella said. “Got to hit some of those people in the Leyden building.”
“Yeah,” Kling said, and put on his shoulder holster, and thought about Anne’s parting shot, and about what Cindy had said concerning fixed psychological symbols, and was suddenly very nervous and a little scared and also a little excited. He looked at Carella sheepishly, as though his partner could read his mind, and then followed him out of the squadroom.
Mrs. Carmen Leibowitz was a widow in her middle fifties, a chic woman with an agreeable and cooperative manner. She lived directly across the hall from the Leydens and was of course shocked, and not a little frightened, by what had happened. The neighbors were getting up a petition, she told the detectives, asking for better protection in the building. It was terrible the way the neighborhood was deteriorating, people getting killed and robbed in elevators and in their own beds, absolutely frightening. She had been living in this same building for thirty-four years now, had come here as a young bride, had raised a family here, had continued living here even after her husband’s fatal coronary more than three years ago. But it had never been like this, with animals waiting to stab you or shoot you, she was afraid of going dow
nstairs any more.
“I’m a woman living alone,” she told them. “It’s very difficult for a woman living alone.”
She spoke in a very loud and somewhat grating voice, sitting on a well-worn Louis XVI settee against a paneled wall in a living room hung with oil paintings. She was wearing a Chanel suit, and Henri Bendel pumps, her hair meticulously coiffed, her makeup impeccable; she told the detectives they’d caught her on her way downtown to do some shopping. Carella promised they would not delay her long, and then declined her offer of coffee and raisin cake. In the kitchen, they could hear someone puttering around, dishes and silverware clinking.
“Who’s that?” Carella asked, and gestured toward the kitchen.
Mrs. Leibowitz, watching his face intently, said, “My girl.”
“Your daughter?”
Still studying his face, she said, “No, no, my maid.”
“Oh,” Carella said.
“Does she sleep in?” Kling asked.
“No,” Mrs. Leibowitz answered. She had given his face that same intense scrutiny, and she continued to gaze at him now, as though waiting for him to say something more. When it became apparent that he was not going to speak, she turned back to Carella, studying him with an identical attitude of concentrated expectancy.
“What time does she come in?” Carella asked.
“Nine in the morning. Except Thursdays and Sundays.”
“And what time does she leave?”
“After dinner. She does the dishes and goes.”
Carella turned toward Kling and said, “That means she wouldn’t have been here on the morning the murders were committed. It’d have been too early for her.”
He turned back toward Mrs. Leibowitz, who smiled, said, “Mmmm,” nodded, and then fastened her eyes to his face again. There was something terribly familiar about her scrutiny. It made Carella uncomfortable, creating a vague and elusive aura of déjà vu, the certain knowledge that he had been looked at in this same way by this same woman many many times before. And yet he knew he had never met her before this morning. Frowning, he said, “Were you at home on the morning of the murders, Mrs. Leibowitz?”
“Yes, I was,” she said.
“Did you hear anything across the hall?” he asked.
“I’m a very heavy sleeper,” she said.
“These would have been shotgun blasts,” Kling said, and she turned toward him and smiled. “Four of them,” he continued. “They would have been very loud.”
“The shots, do you mean?” she asked.
“Yes,” Kling said, and frowned. “The shotgun blasts.”
“I was asleep,” Mrs. Leibowitz said. “The newspapers said it happened in the middle of the night. I was asleep.”
“These shots would have been loud enough to have wakened you,” Carella said.
She turned to him, and did not answer.
“But you slept through them,” he said.
Studying his face, she said, “Yes. I slept through them.”
“We figure the murders took place sometime between three-thirty and four-thirty,” Carella said, “about that time. Would you remember—?”
“I’m sure I was asleep,” Mrs. Leibowitz said, watching him.
“And heard nothing?”
“I’m a very heavy sleeper,” she said again, and waited, watching Carella’s face. He suddenly knew what she was watching, suddenly knew why her expression looked so familiar. He rose abruptly, turning his back to her, walking from the settee and saying in a normal speaking voice, “I think you’re hard of hearing, Mrs. Leibowitz, am I right?” and then turned immediately, and looked at her, and saw that she was smiling and watching him, still waiting expectantly for him to speak.
His wife Teddy was a deaf-mute.
He had lived with her for a long time now, and he knew the look that came over her face, knew the intense concentration in her eyes whenever she “listened” to him, whenever she read his lips or his hands. That same expression was on Mrs. Leibowitz’s face now as she waited for him to speak again. The part of his face she studied so intently was his mouth.
“Mrs. Leibowitz,” he said gently, “who else lives on this floor?”
“There are only three apartments on the floor,” she said.
“Who’s in the third one?” Kling asked.
She turned quickly at the sound of his voice, but did not answer him. Kling glanced at Carella.
“The third apartment,” Carella said gently. “Who’s in it, Mrs. Leibowitz?”
“A family named Pimm. Mr. and Mrs. George Pimm. They’re not here now.”
