by Ed McBain
“Tomorrow night.”
“The nurse thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, just don’t—”
“I mean, I’m always a little scared, but not like this time.” She hesitated. “He blinded one of them,” she said. “One of the nurses he raped.”
“Boy,” Kling said.
“Yeah.”
“Well, what you have to do…just be careful, that’s all.”
“Yeah, I’m always careful,” she said.
“Who’s your backup on this?”
“Two of them. I’ve got two of them.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Abrahams and McCann, do you know them?”
“No.”
“They’re out of the Chinatown Precinct.”
“I don’t know them.”
“They seem okay, but…well, a backup can’t stay glued to you, you know, otherwise he’ll scare off the guy you’re trying to catch.”
“Yeah, but they’ll be there if you need them.”
“I guess.”
“Sure, they will.”
“How long does it take to put out somebody’s eyes?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, really, that’s not going to help, worrying about it. Just make sure you’ve got your hand on your gun, that’s all.”
“In my bag, yeah.”
“Wherever you carry it.”
“That’s where I carry it.”
“Make sure it’s in your hand. And keep your finger inside the trigger guard.”
“Yeah, I always do.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to carry a spare, either.”
“Where would I carry a spare?”
“Strap it to your ankle. Wear slacks. Nurses are allowed to wear slacks, aren’t they?”
“Oh, sure. But they like a leg show, you see. I’ll be wearing the uniform, you know, like a dress. The white uniform.”
“Who do you mean? Rank? They told you to wear a dress?”
“I’m sorry, what—”
“You said they like a leg show—”
“Oh. I meant the lunatics out there. They like a little leg, a little ass. Shake your boobs, lure them out of the bushes.”
“Yeah, well,” Kling said.
“I’ll be wearing one of those starched things, you know, with a little white cap, and white panty hose, and this big black cape. I already tried it on today, it’ll be at the hospital when I check in tomorrow night.”
“What time will that be?”
“When I get to the hospital, or when I go out?”
“Both.”
“I’m due there at eleven. I’ll be hitting the park at a little after midnight.”
“Well, be careful.”
“I will.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Maybe I could tuck it in my bra or something. The spare.”
“Yeah, get yourself one of those little guns—”
“Yeah, like a derringer or something.”
“No, that won’t help you, that’s Mickey Mouse time. I’m talking about something like a Browning or a Bernardelli, those little pocket automatics, you know?”
“Yeah,” she said, “tuck it in my bra.”
“As a spare, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“You can pick one up anywhere in the city,” Kling said. “Cost you something like thirty, forty dollars.”
“But those are small-caliber guns, aren’t they?” she asked. “.22s? Or .25s?”
“That doesn’t mean anything, the caliber. A gun like a .22 can do more damage than a .38. When Reagan got shot, everybody was saying he was lucky it was only a .22 the guy used, but that was wrong thinking. I was talking to this guy at Ballistics… Dorfsman, do you know Dorfsman?”
“No,” Eileen said.
“Anyway, he told me you have to think of the human body like a room with furniture in it. You shoot a .38 or a .45 through one wall of the room, the slug goes right out through another wall. But you shoot a .22 or a .25 into that room, it hasn’t got the power to exit, you understand? It hits a sofa, it ricochets off and hits the television set, it ricochets off that and hits a lamp—those are all the organs inside the body, you understand? Like the heart, or the kidneys, or the lungs, the bullet just goes bouncing around inside there doing a lot of damage. So you don’t have to worry about the caliber, I mean it. Those little guns can really hurt somebody.”
“Yeah,” Eileen said, and hesitated. “I’m still scared,” she said.
“No, don’t be. You’ll be fine.”
“Maybe it’s because of what I told you yesterday,” she said. “My fantasy, you know. I never told that to anyone in my life. Now I feel as if I’m tempting God or something. Because I said it out loud. About…you know, wanting to get raped.”
“Well, you don’t really want to get raped.”
“I know I don’t.”
