by Ed McBain
“Don’t worry about jokes,” he said. And then, because he was not only a real-life detective, but also a real-life writer, he added, “Jokes are the folk lore of truth.”
“Does that mean it’s true that two Irishmen can’t walk out of a bar?” Walsh asked.
“It could happen,” Ollie said, and shrugged again.
“That’s what’s offensive about the joke,” Walsh said. “Those words ‘It could happen.’ And the accompanying shrug, indicating that whereas it’s a remote possibility that a pair of Irishmen could walk out of a bar, the teller of the joke has certainly never seen such a phenomenon in his entire life, though that doesn’t mean to say it couldn’t happen, two Irishmen walking out instead of staggering out or falling down dead drunk as they come out, is what that joke is saying,” Walsh concluded somewhat heatedly.
“Gee, is that so?” Ollie said, and shook his head in wonder. “I never thought of it that way. Can you help me find this Herrera punk?”
THE MAN Patricia spoke to was a Serb named Branislav Something, she couldn’t catch the last name. Something with no vowels in it. He had been working here at the Hall since last December, just about when she’d started on the beat.
“I tink I see you valking around,” he said, grinning. He had bad teeth and patchy hair. He was probably fifty years old, she guessed, and was surprised when he later told her he was only forty-one. He had nice blue eyes. He kept smiling all the while he talked to her. He had been in Kosovo when the Americans bombed, he said. “I don’t blame Americans,” he said, “I blame Albanian bastards.”
“Were you here Monday morning?” she asked him. “When the councilman got shot?”
“Whoo,” he said, and rolled his blue eyes. “Vot a trouble!”
“Where were you?” she asked.
“In toilets,” he said. “Cleaning toilets.”
“Are the toilets anywhere near the stage?”
“Some toilet near, some not,” he said. “You tink I shot councilman?”
“No, no. I just wanted to know if you’d seen anybody running from the stage.”
“Nobody. Saw nobody.”
“Somebody with a gun?”
“Nobody. Saw nobody. Mop floors, wash windows, clean toilets, sinks, everything, make sparkle like new.”
“There are windows in these toilets?” Patricia asked.
“Two toilets got windows,” he said. “Let fresh air come in.”
“Can I see these toilets?”
“Both for men’s,” he said.
“That’s okay,” she said, “I’m a cop.”
When Patricia was eight years old and visiting her grandparents in San Juan, her father took them to a show in one of the big hotels one night, and she had to go to the bathroom after the show, but there was a big line of women out in the hall, the way there always is. He came out of the men’s room and saw her standing there, dancing from foot to foot, and he said, “Come with me, it’s empty in here,” and he took her into the men’s room and stood outside the door to make sure nobody came in while she was peeing. That was the first time she saw urinals.
The next time she saw urinals was just last week at the Sony Theater on Farley and First, where somebody had mugged some kid in the men’s room, smashing his face into a urinal that was running with blood and piss when she came in with her gun drawn and the perp long gone. Harry Potter was playing on the screen outside.
The first men’s room Branislav showed her was just off the right side of the stage. The urinals here were sparkling clean, just as he’d promised. A pebbled glass window was on the wall opposite the urinals, at the far end of the room. The window was wide open. A hand dryer was on the adjoining wall. Patricia hated hand dryers. She did not know anyone who liked hand dryers. She figured hand dryers were designed not to dry a person’s hands but to save money on paper towels. She went to the window, bent over, and looked out.
She was looking out onto what appeared to be an airshaft that ran from right to left across the back of the building.
So much for an accomplice theory, she thought.
• • •
PORTOLES AND DOYLE were just coming out of the Okeh Diner that Monday when Carella and Kling caught up with them. They seemed surprised to learn that the detectives were here about the murder at King Memorial; until now, they’d thought the Fat Boy was investigating that case.
“Was Weeks pulled off it?” Portoles asked. “Is that it?”
“No, we’re handling it together,” Kling said.
“You ain’t shooflies, are you?” Doyle asked.
“No, we’re just honest, decent law enforcement officers investigating a mere homicide,” Carella said.
Doyle looked at him, not sure whether he was kidding or not. Portoles wasn’t sure, either. Sometimes Internal Affairs sent around guys pretending to be what they weren’t.
“So what can we do for you?” he asked.
“We understand you talked to some bum in the alley outside the building,” Carella said. “Is that right?”
“Yeah, a Vietnam vet, he said he was.”
“Did you get his name?”
“No, he was an old drunk.”
“How old could he be, Vietnam?” Kling asked.
“Well, he looked old, let’s put it that way,” Doyle said.
“Did you get his name?”
“No. He was drunk, he didn’t see a weapon, what’s the uproar here?”
“You just didn’t bother to take his name, is that it?” Kling said. “An eye witness.”
“An old drunk,” Doyle insisted.
“Besides,” Portoles said, “the TV lady got it.”
“Got what?” Carella said. “What TV lady?”
“His name,” Portoles said.
