Fat Ollie's Book

by Ed McBain

“You look in all the phone books?”

  At eleven that Friday morning, they were sitting in the park counting the time to their next fixes. When they first started using, they would try all kinds of shit. It was like a big supermarket of drugs out there. The hubba, of course, so cheap, so convenient, somebody shoulda put that on the TV as a commercial, So Cheap, So Convenient, Come Get Your Crack Cocaine Right Here, Kiddies. Or Just Say No, if that’s your choice, tee-hee. But they also smoked gremmies, which were coke and weed rolled in a cigarette, or sherms, which were these cigarettes laced with PCP. If Emilio remembered correctly, they even did some fry before they started slamming their drug of choice, good old hop, directly in the vein, honey.

  It was Aine went on the street first.

  Good-looking Irish girl, shapely white legs, red hair hither and yon, she looked like a virgin Catholic schoolgirl in a pleated skirt and jacket with a gold-thread crest on it, Saint Cecilia of Our Infinite Sorrows, all she needed was books under her arm, some virgin. By that time, she’d been had fore and aft, upside down and backwards.

  Emilio started a little later, and wasn’t doing too well peddling ass till he discovered he looked better in a skirt than he did in jeans. Shaved his legs, bought first a red wig, thinking him and Aine could go on the street together like Miss Dolly Ho and her sister Polly. But the fake red wig didn’t go with his dark complexion or her real red hair, in fact made him look like a male wearing a very bad rug instead of a juicy female tart who just happened to have a cock under his or her skirt. He tried on a lot of other wigs, even some pink and purple ones before he settled on the blond. Business picked up almost at once, though he wasn’t necessarily having more fun.

  “I tried every book I had,” he said. “No O’Malley’s.”

  “Which books do you have?”

  Addicts tended to be somewhat precise, Emilio noticed. They would often argue a point like monks in a seminary or judges on some high tribunal. Emilio didn’t particularly like this about addicts, even though he recognized it as one of his own faults.

  “I have the Riverhead book, and the one here for the city.”

  “That leaves out three very big parts of this town,” Aine said.

  “I know, but I have a feeling this bar is right here someplace.”

  “What gives you that feeling, man?”

  “First thing, I ripped off this bag outside the King. Next thing…”

  “What bag?”

  “Had confidential information in it. Next thing, there’s this lady detective in it talking about diamonds, and she’s locked in a basement…”

  “Whoa now.”

  “Where’d I lose you, Ahn?”

  “There’s this lady detective in a bag?”

  “No, in her report. And her precinct is a few blocks away from this bar she called O’Malley’s. Also, did you ever hear of a precinct called the Oh-One?”

  “No. The Oh-One? No. What’s the Oh-One?”

  “I’m thinking the First Precinct.”

  “No. The First Precinct is the First Precinct. I never heard it called the Oh-One. Never. That makes it sound like there’s a decimal point in front of it, the Oh-One.”

  “Also, if there’s an Oh-One, there’s also an Oh-Two, and an Oh-Three, and so on. Which as you know, there ain’t,” Emilio said. “So I figure Livvie made up this fake what you might call terminology to throw any evil-doer off the track.”

  “Any evil-doer, huh?”

  “Somebody tryin’a get those diamonds.”

  “Diamonds, huh?”

  “You help me find them, Ahn, we’ll both go down to Rio together.”

  “Why Rio?”

  “It’s nice down there, I hear. Also, they have carnival.”

  “I have carnival right here every time I shoot up.”

  “You used to be a bartender, am I right?”

  “You know I used to be a bartender.”

  “So where’s there a bar two blocks from a police station?”

  “Everywhere,” Aine said.

  AT FIVE O’CLOCK that Friday evening, Josh Coogan seemed surprised to find two men who identified themselves as police detectives waiting for him on the steps outside his building.

  “I thought this was the fat guy’s case,” he said.

  “We’re working it together,” Carella told him.

