87P14-Lady, Lady, I Did It!

by Ed McBain

  “I see. And you think he went there to get that book?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Was this a habit of his? Buying books in that particular store?”

  “Buying there, and also using the rental library.”

  “I see. But at that store? Not at a store in your own neighborhood, for example?”

  “No. Joseph spent a lot of time with his business, you see, and so he would do little errands on his lunch hour, or maybe before he came home, but always in the neighborhood where he has his business.”

  “What sort of errands do you mean, Mrs. Wechsler?”

  “Oh, like little things. Let me see. Well, like a few weeks ago, there was a portable radio we have, it needed fixing. So Joseph took it with him to work and had it fixed in a neighborhood store there.”

  “I see.”

  “Or his automobile, it got a scratch in the fender. Just parked on the street, someone hit him and scraped paint from the fender—isn’t there something we can do about that?”

  “Well…have you contacted your insurance company?”

  “Yes, but we have fifty-dollar deductible—you know what that is?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this was just a small paint job, twenty-five, thirty dollars, I forget. I still have to pay the bill. The car painter sent me his bill last week.”

  “I see,” Kling said. “In other words, your husband made a habit of dealing with businessmen in the neighborhood where his own business was located. And someone could have known that he went to that bookshop often.”

  “Yes. Someone could have known.”

  “Is there anyone who…who might have had a reason for wanting to kill your husband, Mrs. Wechsler?”

  Quite suddenly, Ruth Wechsler said, “You know, I can’t get used to he’s dead.” She said the words conversationally, as if she were commenting about a puzzling aspect on the weather. Kling fell silent and listened. “I can’t get used to he won’t read to me any more out loud. In bed.” She shook her head. “I can’t get used to it.”

  The room was silent. In the living room, the litany of the dead rose and fell in melodic, somber tones.

  “Did…did he have any enemies, Mrs. Wechsler?” Kling asked softly.

  Ruth Wechsler shook her head.

  “Had he received any threatening notes or telephone calls?”

  “No.”

  “Had he had any arguments with anyone? Heated words? Anything like that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Mrs. Wechsler…when your husband died…at the hospital, the detective who was with him heard him say the word ‘carpenter.’ Is that the name of anyone you know?”

  “No. Carpenter? No.” She shook her head. “No, we don’t know anybody by that name.”

  “Well…is it possible your husband was having some woodworking done?”

  “No.”

  “That he might have contacted a carpenter or a cabinetmaker?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing like that?” Kling said. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “Do you have any idea why he would have said that word, Mrs. Wechsler? He repeated it over and over. We thought it might have some special meaning.”

  “No. Nobody.”

  “Do you have any of your husband’s letters or bills? Perhaps he was corresponding with someone, or doing business with someone who—”

  “I shared everything with my husband. Nobody named Carpenter. No woodworkers. No cabinetmakers. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, could I have the bills and letters anyway? I’ll return them to you in good condition.”

  “But please don’t take too long with the bills,” Ruth Wechsler said. “I like to pay bills prompt.” She sighed heavily. “I have to read it now.”

  “I’m sorry, what…?”

  “The book. Mr. Wouk’s book.” She paused. “My poor husband,” she said. “My poor darling.”

  And though she pronounced the word “dollink,” it did not sound at all amusing.

  In the hallway outside the apartment, Kling suddenly leaned back against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut. He breathed heavily and violently for several moments, and then he let out a long sigh, and shoved himself off the wall, and quietly went down the steps to the street.

  It was Saturday, and the children were all home from school. A stickball game was in progress in the middle of the street, the boys wearing open shirts in the unaccustomed October balminess. Little girls in bright frocks skipped rope on the sidewalk—”Double-ee-Dutch, Double-ee Dutch, catch a rabbit and build a hutch!” Two little boys were playing marbles in the gutter, one of them arguing about the illegal use of a steelie in the game. Further up the street Kling saw three pint-sized conspirators, two boys and a girl, rush up to a doorway on street level, glance around furtively, ring the bell, and then rush across the street to the opposite side. As he passed the doorway, the door opened and a housewife peered out inquisitively. From across the street the three children began chanting, “Lady, lady, I did it; lady, lady, I did it; lady, lady, I did it; lady, lady, I did it…”

  The sound of their voices echoed in his ears all the way up the block.

