Transgressions

by Ed McBain

  He was nineteen years old, with curly black hair, and an olive complexion, and dark brown eyes. Sitting at sunset on the front steps of his building on Merchant Street, all the way downtown near Ramsey University, his arms hugging his knees, he could have been any Biblical Jew squatting outside a baked-mud dwelling in an ancient world. But Rabbi Cohen had spotted him for a goy first crack out of the box.

  “Gee, who called you Tony?” Carella wanted to know.

  “You were about to. I could feel it coming.”

  Calling a suspect by his first name was an old cop trick, but actually Carella hadn’t been about to use it on the Inverni kid here. In fact, he agreed with him about all these proliferating hyphenated Americans in a nation that broadcast the words “United We Stand” as if they were a newly minted advertising slogan. But his father’s name had been Anthony. And his father had called himself Tony.

  “What would you like us to call you?” he asked.

  “Anthony. Anthony could be British. In fact, soon as I graduate, I’m gonna change my last name to Winters. Anthony Winters. I could be the prime minister of England, Anthony Winters. That’s what Inverni means anyway, in Italian. Winters.”

  “Where do you go to school, Anthony?” Carella asked.

  “Right here,” he said, nodding toward the towers in the near distance. “Ramsey U.”

  “You studying to be a prime minister?” Meyer asked.

  “A writer. Anthony Winters. How does that sound for a writer?”

  “Very good,” Meyer said, trying the name, “Anthony Winters, excellent. We’ll look for your books.”

  “Meanwhile,” Carella said, “tell us about your little run-in with Rabbi Cohen.”

  “What run-in?”

  “He seems to think he pissed you off.”

  “Well, he did. I mean, why wouldn’t he go to Becky’s father and put in a good word for me? I’m a straight-A student, I’m on the dean’s list, am I some kind of pariah? You know what that means, ‘pariah’?”

  Meyer figured this was a rhetorical question.

  “I’m not even Catholic, no less pariah,” Anthony said, gathering steam. “I gave up the church the minute I tipped to what they were selling. I mean, am I supposed to believe a virgin gave birth? To the son of God, no less? That goes back to the ancient Greeks, doesn’t it? All their Gods messing in the affairs of humans? I mean, give me a break, man.”

  “Just how pissed off were you?” Carella asked.

  “Enough,” Anthony said. “But you should’ve seen Becky! When I told her what the rabbi said, she wanted to go right over there and kill him.”

  “Then you’re still seeing her, is that it?”

  “Of course I’m still seeing her! We’re gonna get married, what do you think? You think her bigoted father’s gonna stop us? You think Rabbi Cohen’s gonna stop us? We’re in love!”

  Good for you, Meyer thought. And mazeltov. But did you kill those two cabbies, as the good rov seems to think?

  “Are you on the internet?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Do you send e-mails?”

  “That’s the main way Becky and I communicate. I can’t phone her because her father hangs up the minute he hears my voice. Her mother’s a little better, she at least lets me talk to her.”

  “Ever send an e-mail to Rabbi Cohen?”

  “No. Why? An e-mail? Why would . . . ?”

  “Three of them, in fact.”

  “No. What kind of e-mails?”

  “ ‘Death to all Jews,’ ” Meyer quoted.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Anthony said. “I love a Jewish girl! I’m gonna marry a Jewish girl!”

  “Were you anywhere near Rabbi Cohen’s synagogue last night?” Carella asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “You didn’t throw a fire-bomb into that synagogue last night, did you?”

  “No, I did not!”

  “Sundown last night? You didn’t. . .?”

  “Not at sundown and not at any time! I was with Becky at sundown. We were walking in the park outside school at sundown. We were trying to figure out our next move.”

  “You may love a Jewish girl,” Meyer said, “but how do you feel about Jews?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means how do you feel about all these Jews who are trying to keep you from marrying this Jewish girl you love?”

  “I did not throw a fucking fire-bomb . . .”

  “Did you kill two Muslim cabbies . . .?”

  “What!”

  “. . . and paint Jewish stars on their windshields?”

  “Holy shit, is that what this is about?”

  “Did you?”

  “Who said I did?” Anthony wanted to know. “Did the rabbi say I did such a thing?”

  “Did you?”

  “No. Why would . . . ?”

  “Because you were pissed off,” Meyer said. “And you wanted to get even. So you killed two Muslims and made it look like a Jew did it. So Muslims would start throwing fire-bombs into . . .”

  “I don’t give a damn about Muslims or Jews or their fucking problems,” Anthony said. “All I care about is Becky. All I care about is marrying Becky. The rest is all bullshit. I did not send any e-mails to that jackass rabbi. I did not throw a fire-bomb into his dumb temple, which by the way won’t let women sit with men. I did not kill any Muslim cab drivers who go to stupid temples of their own, where their women aren’t allowed to sit with men, either. That’s a nice little plot you’ve cooked up there, and I’ll use it one day, when I’m Anthony Winters the best-selling writer. But right now, I’m still just Tony Inverni, right? And that’s the only thing that’s keeping me from marrying the girl I love, and that is a shame, gentlemen, that is a fucking crying shame. So if you’ll excuse me, I really don’t give a damn about your little problem, because Becky and I have a major problem of our own.”

