by Ed McBain
“Yes. He’s not at any of them.”
“But you still think he may have been in an accident.”
“I think he may be dead someplace,” Mrs. Ellingham said, and began weeping.
Brown was silent. He looked up at the patrolman.
“Mrs. Ellingham?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll try to get over there later today if I can, to get the information I’ll need for the Missing Persons Bureau. Will you be home?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I call first?”
“No, I’ll be here all day.”
“Fine, I’ll see you later, then. If you should hear anything meanwhile—”
“Yes, I’ll call you.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Ellingham,” Brown said, and hung up. “Lady’s husband disappeared,” he said to the patrolman.
“Went down for a loaf of bread a year ago, right?” the patrolman said.
“Right. Hasn’t been heard from since.” Brown gestured toward the detention cage. “Who’s the prize across the room?”
“Caught him cold in the middle of a burglary on Fifth and Friedlander. On a third-floor fire escape. Jimmied open the window, and was just entering.”
“Any tools on him?”
“Yep. I left them on the bench outside.”
“Want to get them for me?”
The patrolman went out into the corridor. Brown walked over to the detention cage. The prisoner looked at him.
“What’s your name?” Brown asked.
“What’s yours?”
“Detective Arthur Brown.”
“That’s appropriate,” the prisoner said.
“I find it so,” Brown said coolly. “Now what’s yours?”
“Frederick Spaeth.”
The patrolman came back into the room carrying a leather bag containing a hand drill and bits of various sizes, a jimmy, a complete set of picklocks, several punches and skeleton keys, a pair of nippers, a hacksaw, a pair of brown cotton gloves, and a crowbar designed so that it could be taken apart and carried in three sections. Brown looked over the tools and said nothing.
“I’m a carpenter,” Spaeth said in explanation.
Brown turned to the patrolman. “Anybody in the apartment, Simms?”
“Empty,” Simms replied.
“Spaeth,” Brown said, “we’re charging you with burglary in the third degree, which is a felony. And we’re also charging you with possession of burglar’s instruments, which is a class-A misdemeanor. Take him down, Simms.”
“I want a lawyer,” Spaeth said.
“You’re entitled to one,” Brown said.
“I want him now. Before you book me.”
Because policemen are sometimes as confused by Miranda-Escobedo as are laymen, Brown might have followed the course pursued by his colleague Kling, who, the night before, had advised a prisoner of his rights even though cruising radio patrolmen had arrested him in the act. Instead, Brown said, “What for, Spaeth? You were apprehended entering an apartment illegally. Nobody’s asking you any questions, we caught you cold. You’ll be allowed three telephone calls after you’re booked, to your lawyer, your mother, your bail bondsman, your best friend, whoever the hell you like. Take him down, Simms.”
Simms unlocked the cage and prodded Spaeth out of it with his nightstick. “This is illegal!” Spaeth shouted.
“So’s breaking and entry,” Brown answered.
The woman in the apartment across the hall from 4C was taller than both Willis and Genero, which was understandable. Hal Willis was the shortest man on the squad, having cleared the minimum five-feet-eight-inch height requirement by a scant quarter of an inch. Built like a soft-shoe dancer, brown-haired and brown-eyed, he stood alongside Genero, who towered over him at five feet nine inches. Hal Willis knew he was short. Richard Genero thought he was very tall. From his father, he had inherited beautiful curly black hair and a strong Neapolitan nose, a sensuous mouth, and soulful brown eyes. From his mother, he had inherited the tall Milanese carriage of all his male cousins and uncles—except Uncle Dominick, who was only five feet six. But this lady who opened the door to apartment 4B was a very big lady indeed. Both Willis and Genero looked up at her simultaneously, and then glanced at each other in something like stupefied awe. The lady was wearing a pink slip and nothing else. Barefooted, big-breasted, redheaded, green-eyed, she put her hands on her nylon-sheathed hips and said, “Yeah?”
“Police officers,” Willis said, and showed her his shield.
The woman scrutinized it, and then said, “Yeah?”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” Genero said.
“What about?”
“About the young man across the hall. Lewis Scott.”
“What about him?”
“Do you know him?”
“Slightly.”
“Only slightly?” Genero said. “You live directly across the hall from him…”
“So what? This is the city.”
“Even so…”
“I’m forty-six years old. He’s a kid of what? Eighteen? Nineteen? How do you expect me to know him? Intimately?”
“Well, no, ma’am, but—”
“So that’s how I know him. Slightly. Anyway, what about him?”
“Did you see him at any time last night?” Willis asked.
“No. Why? Something happen to him?”
“Did you hear anything unusual in his apartment anytime last night?”
“Unusual like what?”
“Like glass breaking?”
“I wasn’t home last night. I went out to supper with a friend.”
“What time was that?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“And what time did you get back?”
“I didn’t. I slept over.”
“With your friend?”
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?” Genero asked.
“Her name is Morris Strauss, that’s her name.”
“Oh,” Genero said. He glanced at Willis sheepishly.
“When did you get home, ma’am?” Willis asked.
“About five o’clock this morning. Morris is a milkman. He gets up very early. We had breakfast together, and then I came back here. Why? What’s the matter? Did Lew do something?”
