by Ed McBain
Two old black men were standing around a fire in a sawed-off gasoline drum, warming their hands as Brown and Kling approached the front stoop of the building. The men knew immediately that Brown and Kling were detectives. There’s a smell. Brown and Kling knew immediately that the men around the gasoline drum knew immediately they were detectives. There’s a symbiosis. The two men didn’t even look up at Brown and Kling as they climbed the front steps. Brown and Kling didn’t look at the two men. The unspoken rule was that if you hadn’t done anything wrong, you had no bona fide business with each other.
In the small vestibule, they checked the mailboxes. Only two of them had nameplates.
“Have we got an apartment for him?” Brown asked.
“3-B,” Kling said.
The lock on the inner vestibule door was broken. Naturally. The socket hanging from the ceiling just inside the door had no lightbulb in it. Naturally. The hallway was dark and the steps leading upstairs were darker, and there was the aggressive aroma of tight cramped living, a presence as tangible as the brick walls of the building.
“Shoulda taken a flash from the car,” Brown said.
“Yeah,” Kling said.
They climbed the steps to the third floor.
They listened outside the door to Fleet’s apartment.
Nothing.
They listened some more.
Still nothing.
Brown knocked.
“Johnny?” a voice said.
“Police,” Brown said.
“Oh.”
“Open it up,” Brown said.
“Sure, just a second.”
Brown looked at Kling. Both men shrugged. They heard footsteps inside, approaching the door. They heard someone fumbling with a night chain. They heard the tumblers of a lock falling. The door opened. A thin young black man wearing blue jeans and a tan V-necked sweater over a white undershirt stood in the doorframe, peering out into the hallway.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Andrew Fleet?” Brown said, and showed him his shield and ID card.
“Yeah?”
“Are you Andrew Fleet?”
“Yeah?”
“Few questions we’d like to ask you. Okay to come in?”
“Well, uh, sure,” Fleet said, and glanced past them toward the stairwell.
“Or were you expecting somebody?” Kling asked at once.
“No, no, come on in.”
He stepped aside to allow them entrance. They were standing in a small kitchen. A single ice-rimed window opened onto the brick wall of the tenement opposite. There were dirty dishes stacked in the sink. An empty wine bottle was on the small table. A clothesline was stretched across the room from one wall to the wall opposite. A single pair of Jockey shorts was draped over the line.
“It’s a little chilly in here,” Fleet said. “The heat’s slow coming up today. We already called the Ombudsman’s Office.”
“Who’s we?” Brown asked.
“A guy on the tenants’ committee.”
Through an open door off the kitchen, they could see an unmade bed. The floor around the bed was heaped with dirty clothes. On the wall over the bed, there was a framed picture of Jesus Christ with his hand hovering in blessing over his exposed and bleeding heart.
“You live here alone?” Brown asked.
“Yes, sir,” Fleet said.
“Just these two rooms?”
“Yes, sir.”
He was suddenly all “sirs”; the formality was not lost on the two detectives. A glance passed between them. They were both wondering what he was afraid of.
“Okay to ask you a few questions?” Brown said.
“Sure. But…uh…you know, like you said, I was kind of expecting someone.”
“Who?” Kling said. “Johnny?”
“Well, yeah, actually.”
“Who’s Johnny?”
“A friend.”
“You still doing heroin?” Brown asked.
“No, no. Who told you that?”
“Your record, for one thing,” Kling said.
“I ain’t got a record. I never done time in my life.”
“Nobody said you did time.”
“You were arrested last July,” Brown said. “Charged with Rob One.”
“Yeah, but—”
“You walked, we know.”
“Well, it was a suspended sentence.”
“Because you were a poor, put-upon junkie, right?” Brown said.
“Well, I was hooked pretty bad back then, that’s true.”
“But no more, huh?”
“No. Hey, no. You gotta be crazy to fool around with that shit.”
“Uh-huh,” Brown said. “So who’s this friend Johnny?”
“Just a friend.”
“Not a dealer by any chance?”
“No, no. Hey, come on, man.”
“Where were you last Saturday night, Andrew?” Kling asked.
“Last Saturday night?”
“Actually Sunday morning. Two o’clock on the morning of the fourteenth.”
“Yeah,” Fleet said.
“Yeah what?”
“I’m trying to remember. Why? What happened last Saturday night?”
“You tell us,” Brown said.
“Saturday night,” Fleet said.
“Or Sunday morning, take your choice.”
“Two o’clock in the morning,” Fleet said.
“You’ve got it,” Kling said.
“I was here, I think.”
“Anybody with you?”
“Is this an Article 220?” Fleet asked, using the penal law number for the section defining drug abuses.
“Anybody with you?” Kling repeated.
“Who remembers? That was…what was it? Three days ago? Four days ago?”
“Try to remember, Andrew,” Brown said.
“I’m trying.”
“Do you remember the name of the man you held up?”
“Yeah.”
“What was his name?”
“Edelbaum.”
“Try again.”
“That was his name.”
“Ever see him since the holdup?”