“So that’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Except for fun and games,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Getting raped.”
“Oh.”
“You know,” she said. “You tear off my panties and my bra, I struggle a little…like that. Pretending.”
“Sure,” he said.
“To spice it up a little,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“But not for real.”
“No.”
She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “It’s too bad tomorrow night is for real.”
“Take the spare along,” Kling said.
“Oh, I will, don’t worry.”
“Well,” he said, “I guess—”
“No, don’t go,” she said. “Talk to me.”
Suddenly, and again, he could think of nothing else to say.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “The divorce.”
“I’m not sure I want to,” he said.
“Will you tell me one day?”
“Maybe.”
“Only if you want to,” she said. “Bert…” She hesitated. “Thank you. I feel a lot better now.”
“Well, good,” he said. “Listen, if you want to—”
“Yes?”
“Give me a call tomorrow night. When you come in, I mean. When it’s all over. Let me know how it went, okay?”
“Well, that’s liable to be pretty late.”
“I’m usually up late.”
“Well, if you’d like me to.”
“Yes, I would.”
“It’ll be after midnight, you know.”
“That’s okay.”
“Maybe later, if we make the collar. Time we book him—”
“Whenever,” Kling said. “Just call me whenever.”
“Okay,” she said. “Well,” she said.
“Well, good night,” he said.
“Good night, Bert,” she said, and hung up.
He put the receiver back on the cradle. The phone rang again almost instantly. He picked up the receiver at once.
“Hello?” he said.
“Bert, it’s Artie,” Brown said. “You weren’t asleep, were you?”
“No, no.”
“I’ve been trying to get you for the past half hour. I thought maybe you took the phone off the hook. You want to hear what I’ve got?”
“Shoot,” Kling said.
It was 9:00 in the morning, and the four detectives were gathered in the lieutenant’s office, trying to make some sense of what they now knew. It had snowed six inches’ worth overnight, and more snow was promised for later in the day. Byrnes wondered if it snowed this much in Alaska. He was willing to bet it didn’t snow this much in Alaska. The detectives had told him what they knew, and he had taken notes while they spoke—first Meyer and Carella, and then Kling and Brown—and now he guessed he was supposed to provide the sort of leadership that would pull the entire case together for them in a wink. The last time he had pulled an entire case together in a wink was never.
“Yes, Pete,” Meyer said.
“Sally Anderson, huh?”
“Yes, Pete.”
“You showed him her picture yesterday afternoon.”
“Four pictures,” Meyer said. “Hers and three we pulled from the files. All blondes.”
“And he picked out the Anderson girl.”
“Yes.”
“And told you she used to live with Lopez and was supplying him with coke.”
“Yes.”
“He got this from his cousin, huh? The girl who was stabbed?”
“Only the coke part. The rest came from him.”
“About Lopez and the girl living together?”
“It checks out, Pete. We located the building Lopez used to live in—right next door to the drugstore on Ainsley and Sixth— and the super confirmed that the Anderson girl was living there with him until last August sometime.”
“Which is when Fatback went into rehearsal.”
“Right.”
“So there’s our connection,” Byrnes said.
“If we can trust it,” Meyer said.
“What’s not to trust?”
“Well, according to one of the dancers in the show, the Anderson girl went uptown every Sunday to buy coke.”
“So now it looks like she went up there to sell it,” Carella said.
“Big difference,” Meyer said.
“And Quadrado got this from his cousin, huh?” Byrnes said.
“Yes.”
“Reliable?’
“Maybe.”
“Told him the girl went up there every Sunday to sell coke to Lopez, huh?”
“Plus a roll in the hay,” Meyer said.
“How does that tie in with what her boyfriend said?” Byrnes asked.
“What do you mean?” Carella said.
“On one of your reports…where the hell is it?” Byrnes said, and began riffling through the DD forms on his desk. “Didn’t he mention something about a deli? About the girl picking up delicatessen on Sundays?”
