by Ed McBain
A quick brush of the hair, a sprinkle of cologne in the armpits, a bold adventurous approach to the phone (cigarette dangling from the lip), a nonchalant scanning of the little black book, a forthright dialing, and, Oh my, I would have adored going with you to the moon or even Jupiter and back, but here it is almost six o’clock on the most R*O*M*A*N*T*I*C N*I*G*H*T of the week, you don’t expect a girl to be free at this late hour, do you? The Snf has arrived. It has arrived full-blown because it is now six o’clock, fast approaching seven, and at the stroke of seven-thirty you will turn into Spiro Agnew.
At the stroke of seven-thirty, Bert Kling called Nora Simonov, certain that she’d be out having a good time, like everybody else in the United States of America on this Saturday night.
“Hullo?” she said.
“Nora?” he said, surprised.
“Yes?”
“Hi. This is Bert Kling.”
“Hullo,” she said, “what time is it?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“I must’ve fallen asleep. I was watching the six o’clock news.” She yawned and then quickly said, “Excuse me.”
“Shall I call you back?”
“What for?”
“Give you a chance to wake up.”
“I’m awake, that’s okay.”
The line went silent.
“Well . . . uh . . . how are you?” Kling asked.
“Fine,” Nora said, and the line went silent again.
In the next thirty seconds, as static crackled along the line and Kling debated asking the risky question that might prolong his misery eternally, he could not help realizing how spoiled he had been by Cindy Forrest, who, until four weeks ago at least, had been available at any hour of the day or night, and especially on Saturday, when no red-blooded American male should be left alone to weep into his wine.
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” Kling said at last.
“Is that why you called? I thought maybe you had another suspect for me to identify,” Nora said, and laughed.
“No, no,” Kling said. “No.” He laughed with her, immediately sobered, and quickly said, “As a matter of fact, Nora, I was wondering . . .”
“Yes?”
“Would you like to go out?”
“What do you mean?”
“Out.”
“With you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
In the next ten seconds of silence, which seemed much longer to Kling than the earlier thirty seconds of silence had been, he realized he had made a terrible mistake; he was staring directly into the double-barreled shotgun of rejection and about to have his damn fool bead blown off.
“I told you, you know,” Nora said, “that I’m involved with someone . . .”
“Yes, I know. Well, listen . . .”
“But I’m not doing anything tonight, and . . . if you want to go for a walk or something . . .”
“I thought maybe dinner.”
“Well . . .”
“And maybe dancing later.”
“Well . . .”
“I hate to eat alone, don’t you?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. But Bert . . .”
“Yes?”
“I feel sort of funny about this.”
“Funny how?”
“Leading you on,” Nora said.
“I’ve been warned,” he said. “You’ve given me fair warning.”
“I would like to have dinner with you,” Nora said, “but . . .”
“Can you be ready at eight?”
“You do understand, don’t you, that . . . ?”
“I understand completely.”
“Mmm,” she said dubiously.
“Eight o’clock?”
“Eight-thirty,” she said.
“See you then,” he said, and hung up quickly before she could change her mind. He was grinning when he looked into the mirror. He felt handsome and assured and sophisticated and in complete control of America.
He did not know who Nora’s phantom lover was, but he was certain now that she was only playing the age-old maidenly game of shy resistance and that she would succumb soon enough to his masculine charm.
He was dead wrong.
Dinner was all right, he couldn’t knock dinner. They exchanged thoughts on a wide variety of subjects:
“I once did a cover for a historical novel,” Nora said, “with a woman wearing one of these very low-cut velvet gowns, you know, and I was bored to tears while I was doing the roughs, so I gave her three breasts. The art director didn’t even notice. I painted out the third one when I did the final painting.”
“I look at myself,” Kling said, “and I know I’m not a pig, I’m a fairly decent human being trying to do his job. And sometimes my job involves getting into situations that are distasteful to me. You think I like going onto a college campus and breaking up a protest by kids who don’t want to die in a stupid war? But I’m also supposed to see that they don’t burn down the administration building. So how do I convince them that keeping law and order, which is my job, is not the same as suppression? It gets difficult sometimes.”
“Contact sports,” Nora said, “are all homosexual in nature, I’m convinced of it. You can’t tell me the quarterback isn’t copping a feel off the center every time he grabs that ball.”
And like that.
But after dinner, when Kling suggested that they go dancing at a little place he knew in the Quarter, three-piece band and nice atmosphere, Nora at first demurred, saying she was awfully tired and had promised her mother she would take her out to the cemetery early tomorrow morning, and then finally acquiescing when Kling said it was still only ten-thirty, and promised to have her home by midnight.
