by Ed McBain
“Right around the comer. Near what used to be the legit theater there. The one that’s showing skin flicks now. The Saloon’s a bar, but they also serve sandwiches and soup. It’s not a bad joint. It gets a big crowd, especially on weekends.”
“Singles?”
“Mostly. A couple of fags thrown in for spice. But it’s not a gay bar, not by the usual definition.”
“And you say you met Sadie in July?”
“Yeah. The beginning of July. I remember because I was supposed to go out to Greensward that weekend, but the broad who was renting the bungalow already invited ten other people to the beach, so I got stuck here in the city. You ever get stuck here in the city on a weekend in July?”
“Occasionally,” Meyer said dryly.
“How’d you happen to meet her?” Kling asked.
“She admired the ring I was wearing. It was a good opening gambit because the ring happened to be one of my own.” Thornton paused. “I designed it and made it. Here at the shop.”
“Was she alone when you met her?” Kling asked.
“Alone and lonely,” Thornton said, and grinned. It was a knowing grin, a grin hoping for a similar grin in response from Kling and Meyer, who, being cops, had undoubtedly seen and heard all kinds of things and were therefore men of the world, as was Thornton himself, comrades three who knew all about lonely women in singles’ bars.
“Did you realize she was married?” Kling asked, sort of spoiling the Three Musketeers image.
“No. Is she?”
“Yes,” Meyer said. Neither of the detectives had yet informed Thornton that the lady in question, Sarah or Sadie or both, was now unfortunately deceased. They were saving that for last, like dessert.
“So what happened?” Kling said.
“Gee, I didn’t know she was married,” Thornton said, seeming truly surprised. “Otherwise nothing would’ve happened.”
“What did happen?”
“I bought her a few drinks, and then I took her home with me. I was living alone at the time, the same pad on South Lindner, but alone. We balled, and then I put her in a cab.”
“When did you see her next?”
“The following day. It was goofy. She called me in the morning, said she was on her way downtown. I was still in bed. I said, ‘So come on down, baby.’ And she did. Believe me, she did.” Thornton grinned his man-of-the-world grin again, inviting Kling and Meyer into his exclusive all-male club that knew all about women calling early in the morning to say they were on their way down, baby. Somehow, Kling and Meyer did not grin back.
Instead, Kling said, “Did you see her again after that?”
“Two or three times a week.”
“Where’d you go?”
“To the pad on South Lindner.”
“Never went any place but there?”
“Never. She’d give me a buzz on the phone, say she was on her way, and was I ready? Man, I was always ready for her.”
“Why’d you quit seeing her?”
“I went out of town for a while. When I got back, I just didn’t hear from her again.”
“Why didn’t you call her?”
“I didn’t know where to reach her.”
“She never gave you her phone number?”
“Nope. Wasn’t listed in the directory, either. No place in the city. I tried all five books.”
“Speaking of books,” Kling said, “what do you make of this?”
He opened Sarah Fletcher’s address book to the MEMORANDA page and extended it to Thornton. Thornton studied it and said, “Yeah, what about it? She wrote this down the night we met.”
“You saw her writing it?”
“Sure.”
“Did she write those initials at the same time?”
“What initials?”
“The ones in parentheses. Under your phone number.”
Thornton studied the page more closely. “How would I know?” he said, frowning.
“You said you saw her writing . . .”
“Yeah, but I didn’t see the actual page, I mean, we were in bed, man, this was like after the second time around, and she asked me what the address was, and how she could get in touch with me, and I told her. But I didn’t actually see the page itself. I only saw her writing in the book, you dig?”
“Got any idea what the initials mean?”
“TS can only mean ‘Tough Shit,’ ” Thornton said, and grinned.
“Any reason why she might want to write that in her book?” Meyer asked.
“Hey, I’m only kidding,” Thornton said, the grin expanding. “We had a ball together. Otherwise, why’d she keep coming back for more?”
“Who knows? She stopped coming back, didn’t she?”
“Only because I went out of town for a while.”
