Killer's Payoff

by Ed McBain

“YOU KILLED HIM!” Meyer bellowed.

  “No, no, I swear to God. I followed you, yes, almost every one of you, yes, I hit you the other night, yes, I tried to get in on the Mencken squeeze, yes, yes, but Jesus Christ, I didn’t kill Kramer. I swear to God, I didn’t kill him.”

  “You tried to extort money from Lucy Mencken?” Hawes asked.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “You hit me the other night?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Book him for extortion and felonious assault,” Hawes said.

  Torr seemed happy it was all over.

  16.

  IT SEEMED EVIDENT at this point that Lucy Mencken and Edward Schlesser, the soda-pop man, had no further worries. Neither did the third, eleven-hundred-dollar mark who had contributed monthly to Kramer’s checking account. Extending this further, now that Kramer was dead and the sham extortionist Torr exposed, the big mark had nothing to fear, either. The big mark who had furnished Kramer’s apartment, bought his cars, and paid for his clothes, and then swelled his bank account to $45,000 was off the hook. Kramer was dead. No one had inherited his lucrative racket.

  Everybody should have been extremely happy, and perhaps they all were. Everybody but the cops.

  Kramer was dead, and someone had killed him, and that spelled homicide. And the cops still didn’t know who or why.

  Every post office in the city had been checked, as well as every bank. Unless Kramer had kept a box under an unknown alias, it seemed fairly certain the documents were being kept elsewhere. Kramer was a precise man who kept bills going back as far as last September. It did not seem likely that he would have been sloppy in the matter of keeping important papers and photographs. But where?

  His apartment had been searched by a crew of four detectives who worked for two days going over every inch of the place. Nancy O’Hara’s presence did not help the search. She was a mighty pretty girl, and cops are human. But the search was nonetheless a thorough one, and it turned up neither the missing documents nor a key to a possible deposit box somewhere in the city.

  “I don’t know,” Carella said to Hawes. “The whole goddamn thing seems to have bogged down.”

  “He’s got to have them someplace,” Hawes said.

  “Where? He doesn’t belong to any clubs.”

  “No.”

  “He hasn’t got a summer place, just that one apartment.”

  “Yes.”

  “So where?”

  Hawes thought for a moment. “How about the cars?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The cars. The Caddy and the Buick.”

  “You mean maybe he’s got the stuff in the trunk, or the glove compartment? Something like that?”

  “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t sound like Kramer,” Carella said, shaking his head. “I get the impression he was neat, careful. I don’t think he’d leave important stuff in the trunk of a car.”

  “It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

  Carella sighed heavily. “Anything’s worth a goddamn try,” he said. “Let’s hit the garage.”

  GEORGE’S SERVICE CENTER in Isola was located three blocks away from the late Sy Kramer’s apartment. It was there that Kramer had had his cars serviced. It was also there that he had boarded them. George was a wiry little man with grease on his face.

  “Let’s see your badges,” was the first thing he said.

  Carella and Hawes showed their shields.

  “Now we can talk,” George said.

  “We want to look over Kramer’s cars,” Hawes said.

  “You got a search warrant?”

  “No.”

  “Go get one.”

  “Let’s be reasonable,” Carella said.

  “Let’s,” George answered. “Is it illegal to conduct a search without a search warrant?”

  “Technically, yes,” Carella said. “But it won’t take us—”

  “Is it illegal to be doing thirty miles an hour in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour zone?” George asked.

  “Technically, yes,” Carella said.

  “Technically or otherwise, would you call it speeding?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “All right. I got stopped in a speed trap the other day. I’ve never sped in my life. I’m a careful driver. I was doing thirty miles an hour. Technically, I was speeding. The cop who stopped me gave me a ticket. I asked him to be reasonable. He was reasonable, all right. He gave me a ticket. You want to search those cars, go home and get a warrant. Otherwise, it’s an illegal search. I’m being as reasonable as your pal was.”

  “A speeding ticket makes you a cop hater, huh?” Carella said.