  “How’d you know where to find me?”

  “Alan Pierce gave us your address.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “We want to ask you some more questions.”

  “What about? I already spoke to the fat guy, you know.”

  “Briefly, yes,” Kling said.

  “Well, I thought I answered all his questions.”

  “We’re sorry to be bothering you again, but we thought…”

  “I mean, am I a suspect in this thing?”

  The question they all asked sooner or later.

  But Coogan had about him the air of confidence most college kids exude—especially those pursuing arts programs. They didn’t yet realize they would never become a Hemingway or a Picasso or a Hitchcock or a Frank Lloyd Wright. The world was still their oyster. Kling, who’d never been to college, and Carella, who’d never finished college, envied the attitude. But they had both read Fat Ollie’s report, and they remembered him describing Coogan as “flustered and unsure of himself.” He did not appear that way tonight.

  “Do you know anyone named Carrie?” Carella asked.

  “No. Is that a man or a woman?”

  “It’s a nineteen-year-old girl,” Carella said.

  “No, I don’t know her. Am I supposed to know her?”

  “Lester Henderson was supposed to know her.”

  “Does that mean what I take it to mean?”

  “What do you take it to mean?”

  “Was he messing around with a nineteen-year-old girl?”

  “You tell us.”

  “Let me say I wouldn’t be surprised. He definitely had an eye for the women.”

  “Did you ever see him with a nineteen-year-old girl?”

  “Our office is full of nineteen-year-old girls. But if you mean…”

  “Any of them named Carrie?”

  “No.”

  “Did any letters addressed to the councilman and marked ‘Personal and Private’ ever cross your desk?”

  “No. His mail went to him directly.”

  “All of it?”

  “All of it.”

  “In spite of the anthrax scare?”

  “Was it anthrax that killed him?” Coogan said, and raised his eyebrows, and nodded sagely.

  11

  IT TOOK THREE HOURS by train to the state capital. It would have taken them a half-hour to get to the airport and—with security what it was these days—another two hours to get to the gate, all for an hour-long flight. If Carella had opted to drive up, the trip would have taken almost four hours. He figured it was six of one, half a dozen of the other. Besides, on the train, he and Teddy could talk.

  Communicating with a person who could neither hear nor speak required, first, that you be able to see each other’s hands (because that’s what signing was all about, Gertie) and next that the impaired (what a word!) partner be able to see the other person’s lips so that she could read them.

  Car rides were difficult. Without risking an accident, Carella could not turn his head away from the road to look at Teddy. And without leaning over at an impossible angle and virtually flashing her fingers in his face, Teddy simply could not communicate. They had tried. They knew. The only way it worked was to translate through the kids, Carella speaking, the kids in the back seat signing, and then Teddy signing back to the kids, and the kids speaking the words out loud to their father. But alone in a car? Forget about talking.

  The train was a good solution.

  Besides, this was Saturday, and Carella’s day off, and he was entitled.

  The morning train they caught was virtually empty. He bought coffee and donuts in the café car and
carried them back to where they’d spread out like pashas on two reclining seats. Leisurely, they watched the countryside flashing by outside, and talked about things there hadn’t been time to discuss in their busy workaday schedules.

  Carella was most concerned about having to give away both his mother and his sister at their joint weddings this coming June. How was he supposed to do that? Come down the aisle with one of them on each arm? Or lead his mother down first, a nod to seniority, and then go back up for his sister. While Luigi…

  “I really wish his name wasn’t Luigi,” he said, signing simultaneously. “It really makes him sound like a wop.”

  He’s Italian, Teddy signed. That’s a very common name in Italy.

  “Yeah, well, this is America,” he said, and then something occurred to him. “You don’t think she’ll be moving to Milan, do you?”

  Well, of course, she will, Teddy signed. That’s where he lives.

  “How come I didn’t think of that till now?”

  Maybe that’s what’s troubling you about taking them down the aisle.

  “Maybe everything is troubling me about taking them down the aisle.”

