by Ed McBain
“It was mailed to her. At the theater.”
“When?”
“A week ago.”
“Did she report it to the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Haven’t you seen Rattlesnake?” Lois said.
“What do you mean?” Carella said.
“Rattlesnake. The musical. Mercy’s show. The show she was in.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“But you’ve heard of it.”
“No.”
“Where do you live, for God’s sake? On the moon?”
“I’m sorry, I just haven’t—”
“Forgive me,” Lois said immediately. “I’m not usually…I’m trying very hard to…I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
“That’s all right,” Carella said.
“Anyway, it’s…it’s a big hit now but…There was trouble in the beginning, you see…Are you sure you don’t know about this? It was in all the newspapers.”
“Well, I guess I missed it,” Carella said. “What was the trouble about?”
“Don’t you know about this, either?” she asked Hawes.
“No, I’m sorry.”
“About Mercy’s dance?”
“No.”
“Well, in one scene, Mercy danced the title song without any clothes on. Because the idea was to express…the hell with what the idea was. The point is that the dance wasn’t at all prurient, it wasn’t even sexy! But the police missed the point and closed the show down two days after it opened. The producers had to go to court for a writ to get the show opened again.”
“Yes, I remember it now,” Carella said.
“What I’m trying to say is that nobody involved with Rattlesnake would report anything to the police. Not even a threatening letter.”
“If she bought a pistol,” Hawes said, “she would have had to go to the police. For a permit.”
“She didn’t have a permit.”
“Then how’d she get the pistol? You can’t buy a handgun without first—”
“A friend of hers sold it to her.”
“What’s the friend’s name?”
“Harry Donatello.”
“An importer,” Carella said drily.
“Of souvenir ashtrays,” Hawes said.
“I don’t know what he does for a living,” Lois said. “But he got the gun for her.”
“When was this?”
“A few days after she received the letter.”
“What did the letter say?” Carella asked.
“I’ll get it for you,” Lois said, and went into the bedroom. They heard a dresser drawer opening, the rustle of clothes, what might have been a tin candy box being opened. Lois came back into the room. “Here it is,” she said.
There didn’t seem much point in trying to preserve latent prints on a letter that had already been handled by Mercy Howell, Lois Kaplan, and God knew how many others. But Carella nonetheless accepted the letter on a handkerchief spread over the palm of his hand and then looked at the face of the envelope. “She should have brought this to us immediately,” he said. “It’s written on hotel stationery, we’ve got an address without lifting a finger.”
The letter had indeed been written on stationery from The Addison Hotel, one of the city’s lesser-known fleabags, some two blocks north of the Eleventh Street Theater, where Mercy Howell had worked. There was a single sheet of paper in the envelope. Carella unfolded it. Lettered in pencil were the words:
The lamp went out, the room was black.
At first there was no sound but the sharp intake of Adele Gorman’s breath. And then, indistinctly, as faintly as though carried on a swirling mist that blew in wetly from some desolated shore, there came the sound of garbled voices, and the room grew suddenly cold. The voices were those of a crowd in endless debate, rising and falling in cacophonous cadence, a mixture of tongues that rattled and rasped. There was the sound, too, of a rising wind, as though a door to some forbidden landscape had been sharply and suddenly blown open (how cold the room was!) to reveal a host of corpses incessantly pacing, involved in formless dialogue. The voices rose in volume now, carried on that same chill-penetrating wind, louder, closer, until they seemed to overwhelm the room, clamoring to be released from whatever unearthly vault contained them. And then, as if two and only two of those disembodied voices had succeeded in breaking away from the mass of unseen dead, bringing with them a rush of bone-chilling air from some world unknown, there came a whisper at first, the whisper of a man’s voice, saying the single word “Ralph!” sharp-edged and with a distinctive foreign inflection, “Ralph!” and then a woman’s voice joining it, “Adele!” pronounced strangely and in the same cutting whisper, “Adele!” and then “Ralph!” again, the voices overlapping, unmistakably foreign, urgent, rising in volume until the whispers commingled to become an agonizing groan and the names were lost in the shrilling echo of the wind.
Meyer’s eyes played tricks in the darkness. Apparitions that surely were not there seemed to float on the crescendo of sound that saturated the room. Barely perceived pieces of furniture assumed amorphous shapes as the male voice snarled and the female voice moaned above it in contralto counterpoint. And then the babel of other voices intruded again, as though calling these two back to whatever grim mossy crypt they had momentarily escaped. The sound of the wind became more fierce, and the voices of those numberless pacing dead receded, and echoed, and were gone.
The lamp sputtered back into dim illumination. The room seemed perceptibly warmer, but Meyer Meyer was covered with a cold clammy sweat.
“Now do you believe?” Adele Gorman asked.
Detective Bob O’Brien was coming out of the men’s room down the hall when he saw the woman sitting on the bench just outside the squadroom. He almost went back into the toilet, but he was an instant too late; she had seen him, there was no escape.