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  “I hope nobody ever tries to hold up your gas station,” Carella answered. “Come on, Cotton. Let’s get the warrant.”

  “Good day, gents,” George said, smiling.

  His revenge had been sweet. It delayed a murder investigation by almost four hours.

  THEY CAME BACK with the warrant at four in the afternoon on Monday, July fifteenth. George looked at the paper, nodded, and said, “The cars are inside. They’re both unlocked. The keys are in the dashes in case you want to open the trunks or the glove compartments.”

  “Thanks,” Carella said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “One hand washes the other,” George said. “Tell that to your traffic cops.”

  “Do you know what impeding the progress of an investigation is?”

  “All I know is you had to have a warrant,” George said. He shrugged. “If you’re in such a hurry, now that you got your warrant why don’t you go look at the damn cars?”

  “We will,” Carella said.

  Together, he and Hawes went into the garage. The Caddy and the Buick were parked side by side. The Caddy was white, the Buick black. Together, they looked like an ad for good Scotch. Carella took the Caddy, and Hawes took the Buick. They searched the interiors of the cars with patient scrutiny. They removed the seats and looked under them. They felt along the material covering the roofs of the cars, in the hope that Kramer had inserted something between the cloth and the metal. They lifted the floor pads. They took everything out of the glove compartments and everything out of the trunks. The search of both cars took three quarters of an hour.

  They found nothing.

  “Well, that’s that,” Carella said.

  “Mmm,” Hawes said disgustedly.

  “At least I’ve been inside a Caddy,” Carella said. “That’s the closest I’ll ever get to owning one.” He studied the white convertible. “Look at that baby, will you?”

  “It’s a beauty,” Hawes agreed.

  “And it’s got power,” Carella said. “Have you ever seen the engine on a Caddy? It looks as if it could power a destroyer. Here, take a look at it.”

  He went to the front of the car, unclasped the hood, and raised it. Hawes went over to where he was standing.

  “It’s something, all right,” he said.

  “Kept it clean, too,” Carella said. “A neat guy, Kramer.”

  “Yeah.”

  Carella was closing the hood when Hawes said, “Hold it. What’s that?”

  “Huh?”

  “There.”

  “Where?”

  “Stuck to the engine block.”

  “What?”

  “Lift that hood all the way up, Steve.”

  Carella raised the hood, and then looked at the engine. “Oh,” he said, “that’s his extra key. It’s just a little magnetized box you stick somewhere on the car. An extra key fits into it. In case you lock yourself out of the car by accident.”

  “Oh,” Hawes said, disappointed.

  “Sure.” Carella reached for the commercially marketed device. “See? The key fits right into this little—” He stopped. “Cotton,” he said softly.

  “What is it?”

  “That’s no car key,” Carella said. “Holy God, cross your fingers!”

  THE KEY STUCK to
the engine of Kramer’s Cadillac convertible had the round, unmistakable yellow, numbered top of a key to a railroad-station locker. There were two big railroad stations in the city, several smaller ones, and several subway stops in which there were pay lockers. It was not necessary to visit each location in an attempt to match the key with the correct locker. Carella put in a call to the company supplying the lockers to the various spots. He gave them the number of the key on the phone, and the locker was pinpointed within five minutes. Within the half hour, Carella and Hawes were standing in front of the locker.

  “Suppose there’s nothing in it?” Hawes said.

  “Suppose the roof of the station caves in right this minute?” Carella said.

  “It’s possible,” Hawes answered.

  “Bite your tongue,” Carella said, and he inserted the key into the locker and twisted it.

  There was a suitcase in the locker.

  “Old clothes,” Hawes said.

  “Cotton, my friend,” Carella said, “do not joke. Seriously, my friend, do not joke. I am a very high-strung nervous-type fellow.”

  “A bomb, then,” Hawes said.

  Carella pulled the suitcase out of the locker.

  “Is it locked?”

  “No.”

  “Well, open it.”