“How long a while?”
“Four days,” Thornton said. “I went out to Arizona to pick up some Indian silver. We sell some crap here, too, in addition to what Paul and I make.”
“Gone only four days, and the lady never called again,” Kling said.
“Yeah, well, maybe she got sore. I left kind of sudden like.”
“What day was it?”
“Huh?”
“The day you left?”
“I don’t know. Why? The middle of the week, I guess. I don’t remember. Anyway, who cares?” Thornton said. “There are plenty of broads in this city. What’s one more or less?” He shrugged, and then looked suddenly thoughtful.
“Yes?” Meyer said.
“Nothing. Just . . .”
“Yes?”
“She was kind of special, I have to admit it. I mean, she wasn’t the kind of broad you’d take home to mother, but she was something else. She was really something else.”
“How do you mean?”
“She was . . .” Thornton grinned. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “She took me places I’d never been before, you know what I mean?”
“No, what do you mean?” Kling said.
“Use your imagination,” Thornton said, still grinning.
“I can’t,” Kling answered. “There’s no place I’ve never been before.”
“Sadie would’ve found some for you,” Thornton said, and the grin suddenly dropped from his face. “She’ll call again, I’m sure of it. She’s got my number right there in her book, she’ll call.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Meyer said.
“Why not? She kept coming back, didn’t she? We had . . .”
“She’s dead,” Meyer said.
They kept watching his face. It did not crumble, it did not express grief, it did not even express shock. The only thing it expressed was sudden anger.
“The stupid twat,” Thornton said. “That’s all she ever was, a stupid twat.”
Police work (like life) is often not too tidy. Take surveillance, for example. On Friday afternoon, Carella had asked Byrnes for permission to begin surveillance of Gerald Fletcher on Sunday morning. Being a police officer himself, and knowing that police work (like life) is often not too tidy, Byrnes never once thought of asking Carella why he would not prefer to start his surveillance the very next day, Saturday, instead of waiting two days. The reason Carella did not choose to start the very next day was that police work (like life) is often not too tidy—as in the case of the noun “surveillance” and the noun/adjective “surveillant,” neither of which has a verb to go with it in the English language.
Carella had 640 odds-and-ends to clean up in the office on Saturday before he could begin the surveillance of Gerald Fletcher with anything resembling an easy conscience. So he had spent the day making phone calls and typing up reports and generally trying to put things in order. In all his years of police experience, he had never known a criminal who was so considerate of a policeman’s lot that he would wait patiently for one crime to be solved before committing another. There were four burglaries, two assaults, a robbery, and a forgery still unsolved in Carella’s case load; the least he could do was try to cr
eate some semblance of order from the information he had on each before embarking on a lengthy and tedious surveillance. Besides, surveillance (like police work) is often not too tidy.
On Sunday morning, Carella was ready to become a surveillant. That is to say, he was ready to adopt a surveillant stance and thereby begin surveillance of his suspect. The trouble was, just as the English language had been exceptionally untidy in not having stolen the verb from the French when it swiped the noun and the adjective, a surveillance (like life and like police work) is bound to get untidy if there is nobody to surveille.
Gerald Fletcher was nowhere in sight.
Carella had started his surveillance with the usual police gambit of calling Fletcher’s apartment from a nearby phone booth early in the morning. The object of this sometimes transparent ploy was to ascertain that the suspect was still in his own digs, after which the police tail would wait downstairs for him to emerge and then follow him to and fro wherever he went. Gerald Fletcher, however, was not in his digs. This being Sunday morning, Carella automatically assumed that Fletcher was spending the weekend elsewhere. But, intrepid law enforcer he, and steadfast surveillant besides, he parked the squad’s new (used) 1970 Buick sedan across the street from Fletcher’s apartment building, and alternately watched the front door of 721 Silvermine Oval and the kids playing in the park, thinking that perhaps Fletcher had merely spent S*A*T*U*R*D*A*Y N*I*G*H*T someplace and might return home momentarily.
