by Ed McBain
“Do you know anything about his Army background, Mr. Etterman? Whoever shot him is an expert with a rifle, so the possibility that he’s an ex-Army man exists. Since Mr. Forrest was in the Army…”
“I don’t know much about it. I’m sure he was a fine officer.”
“He never mentioned having any trouble with his men, anything that might have carried over into…?”
“Gentlemen, he was in the Army during the war. The war has been over for a long time. Surely, no one would carry a grudge for so many years.”
“Anything’s possible,” Carella said. “We’re looking for a place to hang our hats, sir.”
“It must be a maniac,” Etterman said. “It can only be a maniac.”
“I hope not, sir,” Carella said, and then they rose and thanked him for his time.
On the street outside, Meyer said, “I always feel funny when I’m around Germans.”
“I noticed that,” Carella said.
“Yeah? Was it really noticeable? Was I too quiet?”
“You didn’t say a word all the while we were up there.”
Meyer nodded. “I kept thinking, ‘All right, maybe your son was killed flying an American bomber over Schweinfurt, but maybe, on the other hand, one of your nephews was stuffing my relatives into ovens at Dachau.’ ” Meyer shook his head. “You know, Sarah and I were at a party a couple of weeks ago, and somebody there was arguing with somebody else because he was selling German cars in this country. What it got down to, the guy said that he would like to see all the German people exterminated. So the other guy said, ‘There was a German once who wanted to see all the Jewish people exterminated.’ And I could see his point. What the hell makes it more right for Jews to exterminate Germans than vice versa? I could understand the point completely. But at the same time, Steve, something inside me agreed with the first guy. Because, I guess maybe deep down inside, every Jew in the world would like to see the Germans exterminated for what they did to us.”
“You can’t hate a people here and now for what another people in another time did, Meyer,” Carella said.
“You’re not a Jew,” Meyer said.
“No, I’m not. But I look at a guy like Etterman, and I see only a sad old man who lost his son in the war, and who two days ago lost the equivalent of a second son.”
“I look at him, and I see the film clips of those bulldozers pushing thousands of dead Jews, that’s what I see.”
“Do you see the son who died over Schweinfurt?”
“No. I think I honestly hate the Germans, and I think I’ll hate them till the day I die.”
“Maybe you’re entitled to,” Carella said.
“You know, there are times when I think you’re Jewish,” Meyer answered.
“When I think of what happened in Germany, I am Jewish,” Carella said. “How can I be anything else and still call myself a human being? What the hell were they throwing in those ovens? Garbage? Animals? Don’t you think I feel what you feel?”
“I’m not sure you do,” Meyer said.
“No? Then go to hell.”
“You getting sore or something?”
“A little.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you why. I don’t think I even knew a Jew until I was twelve years old. That’s the God’s honest truth. Oh, yeah, there was a guy who used to come around to the door selling stuff, and my mother called him ‘The Jew.’ She used to say, ‘The Jew is coming today.’ I don’t think she meant anything derogatory, or maybe she did, who the hell knows? She was raised in Italy, and she didn’t know Jews from a hole in the wall. Maybe, for her, ‘Jew’ was synonymous with peddler. To me, a Jew was an old man with a beard and a bundle on his back. Until I got to high school. That was where I met Jews for the first time. You have to remember that Hitler was already in power by then. Well, I heard a joke one day, and I repeated it to a Jewish kid in the cafeteria. The joke was built on a riddle, and the riddle was: ‘What’s the fastest thing in the world?’ The answer was: ‘A Jew riding through Germany on a bicycle.’ The kid I told the joke to didn’t think it was very funny. I couldn’t understand what I’d said to offend him. So I went home and asked my father, who was also born in Italy, who was running a bakery, well, you know, he still does. I told him the joke, and he didn’t laugh either, and then he took me inside, we had a dining room at the time, with one of those big old mahogany tables. We sat at the table, and he said to me in Italian, ‘Son, there is nothing good about hatred, and nothing funny about it, either.’ I went back to school the next day, and I looked for that kid, I can still remember his name, Reuben Zimmerman, and I told him I was sorry for what I’d said the day before, and he told me to forget it. But he never spoke to me again all the while we were in that high school. Four years, Meyer, and he never spoke to me.”
“What are you saying, Steve?”
“I don’t know what the hell I’m saying.”
“Maybe you are Jewish, after all,” Meyer said.
“Maybe I am. Let’s stop for an egg cream before we look up Norden’s wife.”
Mae Norden was forty-three years old, a brunette with a round face and dark-brown eyes. They found her at the funeral home where Norden’s body lay in a satin-lined coffin. The undertaker had done a remarkable job with the front of his face, where the bullet had entered. The casual observer would never have known he’d been shot. The room was filled with relatives and friends, among whom were his wife and his two children, Joanie and Mike. Mike was eight years old and Joanie was five. They both sat on straight-backed chairs near the coffin, looking very old and very bewildered at the same time. Mae Norden was dressed in black, and her eyes looked as if she had cried a lot in the past day, but she was not crying now. She led the detectives outside, and they stood on the sidewalk there and smoked cigarettes and discussed her husband, who lay dead on satin in the silent room beyond.
