by Ed McBain
"This would mean checking Wendell's teller tape for that day, and . . ."
"What's that?" Carella asked. "A teller tape?"
"A computer printout for all the transactions at his window. It looks somewhat like an adding-machine tape."
"Would this tape show such a withdrawal? Two thousand dollars in cash?"
"Well, yes, if in fact it was made. But, you see ..."
Another look at his watch.
"A teller can handle as many as two hundred-and-fifty
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transactions on any given day of the week. To go through all those ..."
"Yes, but a two-thousand-dollar cash withdrawal would be unusual, wouldn't it?"
"No, not necessarily. There could be any number of those on any given day."
"Exactly two thousand dollars?" Carella said skeptically. "In cash?"
"Well..."
"Could we have a look at the tape, Mr Granville?" Brown asked. "When your teller's finished with his tally?"
"His balancing out," Granville corrected, and sighed. "I suppose so, yes."
Wendell Lawton was a man in his early thirties, wearing a lightweight blue blazer, a white shirt, and a red tie that made him look like either a television news commentator or a member of the White House staff. He confirmed that this was indeed his stamp on the two-thousand-dollar strap, but he told them that he handled many such bundles of currency every day of the week, and he couldn't possibly be expected to recall whether this particular strap had been handed over the counter to anyone in par -
"But we understand there's a teller's tape," Carella said.
"Well, a teller tape, yes," Lawton said, correcting him, and then looking up at the clock; Carella figured it must have been a long, hard day.
"So perhaps if we looked at that tape ..."
"Well," he said again.
"This is a homicide we're investigating," Brown said, and fixed Lawton with a scowl that was in itself homicidal.
Lawton's teller tapes were kept in a locked drawer under the counter. His stamp was in that same locked drawer. He unlocked it now, and searched through what he called his proof sheets, looking for and finding at last the one dated the ninth of July. A tape that did indeed look like an adding-machine tape was stapled to it. Lawton had handled a hundred and thirty-seven counter transactions on that day. None of
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them was for an exact two-thousand-dollar withdrawal in cash. But one of the recorded transactions rang a bell.
The computer printout on the tape showed the date, and then the time, and then:
113-807-40 162 772521
SW $2400
"The first number is the account number," Lawton explained. "The next number is the number of the IBT branch here, one-sixty-two. The last number is my teller's number."
"What's the SW stand for?" Brown asked.
"Savings withdrawal. Twenty-four hundred is what the customer took out of his account. It's likely that I gave it to him in a two-thousand-dollar strap and four hundred in loose bills outside the strap."
"Can you trace that account number ..."
"Yes."
"... and give us the customer's name?"
"If Mr Granville says it's okay."
Mr Granville said it was okay to give them the customer's name.
When the computer punched it up, Lawton said, "Oh yes."
"Oh yes what?" Brown asked.
"He's been withdrawing twenty-four hundred in cash every month since March."
The customer's name was Thomas Mott.
He didn't know what they were talking about.
"There must be some mistake," he said.
They always said that.
"No, there's no mistake," Carella said.
They were standing in the center aisle of his antiques shop on Drittel Avenue. A German grandfather clock bonged the hour: six p.m. again. It was always six p.m. here. Mott seemed annoyed that they'd arrived just as he was about to close. Everyone seemed annoyed at having to work a long day today.
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But the cops had been on the job since seven forty-five this morning.
"You do remember withdrawing twenty-four hundred dollars in cash on the ninth of this month, don't you?" Carella asked.
"Well, yes, but that was a very special circumstance. A man came to me with a rare William and Mary tankard, and he would accept only cash for it. He didn't know what he had, it was truly a steal. I went to the bank ..."
"At twelve twenty-seven p.m.," Brown said, showing off.
"Around then," Mott said.
"That's what the teller tape says," Brown said.
"Then that's what it must have been."
"Who's this man with the rare William and Mary tankard?" Carella asked.
"I'm sure I have his name in the file somewhere."
"Then I wish you'd find it for us," Carella said. "And while you're at it, maybe you can look through your records for the withdrawals you made on June first, which was a Friday, and May first, which was a Tuesday, and April second, which was a Monday, and March ..."
"I don't recall any of those withdrawals," Mott said.
"The teller tapes," Brown reminded him, and smiled pleasantly. "That's when the withdrawals started. In March."
"Twenty-four hundred every month."
"For a total of twelve thousand dollars."
"Remember?"
"Yes, now that you mention it. . ."
They always said that, too.
". . . I do remember withdrawing that amount each month. Against just such an opportunity as the rare William and Mary."
"Ahhh," Brown said.
"Then that explains it," Carella said.
"What it doesn't explain," Brown said, "is how that twelve thousand dollars ended up in Susan Brauer's cash box."
Mott blinked.
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"Susan Brauer," Brown said, and smiled pleasantly again.
"Remember her?" Carella asked.
"Yes, but..."
"She came to your shop every now and then, remember?"
"She was in here on the ninth, remember?"
"To look at a butler's table you'd told her about..."
"Yes, of course I remember."
"Do you remember giving her twenty-four hundred dollars in cash every month?"