Pedro’s, as Kling had promised, was long on atmosphere and good music. Dimly illuminated, ideal for lovers both married and un-, adulterated or pure, it seemed to work as a deterrent on Nora from the moment she stepped into the place. She was not good at hiding whatever she was feeling (as Kling had earlier noticed), and the ambience of Pedro’s was either threatening or nostalgic (and possibly more), with the result that her eyes took on a glazed look, her mouth wilted, her shoulders slumped, she became the kind of Saturday-night date red-blooded American males feared and avoided; she became a thorough and complete pain in the ass.
Kling asked her to dance in the hope that bodily contact, blood pulsing beneath flesh, hands touching, cheeks brushing, all that jazz might speed along the seduction he had so successfully launched during dinner. But she held him at bay, with a rigid right arm on his left shoulder, so that eventually he tired physically of trying to draw her close, being afflicted with bursitis, and tired mentally of all the adolescent fumbling and maneuvering. He decided to ply her with booze, having been raised in a generation that placed strong store in the seductive powers of alcohol. (He was, incidentally, a cop who had tried pot twice and enjoyed it. He had realized, however, that he could not very well go around offering grass to young ladies, or even lighting up himself, and had abandoned that pleasant pastime.) Nora drank one drink, count it, or to be more exact, half a drink, toying with the remainder of it while Kling consumed two more and asked politely, “Sure you don’t want to drink up and have another?” To which she politely shook her head with a wan little smile.
And then, despite her protestations, two days ago, that she did not want to talk about her grand amour, the band began playing the Beatles’ “Something” and her eyes misted over, and the next thing Kling knew he was being treated to a monologue about her lover. The man, she confessed, had until just recently been married, and there were still some complications, but she expected they would be cleared up within the next several months, at which time she hoped to become his wife. She did not say what the complications were, but Kling surmised she was talking about a divorce settlement or some such; at this point, he could not have cared less. He had been warned, true, but spending a Saturday night with someone who talked about another man was akin to tak
ing one’s mother to a strip joint, maybe worse. He tried to change the subject, but the power of “Something” prevailed, and, as the band launched into a second chorus, Nora similarly launched into her second chorus, so that the music seemed to be accompanying her little tone poem.
“We met entirely by accident,” she said, “though we learned later that actually we could have met at any time during the past year.”
“Well, most people meet entirely by chance,” Kling said.
“Yes, of course, but this was just the most remarkable coincidence.”
“Mmm,” Kling said, and then launched into what he considered a provocative and perhaps completely original observation on The Beatles Phenomenon, remarking that their rise and fall had encompassed a mere five years or so, which seemed significant when one remembered that they were a product of the space age, where speed was of the essence and . . .
“He’s so far superior to me,” Nora said, “that sometimes I wonder what he sees in me at all.”
“What does he do for a living?” Kling asked, thinking Ho-hum.
Nora hesitated for only an instant. But because her face was such a meticulous recorder of anything she felt, he knew that what she said next would be a lie. He was suddenly terribly interested.
“He’s a doctor,” Nora said, and turned her eyes from his, and lifted her drink, and sipped at it, and then glanced toward the bandstand.
“Is he on staff any place?”
“Yes,” she said immediately, and again, he knew she was lying. “Isola General.”
“Over on Wilson Avenue?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
Kling nodded. Isola General was on Parsons and Lowell, bordering the River Dix.
“When do you expect to be married?” he asked.
“We haven’t set the date yet.”
“What’s his name?” Kling asked conversationally, and turned away from her, and lifted his own glass, and pretended to be completely absorbed in the band, which was now playing a medley of tunes from the forties, presumably for the Serutan members of their audience.
“Why do you want to know?” Nora asked.
“Just curious. I have a thing about names. I think certain names go together. If, for example, a woman named Freida did not eventually hook up with a man named Albert, I would be enormously surprised.”
“Who do you think a ‘Nora’ should hook up with?”
“A ‘Bert,’” he said immediately and automatically, and was immediately sorry.
“She’s already hooked up with someone whose name isn’t ‘Bert.’ ”
“What is his name?” Kling asked.
Nora shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll tell you.”
It was twenty minutes to twelve.
True to his promise, Kling paid the check, hailed a taxicab, and took Nora home. She insisted that it wasn’t necessary for him to come up in the elevator with her, but he told her there’d been a woman killed here in this very building less than a week ago, and since he was a cop and all, armed to the teeth and all, he might just as well accompany her. Outside the door to her apartment, she shook hands with him and said, “Thank you, I had a very nice time.”
“Yes, me, too,” he answered, and nodded bleakly.
He got back to his apartment at 12:25, and the telephone rang some twenty minutes later. It was Steve Carella.
“Bert,” he said, “I’ve arranged with Pete to put a twenty-four-hour tail on Fletcher, and I want to handle the first round myself. You think you can go with Meyer tomorrow when he hits Thornton?”
“Hits who?”
“The second guy in Sarah Fletcher’s book.”
“Oh, sure, sure. What time’s he going?”
“He’ll be in touch with you.”
“Where are you, Steve? Home?”
“No, I’ve got the graveyard shift. Incidentally, there was a call for you.”
