Fat Ollie's Book: A Novel of the 87th Precinct

by Ed McBain

  It was a lovely spring day.

  Carella drove on winding roads past men and women in white playing tennis under clear blue skies, boys and girls on the fields behind stolid Smoke Rise Academy, playing soccer and baseball in their gray-and-black uniforms, their vibrant voices oddly recalling a youth he thought he’d long forgotten. The Henderson house was a vast stone structure set on a good two acres of wooded land. He parked the car in the gravel driveway, walked to the front door, and pressed the bell under a brass escutcheon that read simply “26 Prospect.” A uniformed housekeeper answered the door and told him she would fetch Mrs. Henderson.

  Pamela Henderson was a woman in her mid-forties, Carella guessed, tall and slender and exuding the sort of casual confidence women of wealth and influence often did. But she was not an attractive woman, he realized, her eyes somehow too small for her face, her nose a trifle too large. Newspaper reports would undoubtedly describe her as “handsome,” the death knell for any woman who aspired to beauty.

  Poised and polite, already wearing black—albeit jeans and a cotton turtleneck—she greeted Carella at the door, and led him into the living room of her home perched on the river, afternoon sunlight streaming through French doors, a glimpse of the Hamilton Bridge in the near distance, the cliffs of the adjoining state bursting with the greenery of spring. Her eyes were as green as the faraway hills. She wore no makeup. A simple oversized gold cross hung on the front of the black cotton turtleneck.

  “I understood from the newspapers that a…different detective was investigating the case,” she said, hesitating slightly before the word “different,” as if disapproving of either the false information in the papers or the unexpected turn the investigation had taken.

  There was a certain formality here, a strict observance of the rules of sudden death and subsequent grief. Here were the stunned widow and the sympathetic but detached investigator, together again for the first time, with nothing to talk about but what had brought them to this juncture on this bright spring afternoon. A man had been robbed of his life. To Carella, Lester Henderson was a vague political figure in a city teeming with strivers and achievers. To Pamela Henderson, he had been husband, father, perhaps friend.

  “Would you care for some coffee?” she asked.

  “Thank you, no,” he said.

  She poured coffee from a silver urn resting on a table before sheer saffron colored drapes. She added cream and two lumps of sugar.

  “What are the chances?” she asked. “Realistically.”

  “Of?”

  “Of catching whoever killed him.”

  “We’re hopeful,” he said.

  What do you say to a widow? We lose as many as we catch? Sometimes we get lucky? What do you say when you can see that all her outward calm is vibrating with an almost palpable inner tenseness? Her hand on the saucer was shaking, he noticed. Tell her the truth, he thought. The truth is always best. Then you never have to remember what you lied about.

  “There were a dozen or so people onstage with him when he was shot,” he said. “Detective Weeks and his colleagues at the Eight-Eight are questioning them more fully now. They’re also doing a canvass of the area around the Hall, trying to locate any…”

  “What do you mean by questioning them more fully?”

  “They already had a first pass at them.”

  “And?”

  “No one saw anything. The shots were described as coming from different sections of the hall. This is common. Eye witnesses are notoriously…”

  “Is it possible there were two shooters?”

  He noticed the word “shooters.” Everyone watches television these days, he thought.

  “We’re still waiting for reports from the ME and Ballistics.”

  “When will you have those?”

  “It varies.”

  Tell her the truth. Always the truth. In this city, with the number of homicides committed here every day of the week, any kind of report could sometimes take a week or ten days to get back to you. “We’re hoping, given the magnitude of the case, it’ll be sooner rather than later,” he said.

  “The magnitude of the case,” she said, and nodded.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Meaning my husband was important.”

  “The case is attracting attention, yes, ma’am.”

  “What do I tell the children?” she asked, and was suddenly weeping. She put down the coffee cup. She groped for a tissue in the box on the table, found the tag end of one, yanked it free, and brought it to her eyes. “I kept them home from school today, I don’t know what to tell them. My son was supposed to have baseball practice. My daughter’s on her soccer team. What do I tell them? Your father’s dead? They think he’s still upstate. What do I tell them?”