  Get over it, Teddy signed.

  He nodded, and then fell silent for a while, thinking again that his mother shouldn’t be remarrying so soon after his father’s death, and his sister shouldn’t be marrying the man who’d unsuccessfully prosecuted his father’s slayer. Well, get over it, he thought. You should have got over it last Christmas already, put it to rest, okay? They’re getting married, you’re giving them away, put on a happy face.

  Come June sixteenth, his mother would be Mrs. Luigi—Jesus, I hate that name!—Fontero, and his sister would be Mrs. Henry Lowell, whom he suspected he’d have to start calling “Hank,” the way his sister did, “Could you please pass the gravy, Hank?”

  Luigi and Hank.

  Jesus.

  Teddy was talking again. He turned to watch her hands. He loved the way she signed, her fingers moving almost liquidly, her eyes and her face adding expression to what she was saying, her lips mouthing the words her hands signaled. She was telling him she had to find a job. She was telling him she was tired of addressing envelopes at home, she wanted to get out into the real workplace. She’d been checking the want ads, but these were difficult times, and being so limited…

  “You’re not limited,” he told her.

  Well, if I can’t hear, I won’t exactly be hired as conductor of the Philharmonic, she said, and burst out laughing.

  Carella laughed with her.

  “How about moderator on a talk show?” he suggested.

  Good idea, she said. Or a translator at the UN.

  The countryside flashed by.

  Spring was alive out there.

  It was a very short ride.

  THEY TOOK A TAXI to the Raleigh Hotel, and Carella settled her in the coffee shop while he went to find the manager.

  The manager’s name was Floyd Morgan. He told Carella at once that he hated the job up here because the winters were so damn cold. “Well, look at it,” he said. “It’s already the end of April, and there’s still snow on the ground up here, can you believe it?” He told Carella that the last managerial position he’d held was in the Bahamas, at the Club Med there on Columbus Isle. “Now that was a job,” he said. “Great people to work with, wonderful food, and an atmosphere of…joy, do you know? Happiness. Not like here. Here it’s doom and gloom all winter long and by the time May rolls around, you’re ready to jump out the window. Have a seat,” he said, “let me get some coffee for us. You’ve had a long journey, you must have a lot of questions to ask.”

  Carella did indeed have a lot of questions to ask.

  In police work, it was always a matter of how best to utilize one’s time and assets, especially now that travel had become so difficult. It would have seemed simpler and cheaper all around to have done this by telephone; he’d had to call, anyway, to set up this Saturday appointment. But there were too many people he needed to talk to here, and he couldn’t have done that on the phone. Moreover, there were no nuances in a phone call. You could not see a person’s face, his eyes, you could not detect the tremor of a lip, or a slight hesitation. A catch in the voice, a change of tone, any of which might indicate a lie or merely a bit of information being withheld. Face to face, you saw and heard it all.

  He let Morgan have it flat out.

  “I’m trying to find out if Lester Henderson had a woman with him last weekend,” he said.

  Morgan hesitated, and then said, “You understand, of course…”

  Carella was about to hear the speech he’d already heard from 10,012 hotel managers, the one about the privacy of guests and the hotel’s responsibility to protect a guest’s rights and privileges, the same speech he’d heard from priests and lawyers and even accountants, on occasion, so he cut immediately to the chase by saying the magic words, “Yes, but this is a homicide.”

  Smiling understandingly as he said the words.

  Yes, I know the difficulties of weighing civic duty against corporate obligation. But a grievous breach has taken place here, and I am but a mere public servant attempting to address this wrong and correct it, so I truly would appreciate candor and honesty because this is a homicide, you see, and that is the worst possible crime, sir, so please help me solve it because this is a homicide.

  “I would have to check our records, sir,” Morgan said.

  He led Carella into the Business Office and asked someone there to pull up the registration records for the past weekend. As Carella suspected, Lester Henderson had occupied a single room, albeit with a king-sized bed, and had registered as he himself alone, Lester Lyle Henderson.

