by Ed McBain
“Well—I don’t know,” Carella said.
“Doesn’t the department have a psychologist?” Cindy asked.
“Yes, it does.”
“Why don’t you ask him what he thinks?”
“They only do that on television,” Carella said.
“Isn’t it important for you to know what’s motivating the killer?”
“Yes, certainly. But motives are often very complex things. Your abnormal-psychology instructor may be absolutely correct about an individual sniper, or maybe even ten thousand snipers, but it’s possible we’ll run into ten thousand others who never witnessed the—primal scene, did you call it?—and who…”
“Yes, primal scene. But isn’t that unlikely?”
“Nothing’s unlikely in murder,” Carella said.
Cindy raised her eyebrows dubiously. “That doesn’t sound very scientific, you know.”
“It isn’t.” He ended the sentence there with no intention of being rude, and then suddenly realized he had sounded rather abrupt.
“I didn’t mean to take up your time,” Cindy said, rising, her manner decidedly cool now. “I simply thought you might like to know…”
“You haven’t finished your coffee,” Carella said.
“Thank you, but it’s very bad coffee,” she answered, and she stood and looked down at him with her shoulders back and her eyes blazing a challenge.
“That’s right,” Carella said. “It’s very bad coffee.”
“I’m glad we agree on something.”
“I wasn’t aware we had disagreed on anything.”
“I was only trying to help, you know.”
“I appreciate that.”
“But I suppose I had the mistaken notion that modern police departments might want to know about the psychological forces at work in the criminal mind. My fantasy…”
“Come on,” Carella said. “You’re too nice and too young to be getting sore at a dumb flatfoot.”
“I’m not nice, and I’m not young, and you’re not dumb!” Cindy said.
“You’re nineteen.”
“I’ll be twenty in June.”
“Why do you say you’re not nice?”
“Because I’ve seen too much and heard too much.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing!” she snapped.
“I’m interested, Cindy.”
Cindy picked up her books and held them clasped to her breast. “Mr. Carella, this isn’t the Victorian age. Just remember that.”
“I’ll try to. But suppose you tell me what you mean.”
“I mean that most seventeen-year-olds today have seen and heard everything there is to see or hear.”
“How dull that must be,” Carella said. “What do you do when you’re eighteen? Or nineteen?”
“When you’re nineteen,” Cindy said in an icy voice, “you go looking for the cop who first told you your father was dead. You go looking for him in the hope you can tell him something he might not know, something to help him. And then, the way it always is with so-called adults, you’re completely disappointed when you discover he won’t even listen.”
“Sit down, Cindy. What did you want to tell me about our sniper? If he is a sniper, to begin with.”
“A man who shoots at someone from a rooftop is certainly…”
“Not necessarily.”
“He killed two men in the same way!”
“If he’s the one who killed both men.”
“The newspaper said the same make and caliber of cartridge….”
“That could mean a lot, or it could mean nothing.”
“You’re not seriously telling me you think it was a coincidence?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, except that we’re considering every possibility. Sit down, will you? You make me nervous.”
Cindy sat down abruptly and plunked her books on the desktop. For a nineteen-year-old who had seen and heard all there was to see and hear, she looked very much like a nine-year-old at that moment.
“Well,” Cindy said, “if the same man killed my father and that other man, and if he’s a sniper, then I think you ought to consider the possibility that he may be sexually motivated.”
“We will indeed.”
Cindy rose abruptly and began picking up her books. “You’re putting me on, Detective Carella,” she said, angrily, “and I don’t particularly like it!”
“I’m not putting you on! I’m listening to every word you’re saying, but for God’s sake, Cindy, don’t you think we’ve ever dealt with snipers before?”
“What?”
“I said don’t you think the police department has ever handled a case involving—”
“Oh.” Cindy put her books down again, and again she sat in the chair alongside his desk. “I never thought of that. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right.”
“I’m truly sorry. Of course. I mean, I suppose you run across all sorts of things. I’m terribly sorry.”
“I’m glad you came up anyway, Cindy.”
“Are you?” Cindy asked suddenly.
“We don’t often get nice bright kids in here,” Carella said. “It’s a refreshing change, believe me.”
“I’m just the all-American girl, huh?” Cindy said with a peculiar smile. Then she rose, shook hands with Carella, thanked him, and left.
The woman walking along Culver Avenue was neither a nice bright kid nor an all-American girl.
She was forty-one years old, and her hair was bleached a bright blonde, and she wore too much lipstick on her mouth and too much rouge on her cheeks. Her skirt was black and tight, and dusted with powder she had spilled on it while making up her face. She wore a high brassiere and a tight, white, soiled sweater, and she carried a black patent-leather handbag, and she looked very much like a prostitute, which is exactly what she was.