  Carella listened silently. He never knew what to say. He never knew what the hell to say. She kept sobbing into the tissue, crumpled it, took another from the box. He waited.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “There are some questions we need to ask. If you’d rather I came back some other…”

  “No, please. Ask me.”

  He hesitated, took his notebook from the inner pocket of his jacket, opened it, and looked at the list of questions he and Ollie had prepared. They seemed suddenly stark. Her husband had been killed. He cleared his throat.

  “Can you tell me what time he left here yesterday morning?”

  “Why is that important?” she asked.

  “We’re trying to work up a timetable, ma’am. If we can ascertain when…”

  “I wish you’d stop calling me ‘ma’am,’” she said. “I’d guess we’re about the same age, wouldn’t you? How old are you, anyway?”

  “I’m forty, ma’am.”

  She looked at him.

  “Mrs. Henderson,” he corrected.

  “I’m forty-two,” she said.

  He nodded.

  She returned the nod.

  The ice had been broken.

  THERE WERE REPORTERSwaiting outside the station house when he got back there at a quarter to four that afternoon. A pair of blues were standing on the wide front steps, barring the way like soldiers outside the gates of ancient Rome. Carella moved past the teeming crowd on the sidewalk, approaching the steps with an authority that told them at once he was connected.

  “Excuse me,” one of them said, “are you…?”

  “No,” he said and went past them, and through the entrance doors with their glass-paneled upper sections adorned with the numerals “87” on each. Behind the muster desk, Sergeant Murchison was busy fielding phone calls. He looked up as Carella went past him, rolled his eyes, said into the phone, “You’ll have to contact Public Relations about that,” and hung up. Carella climbed the iron-runged steps to the second floor, stopped in the men’s room to pee, washed his hands, and then went down the corridor and into the squadroom. Everything seemed more or less normal here. He almost breathed a sigh of relief.

  Meyer Meyer, bald and burly and blue-eyed, was at his desk talking to a woman who looked like a hooker but who was probably a housewife who’d got all dressed up in her shortest skirt to come report something-or-other terrible to the police. The woman appeared extremely agitated although scantily dressed. Meyer merely looked patient. Or perhaps bored.

  At his own desk, Bert Kling, blond and hazel-eyed and sporting a beard that was coming in blond and patchy, but which he felt was essential to an undercover he was working, was on the phone with someone he kept calling Charlie, who was probably on a cell phone because Kling kept saying, “Charlie? Charlie? I’m losing you.”

  Artie Brown, looking huge and menacing and dark and scowling, stood at the bulletin board, pondering the multitude of posters, notes, and announcements hanging there, glancing as well at the latest posted e-mail jokes from other police stations all over the country. Carella thought he detected a smile from him. He turned as Carella went by, waved va
guely in his direction, and then went back to his desk, where the phone began ringing furiously.

  Another day, another dollar, Carella thought, and knocked on the lieutenant’s door.

  DETECTIVE-LIEUTENANT PETER BYRNESdid not like high-profile cases. Given his druthers, he would have preferred that Lester Henderson had not lived in Smoke Rise, had instead lived across the river in the next state, or anyplace else but the Eight-Seven. He would have preferred that Ollie Weeks had not come calling with his courtesy request, although asking payback for saving someone’s life—twice, don’t forget—possibly qualified as something more substantial than a mere exchange of good manners. It was not unusual for cops in this city to ask favors of other precincts. Usually, but not always, they offered to share credit for any ensuing bust. Ollie had not deemed such an offer necessary. But, hey, he had saved Carella’s life.Twice!

  The first time was when a lion was about to eat him.

  Yes.

  A lion was sitting on Carella’s chest, don’t ask.

  Ollie shot the beast between the eyes, end of lion, end of story. Carella could still smell the animal’s foul breath.

