by Ed McBain
"Well, yeah, but I'm not talking body count. What I mean is she knocks over the women, and at the same time she puts her daughters in line for the cash."
"Yeah, but she has to kill Schumacher to do that."
"Well, sure."
"Is all I'm saying," Hawes said.
"Sure."
"How about the three of them did it in concert," Willis suggested. "Maybe we're looking at three killers instead of just one. Like the Orient Express."
"What the fuck's the Orient Express?" Parker asked.
"You know, Agatha Christie."
"Who the fuck's that, Agatha Christie?" Parker asked.
"Forget it," Willis said.
"Anyway, that was more than three people," Hawes said.
"And the younger daughter loved him," Carella said. "I don't think she'd have ..."
"Claims she loved him," Willis said.
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"Well, that's true, but. . ."
"Butter wouldn't melt," Brown said.
"Those are sometimes the worst kind," Willis said. "And I know it was more than three people, Cotton. I was just using it as an example."
"What is this, the public library?" Byrnes asked.
"Huh?" Parker said, looking bewildered.
"What about this pet-shop lady?" Kling asked.
"What about her?"
"Did she know she was in the will?"
"Claims she knew nothing about it," Carella said.
"Seemed genuinely surprised," Brown said.
"Anyway," Hawes said, "who'd kill somebody for a lousy ten grand?"
"Me," Parker said, and everyone laughed.
"Besides, she hardly knew the guy," Brown said.
"Just gave him occasional advice on the pooch," Carella said.
"Also she knew the dog from when he was a pup," Hawes said. "Whoever blew away that mutt was somebody who hated him."
"Right, the hippie daughter," Parker said, nodding. "I was you, I'd pick her up, work her over with a rubber hose."
Everybody laughed again. Except Byrnes.
"Where'd that twelve grand come from?" he asked.
"What twelve grand?" Hawes said.
"The twelve grand in the cash box in her closet," Byrnes said. "And how'd the killer get in the apartment?"
"Well, we don't actually ..."
"Anybody talk to the doorman who was on?"
"Yes, sir," Kling said. "Me and Artie."
"So what'd he say?"
"He didn't see anybody suspicious."
"Did he or did he not let anyone in that apartment?"
"He said there's deliveries all the time, he couldn't remember whether anyone went upstairs or not."
"He couldn't remember," Byrnes repeated flatly.
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"Yes, sir."
"He couldn't remember."
"Yes, sir, that's what he said. He couldn't remember."
"Did you try to prod his memory?"
"Yes, sir, we spent an hour, maybe more, talking to him. His statement's in the file."
"He could hardly speak English," Brown said. "He's from the Middle East someplace."
"Talk to him again," Byrnes said. "Go back to the beginning."
The beginning was the dead girl.
Blue eyes open. Throat slit. Face repeatedly slashed. Nineteen, twenty years old, long blonde hair and startling blue eyes, wide open. Young, beautiful body under the slashed black kimono with poppies the color of blood.
They were in the penthouse apartment again, just as they'd been on the night of July seventeenth, standing in the same room where the girl had lain before the coffee table - martini on the table, lemon twist curled on the bottom of the glass, paring knife on the floor beside her, blade covered with blood - bleeding from what appeared to be a hundred cuts and gashes.
This time the doorman was with them.
His name was Ahmad Something. Carella had written down the last name, but he couldn't pronounce it. Short and squat and dust-colored, narrow mustache over his upper lip, looking like a member of the palace guard in his gray uniform with its red trim. Squinting, straining hard to understand what they were saying.
"Did you let anyone into the apartment?"
"Dunn remembah," he said.
Thick Middle Eastern accent. They had not asked him where he was from. Carella was wondering if they'd need a translator here.
"Try to remember," he said.
"Many peckages always," he said, and shrugged helplessly.
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r
"This would've been sometime in the late afternoon, early evening."
The medical examiner had set the postmortem interval at two to three hours. That would've put the stabbing at sometime between five and six o'clock. The doorman looked only puzzled. Carella guessed he was unfamiliar with the words "afternoon" and "evening."
"Five o'clock," he said. "Six o'clock. Were you working then?"
"Yes, working," the doorman said.
"Okay, did anyone come to the door and ask for Miss Brauer?"
"Dunn remembah."
"This is important," Brown said.
"Yes."
"This woman was killed."
"Yes."
"We're trying to find whoever killed her."
"Yes."
"So will you help us, please? Will you try to remember whether you let anyone go up?"
There was something in his eyes. Carella caught it first, Brown caught it a split second later.
"What are you afraid of?"
The doorman shook his head.
"Tell us."
"Saw nobody," he said.
But he had. They knew he had.
"What is it?" Carella asked.
The doorman shook his head again.
"You want to come to the station house with us?" Brown said.
"Hold off a second, Artie," Carella said.
Good Cop/Bad Cop. No need to signal for the curtain to go up, they both knew the act by heart.
"Hold off, sheeee-it," Brown said, doing his Big Bad Leroy imitation. "The man here is lying in his teeth."
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"The man's afraid, is all," Carella said. "Isn't that right, sir?"