  Teddy Carella was talking.

  She said:

  "Yes?" Carella said.

  "I'm beginning to get the message," Carella said.

  “Is that the best you can do?” Carella asked. “That’s not very original. So you love me, huh?”

  Teddy repeated the three words, her hands rapidly spelling the message. He took her into his arms and kissed the tip of her nose briefly, and then his mouth dropped to hers and he kissed her completely and longingly, holding her in his arms after the kiss, her head cradled against his cheek. He released her at last and took off his jacket and then took his service revolver from his right rear pocket, unclipping the holster and putting the gun down on the end table. Teddy frowned and a torrent of words spilled from her hands.

  “All right, all right,” Carella answered. “I won’t leave it around where the kids can get at it. Where are they, anyway?”

  In the yard, her hands told him. What happened today? Did you talk—

  But Carella had picked up the revolver and gone into the bedroom of the old Riverhead house, and he could no longer see her hands. She came into the room after him, turned him around to face her, and completed the sentence.

  —to Kling? How is he?

  Carella unbuttoned his shirt and threw it over one of the chairs. Teddy picked it up and carried it to the hamper. In the backyard he could hear the twins chasing each other, shouting their childish gibberish.

  “I talked to Kling, yes,” he said. “He’s working on the case with us.”

  Teddy frowned and then shrugged.

  “I felt the same way, honey,” Carella answered. He took off his T-shirt, wiped perspiration from his chest and under his arms, and then fired the wadded shirt at the hamper, missing. Teddy cast him a baleful glance and picked up the shirt. “But he wants in on it, and we can’t very well refuse him.” He had turned his back, heading for the bathroom, thoughtlessly. He stopped in his tracks, turned to her, and repeated his words so that she could read his lips. “We can’t very well refuse him.”

  Teddy nodded, but she still seemed troubled by the concept. She followed Carella into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub while he washed. Through a layer of suds and water, Carella said, “We figure the killer was after one of the four he got, Teddy. Maybe we’re wrong, but that’s the way we read it.” His hands had covered his mouth on the last two words as he rinsed away suds. “Read it,” he repeated, and Teddy nodded. He dried his face and then began speaking again while she watched his lips intently. “We’ve been questioning relatives of the deceased. Meyer and I spoke to Mrs. Land out on Sands Spit this morning, and Bert went to see Mrs. Wechsler this afternoon. So far, there’s nothing we can go on. There’s Claire’s father, of course, and Meyer and I thought we’d go s
ee him tomorrow…”

  Teddy frowned instantly.

  “What is it?” Carella asked.

  The folks are coming tomorrow, she told him.

  “What time?”

  In the afternoon. One or two. For lunch.

  “Then Meyer and I…well, we’ll make it early in the morning. He’s got to be talked to, Teddy.”

  Teddy nodded.

  “We haven’t been able to get a line on the third man who was killed in the shop. His name’s Anthony La Scala, and his driver’s license gave an address in Isola for him. But Meyer and I checked there a little while ago, and the super told us he’d moved about a month ago. The post office doesn’t have a forwarding address for him.”

  That might be something, Teddy said.

  “It might. I want to do some homework with the phone book later.”

  Teddy shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  He moved a month ago. The phone book…

  “That’s right,” Carella said, nodding. “His new address and number wouldn’t be listed yet. How come you’re so smart?” He grinned and held out his hands to her. She took them, and he pulled her from her sitting position and held her close to his naked chest. “Why don’t we have Fanny feed the kids and put them to bed?” he said. “Then we can go out to dinner and a movie.”

  Teddy wiggled her eyebrows.

  “Well, yeah, that, too. But I thought later.”

  She ran her tongue over her lips and then pulled away from him. He reached out for her, missed, and slapped her on the behind as she went out of the bathroom, laughing soundlessly. When he came into the bedroom, she was taking off her clothes.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, puzzled. “The kids are still awake.”

  Teddy let her hands dangle loosely from the wrists and then waggled the fingers.

  “Oh, you’re gonna take a shower,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “I think you’re just trying to tease me, that’s all.”