  The second time was a week or so later, when a blonde carrying an AK-47 was not about toeat Carella, more’s the pity, but was instead ready to shoot him in the eye or someplace when who should arrive upon the scene but the large man from the Eight-Eight—wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, though he did not kill her as dead as he had the lion. Carella could still smellher breath, too. A whiff of Tic Tacs, as he recalled, spiked with that selfsame stink of imminent extinction.

  Ollie had a right, Byrnes guessed. But he sure as hell wished nobody but the usual suspects had got killed yesterday morning.

  “So what’d she have to say?” he asked Carella.

  “Her husband wasn’t home Sunday night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I asked her when he left the house yesterday morning, she told me she didn’t know, he wasn’t home.”

  “So where was he?”

  “Upstate. Meeting with the Governor’s people.”

  “That’s very nice, the Governor’s people,” Byrnes said.

  “His wife told me they were trying to convince him to run for mayor.”

  “Oh, Jesus, don’t tell me this is going to get political,” Byrnes said.

  “It could. He’s a politician, Pete. Was.”

  “Too much bad blood between Democrats and Republicans these days,” Byrnes said, shaking his head.

  “You think a Democrat killed him?”

  He was smiling. The idea of a Democrat killing a Republican was somewhat amusing. For that matter, so was the idea of a Republican killing a Democrat.

  “I don’t know who killed him,” Byrnes said. He was not smiling.

  “You know something else? I don’t evencare who killed him. This case belongs to His Lord Fatness, I don’t know how the hell we got involved in it.”

  “Payback time, Pete.”

  “You should try not to get yourself killed so often. And you should try to avoid obese saviors.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Where’d Henderson stay upstate? Did she say?”

  “I’ll ask her.”

  “Call whichever hotel it was, find out what time he checked out, did he drive, did he take the train, did he fly, whatever. Give Ollie an ETA at the hall, and then tell him goodbye.”

  “Yes, sir, is that an order, sir?”

  “I don’t want this case,” Byrnes said.

  AT SEVEN O’CLOCKthat Tuesday night, while Carella was at the dinner table with his wife and two children, Ollie Weeks called to say he was sorry he’d missed him at the office earlier today, but was it convenient for him to talk now?

  “I’m in the middle of dinner,” Carella said.

  “That’s okay,” Ollie said, “so am I.”

  Carella had the feeling that somehow Ollie wasalways in the middle of dinner. Or lunch. Or breakfast. Or something.

  “Can I call you back later?” he asked.

  “Well, sure,” Ollie said, sounding offended, and hung up.

  Carella called him back at a little past eight, after the twins were in bed. Ollie picked up the phone, said, “Weeks,” and then belched.

  “Ollie, it’s Steve.”

  “Yes, Steve.”

  Still sounding offended.

  “I wanted to report on what I learned from Mrs. Henderson…”

  “Yes, Steve.”

  His tone was saying I only saved your life, you know.

  “I had a long telephone conversation with her this afternoon. She…”

  “I thought you were going to see her personally,” Ollie said.

  “I did. This wasafter I saw her.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She said her husband flew up to the state capital on Saturday…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “…stayed the weekend at the Raleigh Hotel there…”

  “Okay.”

  “Probably flew back early Monday morning…”

  “What do you meanprobably? ”

  “He didn’t come home. She thinks he must have gone directly from the airport to King Memorial.”

  “What do you mean shethinks? ”

  “Ollie,” Carella said, “non mi rompere,okay?”

  “What?”

  “I’m trying to tell you what I’ve got here. The lady doesn’t know forsure where he was when. The last time she spoke to him was from the Raleigh. The next thing she knows he’s shot dead at King Memorial. So she’s assuming he flew back and went directly…”

  “Okay, I get it, I get it,” Ollie said. “Did you call the airport?”

  “There are two non-stop flights leaving here early in the morning, both on US Airways. Takes about an hour to get to the capital. Any connecting flight doesn’t pay, you can just as easily drive up these days, the long lines.”

  “How about coming back?”