The doorman nodded. Then he shook his head. Then he nodded again.
"Let's go, mister," Brown said, and reached for the handcuffs hanging from his belt.
"Hold off, Artie," Carella said "What is it, sir?" he asked gently. "Please tell me why you're so afraid."
The doorman looked as if he might burst into tears at any moment. His little mustache quivered, his brown eyes moistened.
"Sit down, sir," Carella said. "Artie, put those goddamn cuffs away!"
The doorman sat on the black leather sofa. Carella sat beside him. Brown scowled and hung the cuffs on his belt again.
"Now tell me," Carella said gently. "Please."
What it was, the doorman was an illegal alien. He had purchased a phony green card and social-security card for twenty bucks each, and he was scared to death that if he got involved in any of this, the authorities would find out about him and send him back home. Back home was Iran. He knew how Americans felt about Iranians. If he got involved in this, they would start blaming him for what had happened to the girl. He just didn't want to get involved. All of this in a broken English on the edge of tears. Carella was thinking that for an illegal alien, Ahmad was learning very fast; nobody in this city wanted to get involved.
"So tell me," he said, "did you send someone up to Miss Brauer's apartment?"
Ahmad had said everything he was going to say. Now he stared off into space like a mystic.
"We won't bother you about the green card," Carella said. "You don't have to worry about the green card. Just tell us what happened that afternoon, okay?"
Ahmad kept staring.
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Okay, you little shit," Brown said, "off we go," and he reached for the cuffs again.
"Well, I did my best," Carella said, and sighed h
eavily. "He's all yours, Artie."
"Vittoria," Ahmad said.
"What?" Carella said.
"Her name," Ahmad said.
"Whose name?"
"The woman who comes."
"What woman who comes?" Brown asked.
"That day."
"A woman came that day?"
"Yes."
"Say her name again."
"Vittoria."
"Are you saying Victoria?"
"Yes. Vittoria."
"Her name was Victoria?"
"Yes."
"Victoria what?"
"Seegah."
"What?"
"Seegah."
"How are you spelling that?"
Ahmad looked at them blankly.
"How's he spelling that, Steve?"
"Is that an S?" Carella asked.
Ahmad shrugged. "Seegah," he said.
"What'd she look like?"
"Tall," Ahmad said. "Tin."
"Thin?"
"Tin, yes."
"White or black?"
"White."
"What color hair?"
"I don' know. She is wearing . . ."
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He searched for the word, gave up, mimed pulling a kerchief over his head and tying it under his chin.
"A scarf?" Brown asked.
"Yes."
"What color eyes?" Carella asked.
"She has glasses."
"She was wearing glasses?"
"Yes."
"Well, couldn't you see the color of . . .?"
"Dark glass."
"Sunglasses? She was wearing sunglasses?"
"Yes."
"What else was she wearing?"
"Pants. Shirt."
"What color?"
"Sand color."
"What'd she say?"
"Says Vittoria Seegah. Tell Miss Brauer."
"Tell her what?"
"Vittoria Seegah here."
"Did you tell her?"
"Tell her, yes."
"Then what?"
"She tell me send up."
"And did she go up?"
"Yes. Go elevator."
"How are you spelling that?" Brown asked again. "S-E-E-G?"
"Seegah," Ahmad said.
"What time was this?" Carella asked. "That she went upstairs?"
"Five. Little more."
"A little past five?"
"Yes. Little past."
"Did you see her when she came down?"
"Yes."
"When was that?"
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"Six."
"Exactly six?"
"Little past."
"So she was up there a full hour, huh?"
Ahmad went blank.
"Did you look at your watch?"
"No."
"You're just estimating?"
The blank look.
"Any blood on her clothes?"
"No."
"What else do you remember about her?"
"Bag. Market bag."
"She was carrying a bag?"
"Yes."
"A what bag?" Brown asked.
"Market bag."
"You mean a shopping bag?"
"Yes. Shopping bag."
"Did you see what was in the bag?"
"No."
"Went upstairs with it?"
"Yes."
"Came back down with it?"
"Yes."
"Can you try spelling that name for us?" Carella said.
Ahmad went blank again.
Brown shook his head. "Seeger," he said.
Which was close, but - as they say - no see-gah.
There were thirty-eight Seegers, Seigers, and Siegers listed in the telephone directories for all five sections of the city, but none of them was a Victoria. There were eight Seagers and eleven Seagrams. Again, no Victorias. There were hundreds and hundreds of Seegals and Segals and Segels and Seigals and Seigels and Siegels and Siegles and Sigals and Sigalls. One of them was a Victoria and seven of them were listed as
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merely Vs. But the posssibility existed that a Victoria might be residing at any one of the addresses listed for a Mark or a Harry or an Isabel or a Whoever.
"It'll take forty cops working round the clock for six months to track down all those people," Byrnes said. "And we don't even know if the Arab was saying the name right."
As a matter of fact, the doorman was an Iranian of the Turkic and not the Arabian ethnic stock - but people in America rarely made such fine distinctions.
