Ten Plus One
Page 6
“The time the woman was killed.”
“I don’t know what time any woman was killed.”
“About five-thirty. Where were you?”
“Having dinner.”
“So early?”
“I eat early.”
“Where?”
“The Rambler.”
“Where’s that?”
“Downtown.”
“Downtown where? Look, Wallach, if you force us to pull teeth, we know some better ways of doing it.”
“Sure, get out your rubber hose,” Wallach said calmly.
“Meyer,” Carella said calmly, “get the rubber hose.”
Calmly Meyer walked to a desk on the far side of the room, opened the top drawer, took out a two-foot length of rubber hose, smacked it against his palm, and then walked back to where Wallach was watching him calmly.
“This what you mean, Wallach?”
“You think you’re surprising me or something?” Wallach asked.
“Who’d you eat with?” Carella said.
“Alone.”
“We don’t need the hose, Meyer. He just cooked his own goose.”
“That’s what you think, buddy. The waiter’ll remember me.”
“Well, that depends on how much we lean on the waiter, doesn’t it?” Carella said. “We’re looking for a patsy, remember? You think we’re going to let a lousy waiter stand in our way?”
“He’ll say I was there,” Wallach said, but his voice was beginning to lack conviction.
“Well, I certainly hope so,” Carella said. “But in the meantime, we’re going to book you for homicide, Wallach. We won’t mention the fact that you’re a pimp, of course. We’ll save that for the trial. It might impress the hell out of a jury.”
“Listen,” Wallach said.
“Yeah?”
“What do you want from me? I didn’t kill her, and you know it.”
“Then who did?”
“How the hell do I know?”
“You know the woman?”
“Of course I know her. Come on, willya?”
“You said you didn’t.”
“I was kidding around. How did I know you guys were so serious? What’s everybody getting so excited about?”
“How long have you known her?”
“About two years.”
“Was she a prostitute when you met her?”
“You getting me involved again? I don’t know what she worked at. My means of earning a living is investment. I lived with her, that’s all. What she done or didn’t do was her business.”
“You didn’t know she was a hooker, huh?”
“No.”
“Wallach,” Carella said, “we’re going to take you down and book you for homicide. Because you’re lying, you see, and that’s very suspicious. So unless we come up with somebody who looks better than you for the rap, you’re it. Now, do you want to be it, Wallach? Or do you want to start telling the truth, so we’ll know you’re an upstanding citizen who only happens to be a pimp? What do you say, Wallach?”
Wallach was silent for a long time. Then he said, “She was a hooker when I met her.”
“Two years ago?”
“Two years ago.”
“When did you see her last?”
“I was out night before last. I didn’t go back to the pad at all yesterday. I didn’t see her all day.”
“What time did you leave the apartment the night before?”
“Around eight.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Uptown. Riverhead.”
“To do what?”
Wallach sighed. “There was a crap game, all right?”
“Was Blanche in the apartment when you left?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“No. She was in the other room with a John.”
“You brought him to her?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Wallach said, and put his cigar in the ashtray. “I’m playing ball with you, okay?”
“You’re playing ball fine, Wallach. Tell us about Blanche.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How old was she?”
“She said she was thirty-five, but she was really forty-one.”
“What’s her background? Where’s she from?”
“The Middle West someplace. Oklahoma, Iowa, I don’t know. One of those hick joints.”
“When did she come here?”
“Years ago.”
“When, Wallach?”
“Before the war. I don’t know the exact date. Listen, if you want her life history, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t know her that good.”
“Why’d she come here?”
“To go to school.”
“What kind of school?”
“College, what do you think?”
“Where?”
“Ramsey University.”
“How long did she stay there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she graduate?”
“I don’t know.”
“How’d she get to be a hooker?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are her parents living?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she married, divorced, would you know?”
“No.”
“What the hell do you know, Wallach?”
“I know she was a broad who was over the hill, and I was taking care of her practically as a charity case, okay? I know she was a goddamn lush, and a pain in the ass, and the best thing that coulda happened to her was to get shot in the head, which is what she got, okay? That’s what I know.”
“You’re a nice guy, Wallach.”
“Thanks, I’m crazy about you, too. What do you want from me? She’da died in the streets a year ago if I hadn’t given her a place to stay. I done an act of kindness.”
“Sure.”
“Yeah, sure. What do you think, she made me a millionaire? Who the hell wanted to bang something looked like her? I used to bring her the dregs, that’s all. She’s lucky she made enough for room and board. Half the time, she never gave me a cent. She had the dough spent on booze before I reached her, and the booze would be gone, too. You think it was a picnic? Try it sometime.”
“How’d a college girl become a hooker?” Carella asked.
“What are you, a cop or a sociologist? There’s more hookers in this town who once went to college than I can count. Call the Vice Squad, they’ll tell you.”
“Never mind the Vice Squad,” Meyer said. “You got any idea who killed her?”