“Did you happen to see him at any time yesterday?”
“Yeah. When I was going to the store. He was just coming in the building.”
“What time was that, would you remember?”
“About four-thirty. I was going out for some coffee. I ran out of coffee. I drink maybe six hundred cups of coffee a day. I’m always running out. So I was going up the street to the A&P to get some more. That’s when I saw him.”
“Was he alone?”
“No.”
“Who was with him?”
“Another kid.”
“Boy or girl?”
“A boy.”
“Would you know who?” Genero asked.
“I don’t hang around with teenagers, how would I—”
“Well, you might have seen him around the neighborhood…”
“No.”
“How old would you say he was?” Willis asked.
“About Lew’s age. Eighteen, nineteen, I don’t know. A big kid.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Long blond hair, a sort of handlebar mustache. He was wearing a crazy jacket.”
“What do you mean, crazy?”
“It was like an animal skin, with the fur inside and the, you know, what do you call it, the pelt? Is that what you call it?”
“Go ahead.”
“The raw side, you know what I mean? The skin part. That was the outside of the jacket, and the fur was the inside. White fur. And there was a big orange sun painted on the back of the jacket.”
“Anything else?”
“Ain’t that enough?”
“Maybe it is,” Willis said. “Thank you very much, ma’am.”
“You
’re welcome,” she answered. “You want some coffee? I got some on the stove.”
“No, thanks, we want to take a look at the apartment here,” Genero said. “Thanks a lot, though. You’ve been very kind.”
The woman smiled so suddenly and so radiantly that it almost knocked Genero clear across the hallway to the opposite wall.
“Not at all,” she said in a tiny little voice, and gently eased the door shut. Genero raised his eyebrows. He was trying to remember exactly what he had said, and in what tone of voice. He was still new at this business of questioning people, and any trick he could learn might prove helpful. The trouble was, he couldn’t remember his exact words.
“What did I say?” he asked Willis.
“I don’t remember,” Willis answered.
“No, come on, Hal, what did I say? What made her smile that way, and all of a sudden get so nice?”
“I think you asked her if she’d like to go to bed with you,” Willis said.
“No,” Genero said seriously, and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
With the passkey the superintendent had provided, Willis opened the door to 4C, and stepped into the apartment. Behind him, Genero was still pondering the subtleties of police interrogation.
There were two windows facing the entrance door. The lower pane of the window on the left was almost completely shattered, with here and there an isolated shard jutting from the window frame. Sunlight streamed through both windows, dust motes rising silently. The apartment was sparsely furnished, a mattress on the floor against one wall, a bookcase on the opposite wall, a stereo record player and a stack of LP albums beside it, a bridge table and two chairs in the kitchen alcove, where another window opened onto the fire escape. A black camp trunk studded with brass rivets served as a coffee table in the center of the room, near the record player. Brightly colored cushions lined the wall on either side of the bookcase. Two black-and-white antiwar posters decorated the walls. The windows were curtainless. In the kitchen alcove, the shelves over the stove carried only two boxes of breakfast cereal and a bowl of sugar. A bottle of milk and three containers of yogurt were in the refrigerator. In the vegetable tray, Willis found a plastic bag of what looked like oregano. He showed it to Genero.
“Grass?” Genero said.
Willis shrugged. He opened the bag and sniffed the greenish-brown, crushed leaves. “Maybe,” he said. He pulled an evidence tag from his pad, filled it out, and tied it to the plastic bag.
They went through the apartment methodically. There were three coffee mugs on the camp trunk. Each of them smelled of wine, and there was a red lipstick stain on the rim of one cup. They opened the camp trunk and found it stuffed with dungarees, flannel shirts, undershorts, several sweaters, a harmonica, an army blanket, and a small metal cash box. The cash box was unlocked. It contained $3 in change and a high school GO card encased in plastic. In the kitchen, they found two empty wine bottles in the garbage pail. A sprung mousetrap, the bait gone, was under the kitchen sink. On top of the closed toilet seat in the bathroom, they found a pair of dungarees with a black belt through the trouser loops, an orange Charlie Brown sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off raggedly at the elbows, a pair of white sweat socks, a pair of loafers, and a woman’s black silk blouse.
The blouse had a label in it.
They came into the grocery store at twenty minutes past 7:00, each of them wearing a Halloween mask, even though this was only the middle of the month and Halloween was yet two weeks away. They were both holding drawn guns, both dressed in black trench coats and black trousers. They walked rapidly from the front door to the counter, with the familiarity of visitors who had been there before. One of them was wearing a Wolf Man mask and the other was wearing a Snow White mask. The masks completely covered their faces and lent a terrifying nightmare aspect to their headlong rush for the counter.
Silvio’s back was turned when they entered the store. He heard the bell over the door and whirled quickly, but they were almost to the counter by then, and he had time to shout only the single word “Ancora!” before he punched the NO SALE key on the register and reached into the drawer for his gun. The man wearing the Snow White mask was the first to realize that Silvio was going for a gun. He did not say a word to his partner. Instead, he fired directly into Silvio’s face at close range. The slug almost tore off Silvio’s head and sent him spinning backward against the shelves. Canned goods clattered to the floor. The curtain leading to the back room was suddenly thrown open and Parker stood in the doorway with a .38 Police Special in his fist. The man with the Wolf Man mask had his hand in the cash drawer and was scooping up a pile of bills.