"I never did such a thing."
"Since March," Brown said.
"Of course not. Why would I have done such a thing?"
"Gee, I don't know," Brown said. "Why would you?"
"The woman was a customer, why would . . .?"
"Mr Mott ... we found a currency strap in her apartment ..."
"I don't know what that is, a currency ..."
"... and we've traced it back to your account. The money came from your account, Mr Mott, there's no question about that. Now do you want to tell us why you were paying Susan Brauer twenty-four hundred dollars a month?"
"For the past five months ..."
"Two thousand in a strap ..."
"The rest in loose hundreds ..."
"Why, Mr Mott?"
"I didn't kill her," Mott said.
He'd met Susan ...
He'd called her Susan in deference to her wishes; nobody calls me Suzie, she'd said.
. . . here at the shop when she came in one day in January, just browsing, she'd told him. She was renting an apartment up on Silvermine Oval, and whereas it was furnished, she missed the little touches that made a house a home, and was always on the lookout for anything that might personalize the place. He asked her what sort of things she had in mind, and she told him Oh, nothing big, no sideboards or dining-room
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tables or Welsh dressers or anything like that. But if there was a small footstool, for example, or a beautiful little lamp that she could take with her when she moved out - she was hoping to move to a bigger apartment as soon as certain arrangements had been made, she told him, but apartments were soooo expensive these days, weren't they?
He'd called her one day toward the end of the month, he'd just got a new shipment from England, this was the end of January. He and his wife had spent a week in Jamaica, he remembered calling Susan as soon as they got back because there was a beautiful set of Sheffield candlesticks in the shipment, none of the copper showing through, rare for Sheffields, and they were reasonably priced, and he thought she might like to take a look at them. She came to the shop that afternoon, and fell in love with them, of course, they were truly beautiful, but then expressed some doubt as to whether or not they'd fit in with the decor of the apartment, which was essentially modern, leather and stainless, you know, huge throw pillows on the floor, abstract paintings, and so on. So he said he'd be happy to lend her the candlesticks until she made up her mind, and she'd said Ohhh, would you? and he had them sent around the very next day.
She called him on a Saturday, this was sometime during the first week in February, and asked if he could possibly stop by to take a look at the candlesticks himself. She'd put them on the dining-room table, which was all glass and stainless, and she thought maybe the brass clashed with the steel, and she really would appreciate his opinion. So he went by at the end of the day.
She had mixed a pitcherful of martinis, she was fond of martinis.
He told her frankly that he thought the candlesticks did look out of place on that table, and she thanked him for his honesty and thanked him again for coming all the way uptown, and then she offered him a drink, which he accepted. It was close to six-thirty, he guessed. A very cold Saturday afternoon
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in February. She put on some music. They had a few drinks. They danced. That's how it started. It all seemed so natural.
Toward the end of February . . .
This was after they'd been to bed together at least half a dozen times . . .
Toward the end of the month, she told him she was having trouble meeting the rent on the apartment and that the owner was threatening to throw her out on the street. She told him the rent was twenty-four hundred a month, which he found absolutely shocking in view of the fact that the mortgage on his house in Locksdale was only three thousand and some change a month, and she said it would be a shame if she lost the apartment because it was such a wonderful way for the two of them to be together in such lovely surroundings. She wasn't asking him to give her the money . . .
"I didn't know what she meant at first," Mott said.
. . . but only to lend it to her, you see.
Temporarily.
The twenty-four hundred.
Just for the March rent, you see. Because she had these modelling jobs coming up, and she'd get paid for them before the April rent was due, and then she'd have enough to pay him back and then some. If he could just lend her the twenty-four hundred. Because she just loved being with him and doing all the things they did together, didn't he love the things they did together?
"She was so beautiful," Mott said.
So very beautiful. And remarkably ...
"Well, in fact, amazingly ..."
He could not find the word. Or perhaps he knew the word and refused to share it with the detectives.
"I gave her the money," he said. "Drew it out of a savings account, handed it over to her. She asked if I wanted a written IOU, and I told her of course not, don't be ridiculous. Then ..."
When it came time to pay the April rent, she didn't have
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the money for that, either, so he'd loaned her another twenty-four hundred, and then another twenty-four in May, and when June came around, he realized this had become a regular thing, he was paying for the rent on her apartment, he was keeping her, she was in effect his ...
"Well, never mind in effect," he said. "That's what she was. My mistress."
Yours and Schumacher's both, Carella thought.
"God, I loved her so much," Mott said.
In July, he and his wife went away for the Fourth . . . well, actually, they'd left the city on the thirtieth of June, which was a Saturday, and spent the whole next week in Baltimore with her sister, didn't get back until the following Sunday. Susan came into the shop the very next day. Monday. The ninth. Came in around lunchtime, wanted to know if he hadn't forgotten a little something? He didn't know what she meant at first. Oh? she said. You don't know? You really don't know? Maybe you think a girl like me just comes along every day of the week, huh? Maybe next time you want me to ...