“Hello, Mr. O’Brien,” she said, and performed an awkward little half-rising motion, as though uncertain whether she should stand to greet him or accept the deference due a lady. The clock on the squadroom wall read 3:02 A.M., but the lady was dressed as though for a brisk afternoon’s hike in the park, brown slacks and low-heeled walking shoes, brief beige car coat, a scarf around her head. She was perhaps fifty-five or thereabouts, with a face that once must have been pretty, save for the overlong nose. Greeneyed, with prominent cheekbones and a generous mouth, she executed her abortive rise and then fell into step beside O’Brien as he walked into the squadroom.
“Little late in the night to be out, isn’t it, Mrs. Blair?” O’Brien asked. He was not an insensitive cop, but his manner now was brusque and dismissive. Faced with Mrs. Blair for perhaps the seventeenth time in a month, he tried not to empathize with her loss because, truthfully, he was unable to assist her, and his inability to do so was frustrating.
“Have you seen her?” Mrs. Blair asked.
“No,” O’Brien said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Blair, but I haven’t.”
“I have a new picture, perhaps that will help.”
“Yes, perhaps it will,” he said.
The telephone was ringing. He lifted the receiver and said, “87th Squad, O’Brien here.”
“Bob, this’s Bert Kling over on Culver, the church bombing.”
“Yeah, Bert.”
“Seems I remember seeing a red Volkswagen on that hot car bulletin we got yesterday. You want to dig it out and let me know where it was snatched?”
“Yeah, just a second,” O’Brien said, and began scanning the sheet on his desk.
“Here’s the new picture,” Mrs. Blair said. “I know you’re very good with runaways, Mr. O’Brien, the kids all like you and give you information. If you see Penelope, all I want you to do is tell her I love her and am sorry for the misunderstanding.”
“Yeah, I will,” O’Brien said. Into the phone, he said, “I’ve got two red VWs, Bert, a ‘64 and a ‘66. You want them both?”
“Shoot,” Kling said.
“The ‘64 was stolen from a guy named Art Hauser. It was parked outside 861 West Meridian.”
“And the ‘64?”
“Owner is a woman named Alice Cleary. Car was stolen from a parking lot on Fourteenth.”
“North or South?”
“South. 303 South.”
“Right. Thanks, Bob,” Kling said, and hung up.
“And ask her to come home to me,” Mrs. Blair said.
“Yes, I will,” O’Brien said. “If I see her, I certainly will.”
“That’s a nice picture of Penny, don’t you think?” Mrs. Blair asked. “It was taken last Easter. It’s the most recent picture I have. I thought it would be most helpful to you.”
O’Brien looked at the girl in the picture and then looked up into Mrs. Blair’s green eyes, misted now with tears, and suddenly wanted to reach across the desk and pat her hand reassuringly, the one thing he could not do with any honesty. Because whereas it was true that he was the squad’s runaway expert, with perhaps fifty snapshots of teenage boys and girls crammed into his bulging notebook, and whereas his record of finds was more impressive than any other cop’s in the city, uniformed or plainclothes, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do for the mother of Penelope Blair, who had run away from home last June.
“You understand—” he started to say.
“Let’s not go into that again, Mr. O’Brien,” she said, and rose.
“Mrs. Blair—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Mrs. Blair said, walking quickly out of the squadroom. “Tell her to come home. Tell her I love her,” she said, and was gone down the iron-runged steps.
O’Brien sighed and stuffed the new picture of Penelope into his notebook. What Mrs. Blair did not choose to hear again was the fact that her runaway daughter Penny was twenty-four years old, and there was not a single agency on God’s green earth, police or otherwise, that could force her to go home again if she did not choose to.
Fats Donner was a stool pigeon with a penchant for Turkish baths. A mountainous white Buddha of a man, he could usually be found at one or another of the city’s steam emporiums at any given hour of the day, draped in a towel and reveling in the heat that saturated his flabby body. Bert Kling found him in an allnight place called Steam-Fit. He sent the masseur into the steam room to tell Donner he was there, and Donner sent word out that he would be through in five minutes, unless Kling wished to join him. Kling did not wish to join him. He waited in the locker room, and in seven minutes’ time, Donner came out, draped in his customary towel, a ludicrous sight at any time, but particularly at close to 3:30 A.M.
“Hey!” Donner said. “How you doing?”
“Fine,” Kling said. “How about yourself?”
“Comme ci, comme ca,” Donner said, and made a seesawing motion with one fleshy hand.
“I’m looking for some stolen heaps,” Kling said, getting directly to the point.”
“What kind?” Donner said.
“Volkswagens. A ‘64 and a ‘66.”
“What color are they?”
“Red.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes.”
“Where were they heisted?”
“One from in front of 861 West Meridian. The other from a parking lot on South Fourteenth.”
“When was this?”
“Both last week sometime. I don’t have the exact dates.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who stole them.”
“You think it’s the same guy on both?”
“I doubt it.”
“What’s so important about these heaps?”
“One of them may have been used in a bombing tonight.”
“You mean the church over on Culver?”
“That’s right.”