“None.”
“You sound very glad to be rid of her.”
“I am. That don’t mean I killed her. Look, you guys know I had nothing to do with this. Why are we wasting each other’s time?”
“What’s your hurry, Wallach? Another crap game?”
“Sure, I’d tell you about it, wouldn’t I?”
“Then take your time. We’ve got all day.”
“Okay, let’s shoot the day. What the hell. It’s only the taxpayers’ money.”
“You never paid a tax in your life, Wallach.”
“I pay taxes every year,” Wallach said indignantly. “Both federal and state, so don’t give me that.”
“What do you list as your occupation?”
“We going to go into that again?”
“No, let’s get back to Blanche. Did anyone ever threaten her? Would you know that?”
“How would I know? Johns are all different. Some are like little lost kids with their first broad, and some are tough guys who like to smack a girl around. There’s something wrong with a guy who goes to a whore in the first place.”
“He’s not a pimp,” Meyer said, “he’s a psychologist.”
“I know whores,” Wallach said simply.
“You don’t seem to know a hell of a lot about Blanche Lettiger.”
“I told you everything I know. What more can I say?”
“Like what?”
“Like what time she got up in the morning.”
“The morning? You kidding?”
“All right, what then? The afternoon?”
“She usually woke up about one, two in the afternoon and started looking for a bottle.”
“What time did she wake up the day she was killed?”
Wallach smiled, pointed a chiding finger at Carella, and said, “Ah-ah. Caught you.”
“Huh?” Carella said.
Still smiling, Wallach said, “I told you I didn’t see her at all yesterday, didn’t I?”
“I wasn’t trying to trip you, Wallach.”
“There ain’t a bull in the world who ain’t always trying to trip guys like me.”
“Look, Wallach,” Carella said, “we understand you’re just a decent, upright, put-upon citizen, okay? So let’s send the violinists home and get down to business. You’re beginning to get on my nerves.”
“You don’t exactly have a calming effect on me,” Wallach replied.
“What the hell is this?” Meyer said, annoyed. “A vaudeville routine at the Palace? One more crack out of you, you cheap punk, and I’ll bust your head open.”
Wallach opened his mouth and then closed it. He looked at Meyer sourly instead.
“Okay?” Meyer shouted.
“Okay, okay,” Wallach answered, sulking.
“Did she make a habit of leaving the apartment between five and five-thirty every afternoon?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d she go?”
“There was a factory nearby the pad. Sometimes the guys coming out of work were good for a strike.”
“She did this every afternoon?”
“Not every afternoon, but often enough. When you’re in the shape she was in, you’ve got to take them where they come.”
“Where’s the factory?”
“Culver and North Fourteenth.”
“So then almost every afternoon, sometime between five and five-thirty, she’d leave the apartment and walk up toward the factory, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Who knew this besides you, Wallach?”
“The cop on the beat knew it,” Wallach answered, unable to repress the crack. “Maybe he’s the one who put the blocks to her, huh?”
“Look, Wallach…”
“All right, all right, I don’t know who knew it. The guy who killed her, I guess. Anybody coulda known it. All they had to do was watch.”
“You’ve been a great help,” Carella said. “Get the hell out of here.”
“You only ruined my day,” Wallach said.
He rose, dusted cigar ash off his trousers, and was walking away from the desk when Meyer kicked him square in the behind. Wallach didn’t even turn. With great dignity he walked out of the squadroom.
So far, the police had done only one concrete thing toward solving the multiple murders: nothing.
That morning, after Wallach left, they tried to remedy the situation somewhat by putting in a call to Samuel Gottlieb of Gottlieb, Graham and Norden. They asked the senior partner of the firm how many criminal cases Norden had handled since he’d been with them, and he told them there had been a total of four. He promptly furnished them with the names of all four clients, and then broke the list down into those who had been acquitted, and those who had been convicted. They then took the list Mrs. Norden had given them, the one containing the names of the various other firms Norden had worked for over the years, and by 11:00 they had called each firm and had a further list of twelve convicted criminals who had once been clients of Norden. They sent the list to the city’s BCI with a request for the whereabouts of each man, and then checked out a car and drove downtown to Ramsey University, where they hoped to learn something, anything, about Blanche Lettiger, the dead prostitute.
The university was in the heart of the city, beginning where Hall Avenue ended, sprawling on the fringes of the Quarter, rubbing elbows with Chinatown. An outdoor art exhibition was in full swing on the bordering side streets. Carella parked the car in a no-parking zone, pulled down the sun visor with its hand-lettered sign advising policeman on duty call, and then walked with Meyer past the canvases lined up on the sidewalk. There seemed to be a predominance of seascapes this year. The smiling perpetrators of all this watery art peered hopefully at each passerby, trying to look aloof and not too eager, but placed nonetheless in the uncomfortable position of being merchants as well as creators.
