The Forty-Two

by Ed Kurtz

  After the Mr. Coffee sputtered the last few drops into the pot, Charley poured himself a cup and went back to the phone. C. Price number eight was a lady named Camilla. She was clearly annoyed by the call. Number nine did not answer. Ten and eleven were both busts. Charley’s master plan amounted to nothing at all.

  Except for the one that didn’t answer. Charley figured that one might still bear results. Plus, there was an address in the listing—226 Canal Street, right on the northern boundary of Chinatown in the Lower East Side.

  Skid Row.

  Charley folded the page back into his pocket and headed out for the subway.

  Chapter 9

  The building was a crumbling prewar tenement with a Chinese jewelry store on the first floor. A rickety fire-escape zigzagged up the façade that sagged just enough to appear terrifying, and enough of the windows were broken that it looked like a gaping mouth full of missing teeth. After Charley climbed up from the Canal Street station, he’d had to step over reeking Bowery Bums all the way there. He was just glad it was daytime. It was not a very nice neighborhood.

  The address listed for C. Price had a buzzer but it didn’t seem to work. Even when Charley mashed all the buttons for the other residences there was no answer. So he hung tight and waited for someone to either come in or go out. In a neighborhood like that no one was likely to make a big deal out of it. It only took fifteen minutes before a haggard looking middle-aged woman in a miniskirt and smeared makeup came stumbling out of the door. Charley slipped through the door before it caught in the jamb and hustled inside.

  The hand-scrawled nameplate on the buzzer assigned Price to apartment 4B. Charley scaled the steep stairs to the fourth floor and gave himself a few minutes to catch his breath before proceeding to the appropriate door.

  The hallway was dark and musty, and it smelled of an unpleasant combination of different kinds of ethnic cooking. Curry and fish sauce and Chinese five-spice powder mixed with a pervasive waft of body odor and the mold that caked the wainscoting. He did his best to keep from breathing too much and hurried up to 4B. From the other side of the door he could hear a television bleating indistinct words and the squealing of tires. Probably some cops and robbers flick, Charley guessed. He knocked lightly on the door and hoped it smelled better in there than it did in the hallway.

  Momentarily the noise from the TV shut off abruptly. Then silence. Charley knocked again, but no one answered. He let a few minutes pass as he strained to figure out what to do next. Nothing particularly brilliant came to him, so he tried knocking one last time and didn’t bother waiting around more than thirty seconds. After that he took a deep breath and headed back down the hallway toward the stairs.

  The deafening blast that exploded behind him sent icy needles up his spine, but he didn’t recognize it for what it was until he saw the gaping hole in the door to 4B. Somebody had tried to shoot him through the door. Charley gasped and scuttled backwards down the hall, away from the shape that was emerging from the obliterated remains of the door. He could not determine whether this was C. Price or not, but it was abundantly clear that whoever it was, he was wielding a pump-action shotgun and training it on Charley as he came out into the hall.

  “Jesus!” he cried.

  A door further down the hall cracked open, and a low, hoarse voice screamed in Mandarin, “Gouzaizi! Zhu zui!” Charley figured that must have meant either shut up or don’t shoot.

  Charley’s attacker pumped the fore-end and the spent shell shot out of the chamber as a fresh one slid into place. The distinctive ch-chack of the pump-action sounded just like it did in the movies. Charley dropped to the floor and covered his head in his hands. His primordial fight or flight instinct had apparently failed him in his time of need.

  “Please,” he moaned as the man strode toward him.

  Each footstep the guy took forward seemed to echo in Charley’s ringing ears. When he got close enough to analyze Charley, he lowered the shotgun and grunted a throaty laugh.

  “I don’t know you,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Charley readily agreed. “You don’t know me.”

  “I thought you was—well, I thought you was somebody else.”

  He then flipped the weapon over to rest it on his shoulder and sauntered back to the apartment. The nonchalance of it disturbed Charley deeply, angered him considerably, and now he was dead certain that this had to be the Chester Price he was looking for. Not that there was anything he could do about it. He wasn’t the one with the gun.