In a day and age when prostitutes in any neighborhood look more like high-fashion models than ladies of the trade, the woman’s appearance was startling, if not contradictory. It was almost as if, by so blatantly announcing her calling, she were actually denying it. Her clothes, her posture, her walk, her fixed smile all proclaimed—as effectively as if the words had been lettered on a sandwich board—i am a prostitute. But as the woman walked past, the imaginary back of the sandwich board was revealed, and lettered there in scarlet letters—what else?—were the words: i am dirty! do not touch! The woman had had a rough day. In addition to being a prostitute, or perhaps because she was a prostitute, or perhaps she was a prostitute because of it—God, there are so many psychological complexes to consider these days—the woman was also a drunk. She had awakened at 6:00 a.m. with bats and mice crawling out of the plaster cracks in her cheap furnished room, and she had discovered there was no more booze in the bottle beside her bed, and she had swiftly dressed, swiftly because she rarely wore anything but a bra under her street clothes, and taken to the streets. By 12:00 noon, she had raised the price of a bottle of cheap whiskey, and by 1:00 p.m. she had downed the last drop. She had awakened at 4:00 p.m. to find the bats and mice crawling out of the cracks again and to find, again, that the bottle beside the bed was empty. She had put on her bra and sweater, her black skirt and her high-heeled black pumps; she had dusted her face with powder, smeared lipstick on her mouth and rouge on her cheeks, and now she was walking along a familiar stretch of avenue as dusk settled in the sky to the west.
She generally walked this pavement each night along about dusk, drunk or sober, because there was a factory on Culver and North Fourteenth, and the men from the factory quit at 5:30, and sometimes she was lucky enough to find a quick $4 partner or, if her luck was running exceptionally good, even a partner for the night at $15 in good, hard, American currency.
Tonight she felt lucky.
Tonight, as she saw the men pouring from the factory on the next corner, she felt certain there would be a winner among them. Maybe even someone who would like to do a little honest drinking before they tumbled into t
he sack. Maybe someone who would fall madly in love with her, the plant superintendent maybe, or even an executive who would love her eyes and her hair and take her home to his large bachelor house in the suburbs of Larksview, where she would have an upstairs maid and a butler and make love only when she felt like it, don’t make me laugh.
Still, she felt lucky.
She was still feeling lucky when the bullet smashed through her upper lip, shattering the gum ridge, careening downward through her windpipe, cracking her upper spine, and blowing a huge hole out of her neck as it left her body.
The bullet spent itself against the brick wall of the building against which she fell dead.
The bullet was a Remington .308.
It is true that in a democracy all men are equal in the eyes of the law, but this does not necessarily apply to all dead men. It would be nice to believe that a detective investigating the murder of a Skid Row wino devoted all his time and energy to the case in an attempt to discover the perpetrator. It would be nicer to believe that the untimely demise of a numbers runner or a burglar occasioned anything but relief, an attitude of “Good riddance” on the part of the police. But there is a vast difference between a murdered millionaire and a murdered criminal. A prostitute, who steals nothing, is nonetheless guilty of a violation, and in the lexicon of the police is a criminal. The death of the Culver Avenue prostitute would have caused little more than slight passing interest, had it not been for the fact that she was slain by a .308-caliber Remington cartridge. As it was, she acquired more status in death than she had ever known in life, either in the eyes of men or in the eyes of the law.
The law is curiously ambiguous concerning prostitutes. The penal law describes prostitution and disorderly houses in detail, but there is nowhere in the code a definition of a prostitute per se. Under the section on prostitution, there are listed:
(1) Abduction of female for purposes of
(2) Compulsory prostitution of women
(3) Compelling prostitution of wife of another
(4) Corroboration of testimony of female compelled or procured
(5) Pimps and procurers
(6) Transporting women for purposes of
Under the section on disorderly houses there are listed:
(1) Abduction of females
(2) Admission of minors
(3) Compulsory prostitution in
(4) Keeping or renting
(5) Sending messenger boys to
…and so on. Some of these crimes are felonies. But nowhere in these subdivisions is there reference to the crime of the prostitute herself. There is only one place in the penal law where love for sale is defined. Curiously, it is in Section 722, which defines disorderly conduct: “Any person who with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, or whereby a breach of the peace may be occasioned, commits any of the following acts shall be deemed to have committed the offense of disorderly conduct.”
The “following acts” include anything from using threatening language, to causing a crowd to collect, to making insulting remarks to passing pedestrians, and, under Subdivision 9: “frequents or loiters about any public place soliciting men for the purpose of committing a crime against nature or any other lewdness.”
If one can call going to bed with a man “a crime against nature,” then that is prostitution. It is not called prostitution in this section. It is called “soliciting,” but in the section titled “Solicitation: Lewd or immoral purposes, solicitation for,” there is listed only the following: “Male persons living on proceeds of prostitution: Every male person who lives wholly or in part on the earnings of prostitution, or who in any public place solicits for immoral purposes, is guilty of a misdemeanor. A male person who lives with or is habitually in the company of a prostitute and has no visible means of support, shall be presumed to be living on the earnings of prostitution.”
