Ice

by Ed McBain

  Brother Anthony tried the clasps. “It’s locked,” he said.

  “I’ll get the key,” Moore said, and went to the dresser across the room.

  “Taking a little trip, were you?” Brother Anthony asked, smiling, and then the smile froze on his face when Moore turned from the open dresser drawer with a gun in his hand. “Hey, wh—” Brother Anthony said, but that was all he ever said because Moore squeezed the trigger once, and then again, and both bullets from the .38 caught Brother Anthony in the face, one entering just below his left eye, the other shattering his teeth and upper gum. Brother Anthony reflexively clawed the air for support, and then fell in a mountainous brown heap at Moore’s feet.

  Moore looked down at him.

  “You stupid son of a bitch,” he whispered, and then he tucked the gun into his belt and went out of the bedroom, through the living room, and into the kitchen. There was no time to pack anything else now, the shots would bring suspicious neighbors. He had to get out of here fast now, take the diamonds, take what was left of the coke, just get out of here as fast as he could.

  He opened the door on the refrigerator’s freezer compartment.

  There were two ice cube trays on a small shelf toward the rear of the freezer. He pried the tray on the left loose, and turned on the sink’s hot water tap. He let the water run for several minutes before putting the tray under the faucet. The ice cubes began to melt. They took forever to melt. He kept listening for sounds in the hallway outside, someone coming, anyone coming, waiting for the ice cubes to melt. At last, he turned off the tap, carefully spilled the water from the tray into the sink, and removed the plastic dividing grid from the tray. The diamonds glistened wetly on the bottom of the tray. He spread them on a dish towel on the counter top, and was patting them dry when he heard the sound of wood splintering. He turned toward the living room. A voice shouted, “Moore?”

  He came out of the kitchen with the gun in his hand, recognized Meyer and Carella, saw that both men were armed, saw two other armed men behind them, one white and one black, and might have put up a fight even then if Carella hadn’t said, very softly, “I wouldn’t.”

  He didn’t.

  They realized, by 11:00 that Thursday night, that he was going to tell them only what he wanted to tell them, and nothing more. That was why he waived his right to have an attorney present during the questioning. That was why he was flying in the face of the Miranda-Escobedo warnings, telling them whatever they wanted to know about the dope they’d found in his apartment, and the letter he’d written to Sally Anderson back in August, knowing they had him cold on the dope charge, but figuring he’d bluff his way out of the murders. They were looking for four counts—maybe five, if he’d also killed the Quadrado girl—of Murder One. He was looking for a Class A-l Felony charge for possession of four or more ounces of a controlled substance, punishable by a minimum of fifteen to twenty-five years and a maximum of life. With a good lawyer, he could plea it down to a Class A-2 Felony, hoping for a minimum of three, and expecting to get out in two. As for having shot and killed Brother Anthony, he was claiming self-defense and hoping to get off scot-free. They were looking for him to do consecutive time on at least four homicide raps. He was hoping to be out on the street again within the imminently foreseeable future. They were somewhat at odds as concerned their differing aspirations and their separate versions of what had happened over the past nine days.

  “Let’s hear it one more time,” Carella said.

  “How often do I have to tell you?” Moore said. “Maybe I should’ve asked for a lawyer.”

  “You still can,” Carella said, making sure for the record that Moore was volunteering all this information of his own free will. They were sitting in the Interrogation Room, a tape recorder whirring on the table between Moore and the four detectives with him. From where Carella sat, he could see past Moore to the two-way mirror on the wall behind him. Moore’s back was to the mirror. No one was in the viewing room beyond the wall.

  “Why would I need a lawyer?” Moore said. “I’m admitting the cocaine. You found the cocaine, you’ve got me on the cocaine.”

  “Two keys of it,” Meyer said.

  “Less than that,” Moore said.

  “But you bought eight keys in Miami. The letter you wrote—”

  “I never should have written that letter,” Moore said.

  “But you did.”

  “Dumb,” Moore said.

  “So’s murder,” Kling said.