  And yet he couldn’t possibly leave it at that. Without Chester Price, Charley had nothing.

  So he heaved himself up from the floor, dusted off his shirt and jeans with his hands, and shouted, “Hey! Wait a minute!”

  Even as he was doing so it occurred to him that it just might have been the stupidest choice he ever made. But it was done, and now the drawn, pockmarked face of his assailant appeared through the splintered hole in the door, peering furiously out at him. Charley swallowed hard and tried not to look as terrified as he was. The rapid thumping of his heart was beginning to make his ribs feel sore.

  “Do you shoot at everyone who knocks on your door?”

  The shooter spread his thin, white lips into a nasty grin.

  “I thought you was gunna hassle me for the rent.”

  “Yeah? You’d really shoot your landlord?”

  Incredibly, the nasty grin got nastier still.

  “I’d shoot just about anybody,” he said with relish. “And I still might shoot you if you don’t let me alone.”

  Charley felt the icicles again, but he decided to ignore them for the time being. He still needed Price.

  “I just want to ask you a question. Can I do that without getting killed?”

  “Maybe. Depends on the question.”

  Now the barrel of the shotgun poked out from the bottom of the hole, its gaping hollowness in line with Charley’s stomach. Eve was right. This crazy guy was bad news.

  “I…I just want to know about somebody. A girl. I think you might have known her.”

  “You’re not a cop.”

  “No, no I’m not a cop.”

  “You’re too much of a pussy to be a cop. You’d have got wasted already.”

  “That’s probably the case, yes.”

  That throaty laugh again. It sounded like it scraped inside.

  “Okay,” Price relented. “What girl?”

  “Her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Hewlett.”

  The gun vanished from view and there was an anxiety-building moment of silence. Then, softly, Price asked, “Was?”

  “Yeah,” Charley said. “She’s dead.”

  “How?”

  “Stabbed in the back. She was murdered.”

  “Christ. That’s fucked up.”

  “So you didn’t know anything about it?”

  “Now how the hell would I know about something like that? You accusing me of something, punk?”

  “It was in the papers. Front page of the Post.”

  “I don’t get the goddamn Post.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her, then?”

  “Now you are starting to sound like a damn cop.”

  “I’m just a concerned civilian,” Charley said. He thought that sounded kind of cool, maybe a little tough, and he had to fight back a smile.

  “What was Lizzie to you? You fuckin her or something?”

  “What was she to you? I heard she had a bit of trouble with you.”

  Price threw the door open and thrust himself right up against Charley, his eyes red and teeth bared. The shotgun was propped up against his shoulder again. He looked to Charley like the Skid Row version of Walking Tall, where even Buford Pusser is a bad guy.

  “Here’s how this is going to play out, shitface. You’re gunna get the hell out of my face, out of my building, off my goddamn street. Right now. Next time I see you, I’m gunna blow your goddamn head off, no questions asked. You unnerstand that?”

  Char
ley sucked in a deep breath. It stung on the way in and tasted like rotting vegetables.

  “Did you call me last night, Price?”

  He barely had time to utter the last syllable of the question before he felt the cold metal of the shotgun barrel jam against the center of his chest. No one had ever pointed a gun at Charley before. He was mildly surprised that he hadn’t soiled his boxers.

  “I ain’t got a phone. Five seconds, shithead.”

  Charley stepped back a pace but Price kept the barrel on him.

  “Four,” Price grunted.

  Charley stepped back again, and Price followed in suit.

  “Three.”

  Charley said, “Okay.” And then he bolted for the stairs. He heard Price’s ruined door slam shut before he made the landing at the bottom of the first flight.

  He emerged on Canal and was temporarily blinded by the bright afternoon sun. It somehow always seemed brighter in winter, even when there wasn’t any snow to reflect it back up like a mirror. Across the street a couple of bums were engaged in a heated argument. Each of them screamed unintelligibly at the same time, stomping their feet and waving their arms. Naturally, nobody paid them any mind at all. Charley stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and barreled down toward the subway.