So what is an honest, conscientious cop supposed to do when an obvious whore sidles up to him and asks, “Want some fun, honey?” Left to his own devices, he might accept the offer. Bound by the penal law, he might arrest her for disorderly conduct, the penalty for which can be a jail sentence not to exceed six months, or a fine not to exceed $50, or both. But the penal law is bolstered by the Code of Criminal Procedure, and every cop in the city knows Section 887, Subdivision 4, by heart. Every prostitute has committed it to memory, too, because this is where they get her by the codes. Section 887 describes, of all things, vagrants. “The following persons are vagrants,” it states, and then goes on to list everyone including your Uncle Max. When it comes to Subdivision 4, it pulls no punches.
4. A person (a) who offers to commit prostitution, or (b) who offers to secure for another for the purpose of prostitution or for any other lewd or indecent act; or (c) who loiters in or near any thoroughfare or public or private place for the
purpose of inducing, enticing or procuring another to commit lewdness, fornication, unlawful sexual intercourse or any other indecent act…
That would seem to cover it, man. But those puritan forefathers weren’t taking any chances. Section 887, Subdivision 4, goes on to state:
…or (d) who in any manner induces, entices or procures a person who is in any thoroughfare or public place or private place, to commit any such acts; or (e) who receives or offers or agrees to receive any person into any place, structure, house, building or conveyance for the purpose of prostitution, lewdness or assignation or knowingly permits any person to remain there for such purposes; or (f) who in any way, aids or abets or participates in the doing of any of the acts or things enumerated in Subdivision four of Section eight hundred and eighty-seven of the Code of Criminal Procedure; or (g) who is a common prostitute, who has no lawful employment whereby to maintain herself.
That’s a vagrant, sir, madam. And if that is what you are, you can under Section 891 (a) of the same code be sent to a reformatory for as long as three years, or a county jail, penitentiary, or other penal institution for as long as a year—so watch yourself!
The man named Harry Wallach was a male person who lived with or was habitually in the company of the prostitute named Blanche Lettiger, the woman who had been shot to death on the night of April 30. It did not take the police long to find him. Everybody knew who Blanche’s “old man” was. They picked him up the next morning in a poolroom on North Forty-first, and they brought him to the station house and sat him down in a chair and began asking their questions. He was a tall, well-dressed man, with hair graying at the temples, and penetrating green eyes. He asked the detectives if it was all right to smoke, and then he lit a 50C/ cigar and sat back calmly with a faint superior smile on his mouth as Carella opened the session.
“What do you do for a living, Wallach?”
“Investment,” Wallach said.
“What kind of investment?” Meyer asked.
“Stocks, bonds, real estate. You know.”
“What’s the current quotation on AT&T?” Carella asked.
“Not in my portfolio,” Wallach said.
“What is in your portfolio?”
“I don’t remember offhand.”
“Do you have a broker?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“He’s in Miami right now on vacation.”
“We didn’t ask you where he was, we asked you what his name is.”
“Dave.”
“Dave what?”
“Dave Milias.”
“Where’s he staying in Miami?”
“Search me,” Wallach said.
“All right, Wallach,” Meyer said, “what do you know about this woman Blanche Lettiger?”
“Blanche who?” Wallach said.
“Oh, you want to play this one cool, huh, Wallach? Is that it?”
“It’s just the name don’t seem to ring a bell.”
“It doesn’t, huh? Blanche Lettiger. You share an apartment with her on Culver and North Twelfth, apartment 6-B, rented under the name of Frank Wallace, and you’ve been
living there with her for the past year and a half. Does the name ring a bell now, Wallach?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wallach said.
“Maybe he’s the guy who plugged her, Steve.”
“I’m beginning to think so.”
“What do you mean?” Wallach asked, unruffled.
“Why the dodge, Wallach? You think we’re interested in a crummy pimp like you?”
“I’m not that,” Wallach said with dignity.
“No? What do you call it?”
“Not what you said.”
“Oh, how sweet,” Meyer said. “He doesn’t want to spoil his dainty little lips by saying the word pimp. Look, Wallach, don’t make this hard for us. You want us to throw the book, we’ve got it, and we know how to throw it. Make it easy for yourself. We’re only interested in knowing about the woman.”
“What woman?”
“You son of a bitch, she was shot down in cold blood last night. What the hell are you, a human being or what?”
“I don’t know any woman who was shot down in cold blood last night,” Wallach insisted. “You’re not going to get me involved in a goddamn homicide. I know you guys too good. You’re looking for a patsy, and it ain’t going to be me.”
“We weren’t looking for a patsy,” Carella said, “but now that you mention it, it’s not a bad idea. What do you think, Meyer?”
“Why not?” Meyer said. “He’s as good as anybody to pin it on. Take the heat off us.”
“Where were you last night, Wallach?”
“What time last night?” Wallach answered, still calm, still puffing gently on his cigar.