They went back to the apartment again that Monday afternoon. Stood there in the living room where Susan Brauer had lain with her wounds shrieking silently to the night, slash and stab marks on her breasts and her belly and the insides of her thighs, blood everywhere, torn white flesh and bright red blood. Shrieking.
The apartment was silent now.
Early-afternoon sunlight slanted through the living room windows.
They had checked her personal address book and had found no listing for any of the Seeger or Seigel variations, Victoria or otherwise. No Seagrams, either. No nothing. No help.
They were now looking for ...
Anything.
It had come down to that.
They'd been told to go back to the beginning, and that's exactly where they were. Square one. Zero elevation. The lockbox had been found in her bedroom closet. Twelve thousand dollars in that box. In hundred-dollar bills. Now they went back to the closet again, and searched again through the fripperies and furs, the satins and silks, the feathers and frills, the designer dresses and monogrammed suitcases, the rows of high-heeled shoes in patent and lizard and crocodile. They found nothing that Kling and Brown hadn't found the first time around.
So they went through the desk again, and the trash basket under the desk, unwrapping balled pieces of paper, studying each scrap carefully for something they might have missed,
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yanking a piece of paper free from where it was stuck to a wad of chewing gum, reading the scribbling on it, discarding it as unimportant.
The kitchen was still ahead of them.
The garbage was waiting for them in the pail under the sink.
It didn't smell any better than it had thirteen days ago. They dumped it out onto the open newspapers again, and they began going through it bit by bit, the whole noisome lot of it, the moldy bread and rotten bananas, the empty oat-bran box, the coffee grinds and milk container, the soup cans, the crumpled paper towels, the soft smelly melon, the rancid slab of butter, the wilted vegetables and wrinkled summer fruit, the old ...
"What's that?" Brown asked.
"Where?"
"In the container there."
A flash of white. A piece of crumpled white paper. Lying on the bottom of a round white container that once had held yogurt. The container stank to high heaven. By proximity, so did the crumpled ball of paper, perfectly camouflaged, white on white. It was easy to see how it could have been missed on the first pass. But they weren't missing it this time around.
Carella picked it up.
White as the driven snow.
He unfolded it, smoothed out the wrinkles and creases, transformed it from the wadded ball it had been an instant earlier into a strip of paper some seven inches long and perhaps an inch-and-a-half wide. White. Nothing on it. A plain white strip of paper. He turned it over. There were narrow violet borders on each side of the strip. Printed boldly from border to border across the strip was the figure $2000, repeated some five times over at regularly spaced intervals along its length. Ink-stamped between two of these bold figures were what at first appeared to be cryptic markings:
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is.BJc.&Tr.Co.,N.A. Jeff. Ave. Br.
They were looking at what banks call a currency strap.
The Manager of the Jefferson Avenue Branch of the Isola Bank & Trust Company was a man named Avery Granville, | fiftyish and balding, wearing a brown, tropical-weight suit, a I beige button-down shirt, and an outrageou
s green-and-orange striped tie. With all the intensity of an archeologist studying a suspect papyrus scroll, he scrutinized the narrow violet-bordered strip of paper and then looked up at last and said, "Yes, a that's one of our straps," and smiled pleasantly, as if he'd just approved a loan application.
"What does the 'NA' stand for?" Brown asked.
"National Association," Granville said.
"And the WL?"
"Wendell Lawton. He's one of our tellers. Each teller has his own stamp."
"Why's that?" Brown asked.
"Why, because he's accountable for whatever's printed on the strap," Granville said, looking surprised. "The teller's personal stamp is saying he's counted that money and there's fifty dollars in the strap, a hundred dollars, five hundred, whatever's printed there on the strap."
"So if this one says two thousand dollars ..."
"Yes, that's what's printed there. And the violet border confirms the amount. Violet is two thousand dollars."
"Then this wrapper ..."
"Well, a strap, we call it."
"This strap at one time was wrapped around two thousand dollars."
"Yes. We've got straps for smaller amounts, of course, but this one's a two-thousand-dollar strap."
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"How high do they go? The straps?"
"That's the highest, two thousand, usually in hundred-dollar bills. All the straps have different colors, you see. Here at IBT, a thousand-dollar strap is yellow and a five-hundred-dollar one is red, and so on. It varies at different banks, they all have their own color-coding."
"And the date here ..."
"That's stamped by the teller, too. First he puts his personal stamp on the currency strap, and then he uses a revolving stamp to mark the date."
"I'm assuming this means ..."
"July ninth, yes. The straps are temporal and disposable, we just stamp in the month and the day, easier that way."
"Is Mr Lawton here now?"
"I believe so," Granville said, and looked at his watch. "But it's getting late, you know, and he's balancing out right now."
The clock on the wall read ten minutes to four.
"What we're interested in knowing, sir," Brown said, "is just who might have withdrawn that two thousand dollars on the ninth of July. Would there be any record of such a cash transaction? Two thousand dollars withdrawn in cash?"
"Really, gentlemen . . ."
"This is very important to us," Brown said.
"It may be related to the murder of a young woman," Carella said.
"Well, believe me, I'd be happy to help. But. . ."
He looked at his watch again.