Mischief

by Ed McBain

“Nothing,” she said.

  “You didn’t call the police to report him missing?”

  “I didn’t want any more trouble with the police.”

  “So you didn’t call them?”

  “No.”

  “Your husband wasn’t in his bed, he wasn’t in the house, but you didn’t…”

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said.

  Both men fell silent.

  “Day and night, living with a ghost, you don’t know what it’s like. He talks to me, but he doesn’t make sense, it’s like being alone. Last week, when the thing with the car happened, at least he still knew my name. Now he doesn’t even know my name. Day by day, he forgets a little more, a little more. Last week, he could drive the car, now he can’t even tie his ownshoelaces ! He gets worse and worse all the time. All the time. I think he may have had a small stroke, I don’t know, I just don’t know. I have to take him to the bathroom, I have towipe him, you don’t know what it’slike ! No, Ididn’t call the police. I didn’twant to call the police. I didn’twant them to find him! Why did you have tofind him? Why did you have to findme ? Why can’t you leave me inpeace , damn you!”

  “Ma’am…”

  “Leave me alone,” she said. “Please leave me alone.”

  “Ma’am,” Meyer said, “do you know how your husband got into the city?”

  She hesitated a long time before answering.

  Her eyes behind the absurd eyeglasses were wet with tears now. She stared vacantly past the detectives into somewhere beyond, perhaps to a time when a young sailor had his wife’s pet name tattooed onto his arm, a name he could no longer remember. Perhaps she was thinking how rotten it was to get old.

  “Yes,” she said at last, “I know how he got into the city.”

  THE FOUR OF THEMwere in the car the Deaf Man had rented that morning. Gloria was sitting with him on the front seat, behind the wheel and fifteen pounds heavier than when he’d interviewed her last Sunday. Carter and Florry were on the back seat. The car was parked on Silvermine Drive, overlooking the River Highway and the Department of Sanitation facility on the water’s edge.

  “The burn is set for one tomorrow,” he said. “We go in at twelve-thirty, secure the facility, wait for the fuzz to arrive. We should be out of there by one-twenty latest. We’ll have clear sailing all the way downtown.”

  “Where do we make the transfer?” Gloria asked.

  “Just off the parkway, a mile below the facility. In the boat-basin parking lot.”

  “We using this same car tomorrow?” Carter asked.

  “No, I’ve reserved four other cars.”

  “Be safer that way, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, of course. That’s why I…”

  “I mean, in case anybody makes us today,” Carter said, still flogging a dead horse.

  “Yes, I understand,” the Deaf Man said.

  “That way, we’ve gotfour cars, they’ll go crazy tracking us down,” Carter insisted.

  “When do we collect what’s coming to us?” Florry asked, which the Deaf Man considered premature since Florry hadn’t yet done anything but construct what he called his “little black box,” for which the Deaf Man had already paid him ten thousand as an advance against the hundred thou he’d promised. All Gloria had done so far was cut her hair and gain fifteen pounds, for which she, too, had already received ten thousand bucks. For the same amount of money, Carter had purchased the uniforms they’d be wearing, stolen the laminates, and located the garbage truck he’d be stealing early tomorrow morning. Thirty thousand bucks had been advanced thus far, against the three hundred the Deaf Man would be paying in total for their participation tomorrow. Meanwhile, the park wasn’t wired, and they didn’t have the garbage truck, and Gloria looked even more womanly than she had before she’d gained the weight and got her hair cut like a boy’s.

  “You’ll all be paid the balance of your fees when we’re safely across the bridge and at the motel,” he said. “Then we all go our separate ways.”

  Except Gloria, he thought. He was planning on celebrating with her after the job tomorrow. Pay them all, send theother two on their merry way, and then ask Gloria to share a bottle of champagne with him in the motel room. Toot a few lines, get down to male-female basics.

  He could not get over the transformation in her.