  At the very least he did manage to conclude that this was the Chester Price Eve told him about. He’d called her Lizzie, just like Eve did, and he even sounded jealous of Charley in a terribly misguided sort of way.

  But that did not mean that Chester Price didn’t kill Elizabeth. Instead, just about everything Charley could deduce about the guy from their brief encounter pointed to a dangerous sociopath who would just as soon kill someone as look at them. Combined with his evident possessiveness and jealously over Elizabeth, not to mention that he would have found her sitting with some strange guy in the Harris, and Charley thought Price was looking pretty good for the murder.

  Still, it was downright bizarre that Eve was so blasé about Price’s likely involvement. She knew much more about it than Charley did, and he knew he had enough on the guy to give Walker. So what was holding Eve back? There had to be something she wasn’t telling him; some threat that would continue to be a threat even if Chester Price was in stir. Anything beyond that, however, was going to be empty speculation until he confronted her with it directly.

  He returned to her building on West Eighteenth, but there wasn’t any answer when he knocked on her door. On the plus side, nobody spewed shotgun fire at him either. Charley was just going to have to postpone his inquiry until later, probably tomorrow. Next year. Next decade. The whole city was going to be three sheets to the wind before long and Charley had nearly forgotten all about it. Eve would almost definitely be at work, at Love Connection, since the vice industry knew a good night for business when it saw one. With that many egregiously intoxicated out-of-towners descending upon Times Square all at once, the fleshmongers and drug dealers and pickpockets and chain-snatchers would be stupid not to work their magic in droves. There was a lot of bread to be made that night, either earned or hustled or outright stolen. Eve was going to have to hawk her wares.

  For once, Charley planned on staying far away from the Deuce.

  Franz was just coming around from his slumber on the sofa when Charley returned to their apartment in the late afternoon. Charley put on some coffee and brought him a cup after it was done brewing. Franz mumbled something indistinct that Charley took for an expression of gratitude.

  When Franz was cognizant enough to form coherent sentences, he thanked Charley properly and asked him what were his plans for New Year’s.

  “Dunno,” Charley said as he flipped John Walker’s dog-eared card between his fingers. “Haven’t really thought about it. You?”

  “Got tickets to the Ramones at the Palladium. I didn’t get you one ’cause I don’t think it’s your bag.”

  “No,” Charley agreed. “It’s not.”

  Charley used to dislike any and all forms of rock music, but lately he had grown to really hate it. It all sounded empty and artless to him. It was an industry rather than an art form. Charlie Parker never owned a private jet, that was for damn sure.

  “Gunna be boss, though,” Franz said absently. “Too bad.”

  Franz switched the TV set on and leaned back on the sofa. Charley did not want to phone Walker where Franz could hear—he still hadn’t said a word about the murder to him and had no plans to bring it up now. He went for his wallet, thinking he’d store the card there until further notice, and for a moment he was shocked to find it gone. He’d forgotten about getting rolled in front of that dive on Eighth.

  “Damn,” he groaned.

  “Damn what?” Franz mumbled from the sofa.

  Charley said, “Nothing.”

  He poured himself a cup and wrinkled his nose at what he was about to ask.

  “Think you could lend me a few bucks though? I got mugged last night.”

  Franz craned his neck to look at Charley.

  “How much? Wait, did you say you got mugged?”

  “Yeah. They got my wallet.”

  “Shit, that’s lame. Will twenty hold you?”

  “Definitely,” Charley said as Franz dug a crumpled bill out of his pocket and handed it to him. “Thanks, man. I’ll get you back as soon as I get paid.”

  “Don’t sweat it. I can deal.”

  Franz returned his attention to the tube without another thought about it. It was the channel 11 Action News. One of those guys who wrote all those Broadway shows had died. Charley wondered what he’d thought of Broadway now that hardcore pornography had mostly replaced The Sound of Music.