“Count me out,” Donner said.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a lot of guys in this town who’re in sympathy with what happened over there tonight. I don’t want to get involved in none of this black-white shit.”
“Who’s going to know whether you’re involved or not?” Kling asked.
“The same way you get information, they get information.”
“I need your help, Donner.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry on this one,” Donner said, and shook his head.
“In that case, I’d better hurry downtown to High Street.”
“Why? You got another source down there?”
“No, that’s where the DA’s office is.”
Both men stared at each other, Donner in a white towel draped around his belly, sweat still pouring from his face and his chest even though he was no longer in the steam room, Kling looking like a slightly tired advertising executive rather than a cop threatening a man with revelation of past deeds not entirely legal. They stared at each other with total understanding, caught in the curious symbiosis of law breaker and law enforcer, an empathy created by neither man, but essential to the existence of both. It was Donner who broke the silence.
“I don’t like being coerced,” he said.
“I don’t like being refused,” Kling answered.
“When do you need this?”
“I want to get going on it before morning.”
“You expect miracles, don’t you?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Miracles cost.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five if I turn up one heap, fifty if I turn up both.”
“Turn them up first. We’ll talk later.”
“And if somebody breaks my head later?”
“You should have thought of that before you entered the profession,” Kling said. “Come on, Donner, cut it out. This is a routine bombing by a couple of punks. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”
“No?” Donner asked. And then, in a very professorial voice, he uttered perhaps the biggest understatement of the decade. “Racial tensions are running very high in this city right now.”
“Have you got my number at the squadroom?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it,” Donner said glumly.
“I’m going back there now. Let me hear from you soon.”
“You mind if I get dressed first?” Donner asked.
The night clerk at The Addison Hotel was alone in the lobby when Carella and Hawes walked in. Immersed in an open book on the desk in front of him, he did not look up as they approached. The lobby was furnished in faded Gothic: a threadbare oriental rug, heavy curlicued mahogany tables, ponderous stuffed chairs with sagging bottoms and soiled antimacassars, two spittoons resting alongside each of two mahogany-paneled supporting columns. A real Tiffany lampshade hung over the registration desk, one leaded glass panel gone, another badly cracked. In the old days, The Addison had been a luxury hotel. It now wore its past splendor with all the style of a two-dollar hooker in a moth-eaten mink she’d picked up in a thrift shop.
The clerk, in contrast to his ancient surroundings, was a young man in his mid-twenties, wearing a neatly pressed brown tweed suit, a tan shirt, a gold-and-brown silk rep tie, and eyeglasses with tortoiseshell rims. He glanced up at the detectives belatedly, squinting after the intense concentration of peering at print, and then he got to his feet.
“Yes, gentlemen,” he said. “May I help you?”
“Police officers,” Carella said. He took his wallet from his pocket and opened it to where his detective’s shield was pinned to a leather flap.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m Detective Carella, this is my partner, Detective Hawes.”
“How do you do? I’m the night clerk, my name is Ronnie Sanford.”
“We’re looking for someone who may have been registered here two weeks ago,” Hawes said.
“Well, if he was registered here two weeks ago,” Sanford said, “chances are he’s still registered. Most of our guests are residents.”
“Do you keep stationery in the lobby here?” Carella asked.
“Sir?”
“Stationery.
Is there any place here in the lobby where someone could walk in off the street and pick up a piece of stationery?”
“No, sir. There’s a writing desk there in the corner, near the staircase, but we don’t stock it with stationery, no, sir.”
“Is there stationery in the rooms?”
“Yes, sir.” “How about here at the desk?”
“Yes, of course, sir.”
“Is there someone at this desk twenty-four hours a day?”
“Twenty-four hours a day, yes, sir. We have three shifts. Eight to four in the afternoon. Four to midnight. And midnight to eight A.M.”
“You came on at midnight, did you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any guests come in after you started your shift?”
“A few, yes, sir.”
“Notice anybody with blood on his clothes?”
“Blood? Oh, no, sir.”
“Would you have noticed?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you generally pretty aware of what’s going on around here?”
“I try to be, sir. At least, for most of the night. I catch a little nap when I’m not studying, but usually—”
“What do you study?”
“Accounting.”
“Where?”
“At Ramsey U.”
“Mind if we take a look at your register?”
“Not at all, sir.”
He walked to the mail rack and took the hotel register from the counter there. Returning to the desk, he opened it and said, “All of our present guests are residents, with the exception of Mr. Lambert in 204, and Mrs. Grant in 701.”
“When did they check in?”
“Mr. Lambert checked in…last night, I think it was. And Mrs. Grant has been here for four days. She’s leaving on Tuesday.”
“Are these the actual signatures of your guests?”
“Yes, sir. All guests are asked to sign the register, as required by state law.”
“Have you got that note, Cotton?” Carella asked, and then turned again to Sanford. “Would you mind if we took this over to the couch there?”
“Well, we’re not supposed—”
“We can give you a receipt for it, if you like.”
“No, I guess it’ll be all right.”