“Yeah, at the trial.”
“And you think his name is Edelbaum, huh?”
“That is his name.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“No. Where does he live?”
“No idea where he lives, huh?”
“How would I know where he lives?”
“Do you remember where his shop is?”
“Sure. On North Greenfield.”
“But you don’t remember where he lives, huh?”
“I never knew where, so how can I remember where?”
“But if you wanted to find out where, you’d look it up in the phone book, right?” Brown said.
“Well, sure, but why would I want to do that?”
“Where were you on February the fourteenth at two in the morning?” Kling asked.
“I told you. Right here.”
“Anybody with you?”
“If this is an Article—”
“Anybody with you, Andrew?”
“We were shooting a little dope, okay?” Fleet said. “Is that what you want to know? Fine, you got it, man. We were shooting dope, I’m still a junkie, okay? Big deal. Go through the place if you want to, you won’t find anything but a little pot. Not enough for a bust, that’s for sure. Go ahead, take a look.”
“Who’s we?” Brown asked.
“What?”
“The person who was with you on Saturday night.”
“It was Johnny, okay? What are we gonna do here, get the whole world in trouble?”
“Johnny who?” Kling asked.
A knock sounded on the door. Fleet looked at the two cops.
“Answer it,” Brown said.
“Listen—”
“Answer it.”
Fleet sighed and went to the door. He turned the knob on the lock and opened the door.
“Hi,” he said.
The black girl standing in the hallway couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. She was wearing a red ski parka over blue jeans and high-heeled boots. She was not unattractive, but the lipstick on her mouth was a shade too garish, and her cheeks were heavily rouged and her eyes were made up with shadow and liner that seemed far too nocturnal for twenty minutes past noon.
“Come in, miss,” Brown said.
“What’s the beef?” she asked, recognizing them immediately as cops.
“No beef,” Kling said. “Want to tell us who you are?”
“Andy?” she said, turning her eyes to where Fleet was standing.
“I don’t know what they want,” Fleet said, and shrugged.
“You got a warrant?” the girl asked.
“We don’t need a warrant. This is a field investigation and your friend here invited us in,” Brown said. “Why? What’ve you got to hide?”
“Is this an Article 220?” she asked.
“You both seem pretty familiar with Article 220,” Brown said.
“Yeah, well, live and learn,” the girl said, shrugging.
“What’s your name?” Kling said.
She looked at Fleet again. Fleet nodded.
“Corrine,” she said.
“Corrine what?”
“Johnson.”
The dawn broke slowly. It illuminated first Brown’s face, and then Kling’s.
“Johnny, is it?” Brown asked.
“Yeah, Johnny,” the girl said.
“Is that what you call yourself?”
“If your name was Corrine, would you call yourself Corrine?”
“How old are you, Johnny?”
“Twenty-one,” she said.
“Try again,” Kling said.
“Eighteen, okay?”
“Is it sixteen?” Brown said. “Or even younger?”
“Old enough,” Johnny said.
“For what?” Brown asked.
“For anything I’ve got to do.”
“How long have you been on the street?” Kling asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re a hooker, aren’t you, Johnny?” Brown asked.
“Who says?”
Her eyes had turned to ice as opaque as that on the window. Her hands were in the pockets of the ski parka now. Both Kling and Brown were willing to bet her unseen fists were clenched.
“Where were you last Saturday night?” Kling asked.
“Johnny, they—”
“Shut up, Andrew!” Brown said. “Where were you, miss?”
“When did you say?”
“Johnny—”
“I told you to shut up!” Brown said.
“Last Saturday night. Two A.M.,” Kling said.
“Here,” the girl said.
“Doing what?”
“Shooting up.”
“How come? Was it slow on the street?”
“The snow,” Johnny said angrily. “Keeping all the Johns in they own beds.”
“What time did you get here?” Brown asked.
“I live here, man,” she said.
“Thought you lived here alone, Andrew,” Kling said.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to get anybody else in trouble, you know, man?”
“So you were here all night, huh?” Brown said.
“I didn’t say that,” the girl answered. “I went out around… what was it, Andy?”
“Never mind Andy. You tell us.”
“Ten o’clock, musta been, usually that’s when the action starts. Damn streets was empty as a hooker’s heart.”
“When did you get back?”
“Around midnight. We started partying around midnight, wasn’t it, Andy?”
Fleet was about to answer, but Brown’s stare silenced him.
“And you were here from midnight till two?” Kling asked.
“I was here from midnight till the next morning. I told you, man, I live here.”
“Did Andrew leave the apartment at any time that night?”
“No, sir,” Johnny said.
“No, sir,” Fleet repeated, nodding emphatically.
“Where’d you go the next morning?”
“Out. See if I could score.”
“What time?”
“Early. Around eleven o’clock, I guess it was.”
“Did you score?”
“Snow’s hinderin’ the traffic,” she said. She was not talking about automobile traffic. “You get your junk comin’ up from Florida, minute they hit North Carolina, they’re ass-deep in snow. I tell you two things it don’t pay to be in this weather, man. One’s a hooker, the other’s a junkie.”