“Where are they?”
“In Puerto Rico.”
“On vacation?”
“Vacation, yes,” she said.
She really carries it off very well, Carella thought. So long as she’s facing you, she can read your lips like an expert, even Teddy misses a word every now and then, but not Carmen Leibowitz, who fixes you with those very blue eyes of hers, clamps them to your lips, and refuses to let go until she has wrung from them the meaning of their movement, but only when she’s facing you. If she turns away, she misses the sense completely, probably hearing only a faint rumble that causes her to turn toward the speaker. She’s developed a lovely smile and a faint encouraging nod and a look of patient empathy, and she pulls off her deception really quite well because it would not do to wear a hearing aid, a hearing aid would not look good on a woman so chic, a woman so well-groomed. I wish she could meet Teddy, he thought. I wish she could meet my wonderful wife, who is as deaf and as mute as a sunrise.
“When did they leave?” he asked, taking pains to face her directly and to exaggerate each word.
“A week ago Sunday.”
“Then they were gone before the murders?”
“Yes, before.”
“When will they be back, do you know?”
“George said two weeks, I think. I’m not sure.”
“That would be…” he started, inadvertently turning toward Kling, and then immediately correcting his oversight, and turning back to find Mrs. Leibowitz sitting with that same painfully expectant smile on her face, not having heard a word he’d said. “That would be next Sunday,” Carella said.
“Yes,” she answered. She knew now that he knew, but she sat in unshakable confidence that she could continue to deceive, or perhaps only confidence that he would allow her to deceive.
“So with the Pimms gone,” he said, “you’d have been the only person on this floor. And you of course were asleep.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, then, I guess there’s nothing further to ask,” he said. “Thank you very much.”
“Thank you,” she said, and showed them to the door.
They talked to everyone in the building that afternoon, hoping to find someone who might have been awakened by the shots, someone who might have gone to the window and looked outside, seen a car downstairs perhaps, a yellow Buick perhaps, read a license number and remembered it.
Seven people admitted they had heard the shots. Two of them said they figured it was a truck downstairs, the backfire cliché apparently having been pounded into the unconscious of the average man as a reasonable explanation for any loud and sudden noise. A man on the fourth floor said he had got out of bed when he heard the first explosions…
“Two of them?” Carella asked.
“Yes, two, and very loud. I got out of bed and then heard someone yelling—”
“A man or a woman?”
“Hard to tell, just somebody yelling, you know, and then two more explosions, also very loud.”
“What did you do?” Carella asked.
“I went back to bed,” the man said.
A woman on the ninth floor had heard the shots only distantly, and had been frightened by them, and had stayed in bed for
a full five minutes before going to the window to investigate. She had seen a car pulling away from the curb.
“What kind of a car?” Carella asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell makes.”
“What color was it?”
“A dark color.”
“Not yellow?”
“No. Oh, no. Definitely not yellow.”
“Did you see the license plate?”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t.”
The remaining three people said they had known immediately that the noise was gunfire. They also said they’d thought it had come from the street, but none of them had gone to the window for a look outside, nor had any of them thought of telephoning the police. Par for the course, Carella thought, and thanked them, and wearily trudged downstairs with Kling.
“So what do you think?” he asked.
“The car pulling away could have been anybody,” Kling said. “Couple of kids necking, guy going to work, anybody.”
“Or maybe Walter Damascus.”
“His girlfriend drives a yellow Buick.”
“Sure, but what does he drive?”
“Nothing is my guess. Otherwise, why would he need her to pick him up?”
“It doesn’t seem possible, does it?” Carella said.
“What doesn’t?”
“That a guy could vanish into thin air this way. We know his name, we know where he lives, we’ve got his fingerprints, we’ve even got a good description of him. The only thing we haven’t got is him.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Kling said.
“When?” Carella asked.
The Roundelay Bar was on Jefferson Avenue, three blocks from the new museum. At 5:15 that afternoon, when Kling arrived for his business meeting with Anne Gilroy, it was thronged with advertising executives and pretty young secretaries and models, all of whom behaved like guests at a private cocktail party, moving, drinking, chattering, moving on again, hardly any of them sitting at the handful of tables scattered throughout the dimly lit room.
Anne Gilroy was sitting at a table in the far corner, wearing an open crochet dress over what appeared to be a body stocking. At least, Kling hoped it was a body stocking, and not just a body. He felt very much out of place in an atmosphere as sleek and as sophisticated as this one, where everyone seemed to be talking about the latest Doyle Dane campaign, or the big Solters and Sabinson coup, or the new Blaine Thompson three-sheet, whatever any of those were. He felt shabbily dressed in his blue plaid jacket, his tie all wrong and improperly knotted, his gun in its shoulder holster causing a very un-Chipplike bulge, felt in fact like a bumbling country hick who had inadvertently stumbled into whatever was making this city tick. And besides, he felt guilty as hell.