“I don’t know who could have done this,” Mae said. “I know it’s common for a wife to think her husband was well-liked, but I can’t think of a single person who disliked Randy. That’s the truth.”
“How about business associates, Mrs. Norden? He was a lawyer, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Is it possible that one of his clients…?”
“Look, anyone who shoots someone has to be a little crazy, isn’t that so?”
“Not necessarily,” Meyer said.
“My point is, sure, Randy lost cases. Is there a lawyer who doesn’t lose cases? But if you ask me whether or not any of his clients would be…be angry enough to do something like this, then I have to say how do I know what a crazy person would do? Where’s the basis for…for anything when you’re dealing with someone who’s unbalanced?”
“We’re not sure the killer was unbalanced, Mrs. Norden,” Meyer said.
“No?” She smiled thinly. “A perfectly normal person went up on that roof and shot my husband when he came out of the building, is that it? Perfectly sane?”
“Mrs. Norden, we’re not psychiatrists. We’re talking about sanity in the eyes of the law. The murderer may not have been what the law considers insane.”
“The hell with the law,” Mae said suddenly. “Anyone who takes another man’s life is insane, and I don’t care what the law says.”
“But your husband was a lawyer, isn’t that right?”
“That’s exactly right,” Mae said angrily. “What are you saying now? That I have no respect for the law, therefore I have no respect for lawyers, therefore I have…”
“We didn’t say that, Mrs. Norden.” Carella paused. “I feel certain a lawyer’s wife would have a great deal of respect for the law.”
“But I’m not a lawyer’s wife anymore,” Mae said. “Didn’t you know that? I’m a widow. I’m a widow with two young children, Mr.—what was your name?”
“Carella.”
“Yes. I’m a forty-three-year-old widow, Mr. Carella. Not a lawyer’s wife.”
“Mrs. Norden, perhaps
you can tell us a few things that might help us to find the man who killed your husband.”
“Like what?”
“Did he usually leave the apartment at the same time each morning?”
“Yes. On weekdays. On Saturdays and Sundays, he slept late.”
“Then anyone who had made a habit of observing him would know that he went to work at the same time each day?”
“I suppose so.”
“Mrs. Norden, was your husband a veteran?”
“A veteran? You mean, was he in the service?”
“Yes.”
“He was in the Navy for three years during World War Two,” Mae said.
“The Navy. Not the Army.”
“The Navy, yes.”
“He was a junior partner in his firm, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“How did he feel about that?”
“Fine. How should he have felt about it?”
“How many partners were there, Mrs. Norden?”
“Three, including my husband.”
“Was your husband the only junior partner?”
“Yes. He was the youngest man in the firm.”
“Did he get along with the others?”
“Very well. He got along with everyone. I just told you that.”
“No trouble with any of the partners, right?”
“That’s right.”
“What sort of law did he practice?”
“The firm handled every kind of case.”
“Criminal?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did your husband ever represent a criminal?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Three or four, I don’t remember. Four, I guess, since he’s been with the firm.”
“Acquittals or convictions?”
“Two of his clients were convicted, two were acquitted.”
“Where are the convicted men now?”
“Serving jail sentences, I would imagine.”
“Would you remember their names?”
“No. But Sam could probably…Sam Gottlieb, one of the partners. He would know.”
“Was your husband a native of this city, Mrs. Norden?”
“Yes. He went through the city school system, and also college and law school here.”
“Where?”
“Ramsey.”
“And how did you come to know him?”
“We met in Grover Park one day. At the zoo. We began seeing each other regularly, and eventually we were married.”
“Before he went into the service, or afterward?”
“We were married in 1949.”
“Had you known him while he was in the service?”
“No. He went into the Navy immediately after graduation. He took his bar exams as soon as he was discharged. He passed them and began practicing shortly afterward. When I met him, he had his own small office in Bethtown. He didn’t move to Gottlieb and Graham until three years ago.”
“He had his own practice up to that time?”
“No. He’d been with several firms over the years.”
“Any trouble anywhere?”
“None.”
“Criminal cases at those firms, too?”
“Yes, but I can hardly remember what…”
“Can you tell us which firms those were, Mrs. Norden?”
“You don’t really believe this can be someone he lost a case for, do you?”
“We don’t know, Mrs. Norden. Right now, we have almost nothing to go on. We’re trying to find something, anything.”
“I’ll write out a list for you,” she said. “Will you come inside, please?” In the doorway of the funeral home, she stopped and said, “Forgive me if I was rude to you.” She paused. “I loved my husband very much, you see.”