Brown could think of a lot of other things it didn’t pay to be in this weather.
“Bert?” he said.
Kling looked at the two kids.
Then he said, “Yeah, let’s go.”
They walked down to the street in silence. The two old men were still standing around the gasoline drum, trying to warm themselves. When Kling started the car, the heater began rattling and clanging.
“They look clean, don’t you think?” Brown asked.
“Yeah,” Kling said.
“Didn’t even know the man’s name,” Brown said.
They drove downtown in silence. As they were approaching the station house, Brown said, “It’s a goddamn crying shame,” and Kling knew he wasn’t talking about the fact that they’d come up blank on the Edelman killing.
The superintendent of Sally Anderson’s building had been pestered by cops ever since her murder, and now there was a monk to contend with. The super was not a religious man, he did not give a damn about Heaven or Hell, and he did not feel like cooperating with a monk while he was sprinkling rock salt on the pavement outside the building, trying to melt the sheet of ice there.
“What’s she got to do with you?” he asked Brother Anthony.
“She ordered a Bible,” Brother Anthony said.
“A what?”
“A Bible. From the Order of Fraternal Pietists,” he said, figuring that sounded very holy.
“So?”
“I am of that order,” Brother Anthony said solemnly.
“So?”
“I would like to deliver her Bible. I’ve been upstairs to the apartment listed in her mailbox, and there’s no answer. I was wondering if you could tell me—”
“You bet there’s no answer,” the super said.
“That’s right,” Brother Anthony said.
“Ain’t never gonna be no answer up there,” the super said. “Not from her, anyway.”
“Oh?” Brother Anthony said. “Has Miss Anderson moved?”
“You mean you’re not in touch?”
“In touch?”
“With God?”
“With God?”
“You mean God doesn’t send down daily bulletins?”
“I’m not following you, sir,” Brother Anthony said.
“Doesn’t God have a list he sends down to you guys? Telling you who expired and where she was sent?” the super said, flinging rock salt onto the sidewalk with atheistic zeal. “Whether it was Heaven or Hell or in between?”
Brother Anthony looked at him.
“Sally Anderson is dead,” the super said.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Brother Anthony said. “Dominus vobiscum.”
“Et cum spiritu tuo,” the super said; he had been raised as a Catholic.
“May God have mercy on her eternal soul,” Brother Anthony said. “When did she die?”
“Last Friday night.”
“What was the cause of her death?”
“Three bullet holes was what was the cause of her death.”
Brother Anthony’s eyes opened wide.
“Right here on the sidewalk,” the super said.
“Do the police know who did it?” Brother Anthony asked.
“The police don’t know how to blow their noses,” t
he super said. “Don’t you read the papers? It’s been all over the papers.”
“I wasn’t aware,” Brother Anthony said.
“Too busy with your Latin, I suppose,” the super said, hurling rock salt. “Your kyrie eleisons.”
“Yes,” Brother Anthony said. He had never heard those words before. They sounded good. He decided to use them in the future. Toss in a few kyrie eleisions with his Dominus vobiscums. Et cum spiritu tuo. That was a good one, too. And then it occurred to him that this was a remarkable coincidence here, Paco Lopez buying a couple of slugs on Tuesday night, and his supplier taking three of them on Friday night.
Suddenly, this did not seem like such small potatoes anymore. All at once, the two murders seemed like the kind of action the big-time spic drug dealers in this city were into. He wondered if he wanted to get involved in such goings-on. He certainly did not want to wake up dead in the trunk of an automobile in the parking lot at Spindrift Airport. Still, he sensed he had stumbled onto something that might just possibly net him and Emma some really big bucks. Provided they played it right. Provided they did their sniffing around without getting their feet wet. At first, anyway. Plenty of time to move in once they knew what was going on.
“What did she do for a living?” he asked the super, figuring if this Anderson girl had been into something big with Lopez, then maybe one or more of her business associates were into the same thing. It was someplace to start. Such remarkable coincidences didn’t fall into his lap every day of the week.
“She was a dancer,” the super said.
A dancer, Brother Anthony thought, visualizing somebody teaching the tango up at Arthur Murray’s. Once, a long time ago, when he was married to a lady who ran a luncheonette upstate, she had convinced him to go with her to a dance studio. Not Arthur Murray’s. Not Fred Astaire’s, either. Something called— he couldn’t remember. To learn the cha-cha, she’d been crazy about the cha-cha. Brother Anthony got an erection the first time he was alone in the room with his instructor, a pretty little brunette wearing a slinky gown, looked more like a hooker than a person supposed to teach him the cha-cha. The girl told him he was very light on his feet, which he already knew. He had his hands spread on her satiny little ass when his wife walked in and decided maybe they should stop taking cha-cha lessons. Step Lively, that had been the name of the place. That was a long time ago, before his wife met with the untimely accident that had cost him a year in Castleview on a bum manslaughter rap. All water under the bridge, Brother Anthony thought, kyrie eleison.