  He raised his right hand, touched it to his temple in a mock salute, and went back into his building.

  At nine the next morning, Detective Wilbur Jackson of the Documents Section called to say they’d checked out the graffiti—

  He called the Jewish stars graffiti.

  —on the windshields of those two evidence cabs and they were now able to report that the handwriting was identical in both instances and that the writer was right-handed.

  “Like ninety percent of the people in this city,” he added.

  That night, the third Muslim cabbie was killed.

  “Let’s hear it,” Lieutenant Byrnes said.

  He was not feeling too terribly sanguine this Monday morning. He did not like this at all. First off, he did not like murder epidemics. And next, he did not like murder epidemics that could lead to full-scale riots. White-haired and scowling, eyes an icy-cold blue, he glowered across his desk as though the eight detectives gathered in his corner office had themselves committed the murders.

  Hal Willis and Eileen Burke had been riding the midnight horse when the call came in about the third dead cabbie. At five-eight, Willis had barely cleared the minimum height requirement in effect before women were generously allowed to become police officers, at which time five-foot-two-eyes-of-blue became threatening when one was carrying a nine-millimeter Glock on her hip. That’s exactly what Eileen was carrying this morning. Not on her hip, but in a tote bag slung over her shoulder. At five-nine, she topped Willis by an inch. Red-headed and green-eyed, she provided Irish-setter contrast to his dark, curly-haired, brown-eyed, cocker-spaniel look. Byrnes was glaring at both of them. Willis deferred to the lady.

  “His name is Ali Al-Barak,” Eileen said. “He’s a Saudi. Married with three . . .”

  “That’s the most common Arabic name,” Andy Parker said. He was slumped in one of the chairs near the windows. Unshaven and unkempt, he looked as if he’d just come off a plant as a homeless wino. Actually, he’d come straight to the squadroom from home, where he’d dressed hastily, annoyed because he wasn’t supposed to come in unt
il four, and now another fuckin Muslim had been aced.

  “Al-Barak?” Brown asked.

  “No, Ali,” Parker said. “More than five million men in the Arab world are named Ali.”

  “How do you know that?” Kling asked.

  “I know such things,” Parker said.

  “And what’s it got to do with the goddamn price offish?” Byrnes asked.

  “In case you run into a lot of Alis,” Parker explained, “you’ll know it ain’t a phenomenon, it’s just a fact.”

  “Let me hear it,” Byrnes said sourly, and nodded to Eileen.

  “Three children,” she said, picking up where she’d left off. “Lived in a Saudi neighborhood in Riverhead. No apparent connection to either of the two other vies. All three even worshipped at different mosques. Shot at the back of the head, same as the other two. Blue star on the windshield . . .”

  “The other two were the same handwriting,” Meyer said.

  “Right-handed writer,” Carella said.

  “Anything from Ballistics yet?” Byrnes asked Eileen.

  “Slug went to them, too soon to expect anything.”

  “Two to one, it’ll be the same,” Richard Genero said.

  He was the newest detective on the squad and rarely ventured comments at these clambakes. Taller than Willis—hell, everybody was taller than Willis—he nonetheless looked like a relative, what with the same dark hair and eyes. Once, in fact, a perp had asked them if they were brothers. Willis, offended, had answered, “I’ll give you brothers.”

  “Which’ll mean the same guy killed all three,” Byrnes said.

  Genero felt rewarded. He smiled in acknowledgment.

  “Or the same gun, anyway,” Carella said.

  “Widow been informed?”

  “We went there directly from the scene,” Willis said.

  “What’ve we got on the paint?”

  “Brand name sold everywhere,” Meyer said.

  “What’s with this Inverni kid?”

  “He’s worth another visit.”

  “Why?”

  “He has a thing about religion.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “He thinks it’s all bullshit.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Parker said.

  “I don’t,” Genero said.

  “That doesn’t mean he’s going around killing Muslims,” Byrnes said. “But talk to him again. Find out where he was last night at . . . Hal? What time did the cabbie catch it?”

  “Twenty past two.”

  “Be nice if Inverni’s our man,” Brown said.

  “Yes, that would be very nice.”

  “In your dreams,” Parker said.

  “You got a better idea?”

  Parker thought this over.

  “You’re such an expert on Arabian first names . . .”

  “Arabic.”

  “ . . . I thought maybe you might have a better idea,” Byrnes said.

  “How about we put undercovers in the cabs?”

  “Brilliant,” Byrnes said. “You know any Muslim cops?”

  “Come to think of it,” Parker said, and shrugged again.

  “Where’d this last one take place?”

  “Booker and Lowell. In Riverhead,” Eileen said. “Six blocks from the stadium.”

  “He’s ranging all over the place.”

  “Got to be random,” Brown said.

  “Let’s scour the hood,” Kling suggested. “Must be somebody heard a shot at two in the morning.”

  “Two-twenty,” Parker corrected.

  “I’m going to triple-team this,” Byrnes said. “Anybody not on vacation or out sick, I want him on this case. I’m surprised the commissioner himself hasn’t called yet. Something like this . . .”