  “Same thing. Two early morning flights. I called the hotel. Henderson checked out at six Monday morning. He could’ve caught either one of them, been here in the city by eight, eight-thirty. A cab from the airport would’ve put him at the Hall by eight-thirty, nine. Which is about right, more or less.”

  “Where’s his suitcase?”

  “What?”

  “He had to have a bag, no? So if he went straight to the Hall, where’s the bag?”

  “Good question.”

  “We’ll find out tomorrow. Meet me up the precinct at eight o’clock.”

  “Uh…Ollie…my boss wants me off this.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “He thinks it’s too uptown for us.”

  “We been uptown together before, my friend, ah yes.”

  “The Loot isn’t sure he wants to go there again.”

  “Even if we share the bust?”

  “I just don’t think he wants any part of it.”

  “You negotiating with me, or what?”

  “Would I even dream?”

  “We crack this one, we’re made men.”

  “I thought only the Mob had made men.”

  “The Police Department is a mob, too, believe it or not. Tell your loot we share the bust, we’ll all be glory boys.”

  “How do you figure that, Ollie?”

  “Guy about to run for mayor, he gets snuffed? Hey, this is big-time stuff, Steve-a-rino.”

  “How do you know he was going to run for mayor?”

  “His aide told me. Alan Pierce, Mr. Wasp from Waspville. Steve, I know it don’t mean nothing I saved your life…”

  “Enough already, Ollie.”

  “Talk to your loot. Tell him we’ll all get rich and famous.”

  “He’s already rich and famous.”

  “Sure. Like my Aunt Tillie. Tell him we’ll be on television and everything.”

  “You know what we caught this morning, Ollie?”

  “Tell me what you caught this morning, Steve.”

  “A hundred-and-four-year-old lady
drowned in her bathtub.”

  “Not unusual. These old broads, they sometimes…”

  “She was stabbed in the eye first, Ollie.”

  “Extraordinary,” Ollie said. “But it ain’t gonna get your picture in the papers. You want the Eight-Seven to remain a shitty little precinct the rest of your life, or you want to step up to the plate and knock one out of the ball park?”

  “I want to go say goodnight to my kids.”

  “Call your loot instead, what’s his name? Bernstein?”

  “Byrnes.”

  “I thought he was a Yid, like my boss. Tell him does he want another juicy one like that money money case we caught around Christmastime…”

  “Money moneymoney, ” Carella said.

  “Or does he just want another old lady moldering in a bathtub?”

  “I think he might prefer the old lady.”

  “Then he’s an old lady himself, your boss. Tell him you got to grab this city by the balls before it grabs you first. Tell him opportunity knocks but once, tell him it’s not every cop in the world gets invited to talk onLarry King. Tell him Oliver Wendell Weeks has spoken.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be impressed.”

  “Tell him.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Don’t forget the old lady metaphor,” Ollie said, and hung up.

  4

  DETECTIVE/SECOND GRADE EILEEN BURKEdid not know how she felt about being transferred to the Eight-Seven.

  Lieutenant Byrnes voiced it for her.

  “Eileen, you’re a good cop,” he said, “and I’m glad to have you with us. But there’s this thing with Bert.”

  The lieutenant was referring to the fact that in the not too distant past, Eileen had enjoyed an arduous but brief (well, brief in the annals of the Eight-Seven) relationship with one of his detectives. The look on Byrnes’s face indicated he did not want problems related to ancient love affairs. Eileen read the look, and registered his words, and didn’t know quite what to say. She had not seen Bert Kling in a very long time, and she knew he was now involved with someone else.

  Standing before her new boss’s desk, wearing brown slacks and brown low-heeled pumps, an olive-green crewneck sweater with a matching cardigan over it, sunshine streaming through the Loot’s corner windows and setting her red hair ablaze, she wondered what gave him the right to intrude on her personal life, wondered if he would give the male half of this prior romance the same warning, and was tempted to tell him to go to hell. He must have read the look in her green eyes, must have seen County Cork flaring; he was Irish himself, after all.