  “I killed a man who came into my apartment with a gun,” Moore said, almost by rote now. “We struggled, I grabbed the gun from him, and shot him. It was self-defense.”

  “The same gun that was used in three other murders,” Brown said.

  “I don’t know anything about any other murders. Anyway, this wasn’t murder, it was self-defense.”

  “I thought you were a medical student,” Kling said.

  “What?”

  “Are you also studying law?”

  “I know the difference between cold-blooded murder and self-defense.”

  “Was it cold-blooded murder when you killed Sally Anderson?” Carella asked.

  “I didn’t kill Sally.”

  “Or Paco Lopez?”

  “I don’t know anybody named Paco Lopez.”

  “How about Marvin Edelman?”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “Then how do you account for those diamonds we found in your kitchen?”

  “I bought them with the money I realized on the sale of the six keys.”

  “Who’d you buy them from?”

  “How is that relevant? Is it against the law to buy diamonds?”

  “Only if you later kill the man you bought them from.”

  “I bought them from somebody whose name I never knew.”

  “An anonymous diamond dealer, huh?” Meyer said.

  “Passing through from Amsterdam,” Moore said, and nodded.

  “How’d you get onto him?”

  “He contacted me. He heard I had some ready cash.”

  “How much cash?” Carella asked.

  “I bought the eight keys for four hundred thousand.”

  “A bargain,” Brown said.

  “I told you, the man was doing me a favor.”

  “The man in Miami.”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t have to tell you that. He was doing me a favor, why should I get him in trouble?”

  “Because you saved his son’s life, right?” Meyer said.

  “Right. The kid was choking to death. I did the Heimlich on him. The father said he wanted to do something for me in return.”

  “So that’s how you got in the drug business, right?” Brown said.

  “That’s how.”

  “Where’d you get the four hundred thousand?”

  “From my mother. The money my father left her.”

  “She had four hundred thousand bucks under her mattress, huh?”

  “No. Some of it was in money market funds, the rest in securities. She was getting something like thirteen percent, I promised her fifteen percent in a month’s time.”

  “Did you pay back the money?”

  “Every cent.”

  “Plus the interest?”

  “Fifteen percent.”

  “You gave back…what does that come to, Artie?”

  “Fifteen percent on four hundred thousand?”

  “For a month.”

  “It’s five thousand dollars,” Moore said.

  “You returned the four hundred plus five, is that right?” Carella asked.

  “I did.”

  “When?”

  “At the end of September. I gave my mother the money shortly after Fatback opened.”

  “Is that how long it took you to cut and resell those eight keys?”

  “Only six of them.”

  “What’d you get for selling off the six?”

  “Twelve, by the time I c
ut them. I got sixty thousand a key.”

  “What does that come to, Artie?” Carella asked.

  “It comes to seven hundred twenty thousand dollars,” Moore said.

  “And you returned four hundred five of that to your mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which left you with—”

  “Three hundred fifteen.”

  “Three hundred of which you spent to buy diamonds from Edelman.”

  “I don’t know anybody named Edelman,” Moore said.

  “But that’s how much you spent for the diamonds you bought, isn’t it?”

  “Close to it.”

  “From this Dutchman who was passing through, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What’d you get for that kind of money?”

  “About twenty-five carats. I got a break because it was a cash transaction.”

  “So how many stones did you buy?”

  “About three dozen. Most of them quarter-and half-carat stones. A few one-carat stones. Different sizes and cuts, American, European—well, you saw them.”

  “Just enough to fit in an ice cube tray, huh?”

  “I thought of that later.”

  “First place a burglar would look,” Meyer said.

  “I don’t know anything about burglars.”

  “Why’d you pick diamonds?”

  “A good investment. Over the past thirty years—before the bottom fell out—diamonds have gone up in value more than a thousand percent. I figured they had to start going up again.”

  “You’re just an enterprising young businessman, right?” Brown said.

  Moore said nothing.

  “Where’d you sell those six keys?”