  Her hair was even shorter than his now, trimmed close at the sideburns and the back of her head, a single blonde tuft combed straight back off her forehead. Last night, after they’d tried on the garbage men’s uniforms, he’d sent down for pizza, and they’d all made themselves comfortable around the kitchen table. Her uniform jacket slung over the back of her chair, sitting in just the baggy green trousers and snug T-shirt, Gloria must have felt his steady gaze upon her. She turned suddenly away. He did not know whether she was embarrassed by his scrutiny, or whether she’d turned away merely to protect her job; the fact of the matter was that she’d gained weight in precisely the wrong places, transforming herself into the most voluptuous garbage man in the universe.

  “You reserved a room yet?” Carter asked.

  “Yes,” the Deaf Man said.

  “Cause otherwise, we’re liable’a get there and find they’re full up,” he said, flogging yet another dead horse.

  “The room’s already been reserved,” the Deaf Man said.

  “Cause those motels over the bridge,” Carter said, “they’re riding academies, most of them, you get guys taking their bimbos there in the afternoon. We pull up with the van full of stuff, there won’t be a room for us.”

  The Deaf Man looked at him.

  “But you already reserved one,” Carter said, and shrugged.

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s hope they hold it.”

  “For Christ’s sake, go phone your mother, will you?” Gloria said testily. “Askher if we’ve got a differentcar for tomorrow, if theroom is reserved, if you can blow yournose or go take apee , for Christ’s sake!”

  “It pays to be careful,” Carter said solemnly. “When I was on the stage, even though I’d been doing the same part for weeks and of course knew my lines by heart, I always had the stage manager cue me on them every night before I went on. I never went up in all the years I was acting.”

  “Fine, you never went up,” Gloria said, tapping her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.

  “Did I see you in anything?” Florry asked.

  “You’re getting on my nerves,” Gloria said, “all these superfluous questions. We’re here to run it through, I don’t know what all these other questions have to do with anything.”

  “She’s right,” the Deaf Man said. “Let’s run it.”

  Gloria nodded curtly and started the car.

  THE MANthey’d spoken to at SavMor’s regional headquarters was a vice president named Arthur Presson. He’d told them yesterday afternoon that he would check the code numbers following the SavMor name on the pricing label and get back to them as soon as he could. He did not get back until two o’clock that Friday, almost twenty-four hours after they’d made their “urgent” request; corporate chiefs do not know from homicide investigations.

  Kling took the call.

  “On that pricing label,” Presson said.

  He sounded Yale out of Choate.

  “Yes, sir,” Kling said, intimidated.

  “You understand that we have four hundred and thirty SavMor stores nationwide…”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “…and whereas all we sell ishardware , as opposed to a supermarket, say, which color-codes for frozen food, produce, dairy products, meats, and so on…”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “…wedo need a code on our labels so that our computers can zero in immediately on the state, the specific city in that state, and the particular store in that city. The number thirty-seven, for example, would indicate…we have stores in each of the fifty states, you see…”

  “I see.”

  “Thirty-seven would be Georgi
a.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And the number four following it would mean Atlanta, as opposed to five for Macon or six for Gainesville.”

  “I see.”

  “And then…well, we have nine stores in Atlanta, so the last number in the code could be for any one of those nine stores. The coded labels are supplied to the various stores. The pricing changes for each locality. Prices are set at national headquarters. In Dallas.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The code number you read to me on the phone was 19-06-07.”

  “That’s the exact number,” Kling said.

  “The nineteen is for this state, and the oh-six is for this city. We have twenty stores here. The oh-seven store is in Isola. It’s located on River and Marsh…are you familiar with the Hopscotch area? All the way downtown?”

  “I am.”

  “Well, that’s where it is,” Presson said.

  Which was a long way from where Peter Wilkins had lived with his wife on Albermarle Way, all the wayuptown .

  “Thank you, sir,” Kling said, “I appreciate your time.”

  “De nada,”Presson said, for no good reason Kling could fathom, and then hung up.

  Parker was sitting at his desk, reading the morning paper and picking his teeth. Kling told him what he had. He listened, tossed the toothpick into the metal wastebasket under his desk, folded the newspaper, put it in the bottom drawer of his desk, rose, farted, and said, “Let’s go.”