  “I’m trying to,” Carella said. “My damn hands are shaking.”

  Patiently Hawes waited while Carella unclasped the bag. There were four big manila envelopes in it. The first envelope contained a dozen photostated copies of the letter to Schlesser from the lawyer of the man who’d drunk the mousy sarsaparilla.

  “Exhibit A,” Carella said.

  “Tells us nothing we don’t already know,” Hawes answered. “Open the next envelope.”

  The second envelope contained two pages from the ledger of a firm called Ederle and Cranshaw, Inc. Both pages were signed by a C.P.A. named Anthony Knowles. A comparison of the ledger pages showed that the second page was a revision of the first page, and that the first page did not exactly balance. It did not exactly balance to the tune of $30,744.29. The second page balanced very neatly, thank you. Mr. Knowles, whoever he was, had robbed the firm of Ederle and Cranshaw of thirty grand, and then balanced the books to cover the deficit. Sy Kramer had, in his own mysterious way, managed to get a copy of both the original entry and the fraudulent one—and had been using both to extort money from Knowles, who was undoubtedly the $1,100-a-month mark.

  “Larceny rears its ugly head,” Carella said.

  “The skeleton in every closet,” Hawes said.

  “We’ll have to pick up this Knowles.”

  “Damn right, we’ll have to,” Hawes said. “He may be the one who done in our friend Kramer.”

  But, of course, they had not yet opened the remaining two envelopes.

  Envelope number three contained six negatives and prints of Lucy Mencken in an attitude close to nudity. Hawes and Carella studied them with something unlike mere professional interest.

  “Nice,” Hawes said.

  “Yes,” Carella answered.

  “You’re a married man,” Hawes reminded him.

  “She’s a married woman,” Carella said, grinning. “That makes us even.”

  “Do you think she killed Kramer?”

  “I don’t know,” Carella said. “But that last envelope better have a lot of answers.” He lifted it out of the suitcase. “I think it’s empty,” he said, with astonishment.

  “What? You haven’t opened it. How can you—?”

  “It feels so light,” Carella said.

  “Open it, will you? For God’s sake!”

  Carella opened the envelope.

  There was a sheet of onion-skin paper in the envelope, and that was all. The sheet of paper carried a very faint typewritten carbon impression of three words. The three words were:

  I SAW YOU!

  17.

  YOU CAN CARRY DEDUCTION only so far.

  You can add two and two, and get four. And then you can subtract two from four, and get two. You can square two, and get four again. And then you can take the square root of four, and get two again—and you’re right back where you started.

  There comes a time when your personal mathematics don’t mean a damn.

  There comes a time, for example, like immediately after the arrest of Anthony Knowles. There comes a time when Knowles admits to the theft and the fraudulent entry in the ledger, and then comes up with a perfect alibi for the night Sy Kramer was killed.

  There comes a time when you’re right back where you started, and no matter how you add the facts you always get the same answer, and the same answer is no damn good at all.

  When that time comes, you play a hunch.

  If you’re a cop who isn’t particularly intuitive, you’re up the creek without a paddle. Because then you can only add up the facts, and the facts come out like this: Kramer was extorting money from three known victims in various amounts, the amounts arbitrarily decided by Kramer in an attempt to make the punishment fit the crime. Three hundred bucks for putting out sarsaparilla that had flavor and body—the body of a mouse. Five hundred bucks for getting undressed—before a photographer. Eleven hundred bucks for making an erasure—to cover a theft.

  Kramer had had another source of income. This unknown source had furnished his apartment, bought his cars and clothes, and filled his bank account with $45,000. The first three manila envelopes in the suitcase had dealt with Kramer’s low-income marks. The fourth envelope contained a note saying “I SAW YOU!” and this was the carbon of a note that had possibly been mailed to someone. Was the fourth envelope the clue to the big-money mark? If so, to whom had the note been mailed? And what had Kramer seen?

  Facts, facts, more facts.