“That’s right, but she could’ve been killing two birds with—”
“Here it is,” Byrnes said, and began reading out loud. “‘Moore identified word “Del” on calendar as—’ “
“That’s right,” Carella said.
” ‘Cohen’s Deli, Stem and North Rogers, where she went for bagels and lox, etcetera every Sunday.’”
“That doesn’t mean she couldn’t have come farther uptown afterward, to deliver the coke to Lopez.”
“He didn’t know anything about this, huh? The boyfriend?”
“The coke, do you mean? Or the fact that she was still playing around with Lopez?”
“Take your choice,” Byrnes said.
“He told us there were no other men in her life, and he told us she wasn’t doing anything stronger than pot.”
“Reliable?” Byrnes asked.
“He was the one who tipped us off to the ice operation,” Meyer said.
“Yeah, what about that?” Byrnes asked. “Any connection to the murders?”
“We don’t think so. The Anderson girl’s involvement was a one-shot deal.”
“Are you moving on it?”
“No proof,” Meyer said. “We’ve put Carter on warning.”
“A lot of good that’s gonna do,” Byrnes said, and sighed. “What about Edelman?” he asked Brown. “Are you sure you read all that stuff right?”
“Checked it three times,” Brown said. “He was screwing Uncle, that’s for sure. And laundering a lot of cash over the past five years.”
“Buying real estate overseas, huh?”
“Yes,” Brown said, and nodded.
“You think that’s what all that money in his safe was for?”
“For his next trip over there, right.”
“Any idea when he was going?”
“His wife told us next month sometime.”
“So he was stashing the money till then, is that it?”
“That’s the way it looks to us,” Brown said.
“Where’d he get three hundred grand all of a sudden?” Byrnes asked.
“Maybe it wasn’t all of a sudden,” Kling said. “Maybe it was over a period of time. Let’s say he comes back from Holland with a plastic bag of diamonds stuffed up his kazoo, and sells them off a little at a time, sixty grand here, fifty grand there, it adds up.”
“And then goes to Zurich to put the money in a Swiss account,” Brown said.
“Till he’s ready to buy either more gems or more real estate,” Kling said.
“Okay,” Byrnes said, “a nice little racket. But how does it tie in with the other two murders?”
“Three, if you count the Quadrado girl.”
“That was a cutting,” Byrnes said. “Looks like a wild card to me, let’s concentrate on the ones with the same gun. Any ideas?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Carella said.
“What’s the thing?”
“We can’t find any connection but the one between Lopez and the girl. And even that one…” He shook his head. “We’re talking peanuts here, Pete. Lopez had a handful of customers, the girl was maybe supplying him with…what? An ounce a week, tops? Tack on what she was selling to the kids in the show, and it still adds up to a very small operation. So why kill her? Or Lopez? What’s the motive?”
“Maybe it is a crazy, after all,” Byrnes said, and sighed.
The other men said nothing.
“If it’s a crazy,” Byrnes said, “there’s nothing we can do till he makes his next move. If he knocks off a washerwoman in Majesta, or a truck driver in Riverhead, then we’ll know the guy’s choosing his victims at random.”
“Which would make the Lopez and Anderson connection—”
“Coincidental, right,” Byrnes said. “If the next one is a washerwoman or a truck driver.”
“I don’t like the idea of waiting around till the next body turns up,” Meyer said.
“And I don’t buy coincidence,” Carella said. “Not with Lopez and Anderson both moving cocaine. Anything else, I’d say sure, the guy picked one victim here, another one downtown, a third one up here again, he’s checkerboarding all over the city and shooting the first person he happens to run across on any given night. But not with cocaine involved. No, Pete.”
“You just told me the cocaine was a lowball operation,” Byrnes said.
“It’s still cocaine,” Carella said.
“Was Lopez the only person she was supplying?” Byrnes asked.
The men looked at him.
“Or was this a bigger operation than we know?”
The men said nothing.