“Oh? Who called?”
“Cindy Forrest.”
Kling caught his breath. “What’d she say?”
“Just to tell you she’d called.”
“Thanks,” Kling said.
“Good night,” Carella said, and hung up.
Kling put the receiver back on its cradle, took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and began unlacing his shoes. Twice he lifted the receiver from its cradle, began dialing Cindy’s number, and changed his mind. Instead, he turned on the television in time to catch the one o’clock news. The weather forecaster announced that the promised snowstorm had blown out to sea. Kling got undressed, and went to bed.
9
M ichael Thornton lived in an apartment building several blocks from the Quarter, close enough to absorb some of its artistic flavor, distant enough to escape its high rents. Kling and Meyer did not knock on Thornton’s door until 11 A . M ., on the theory that a man is entitled to sleep late on a Sunday morning, even if his name is listed in a dead lady’s address book.
The man who opened the door was perhaps twenty-eight years old, with blond hair and a blond beard stubble. He was wearing pajama bottoms and socks, and his brown eyes were still edged with sleep. They had announced themselves as policemen through the wooden barrier of the closed door, and now the blond man looked at them bleary-eyed and asked to see their badges. He studied Meyer’s shield, nodded, and, without moving from his position in the doorway, yawned and said, “So what can I do for you?”
“We’re looking for a man named Michael Thornton. Would you happen to be . . . ?”
“Mike isn’t here right now.”
“Does he live here?”
“He lives here, but he isn’t here right now.”
“Where is he?”
“What’s this about?” the man said.
“Routine investigation,” Kling said.
The words “routine investigation,” Kling noticed, never failed to strike terror into the hearts of man or beast. Had he said they were investigating a hatchet murder or a nursery school arson, the blond man’s face would not have gone as pale, his eyes would not have begun to blink the way they did. In the land of supersell, the understatement—“routine investigation”—was more powerful than trumpets and kettledrums. The blond man was visibly frightened and thinking furiously. Somewhere in the building, a toilet flushed. Meyer and Kling waited patiently.
“Do you know where he is?” Kling said at last.
“Whatever this is, I know he had nothing to do with it.”
“It’s just a routine investigation,” Kling repeated, and smiled.
“What’s your name?” Meyer asked.
“Paul Wendling.”
“Do you live here?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where we can find Michael Thornton?”
“He went over to the shop.”
“What shop?”
“We have a jewelry shop in the Quarter. We make silver jewelry.”
“The shop’s open today?”
“Not to the public. We’re not violating the law, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“If you’re not open to the public . . .”
“Mike’s working on some new stuff. We make our jewelry in the back of the shop.”
“What’s the address there?” Meyer asked.
“1156 Hadley Place.”
“Thank you,” Meyer said.
Behind them, Paul Wendling watched as they went down the steps, and then quickly closed the door.
“You know what he’s doing right this minute?” Meyer asked.
“Sure,” Kling said. “He’s calling his pal at the shop to tell him we’re on the way over.”
Michael Thornton, as they had guessed, was not surprised to see them. They held up their shields to the plate-glass entrance door, but he was clearly expecting them, and he unlocked the door at once.
“Mr. Thornton?” Meyer asked.
“Yes?”
He was wearing a blue work smock, but the contours of the garment did nothing to hide
his powerful build. Wide-shouldered, barrel-chested, thick forearms and wrists showing below the short sleeves of the smock, he backed away from the door like a boulder moving on ball bearings and allowed them to enter the shop. His eyes were blue, his hair black. A small scar showed white in the thick eyebrow over his left eye.
“We understand you’re working,” Meyer said. “Sorry to break in on you this way.”
“That’s okay,” Thornton said. “What’s up?”
“You know a woman named Sarah Fletcher?”
“No,” Thornton said.
“You know a woman named Sadie Collins?”
Thornton hesitated. “Yes,” he said.
“This the woman?” Meyer asked, and showed him a newly made stat of the photograph they had confiscated from the Fletcher bedroom.
“That’s Sadie. What about her?”
They were standing near Thornton’s showcase, a four-foot-long glass box on tubular steel legs. Rings, bracelets, necklaces, pendants dizzily reflected the sunshine that slanted through the front window of the shop. Meyer took his time putting the stat back into his notebook, meanwhile giving Kling a chance to observe Thornton. The picture seemed to have had no visible effect on him. Like the solid mass of mountain that he was, he waited silently, as though challenging the detectives to scale him.
“What was your relationship with her?” Kling said. Thornton shrugged. “Why?” he asked. “Is she in trouble?”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Thornton said.
“Well, you didn’t answer ours, either,” Meyer said, and smiled. “What was your relationship with her, and when did you see her last?”
“I met her in July and the last time I saw her was in August. We had a brief hot thing, and then good-bye.”
“Where’d you meet her?”
“In a joint called The Saloon.”
“Where’s that?”