  A man named Phil Kettering had vanished. Poof, into thin air. Why? Where was he now? Had he killed Kramer? Was he the man to whom Kramer had sent the “I SAW YOU!” note? And what, what, what the hell had Kramer seen?

  Facts.

  Add them up.

  Two and two make four.

  Or sometimes zero.

  * * *

  COTTON HAWES played a hunch.

  He played the hunch on his own time, on one of his off duty days. If he was wrong, he didn’t want to waste the city’s time and money. If he was right, there was plenty of time to act. And even if he was right, there would still be unanswered questions. He was beginning to wish he’d signed re-enlistment papers when the war had ended. He was beginning to wish he was on the deck of a seagoing tug somewhere in the Pacific, where there was no guesswork, no suspects, no bodies.

  On Wednesday morning, July seventeenth, Hawes hopped into his automobile. He did not tell anyone on the squad where he was going. He had made a fool of himself once before, when he’d first joined the Squad, and he did not wish to compound the felony by proving himself wrong another time.

  Hawes crossed the River Harb. He drove on the Greentree Highway. He passed the town in which he and an anthropology student named Polly had enjoyed an evening together. The memory was sweet. He drove past Castleview Prison’s impenetrable, forbidding walls. He drove up into New York State, and he headed for the Adirondacks and Kukabonga Lodge.

  Jerry Fielding recognized the car as Hawes pulled up. He came down the steps to greet him, his hand extended.

  “Been hoping you’d come back,” he said. “Have any luck with Kettering yet?”

  “No,” Hawes said, taking Fielding’s hand. “We can’t find him.”

  “That looks bad for him, doesn’t it?”

  “It looks very bad for him,” Hawes said. “Do you know these woods pretty well?”

  “Like the back of my hand.”

  “Want to guide me through them?”

  “Going to do a little hunting?” Fielding asked.

  “In a sense, yes,” Hawes said. He went to the car and took out a small travel case.

  “What’s in that?”

  “A pair of swimming trunks,” Hawes said. “Could you ta
ke me around the edge of the lake first?”

  “Are you hot?” Fielding asked, puzzled.

  “Maybe,” Hawes said. “And maybe I’m cold. We’ll know in a little while, I guess.”

  Fielding nodded. “Let me get my pipe,” he said.

  IT TOOK THEM AN HOUR to find the spot. The spot was close to the road and close to the lake. The new summer growth had already come in, but it was possible to see the faint traces of deep tire tracks beneath the vegetation. Hawes went to the edge of the lake and looked down into the water.

  “Anything down there?” Fielding asked.

  “A car,” Hawes said. He was already unbuttoning his shirt and trousers. He changed into his trunks and stood poised on the edge of the lake for a moment.

  “This is a pretty deep spot,” Fielding said.

  “It would have to be,” Hawes answered, and he plunged into the water. The lake closed around him. The water was very cold for July. The animal and insect sounds of the woods were suddenly cut off. He was in a silent, murky world as he dove closer to the bottom of the lake. The automobile rested on the lake bottom like the hulk of a sunken ship. Hawes seized the door handle and pulled himself to the floor of the lake. Standing erect, clinging to the handle, he tried to see into the car. It was impossible. The lake bottom was too dark. He was beginning to feel the need for air. He pushed himself off and started for the surface again.

  When he came up, Fielding was waiting for him.

  “Anything?”

  Hawes waited while he caught his breath. “What kind car did Phil Kettering drive?” he asked.

  “A Plymouth, I think,” Fielding said.

  “The car down there’s a Plymouth,” Hawes said. “I can’t see into it. We’ll need an underwater light and maybe a crowbar to pry open the doors, if they’re locked. Do you swim, Fielding?”

  “Like a shark.”

  “Good.” Hawes came out of the water. “How many phones do you have?”

  “Two. Why?”

  “While you’re phoning for the gear, I’d like to call the city. I want to get a positive identification on that car. You can start with your calls, if you will. I have to go down and take a look at the license plate.”