  “I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “Why’d you hang on to the other two?”

  “That was Sally’s idea. She figured we could get more for it by selling them off to gram dealers.”

  “Like Paco Lopez.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Paco Lopez. Sally figured it might take a while longer, but over the long run we’d make maybe an extra fifty thousand on those two keys. By ouncing it out to gram dealers.”

  “Another enterprising young businessman,” Brown said.

  “Woman,” Meyer said.

  “Person,” Kling said.

  “So why’d you decide to kill all these people?” Carella asked casually.

  “I didn’t kill anyone but the man who broke into my apartment,” Moore said. “And that was self-defense. The man came in with a gun, we struggled, I took the gun away from him, and shot him. He was trying to hold me up. It was self-defense.”

  “Knew you had two keys of dope in there, huh?”

  “I don’t know what he knew. Anyway, it was less than two keys. We’d been dipping into it ever since I got back from Miami.”

  “Selling it here and there around town.”

  “Sally took care of that.”

  “Made her deliveries on Sundays, did she?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what the del stood for, right? Not ‘delicatessen.’ ‘Deliveries.’”

  “Deliveries, yes.”

  “Did Paco Lopez put her onto the other gram dealers she—”

  “I don’t know anyone named Paco Lopez.”

  “Why’d you kill him first?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Why’d you kill Sally?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And Edelman.”

  “I don’t know who Edelman is. You’ve got me on the dope, so charge me with the dope. I killed an armed intruder in self-defense. I don’t know what you can charge me with on that—”

  “Try homicide,” Carella said.

  “If self-defense is homicide, fine. But no jury in its right mind—”

  “You’re an expert on the jury system, too, huh?” Meyer said.

  “I’m not an expert on anything,” Moore said. “I happened across a good investment, and I took advantage of it.”

  “And then decided to protect it by killing—”

  “The only person I killed is the man who broke into my apartment.”

  “Did he know there’d be diamonds in there?”

  “I don’t know what he knew.”

  “Just happened to break in on you, is that it?”

  “Happens all the time in this city.”

  “Didn’t know there’d be dope, didn’t know there’d be diamonds.”

  “I never saw him before in my life, how would I know what his motive was? He forced his way in with a gun. We struggled—”

  “Yes, and you took the gun away from him and shot him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Guy built like a grizzly bear, you took the gun away from him?”

  “I can handle myself,” Moore said.

  “Only too well,” Carella said, and sighed. He looked up at the wall clock. It was ten minutes to 12:00. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go through it one more time.”

  She felt stupid with a gun in her bra.

  The gun was a .22 caliber Llama with a six-shot capacity, deadly enough, she supposed, if push came to shove. Its overall length was four and three-quarter inches, just small enough to fit cozily if uncomfortably between her breasts. It weighed only thirteen and a half ounces, but it felt like thirteen and a half pounds tucked there inside her bra, and besides, the metal was cold. That was because she had left the top three buttons of the uniform unfastened, in case she needed to get in there in a hurry. The wind was blowing up under the flapping black cape she was wearing, straight from the North Pole and directly into the open V-necked wedge of the uniform. Her breasts were cold, and her nipples were cold and erect besides—but maybe that was because she was scared to death.

  She did not like the setup, she had told them that from the start. Even after the dry run this afternoon, she had voiced her complaints. It had taken her eight minutes to cross the park on the winding path that ran more or less diagonally through it, walking at a slightly faster than normal clip, the way a woman alone at midnight would be expected to walk through a deserted park. She had argued for a classic bookend surveillance, one of her backup men ahead of her, the other behind, at reasonably safe distances. Both of her backups were old-timers from the Chinatown Precinct, both of them detectives/1st. Abrahams (“Call me Morrie,” he said back at the precinct, when they were laying out their strategy) argued that anybody walking point would scare off their rapist if he made a head-on approach. McCann (“I’m Mickey,” he told her) argued that if the guy made his approach from behind, he’d spot the follow-up man and call it all off. Eileen could see the sense of what they were saying, but she still didn’t like the way they were proposing to do it. What they wanted to do was plant one of them at either end of the path, at opposite ends of the park. That meant that if their man hit when she was midway through the park, the way he’d done on his last three outings, she’d be four minutes away from either one of them—okay, say three minutes, if they came at a gallop.