  RIVER STREETstarted on the waterfront in the oldest section of town, an area of narrow lanes and gabled houses dating back to when the Dutch were still governing. For quite some distance, it ran parallel to Goedkoop Avenue, which lay cheek by jowl with the courthouses and municipal buildings in the Chinatown Precinct, and then it crossed Marsh at the virtual hub of an area bristling with restaurants, art galleries, boutiques, bookstores, shops selling drug paraphernalia, sandals, jewelry, unpainted furniture, leather goods, lighting fixtures, herbal lotions and shampoos, Tarot cards, teas, art-deco reproductions and handcrafted items ranging from wooden whistles to whittled nudes. Here and there in the lofts along these narrow streets, a multitude of artists and photographers had taken up residence, spilling over from the Quarter into Hopscotch, so-called because the first gallery to open here was on Hopper Street, overlooking the Scotch Meadows Park.

  The manager of the SavMor Hardware store on the corner of River and Marsh looked at the can of paint Kling had handed him, turned it over to glance at the pricing label stuck to its bottom, said, “That’s our store, all right,” and then said, “How can I help you?”

  “We found twenty-two cans of this stuff in a dead man’s closet,” Parker said, getting directly to the point. “Every color you’d care to name, twenty-two of them. Is there anything on that pricing label that’d tell you when the purchase was made?”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  “Anything at your checkouts that might help us?” Kling asked. “Mr. Presson mentioned you’re computerized. Would your…?”

  “Yes, we are. Mr.who ?”

  “Presson. At regional headquarters. Would your computers show a sale of twenty-two cans of…?”

  “I thought you meant someone in the store here,” the manager said. “When was this purchase made?”

  “Sometime after the twenty-fourth of last month,” Parker said. “That’s when he got killed.”

  He was thinking like Kling now. If Debra had killed him, then she’d bought the paintafter he was safely out of the way.

  “Wouldyour computers be able to help us?” Kling asked.

  “Well, let’s take a look,” the manager said. “Twenty-two cans of spray paint is an unusual purchase.”

  It was indeed.

  But on the twenty-fifth day of March—the very day Peter Wilkins was found dead on Harlow Street, the day before Parker and Kling discovered the treasure trove of cans in the Wilkins apartment—someone had in fact purchased twenty-two cans of the paint at $2.49 a can, which came to a total of $54.78 plus tax.

  The girl at checkout counter number six remembered the day well.

  “It was still raining,” she said. “There was a lot of rain that day. This must’ve been around twelve, one o’clock in the afternoon, the lunch hour. We get lots of people in here during the lunch hour. He had his cart full of…”

  “He?”Parker said. “It wasn’t a woman?”

  “Not unless she had a mustache,” the girl said.

  THE OFF-TRACKbetting parlor at a little past two that afternoon was thronged with men and women waiting for the start of the fourth at Aqueduct. Meyer and Hawes had chosen this particular location because Margaret Shanks had described a man who sounded remarkably like the security guard who’d been touting Pants on Fire the night Hawes spent at the Temple Street shelter. She’d told them the man’s name was Bill Hamilton. Whether he’d show here this afternoon at the parlor on Rollins and South Fifth was anybody’s guess. A call to Laughton, the shelter’s supervisor, had informed them that this was Hamilton’s day off. A visit to the home address Laughton had supplied proved fruitless. So here they were now in the betting parlor Hamilton had called “thereally ritzy one,” rubbing elbows with a white, black, and Latino crowd both detectives might charitably have described as seedy.

  There was a television monitor in each corner of the room on the wall that faced the street, the screens now showing the odds for the fourth race, which was scheduled to go off at twenty past two. The favorite, the 6F horse, was paying seven to two. The long shot, the 2B horse, was paying thirty to one. On both side walls, racing forms were posted behind glass panels, and there were posters advising the prospective gambler on how to bet in five easy steps, and other posters listing the track codes for some sixteen or seventeen tracks, AQU for Aqueduct, BEL for Belmont, SAR for Saratoga, LAU for Laurel, and so on, and yet other posters detailing the bet codes, W for Win, P for Place, S for Show, WP for Win/Place Combination, and so on.