“Hold it!” Parker shouted, and the man with the Snow White mask fired again. His slug caught Parker in the right shoulder. Parker bent low and pulled off a wild shot just as the man at the cash register opened fire, aiming for Parker’s belly, catching him in the leg instead. Parker grabbed for the curtain behind him, clutching for support, tearing it loose as he fell to the floor screaming in pain.
The two men in their Halloween masks ran out of the store and into the Sunday-morning sunshine.
There were 186 patrolmen assigned to the 87th Precinct, and on any given day of the week, their work schedule was outlined by a duty chart that required a PhD in Arabic literature to be properly understood. In essence, six of these patrolmen worked from 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., Monday through Friday, two of them serving as the captain’s clerical force, one as a highway safety patrolman, and the last two as community relations patrolman and roll call man respectively. The remaining 180 patrolmen were divided into twenty squads with nine men on each squad. Their duty chart looked like this:
All of which meant that patrolmen worked five tours for a forty-hour week, and then were off for fifty-six hours except when they were working the midnight to 8:00 A.M. shift, in which case they then worked only four tours and were off for eighty hours. Unless, of course, the fifth midnight tour happened to fall on a Friday or Saturday night, in which case they were required to work. All clear?
Patrolmen were supposed to be relieved on post as soon as possible after the hour by the squad that had just answered roll call in the precinct muster room. But most patrolmen began to drift back toward the station house shortly before the hour, so that seconds after the new shift trotted down the precinct steps, the old one entered the building and headed for the locker room to change into street clothes. There were a lot of cops in and around a police station when the shift was changing, and Sunday morning was no exception. If anything, the precinct was busier on Sunday because Saturday night brought thieves out like cockroaches and their resultant handiwork spilled over onto the day of rest.
This particular Sunday morning was more chaotic than usual because a cop had been shot, and nothing can galvanize a police department like the knowledge that one of their own has been gunned down. Lieutenant Peter Byrnes, who was in command of the sixteen detectives on the 87th Squad, saw fit to call in three men who were on vacation, perhaps on the theory that one wounded cop is worth at least three who were ambulatory. Not content to leave it at that, he then put in a call to Steve Carella at his home in Riverhead, ostensibly to inform him of the shooting.
Sitting behind his desk in the corner room upstairs, looking down at the front steps of the building, where the patrolmen filed out in pairs, the green globes flanking the steps and burning with sunshine as though fired from within, Byrnes must have known that Carella had worked the night shift and that the man did not now need a call from his superior officer. But he dialed the number nonetheless and waited while the phone rang repeatedly on the other end. When at last Carella answered, Byrnes said, “Steve? Were you asleep?”
“No, I was just getting into my pajamas.”
“Sorry to bother you this way.”
“No, no, what is it, Pete?”
“Parker just got shot in a grocery store on Ainsley.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah.”
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p; “Jesus,” Carella said.
“Two hoods killed the proprietor, wounded Parker in the shoulder and leg. He’s been taken to Buenavista Hospital. It looks pretty serious.”
“Jesus,” Carella said again.
“I’ve already called in Di Maeo, Levine, and Meriwether. They’re on vacation, Steve, but I had to do it, I don’t like it when cops get shot.”
“No, neither do I.”
“I just thought I’d tell you.”
“Yeah, I’m glad you did, Pete.”
The line went silent.
“Pete?”
“Yeah, Steve?”
“What is it? Do you want me to come in, too?”
“Well, you had a long night, Steve.”
The line was silent again.
“Well…What do you want me to do, Pete?”
“Why don’t you see how you feel?” Byrnes said. “Go to bed, get some rest, maybe you’ll feel like coming in a little later, okay?” Byrnes paused. “I can use you, Steve. It’s up to you.”
“What time is it, anyway?” Carella asked.
Byrnes looked up at the wall clock. “Little after eight. Get some rest, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Carella said.
“I’ll talk to you later,” Byrnes said, and hung up. He rose from behind his desk, hooked his thumbs into his belt just above both hip pockets, and walked to the window overlooking the park. He was a compact man with gray hair and flinty blue eyes, and he stood looking silently at the sun-washed foliage across the street, his face expressionless, and then turned suddenly and walked to the frosted-glass door of his office, yanked it open, and went out into the squadroom.
A Marine corporal was sitting with Detective Carl Kapek at the desk closest to the lieutenant’s office. A swollen discolored lump the size of a baseball sat just over the Marine’s left eye. His uniform was rumpled and soiled, and he looked extremely embarrassed, his hands clasped in his lap rather like a schoolboy’s. He spoke in a very low voice, almost a whisper, to Kapek as the lieutenant walked past them to where Brown was on the telephone at his own desk.
“Right, I’ll tell him,” Brown said, and replaced the phone on its cradle.
“That about Parker?” Byrnes asked.