  Charley thanked Franz again and went out in search of a payphone.

  Charley whistled down a cab on First and climbed in before the driver had managed a complete stop. The radio was tuned to WABC and Howard Hoffman was counting down the top one hundred songs from the year, all of it garbage to Charley’s ears. Hoffman was just introducing the hit disco theme song to some failed sitcom when the driver asked Charley where he wanted to go.

  “I’m not sure,” Charley admitted. “Some place with a phone booth where I can get a beer.”

  “I ain’t the yella pages, pal,” the cabbie barked. “Gimme an address or get outta my cab.”

  Charley frowned. He remembered seeing a phone booth in that bar on Eighth, but that was a long way to go for a drink and a phone call. Still, it was all he could think of under the gun, as it were.

  “Eighth and Eighteenth,” he said with a sigh.

  The driver lightened up after that. By the time they were halfway down Fourteenth he was rambling about the Soviets in Afghanistan and the hostages in Iran and shouldn’t we just nuke that whole part of the world over and turn it into a parking lot? Uninterested in debating the pros and cons of nuclear annihilation with the guy, Charley just agreed and left it at that.

  The analog clock on the taxi’s dash read ten to seven when Charley got dropped off at the bar. He paid the cabbie, went inside and ordered a glass of pilsner. The bartender said, “Back for more, huh?”

  Charley laid a clearly fake smile on the guy and removed himself to the phone booth in the back.

  Walker answered his line like a cop on TV.

  “Walker, Midtown South.”

  “This is Charley McCormick.”

  “Charles McCormick,” Walker said in a sing-song sort of way. “You know I was just thinking about your shiny bright little face.”

  “That right?” Charley was on edge already.

  “Oh, yeah. See, when I get wind of the fact that a witness to a murder—a murder of a girl he says he never saw before in his life—is spending the night with the victim’s sister, I get to thinking. I get to thinking about you, Charles.”

  “I’m not hiding anything, Detective, but how the hell did you know that?”

  “Don’t you watch television? Or just slashers and pornos on Forty-Two?”

  “Little bit of both.”

  “A r
enaissance man, huh?”

  “Yeah, sure. Look, Detective Walker, you know a guy called Chester Price?”

  “What if I do?”

  “I think he killed Elizabeth Hewlett, that’s what.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “That he killed her, or that I think he did?”

  “What’s your proof?”

  “Well, he’s a psycho for one thing. Took a pop at me with a shotgun this afternoon, right through his own damn door.”

  “And why would he want to do that, Charles?”

  “I can’t say for sure, Walker, but I went over there because Eve Hewlett told me he’d been stalking her sister. All I had to do was knock on the dude’s door…”

  “Okay. All right. You got an address for this Price?”

  Charley rattled it off and took a long pull from his pilsner. At Walker’s request he read off the number handwritten on the front plate of the payphone, as well.

  “I’ll check it out,” Walker said off the cuff. “And I’ll be checking you out too, Charles. You’re awfully wrapped up in this thing for an innocent bystander.”

  “I got wrapped up in it the second Elizabeth sat with me last Thursday.”

  “That’s what you say. Stay cool, Charles.”

  Walker rang off. Charley drained the rest of the beer and returned to the bar for another. The joint was starting to fill up with revelers getting an early start, but it wasn’t a tenth as bad as Times Square was going to be. He laid a fin on the bar, instructed the bartender to leave it open and made camp in the same booth he’d shared with Eve the night before. About three quarters of the way through his third glass of Rheingold, the phone jangled tinnily from the booth. Charley raced to answer it.

  “We’re sending a car over to pick your boy up,” Walker curtly informed Charley before he could say hello. “Got an outstanding warrant on him anyway, so no loss there. But listen—don’t think about leaving town anytime soon, you hear?”

  “Hadn’t planned on it,” Charley said.

  “Good. You put yourself in this and now you’re in it. Am I clear on that?”