"Well, she made a reference to ... to what we ... to what we ... well, what she . . . uh. She said I might. . . she said I ought to think about that the next time I asked her to ... you know. Because if I was going to forget all about the rent coming due, then maybe she should start looking for someone who might enjoy being with her and taking advantage of her that way. She was furious. I'd never seen her like that. I hadn't really thought I was taking advantage of her, I thought she enjoyed it. I tried to explain ..."
He'd tried to explain. It had been the holiday, you see, the Fourth of July, the bank would be closed on Wednesday, anyway, and he'd had to go away with his wife, she knew he was married, she knew he had a wife. She said did he know how humiliating it was for her to receive a call from the woman who was renting her the apartment, asking her where the rent was, did he realize? He'd gone to the bank while she waited in the shop . . .
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"This was around twelve-thirty, the bank's record is correct," he said.
. . . and he'd brought the money back, and all of a sudden she was a different person, the same Susan he'd always known. In fact, right there in the shop, she'd . . .
"Well," he said.
They did not ask him what she'd done right there in the shop.
Instead, Carella said, "Where were you on the night she was killed?"
"Home with my wife," Mott said.
Isabelle Mott was a woman in her mid-to-late forties, some five feet seven or eight inches tall, with long straight black hair and dark brown eyes, which combined with the silver-and-turquoise jewelry she was wearing to give her the strikingly attractive look of a native American Indian, which she was not. She was, in fact, of Scotch-Irish ancestry, go figure.
They did not tell her that her husband, Thomas, had been enjoying of late an affair with a beautiful twenty-two-year-old blonde who'd been murdered only eight days after he'd last seen her. They figured there was no sense causing more trouble than already existed. They simply asked if she knew where he'd been on the night of July seventeenth, that would've been a Tuesday night, ma'am. When she asked why they wanted to know, they said what they said to any civilian who wanted to know why certain questions were being asked: Routine investigation, ma'am.
"He was here," she said.
"How do you happen to remember that?" Carella asked.
She had not looked at a calendar, she had not consulted an appointment -
"I was sick in bed that night," she said.
"Uh-huh," Carella said.
"Sick with what, ma'am?" Brown asked.
"Actually, I was recovering from surgery," she said.
"Uh-huh," Carella said.
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"What kind of surgery, ma'am?" Brown asked.
"Minor surgery," she said.
"Had you been hospitalized?" Carella asked.
"No. The surgery was done that morning, Tommy came to pick me up that afternoon."
"Where was this surgery done, ma'am?" Brown asked.
Both cops were thinking abortion. It sounded like abortion.
"At Hollingworth," she said.
A hospital not far from here, in the Three-Two Precinct.
"And what was the nature of the surgery?" Carella asked.
"If you must know," Isabelle said, "I had a D and C, okay?"
"I see," Carella said, and nodded.
Brown was thinking that's what they used to call abortions before Roe v. Wade.
"What time did you get home from the hospital?" Carella asked.
"Around four, four-thirty."
"An
d you say your husband was with you?"
"Yes."
"Did he leave the house at any time after that?"
"That night, do you mean?"
"Yes. The night of the seventeenth. After you got home from the hospital, did he leave the house at any time?"
"No."
Firm and emphatic.
"He was home all night long?"
"Yes," she said, positively nailing it to the wall.
"Well, thank you," Carella said.
Brown nodded glumly.
The signs on the corner lamppost read respectively Meriden St and Cooper St, white lettering on green, one sign running horizontally in an east-west direction, the other running north-south. Below these, white on blue, was a larger sign that read:
QUIET
HOSPITAL
ZONE
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Across the street, Farley General's huge illuminated windows glared a harsh yellow-white against a black moonless sky. It was fifteen minutes to midnight, and the street was silent and deserted. An occasional automobile passed, but for the most part the traffic was light; motorists tended to avoid this street because the speed limit here was only twenty miles an hour, and they preferred Averill as an approach to the bridge.
Standing in the shadows of the trees across the street, you could almost hear your own heartbeat, it was that still. Hand around the butt of the gun in the right-hand pocket of the long black coat, black again, wearing black again, the gun butt warm now, though it had felt cool earlier, there in the cool dark of the coat pocket. Warmer now. Palm of the hand somewhat moist on the walnut stock of the gun, but not from nervousness, you did this often enough it didn't make you nervous anymore. Moist with anticipation, the honest sweat of anticipation, expectation. Shoot her dead the moment she came through those doors. Empty it in her. Kill her.
She would be coming out at midnight.
Monday was when she worked the four-to-midnight shift, it was important to check such things, make sure you knew who would be where when. Otherwise you made mistakes. There'd been no mistakes so far. All the questions they'd asked, but no mistakes. Too smart for them, was what it was. All you had to do was show them whatever they wanted to see, tell them whatever they expected to hear, and they were satisfied. Well, sure, look what you were dealing with here. So easy to fool them, so very easy. Just play the person they thought you were, never mind what was inside, never mind the pain and the suffering inside, just show them the surface. Play back the image they themselves had created, the stereotype of whoever they thought you were, this is me, right? Isn't this who I am? Whoever you think I am? Whatever idea of me you had in your heads even before you met me, isn't that right? Isn't that me?