On Monday, April 30, five days after the first murder had been committed, Cynthia Forrest came to see Steve Carella. She walked up the low, flat steps at the front of the gray precinct building, past the green globes lettered with the white numerals 87, and then into the muster room where a sign told her she must state her business at the desk. She told Sergeant Murchison she wanted to talk to Detective Carella, and Murchison asked her her name, and she said, “Cynthia Forrest,” and he rang Carella upstairs, and then told her to go on up. She followed the white sign that read detective division and climbed the iron-runged steps to the second floor of the building, coming out onto a narrow corridor. She followed the corridor past a man in a purple sports shirt who was handcuffed to a bench, and then paused at the slatted wood railing, standing on tiptoes, searching. When she spotted Carella rising from his desk to come to her, she impulsively raised her arm and waved at him.
“Hello, Miss Forrest,” he said, smiling. “Come on in.” He held open the gate in the railing, and then led her to his desk. She was wearing a white sweater and a dark-gray skirt. Her hair was hemp-colored, long, pulled to the back of her head in a ponytail. She was carrying a notebook and some texts, and she put these on his desk, sat, crossed her legs, and pulled her skirt down over her knees.
“Would you like some coffee?” Carella asked.
“Is there some?”
“Sure. Miscolo!” he yelled. “Can we get two cups of joe?”
From the depths of the clerical office in the corridor, Miscolo’s voice bellowed, “Coming!”
Carella smiled at the girl and said, “What can I do for you, Miss Forrest?”
“Most everyone calls me Cindy,” she said.
“All right. Cindy.”
“So this is where you work.”
“Yes.”
“Do you like it?”
Carella looked around the room as if discovering it for the first time. He shrugged. “The office, or what I do?” he asked.
“Both.”
“The office…” He shrugged again. “I guess it’s a rat trap, but I’m used to it. The work? Yes, I enjoy it, or I wouldn’t do it.”
“One of my psych instructors said that men who choose violent professions are usually men of violence.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” Cindy said. She smiled faintly, as though enjoying a secret joke. “You don’t look very violent.”
“I’m not. I’m a very gentle soul.”
“Then my psych instructor is wrong.”
“I may be the exception that proves the rule.”
“Maybe.”
“Are you a psych major?” Carella asked.
“No. I’m studying to be a teacher. But I’m taking general psych and abnormal psych. And then later, I’ll have to take all the educational psychology courses, ed psych one and two and…”
“You’ve got your work cut out for you,” Carella said.
“I suppose so.”
“What do you want to teach?”
“English.”
“College?”
“High school.”
Miscolo came in from the clerical office and placed two cups of coffee on Carella’s desk. “I put sugar and milk in both of them, is that all right?” he asked.
“Cindy?”
“That’s fine.” She smiled graciously at Miscolo. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, miss,” Miscolo said, and went back to his office.
“He seems very sweet,” Cindy said.
Carella shook his head. “A violent man. Terrible temper.”
Cindy laughed, picked up her coffee cup, and sipped at it. She put the cup down, reached into her handbag for a package of cigarettes, was about to put one in her mouth, when she stopped and asked, “Is it all right to smoke?”
“Sure,” Carella said. He struck a match for her, and held it to the cigarette.
“Thank you.” She took several drags, sipped more coffee, looked around the room a little, and then turned back toward Carella, smiling. “I like your office,” she said.
“Well, good. I’m glad.” He paused, and then asked, “What did you have on your mind, Cindy?”
“Well�
��” She dragged on the cigarette again, smoking the way a very young girl smokes, a little too feverishly, with too much obvious enjoyment, and yet at the same time with too much casualness. “They buried Daddy on Saturday, you know.”
“I know.”
“And I read in the newspapers that another man was killed.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you think the same person did it?”
“We don’t know.”
“Do you have any ideas yet?”
“Well, we’re working on it,” Carella said.
“I asked my abnormal-psych instructor what he knew about snipers,” Cindy said, and paused. “This is a sniper, isn’t it?”
“Possibly. What did your instructor say?”
“He said he hadn’t read very much about them, and didn’t even know whether or not any studies had been done. But he had some ideas.”
“Yes? Like what?”
“He felt that the sniper was very much like the peeper. The Peeping Tom, do you know?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. He thought the dynamic was essentially the same.”
“And what was that? The dynamic?”
“A response to infantile glimpses of the primal scene,” Cindy said.
“The primal scene?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the primal scene?” Carella asked innocently.
Unflinchingly Cindy replied, “The parents having intercourse.”
“Oh. Oh, I see.”
“My instructor said that every child watches and attempts to pretend he is not watching. The sniper comes equipped with an obvious symbol, the rifle, and usually makes use of a telescopic sight, repeating the furtive way things are carried out in childhood, the looking and not being seen, the doing and not being caught.”
“I see,” Carella said.
“Essentially, my instructor said, sniping is a sexually aggressive act. Witnessing of the primal scene can manifest itself neurotically either through peeping—the voyeur—or through the reverse of peeping, in effect a fear of being peeped at. But the dynamic remains essentially the same with both the peeper and the sniper. Both are hidden, furtive, surreptitious. Both find sexual stimulation, and often gratification, in the act.” Cindy put out her cigarette, stared at Carella with wide, young, innocent blue eyes and said, “What do you think?”