At twelve noon, Carella got out of the car, walked into the park, and sat on a bench facing the building. He ate the ham and cheese sandwich his wife had prepared for him, and drank a soft drink that beat the others cold but wasn’t so hot hot. Then he stretched his legs by walking over to the railing that overlooked the river, never taking his eyes off the building, and finally went back to the car. His vigil ended at 5 P . M ., when he was relieved by Detective Arthur Brown, driving the squad’s old 1968 Chevrolet sedan. Brown was equipped with a description of Fletcher as well as a photograph swiped from the bedroom dresser in Fletcher’s apartment. In addition, he knew what sort of automobile Fletcher drove, courtesy of the Motor Vehicle Bureau. He told Carella to take it easy, and then he settled down to the serious business of watching a doorway for the next seven hours, at which time he was scheduled to be relieved by O’Brien, who would hold the fort until eight in the morning, when Kapek would report to work for the long daytime stretch.
Carella went home to read his son’s latest note to Santa Claus, and then he had dinner with the family and was settling down in the living room with a novel he had bought a week ago and had not yet cracked, when the telephone rang.
“I’ve got it!” he yelled, knowing that Teddy could not hear him, and knowing this was Fanny’s day off, but also knowing that Mark, his son, had a habit these days of answering the telephone with the words “Automobile Squad, Carella here,” all well and good unless the caller happened to be a detective from the Automobile Squad trying to report on a stolen vehicle.
“Hello?” Carella said into the mouthpiece.
“Hello, Steve?”
“Yes?” Carella said. He did not recognize the voice.
“This is Gerry.”
“Who?”
“Gerry Fletcher.”
Carella almost dropped the receiver. “Hello,” he said, “how are you?”
“Fine, thanks. I was away for the weekend, just got back a little while ago, in fact. I frankly find this apartment depressing as hell. I was wondering if you’d like to join me for a drink.”
“Well,” Carella said, “it’s late, and I was just about to . . .”
“Nonsense, it’s not even eight o’clock.”
“Yes, but it’s Sunday night . . .”
“Hop in your car and meet me down here,” Fletcher said. “We’ll do a little old-fashioned pub crawling, what the hell.”
“No, I really couldn’t. Thanks a lot, Gerry, but . . .”
“Take you half an hour to get here,” Fletcher said, “and you may end up saving my life. If I sit here alone another five minutes, I’m liable to throw myself out the window.” He suddenly began laughing. “You know what the Penal Law has to say about suicide, don’t you?”
“No, what?” Carella asked.
“Silliest damn section in the book,” Fletcher said, still laughing. “It says, and I quote ‘Although suicide is deemed a grave public wrong, yet from the impossibility of reaching the successful perpetrator, no forfeiture is imposed.’ How do you like that for legal nonsense? Come on, Steve. I’ll show you some of the city’s brighter spots, we’ll have a few drinks, what do you say?”
It suddenly occurred to Carella that Gerald Fletcher had already had a few drinks before placing his call. It further occurred to him that if he played this too cozily, Fletcher might rescind his generous offer. And since there was nothing Carella wanted more than a night on the town with a murder suspect who might possibly drink more than was prudent for his own best interests, he immediately said, “Okay, I’ll see you at eight-thirty. Provided I can square it with my wife.”
“Good,” Fletcher said. “See you.”
10
P addy’s Bar & Grille was on the Stem, adjacent to the city’s theater district. Carella and Fletcher got there at about nine o’clock, while the place was still relatively quiet. The action began a little later, Fletcher explained, the operative theory behind a singles operation being that neither bachelor nor career girl should seem too obvious about wanting to make each other’s acquaintance. If you began to prowl too early, you appeared eager. If you got there too late, however, you missed out. The idea was to time your arrival just as the crowd was beginning to reach its peak, wandering in as though casually looking for a phone booth instead of a partner.
“You seem to know a lot about it,” Carella said.
“I’m an observant man,” Fletcher said, and smiled. “What are you drinking?”