  “If I’m in trouble,” she said, “you won’t be able to reach me in time. Why can’t we put you under the trees someplace, hiding under those trees in the middle of the park? That’s where he hit the last three times. If you’re under the trees there, we won’t have four minutes separating us.”

  “Three minutes,” Abrahams said.

  “That’s where he hit the last three times,” she said again.

  “Suppose he scouts the area this time?” McCann said.

  “And spots two guys hiding under the trees there?” Abrahams said.

  “He’ll call it off,” McCann said.

  “You’ll have the transmitter in your bag,” Abrahams said.

  “A lot of good that’ll do if he decides to stick an ice pick in my eye,” Eileen said.

  “Voice-activated,” McCann said.

  “Terrific,” Eileen said. “Will that get you there any faster? I could yell bloody murder, and it’ll still take you
three minutes— minimum—to get from either end of that park. In three minutes, I can be a statistic.”

  Abrahams laughed.

  “Very funny,” Eileen said. “Only it’s my ass we’re talking about here.”

  “I dig this broad,” Abrahams said, laughing.

  “That radio can pick up a whisper from twenty-five feet away,” McCann said.

  “So what?” Eileen said. “It’ll still take you three minutes to reach me from where you guys want to plant yourselves. Look, Morrie, why don’t you go in? How about you, Mickey? Either one of you in drag, how does that sound? I’ll sit outside the park, listening to the radio, okay?”

  “I really dig this broad,” Abrahams said, laughing.

  “So what do you want to do?” McCann asked her.

  “I told you. The trees. We hide you under the trees.”

  “Be pointless. The guy combs the park first, he spots us, he knows we’ve got it staked out. That’s what you want to do, we might as well forget the whole thing.”

  “Let him go on raping those nurses there,” Abrahams said.

  Both men looked at her.

  So that was what it got down to at last, that was what it always got down to in the long run. You had to show them you were just as good as they were, willing to take the same chances they’d have taken in similar circumstances, prove to them you had balls.

  “Okay,” she said, and sighed.

  “Better take off those earrings,” McCann.said.

  “I’m wearing the earrings,” she said.

  “Nurses don’t wear earrings. I never seen a nurse wearing earrings. He’ll spot the earrings.”

  “I’m wearing the earrings,” she said flatly.

  So here I am, she thought, ball-less to be sure, but wearing my good-luck earrings, and carrying one gun tucked in my bra, and another gun in my shoulder bag alongside the battery-powered, voice-activated FM transmitter that can pick up a whisper from twenty-five feet away—according to McCann, who, by her current estimate, was now two and a half minutes away at the southeast corner of the park, with Abrahams three and a half minutes away at the northwest corner.

  If he’s going to make his move, she thought, this is where he’ll make it, right here, halfway through the park, far from the streetlights. Trees on either side of the path, spruces, hemlocks, pines, snow-covered terrain beyond them. Jump out of the trees, drag me off the path the way he did with the others, this is where he hit the last three times, this is where he’ll do it now. The descriptions of the man had been conflicting, they always seemed to be when the offense was rape. One of the victims had described him as being black, another as white. The girl he’d blinded had sobbingly told the investigating officer that her assailant had been short and squat, built like a gorilla. The other two nurses insisted that he’d been very tall, with the slender, muscular body of a weight lifter. He’d been variously described as wearing a business suit, a black leather jacket and blue jeans, and a jogging suit. One of the nurses said he was in his mid-forties, another said he was no older than twenty-five, the third had no opinion whatever about his age. The first nurse he’d raped said he’d been blonde. The second one said he’d been wearing a peaked hat, like a baseball cap. The one he’d blinded—her hand began sweating on the butt of the .38 in her shoulder bag.