“Where was the girl getting it?” Byrnes said. He nodded briefly. “There’s something missing,” he said. “Find it.”
Emma and Brother Anthony were celebrating in advance.
He had bought a bottle of expensive $4 wine, and they now sat drinking to their good fortune. Emma had read the letter, and had come to the same conclusion he had: the man who’d written that letter to Sally Anderson was the man who was supplying her with cocaine. The letter made that entirely clear.
“He buys eight keys of cocaine,” Brother Anthony said, “gives it a full hit, gets twice what he paid for it.”
“Time it gets on the street,” Emma said, “who knows what it’d be worth?”
“You got to figure they step on it all the way down the line. Time your user gets it, it’ll only be ten, fifteen percent pure. The eight keys this guy bought…he sounds like an amateur, don’t he? I mean, going in alone? With four hundred grand in cash?”
“Strictly,” Emma said.
“Well, so are we, in a way,” Brother Anthony said.
“You’re very generous,” Emma said, and smiled.
“Anyway, those eight keys, time they hit the street up here, they’ve already been whacked so hard you’re talking maybe thirty-two keys for sale. Your average user buying coke d
oesn’t know what he’s getting. Half the rush he feels is from thinking he paid so much for his gram.”
Emma looked at the letter again. ” ‘The first thing I want to do is celebrate,’” she read. ” ‘There’s a new restaurant on top of the Freemont Building, and I’d like to go there Saturday night. Very elegant, very continental. No panties, Sally. I want you to look very elegant and demure, but no panties, okay? Like the time we ate at Mario’s down in the Quarter, do you remember? Then, when we get home…’ ” Emma shrugged. “Lovey-dovey stuff,” she said.
“Girl had more panties than a lingerie shop,” Brother Anthony said. “Whole drawerful of panties.”
“So he asks her not to wear any!” Emma said, and shook her head.
“I’m gonna buy you one of those little things ballet dancers wear,” Brother Anthony said.
“Thank you, sir,” Emma said, and made a little curtsy.
“Why you think she saved that letter?” Brother Anthony asked.
” ‘Cause it’s a love letter,” Emma said.
“Then why’d she hide it in the collar of her jacket?”
“Maybe she was married.”
“No, no.”
“Or had another boyfriend.”
“I think it was in case she wanted to turn the screws on him,” Brother Anthony said. “I think the letter was her insurance. Proof that he bought eight keys of coke. Dumb amateur,” he said, and shook his head.
“Try him again,” Emma said.
“Yeah, I better,” Brother Anthony said. He rose ponderously, walked to the telephone, picked up the scrap of paper on which he’d scribbled the number he’d found in the directory, and then dialed.
Emma watched him.
“It’s ringing,” he said.
She kept watching him.
“Hello?” a voice on the other end said, and Brother Anthony immediately hung up.
“He’s home,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Go see the man, dear.”
The odd thing about the lunchtime skull session the boys of the Eight-Seven held in the squadroom at ten minutes past 1:00 that Thursday afternoon was that someone who wasn’t even a policeman already knew the missing “something” that would have proved extremely valuable to their investigation if only they’d known it, which they didn’t. They were still trying to find it, whereas Brother Anthony already knew it. Brother Anthony, as it were, happened to be a few steps ahead of them as they chewed, respectively, on their hot pastrami on rye, tuna on white, sausage and peppers on a roll, and ham on toasted whole wheat. They were drinking coffee in cardboard containers, also ordered from the diner up the street, a habit Miscolo tried to discourage because he felt it was an insult to the coffee he brewed and dispensed, gratis, in the Clerical Office. As Brother Anthony pushed his way through the subway turnstile some six blocks away, and ran toward the waiting graffiti-camouflaged train, managing to squeeze himself inside the car before the doors closed, the boys of the Eight-Seven were chewing on the case (and their sandwiches) from the top, trying to find the missing something that would take them exactly where Brother Anthony was heading. It did not speak well for the police department.