  “The rate would have been higher for a double,” Morgan said.

  Carella was tempted to ask why hotels charged more for double occupancy than single. A room was a room, wasn’t it? No matter how many people were in it? Well, maybe they provided more towels and little bottles of shampoo if they rented it as a double. He was sure there had to be a reason. Maybe this went back to the so-called blue laws, when women weren’t allowed to drink at the bar, or—for all he knew—occupy hotel rooms with men who weren’t their husbands.

  “Could you check your records for a woman with the first name Carrie?” he asked. “Who also might have been here last weekend.”

  “That…might be difficult,” Morgan said.

  “This is a homicide,” Carella said.

  “Let me see if the computer can do a find.”

  The computer did, in fact, “do a find”—but it found nothing for anyone named Carrie.

  “How about the initials JSH?” Carella said.

  “Really, I don’t see how…”

  “Do a find for last names beginning with the letter ‘H,’” Carella said. “Then narrow it to first names beginning with ‘J,’ and if you get lucky, close in on the ‘S.’ This would’ve been a woman, too.”

  “JSH,” Morgan said.

  “Please.”

  Three women whose last names began with the letter “H” had checked in last Saturday. All three worked for IBM. Only one of them had a first name beginning with the letter “J.” She had signed in as Miss Jacqueline Held, no middle initial, and had given an address in Charlotte, North Carolina.

  “How old was she, would you know?” Carella asked.

  “Our records would not show that,” Morgan said.

  “How about the room clerk who checked her in? Would he remember?”

  “She,” Morgan corrected. “Everyone behind the registration desk is a woman.”

  “Would the same room clerk be working today?”

  “Usually we have the same people on weekends, yes.”

  “Can we find out which one of them checked in Miss Held?”

  “Nothing is impossible,” Morgan said, and then added—somewhat sarcastically, Carella thought—“This is a homicide, you know.” But he was smiling.

  The clerk who’d checked in Miss Jacqueline H
eld recalled her as a dark-haired woman in her forties with a distinct Southern accent.

  “What room was Henderson in?” Carella asked.

  “We’ll have to go back to the Business Office,” Morgan said, and briskly led the way down the corridor. Carella got the impression that he was beginning to enjoy himself. Well, it had been a long hard winter.

  The computer showed that Henderson had stayed in room 1215, which was occupied at the moment.

  “How about the maid who cleaned that room?” Carella asked. “Is she working today.”

  “Well, let’s see if we can find her, shall we?” Morgan said, sounding positively ebullient now.

  Two maids had worked the twelfth floor that weekend. Both of them were from Brazil. One of them was short, the other very tall. The short one spoke only Portuguese. The tall one’s English was halting at best. She told Carella that she vaguely remembered the people who had occupied—

  “People?” he said.

  “Man and girl,” she said, and nodded.

  “Can you describe them for me?”

  “Man short, eyeglasses, maybe forty-five. Girl blond, maybe eighteen, nineteen. Maybe was daughter, no?”

  The short maid suddenly began shaking her head and speaking in rapid Portuguese.

  “What is it?” Carella asked.

  “She says wasn’t daughter. The girl.”

  “She saw her, too?”

  “Você também a viu?”

  “Claro que vi ela. Eles estavam esperando o elevador.”

  “She says, Yes, she saw her. They were waiting for the elevator.”

  “What makes her think this wasn’t his daughter?”

  “Por que você acha que ela não era filha dele?” the tall one asked.

  “Porque eles estavam se beijando,” the short one said.

  The tall one turned back to them and shrugged.

  “Because they were kissing,” she said.

  The Business Office showed no room service charges for Henderson on Saturday night. Neither had he charged anything to the hotel restaurant that night. The records did reveal, however, that he had charged his stay to an American Express card. Carella copied down the number and expiration date of his card, and then asked if he could use a telephone.