Meyer glanced only cursorily at the seascapes, and then stopped before an “action” painting, the action consisting of several bold black slashes across a field of white, with two red dots in one corner. He nodded mysteriously, and then caught up with Carella.
“What happened to people?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Carella answered.
“There used to be a time when you looked at a painting, there were people in it. No more. Artists aren’t interested in people. They’re only interested in ‘expression.’ I read about a guy who covers a nude lady with paint, and then she rolls on a canvas, and what comes out is a painting.”
“You’re kidding,” Carella said.
“I swear to God,” Meyer said. “You can see where she rubbed with her leg or her thigh, or whatever. She’s like the guy’s paintbrush.”
“Does he clean his brushes at the end of the day?”
“I don’t know. The article didn’t say. It just told about how he worked, and it showed some examples.”
“That’s pretty far-out, isn’t it?”
“No, I think it’s a return to tradition.”
“How so?”
“The guy is obviously putting people back into painting.”
“There’s the school,” Carella said.
Ramsey University sat on the other side of a small park struck with May sunshine. There were several students sitting on the scattered benches discussing the conjugation of the verb aimer, discussing too the theory of ratio-mobility. They glanced up momentarily as Meyer and Carella crossed the park and climbed the steps of the administration building. The inside of the building was cool and dim. They stopped a student wearing a white shirt and a loose green sweater and asked him where the records office was.
“What records office?” the student asked.
“Where they keep the records.”
“Records of what? You mean the registrar?”
“We mean records of past students.”
“Alumni, you mean?”
“Well, we’re not sure this student ever graduated.”
“Matriculated students, do you mean? Or nonmatriculated?”
“We’re not sure,” Carella said.
“Day session or night?” the student asked.
“Well, we’re not sure.”
“Which college, would you know that?”
“No,” Carella said.
The student looked at him curiously. “I’m late for class,” he said at last, and wandered off.
“We get an F,” Meyer said. “We came to school unprepared.”
“Let’s talk to the dean,” Carella said.
“Which dean?” Meyer asked, peering at Carella as the student had done. “Dean of admissions? Dean of men? Dean of women? Dean Martin?”
“Dean I see you someplace before?” Carella said, and Meyer said, “Ouch!”
The dean of admissions was a nice lady in her early sixties who wore a starched ruffled blouse and a pencil in her hair. Her name was Dean Agnes Moriarty, and when the detectives said they were from the police, she immediately quipped, “Moriarty, meet Holmes and Watson.”
“Carella and Meyer,” Carella said, smiling.
“What can I do for you, gentlemen?”
“We’re interested in whatever information we can get about a woman who was once a student here.”
“When?” Miss Moriarty asked.
“We don’t know. Sometime before the war, we believe.”
“When before the war? This university was founded in 1842, gentlemen.”
“The girl was forty-one years old when she died,” Meyer said. “We can assume…”
“Died?” Miss Moriarty asked, and she raised her eyebrows slightly.
“Yes, ma’am,” Meyer said. “She was killed last night.”
“Oh,” Miss Moriarty nodded. “Then this is serious, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh. Well, now, let’s see. If she was forty-one years old—most of our students begin at eighteen, which would make this twenty-three years ago. Do you have any idea which college she was enrolled in?”
“No, I’m afraid we haven’t.”
“Shall we try the school of liberal arts?”
“We’re entirely in your hands, Miss Moriarty,” Carella said.
“Well, then, let’s see what we can find out, shall we?”
They found out that Blanche Ruth Lettiger had indeed enrolled in the Liberal Arts College of Ramsey University as a speech and dramatics major in 1940; that she had given her age as eighteen at the time, and her home address as Jonesboro, Indiana, a town with a population of 1,973, close to Kokomo. She had listed her temporary address at 1107 Horsely Road, in the Quarter. She had remained at the school for one term only, a matter of less than five months, and had then dropped out. Her withdrawal was somewhat mysterious, since she was an honor student with a 3.8 index, close to the perfect 4.0. Miss Moriarty had no idea where Blanche Lettiger had gone after her dropout. She had never returned to the school, and had never attempted to contact them in any way.
Carella asked Miss Moriarty if there was anyone at the school now who might remember Blanche Lettiger as a student, and Miss Moriarty promptly took the detectives to Professor Richardson in the speech and dramatics department. Richardson was a thin old man with the manner and bearing of a Shakespearean actor. His voice rolled from his mouth in golden, rounded tones. He spoke forcefully, as though he were trying to give the second balcony its money’s worth. Carella was certain every word he projected was heard all the way uptown in the squadroom.
“Blanche Lettiger?” he said. “Blanche Lettiger?”
He put one slender hand to his leonine head, closing the thumb and forefinger over the bridge of his nose, lost in silent thought. Then he nodded once, looked up and said, “Yes.”
“You remember her?” Carella asked.
“Yes.” Richardson turned to Miss Moriarty. “Do you recall the Wig and Buskin Society?”