“Scotch and soda,” Carella said.
“A scotch and soda,” Fletcher said to the bartender, “and a Beefeater’s martini, straight up.”
He had drunk whiskey sours the day they’d had lunch together, Carella remembered, but he was drinking martinis tonight. Good. The more potent the drinks, the looser his tongue might become. Carella looked around the room. The men ranged in age from the low thirties to the late fifties, a scant dozen in the place at this early hour, all of them neatly dressed in city weekend clothes, sports jackets and slacks, some wearing shirts and ties, others wearing shirts with ascots, still others wearing turtlenecks. The women, half in number, were dressed casually as well—pants suits, skirts, blouses or sweaters, with only one brave and rather ugly soul dressed to the teeth in a silk Pucci. The mating game, at this hour, consisted of sly glances and discreet smiles; no one was willing to take a real gamble until he’d had an opportunity to look over the entire field.
“What do you think of it?” Fletcher asked.
“I’ve seen worse,” Carella said.
“I’ll bet you have. Would it be fair to say you’ve also seen better?” Their drinks arrived at that moment, and Fletcher lifted his glass in a silent toast. “What kind of person would you say comes to a place like this?” he asked.
“Judging from appearances alone, and it’s still early . . .”
“It’s a fairly representative crowd,” Fletcher said.
“I would say we’ve got a nice lower-middle-class clientele bent on making contact with members of the opposite sex.”
“A pretty decent element, would you say?”
“Oh, yes,” Carella answered. “You go into some places, you know immediately that half the people surrounding you are thieves. I don’t smell that here. Small businessmen, junior executives, divorced ladies, bachelor girls—for example, there isn’t a hooker in the lot, which is unusual for a bar on the Stem.”
“Can you recognize a hooker by just looking at her?”
“Usually.”
“What would you say if I told you the blon
de in the Pucci is a working prostitute?”
Carella looked at the woman again. “I don’t think I’d believe you.”
“Why not?”
“Well, to begin with, she’s a bit old for the young competition parading the streets these days. Secondly, she’s in deep conversation with a plump little girl who undoubtedly came down from Riverhead looking for a nice boy she can bed and eventually marry. And thirdly, she’s not selling anything. She’s waiting for one of those two or three older guys to make their move. Hookers don’t wait, Gerry. They make the approach, they do the selling. Business is business, and time is money. They can’t afford to sit around being coy.” Carella paused. “Is she a working prostitute?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Fletcher said. “Never even saw her before tonight. I was merely trying to indicate that appearances can sometimes be misleading. Drink up, there are a few more places I’d like to show you.”
He knew Fletcher well enough, he thought, to realize that the man was trying to tell him something. At lunch last Tuesday, Fletcher had transmitted a message and a challenge: I killed my wife, what can you do about it? Tonight, in a similar manner, he was attempting to indicate something else, but Carella could not fathom exactly what.
Fanny’s was only twenty blocks away from Paddy’s Bar & Grille, but as far removed from it as the moon. Whereas the first bar seemed to cater to a quiet crowd peacefully pursuing its romantic inclinations, Fanny’s was noisy and raucous, jammed to the rafters with men and women of all ages, wearing plastic hippie crap purchased in head shops up and down Jackson Avenue. If Paddy’s had registered a seven on the scale of desirability and respectability, Fanny’s rated a four. The language sounded like what Carella was used to hearing in the squadroom or in any of the cellblocks at Calcutta. There were half a dozen hookers lining the bar, suffering severely from the onslaught of half a hundred girls in skin-tight costumes wiggling their behinds and thrusting their breasts at anything warm and moving. The approaches were blatant and unashamed. There were more hands on asses than Carella could count, more meaningful glances and ardent sighs than seemed possible outside of a bedroom, more invitations than Truman Capote had sent out for his last masked ball. As Carella and Fletcher elbowed their way toward the bar, a brunette, wearing a short skirt and a see-through blouse without a bra, planted herself directly in Carella’s path and said, “What’s the password, stranger?”