  There was a pay phone on one of the walls, with a small green sign over it askingGAMBLING PROBLEM ? and then suggesting that anyone with such a problem should dial the 800 number listed below. The sign did little to dissuade the three dozen men and two women who were milling about the room, glancing up at the changing odds on the two monitors and noisily debating, in English and in Spanish, which horses to bet. Some of the gamblers were already placing their bets at any of the seven windows on the rear wall, where hanging plaques announcedCASHING /SELLINGand a handwritten sign cautionedNO VERBAL BETS .

  The horses were being led onto the track now, the man doing the live calls from the main office downtown on Stemmler Avenue announcing each horse and rider as they came onto the screen, “The number three horse is Trumpet Vine, the rider is Fryer,” or “Number six, Josie’s Nose, the jockey is Mendez,” or “Number nine, Golden Noose, Abbott in the saddle,” and so on.

  Meyer and Hawes kept watching the front door.

  Some five minutes later, the man downtown announced that betting on the fourth race would close in less than four minutes, and this caused a flurry of activity at the betting windows, people glancing over their shoulders for a last fast look at the changing odds, writing out their betting tickets with the pencils provided, paying their money, and then beginning a drift toward the television monitors as the man downtown told them betting would close on the fourth race in less than two minutes.

  Hamilton came in just as the horses broke from the gate. The moment Hawes spotted him, he nudged Meyer. Hamilton wasn’t wearing his security guard uniform this time around, sporting instead a brown leather jacket over blue jeans and tasseled loafers, and carrying a racing form in his right hand. He greeted someone he knew, shook hands with someone else, and was looking up at the monitor in the left-hand corner of the room when Meyer and Hawes came up to him.

  “Mr. Hamilton?” Meyer said.

  “Bill Hamilton?” Hawes said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Police,” Meyer said, and flashed the tin.
/>
  On the television screens, the horses were thundering around the track, the announcer’s excited voice calling the race, “Coming up on the outside, number four…”

  “What?” Hamilton said.

  “Police,” Hawes said.

  “Keep going!” one of the gamblers shouted.

  “Pushing through on the rail, it’s number nine…”

  “Police? What is this, a joke?”

  “No joke,” Hawes said.

  “Into the stretch, it’s one and four and nine and…”

  Not a man or woman in that place turned away from the screens as the horses galloped into the home stretch. There was a real-life drama going on behind them right here in their friendly neighborhood betting parlor, two cops in plainclothes throwing around badges and bracing a good old gambling buddy, but not a soul in the joint gave a damn. They were watching the horses. The horses were all.

  “Whip him, whip him!”

  “Heading for home, it’s one, and nine, and three…”

  “Is it all at once against the law to bet the ponies?” Hamilton asked, and grinned broadly, playing to the oblivious crowd.

  “No, it’s all at once against the law to kill little old ladies,” Meyer said.

  MORT ACKERMANwas a portly man wearing a brown suit and smoking a huge brown cigar. He looked more like a banker than a promoter, but the sign on his office door readWINDOWS ENTERTAINMENT ,INC ., and the posters all over his walls attested to his successful promotion of more performers than Carella or Brown knew existed.

  Sitting in a black leather swivel chair, he blew out a ring of smoke and said, “I’ll tell you something. An outfit crazy enough to do a show outdoors inApril , it deserves somebody setting fire to the stage. If that’s what you think’s gonna happen. FirstBank has no business doingthis thing, inthis city, inApril , no business at all. It isn’t as if they come from Florida, these people, they don’t know what the climate here is like. These are people whoknow this city, this is the only place they have their banks, is in this city. Look at the weather we’ve had the past few weeks. If it doesn’t rain this weekend, it’ll be a miracle. But if what you say is true, there’s gonna be a fire…”