“He had to sign some kind of release,” Doyle said.
“What was her name?” Kling asked. “The TV lady. Did you get her name?”
“Oh sure,” Doyle said, beaming. “Honey Blair, Channel Four News. Everybody knows Honey Blair.”
• • •
CARELLA CALLED HER as soon as they got back to the squadroom. He got her answering machine.
“Miss Blair,” he said, “this is Detective Steve Carella, you probably won’t remember me, we met around Christmastime at the Grover Park Zoo, the case with the lady and the lions, do you remember? I need to know the name of the Vietnam vet you talked to outside King Memorial on the day Lester Henderson got shot and killed. One of the responding officers told us the man signed a release for you. If we could have his name, we’d appreciate it. You can call me back at Frederick seven, eight, oh, two, four, thanks a lot.”
She called back ten minutes later.
“Well, well,” she said, “Detective Carella.”
“Hi, Miss Blair, I’m glad you…”
“Honey,” she said.
“Thank you for returning my call, uh, Honey,” he said. “I won’t take much of your time. All I need…”
“You can take all the time you need with me,” Honey said.
“All I want is the name of the man you…”
“It’s Clarence Weaver, 702 Huxley Boulevard, I don’t have a phone number for him, what else is on your mind?”
“Nothing right now,” he said.
“When you think of something, give me another call,” Honey said.
There was a click on the line.
He looked at the receiver.
THE HAND-LETTERED wooden sign over the entrance door read DSS HUXLEY. The DSS stood for Department of Social Services. Huxley Boulevard had once been a tree-lined esplanade with elegant apartment buildings on either side of it. The trees were still there, but the apartment buildings were now run by the city and were used for welfare housing. 702 Huxley had once been a movie theater. The seats had been torn out seven years ago, when the building was turned into a shelter for the homeless. That was where they found Clarence Weaver on that Monday afternoon a week after Henderson’s murder.
There were eight h
undred and forty-seven cots in the shelter. Weaver was lying on cot number 312, his hands behind his head, his eyes closed. He was wearing khaki fatigues and a khaki-colored tank-top undershirt. He had taken off his shoes and socks. His feet were dirty, grime caked between the toes, the ankles smudged with filth from the streets.
Gently, Carella said, “Mr. Weaver?”
He sat upright, eyes snapping open. He truly looked too old and too frail ever to have served in Vietnam, a scrawny, unshaven, toothless black man with thin arms and a sunken chest, the stench of whiskey on his breath at two o’clock in the afternoon.
“Whut’s it?” he said at once, and looked around wildly, as if he had just heard incoming mail.
“It’s okay,” Carella said, and showed Weaver his shield. “We just want to ask you some questions.”
Weaver studied the shield carefully.
“I’m Detective Carella, this is my partner, Detective Kling.”
He looked up at the detectives, swung his legs over the side of the cot. “That TV station never sent me a nickel,” he said, and shook his head. “I axed was they a reward, the blond lady tole me to just please sign the release. I told them ever’thin I knowed, but nobody sent me nothin.”
“What is it you told them, Mr. Weaver? What did you see that morning?”
As Weaver recalls it, he was planning to enter the alley on the side of King Memorial…
“They’s two alleys,” he said, “one to the right, one to the left. One of them usually has nothin but papers an’ trash in the garbage cans, from the offices that side of the buildin. The other one sometimes has soda bottles in it, sometimes even food, from people usin the aud’torium for one reason or another. I was juss about to go in there to start mah search, when I seed this young feller come racin out the buildin…”
“When you say young…”
“Yessir.”
“How young?”
“Hard to say. You know how these young fellers look nowadays. Tall, kind of thin…”
“How tall?”
“Five-seven? Five-eight?”
Carella was thinking that wasn’t tall. Kling was thinking the same thing.
“White or black?” he asked.
“White man. He was a white man.”
“Clean-shaven? Or did he have a beard? A mustache?”
“No, nothin like that. Clean-shaven, I’d say.”
“Any scars? Did you notice any scars?”
“No, he was comin too fast. An the cap made it hard to see his face.”
“We understand he didn’t have a gun.”
“That’s right, he did not have a piece, suhs. I was in the Army, you know, I’m a Vietnam vet, I knows all about weapons. He did not have a weapon, this man. I was in Nam durin the Tet offensive, you know.”
“Yes, sir,” Kling said. “Sir, can you tell us what this man was wearing?”
“I tole the other officers, he had on blue jeans and a ski parka…”
“What color parka?”
“Blue. Darker than the jeans. An white sneakers, and this cap pulled down over his eyes.”
“What kind of cap?”
“A baseball cap.”
“What color was it?”
“Black.”
“Anything on it?”
“How do you mean?”
“Any letters for a team?”
“I still don’t get you.”
“NY for New York, or LA for Los Angeles…”
“SD for San Diego? The Padres?”
“M for the Milwaukee Brewers?”
Weaver was thinking.
“The Phillies?” Kling said.
“The Royals?”
“Anything like that?”