  The phone on his desk rang.

  “Let’s get this son of a bitch,” Byrnes said, and waved the detectives out of his office.

  His phone was still ringing.

  He rolled his eyes heavenward and picked up the receiver.

  THIRD HATE KILLING

  MUSLIM MURDERS MOUNT

  All over the city, busy citizens picked up the afternoon tabloid, and read its headline, and then turned to the story on page three. Unless the police were withholding vital information, they still did not have a single clue. This made people nervous. They did not want these stupid killings to escalate into the sort of situation that was a daily occurrence in Israel. They did not want retaliation to follow retaliation. They did not want hate begetting more hate.

  But they were about to get it.

  The first of what the police hoped would be the last of the bombings took place that very afternoon, the fifth day of May.

  Parker—who knew such things—could have told the other detectives on the squad that the fifth of May was a date of vast importance in Mexican and Chicano communities, of which there were not a few in this sprawling city. Cinco de Mayo, as it was called in Spanish, celebrated the victory of the Mexican Army over the French in 1862. Hardly anyone today—except Parker maybe—knew that La Battala de Puebla had been fought and won by Mestizo and Zapotec Indians. Nowadays, many of the Spanish-speaking people in this city thought the date commemorated Mexican independence, which Parker could have told you was September 16, 1810, and not May 5, 1862. Some people suspected Parker was an idiot savant, but this was only half true. He merely read a lot.

  On that splendid, sunny, fifth day of May, as the city’s Chicano population prepared for an evening of folklorico dancing and mariachi music and margaritas, and as the weary detectives of the Eight-Seven spread out into the three sections of the city that had so far been stricken with what even the staid morning newspaper labeled “The Muslim Murders,” a man carrying a narrow Gucci dispatch case walked into a movie theater that was playing a foreign film about a Japanese prostitute who aspires to become an internationally famous violinist, took a seat in the center of the theater’s twelfth row, watched the commercials for furniture stores and local restaurants and antique shops, and then watched the coming attractions, and finally, at 1:37 P.M.—just as the feature film was about to start—got up to go to the men’s room.

  He left the Gucci dispatch case under the seat.

  There was enough explosive material in that sleek leather case to blow up at least seven rows of seats in the orchestra. There was also a ticking clock set to trigger a spark at 3:48 P.M., just about when the Japanese prostitute would be accepted at Juilliard.

  Spring break had ended not too long ago, and most of the students at Ramsey U still sported tans they’d picked up in Mexico or Florida. There was an air of bustling activity on the downtown campus as Meyer and Carella made their way through crowded corridors to the Registrar’s Office, where they hoped to acquire a program for Anthony Inverni. This turned out to be not as simple as they’d hoped. Each and separately they had to show first their shields and next their ID cards, and still had to invoke the sacred words “Homicide investigation,” before the yellow-haired lady with a bun would reveal the whereabouts of Anthony Inverni on this so-far eventless Cinco de Mayo.

  The time was 1:45 P.M.

  They found Inverni already seated in the front row of a class his program listed as “Shakespearean Morality.” He was chatting with a girl wearing a blue scarf around her head and covering her forehead. The detectives assumed she was Muslim, though this was probably profiling. They asked Inverni if he would mind stepping outside for a moment, and he said to the girl, “Excuse me, Halima,” which more or less confirmed their surmise, but which did little to reinforce the profile of a hate criminal.

  “So what’s up?” he asked.

  “Where were you at two this morning?” Meyer asked, going straight for the jugular.

  “That, huh?”

  “That,” Carella said.

  “It’s all over the papers,” Inverni said. “But you’re still barking up the wrong tree.”

  “So where were you?”

  “With someone.”

  “Who?”r />
  “Someone.”

  “The someone wouldn’t be Rebecca Schwartz, would it? Because as an alibi. . .”

  “Are you kidding? You think old Sam would let her out of his sight at two in the morning?”

  “Then who’s this ‘someone’ we’re talking about?”

  “I’d rather not get her involved.”

  “Oh? Really? We’ve got three dead cabbies here. You’d better start worrying about them and not about getting someone involved. Who is she? Who’s your alibi?”

  Anthony turned to look over his shoulder, into the classroom. For a moment, the detectives thought he was going to name the girl with the blue scarf. Hanima, was it? Halifa? He turned back to them again. Lowering his voice, he said, “Judy Manzetti.”

  “Was with you at two this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  His voice still a whisper. His eyes darting.

  “Where?”

  “My place.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Well. . . you know.”

  “Spell it out.”

  “We were in bed together.”

  “Give us her address and phone number,” Carella said.

  “Hey, come on. I told you I didn’t want to get her involved.”

  “She’s already involved,” Carella said. His notebook was in his hand.

  Inverni gave him her address and phone number.

  “Is that it?” he asked. “Cause class is about to start.”

  “I thought you planned to marry Becky,” Meyer said.

  “Of course I’m marrying Becky!” Inverni said. “But meanwhile . . .”—and here he smiled conspiratorially—“. . . I’m fucking Judy.”

  No, Meyer thought. It’s Becky who’s getting fucked.

  The time was two P.M.