“Yes, they was letters on it,” Weaver said at last.
“Which team?”
“I got no idea.”
“Well, what’d you see, sir?”
“SRA.”
“SRA?” Kling said.
“The letters SRA, yessir.”
“SRA,” Carella repeated.
“You sure it wasn’t SF?” Kling asked. “For San Francisco? The San Francisco Giants?”
“Or SL?” Carella asked. “For the St. Louis Cardinals?”
“No, it was SRA. I feel sure about that. I was a spotter, you know. In Nam.”
“What color were the letters?” Carella asked.
“White.”
“White letters on a black cap,” Kling said. “What team do you suppose that can be?”
“Oh Jesus,” Carella said.
“What?”
“Smoke Rise. Smoke Rise Academy.”
16
THE PLAYING FIELDS behind Smoke Rise Academy were empty as Carella and Kling drove past them at three-thirty that Monday afternoon. Girls and boys in their school uniforms—gray trousers and black blazers for the boys, gray skirts and similar black blazers for the girls—walked along country roads anomalous in a city as big as this one, wending their easy way homeward, chatting, teasing, skipping, laughing on an afternoon still bright with spring sunlight.
The same housekeeper who’d answered the door for Carella on his earlier visit opened the door for them now. She said she would inform Mrs. Henderson they were here, and then politely left the door open a crack while she went to summon her. Pamela herself opened the door for them not three minutes later. She was still wearing black, a sweater and skirt this time, black pantyhose, black loafers.
“Has there been some news?” she asked at once.
“May we come in?” Carella asked.
“Please,” she said, and led them into the house and into the living room Carella remembered from the first time he was here. “Would you care for some coffee?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” Carella said.
Kling shook his head.
The detectives sat on the sofa, their backs to the French windows and the Hamilton Bridge in the near distance. Pamela sat in a chair facing them.
“We’re sorry to bother you again,” Carella said, “but we’d like to ask a few more questions.”
“I was hoping…”
“Mrs. Henderson,” Carella said, “can you tell us where you were on the morning your husband was shot and killed?”
“I’m sorry?” she said.
“I asked…”
“Yes, I heard you. Will I need a lawyer here?”
“I don’t think so, Mrs. Henderson.”
“Why do you want to know where…?”
“You don’t have to answer the question if you don’t want to,” Kling said.
“Oh, I’ll just bet,” she said, and then immediately, with a slight wave of her hand to indicate this was all nonsense, “I was here at home.”
“This would’ve been around ten, ten-thirty…”
“Yes, I was here at home. Is that it? In which case…”
“Was anyone here with you?”
“No. I was alone.”
“No housekeeper, no…”
“Our housekeeper comes in later on Mondays.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“She does the weekly marketing on Mondays. She doesn’t get here till noon or thereabouts.”
“So she wasn’t here at all that Monday morning, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“You were here alone.”
“Yes.”
“Children gone?”
“The children walk to school. They leave here at eight-thirty.” She looked at her watch. “They should be home any minute, in fact. I would rather you were gone by then. If there are no further questions…”
“Do you drive a car, Mrs. Henderson?”
“No. Well, do you mean do I have a license to drive? Yes, I do. But no, we do not keep a car in the city. My husband was a city councilman. We were provided with a car and driver whenever we needed one.”
“I believe you mentioned your son was on the school baseball team.”
“Yes, he plays second base.”
“Does he have a baseball uniform?”
“Yes?”
“With a baseball cap?”
“Yes?”
“A black cap with the initials SRA on it? For Smoke Rise Academy?”
“I’m sure he does.” She rose suddenly. “I hear them now,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I must ask you to leave.”
They passed the children on the way to their car.
A boy of eleven, a girl of eight or nine.
“Hello there,” Carella said.
Neither of them answered.
THE UNIFORMED GUARD in the booth at the Smoke Rise gate wasn’t sure he should talk to them.
“It’s okay,” Kling assured him. “We’re just checking some stuff Mrs. Henderson already told us.”
“Well,” the guard said, but then immediately relaxed into his five minutes of fame.
“Can you tell us what time the Henderson housekeeper got here last Monday?”
“Jessie? Around noon, I guess it was. She usually comes in late on Mondays. Does the shopping for them, you know. Or used to. I don’t know what it’ll be like now.”
“How about Mrs. Henderson? Did she leave the development anytime before then?”
“We don’t call it a development,” the guard said.
“What do you call it?”
“People who live here call it a compound.”
“Did she leave the compound anytime that morning?” Carella asked.
“Saw her going out around nine,” the guard said.
“In a limousine or what?”
“No, in a taxi. Let him in a few minutes before that.”
“Around nine, you say.”
“Well, the cab got here at five to nine, it must’ve been. Drove out some ten minutes later? Quarter past, let’s say. Around that time.”
“Yellow cab, was it?”
“Yellow cab, yes.”
“What was she wearing, did you notice?”
“Mrs. Henderson? I just told you. She was in a taxi!”