  Teddy shrugged speculatively and then went past him, half naked, into the bathroom. She closed the door, and he heard the lock clicking shut. The door opened again. She cocked her head around the door frame, grinned mischievously, and then brought her right hand up suddenly. Quickly her fingers moved.

  Go talk to your children, she said.

  Then, at the end of the sentence, she waved goodbye, her head and hand disappeared, the door clicked shut, the lock snapped. In a moment, Carella heard the shower going. He smiled, put on a fresh T-shirt and went downstairs to find the twins and Fanny.

  Fanny was sitting on a bench under the single huge tree in the Carella backyard, a big Irish woman in her early fifties who looked up the moment Carella came out of the house.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s himself.”

  “Daddy!” Mark yelled, his fist poised to sock his sister in the eye. He ran across the yard and leaped into Carella’s arms. April, a little slower to respond, especially since she’d expected a punch just a moment before, did a small take and then shot across the lawn as if she’d been propelled from a launching pad. The twins were almost two and a half years old, fraternal twins who had managed to combine the best features of their parents in faces that looked similar but not identical. Both had Carella’s high cheekbones and slanting oriental eyes. Both had Teddy’s black hair and full mouths. At the moment, Mark also had a strangle hold on Carella’s neck, and April was doing her best to climb to a sitting position on his waist by clambering up his legs.

  “It’s himself,” April said, mimicking Fanny, from whom she heard most of her English during the day.

  “It’s himself indeed,” Carella said. “How come you weren’t waiting at the front door to greet me?”

  “Well, who knows when you minions of the law will come home?” Fanny asked smiling.

  “Sure, who knows when the minnows,” April said.

  “Well, Daddy,” Mark said seriously, “How was business today?”

  “Fine, just fine,” Carella said.

  “Did you catch a crook?” April asked.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Will you catch…” She paused and rephrased it. “Will you catch…” Apparently the rephrasing didn’t satisfy her either. “Will you catch…” she said, paused again, gave it up, and then completed the sentence. “Will you catch one tomorrow?”

  “Oh, if the weather’s good, maybe we will,” Carella said.

  “Well, that’s good, Daddy,” Mark said.

  “ ‘If the weather’s good,’ he said,” April put in.

  “Well, if you catch one, bring him home,” Mark said.

  “Those two are gonna be G-men,” Fanny said. She sat in bright, redheaded splendor under the bold autumn foliage of the tree, grinning approval at her brood. A trained nurse who supplemented the meager salary Carella could afford by taking night calls whenever she could, she had been working for the Carellas ever since the twins were brought home from the hospital.

  “Daddy, what do crooks look like?” Mark asked.

  “Well, some of them look like Fanny,” Carella said.

  “That’s right, teach them,” Fanny said.

  “Are there lady crooks?” April asked.

  “There are lady crooks and men crooks, yes,” Carella said.

  “But no chi’drun,” Mark said. He always had difficulty with the word.

  “Children,” Fanny corrected, as she invariably did.

  “Chi’drun,” Mark repeated, and he nodded.

  “No, no children crooks,” Carella said. “Children are too smart to be crooks.” He put the twins down and said, “Fanny, I brought you something.”

  “What?”

  “A swear box.”

  “What in hell is a swear box?”

  “I left it in the kitchen for you. You’ve got to put money in it every time you use a swear word.”

  “Like hell I will.”

  “Like hell she will,” April said.

  “See?” Carella said.

  “I don’t know where they pick it up,” Fanny answered, shaking her head in mock puzzlement.

  “You feel like giving us the night off?” Carella asked.

  “It’s Saturday, ain’t it? Young people have to go out on Saturday.”

  “Good,” Mark said.

  “Huh?” Carella asked.

  “We’re young people.”

  “Yes, but Fanny’s going to feed you and put you to bed, and Mommy and Daddy are going to a movie.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Go see a monster fimm,” Mark said.

  “A what?”

  “A monster fimm.”

  “Film?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why should I? I have two monsters right here.”

  “Don’t, Daddy,” April said. “You’ll scare us.”

  He sat with them in the yard while Teddy showered and dusk claimed the city. He read to them from Winnie the Pooh until it was time for their dinner. Then he went upstairs to change his clothes. He and Teddy had a good dinner and saw a good movie. When they got home to the old Riverhead house, they made love. He leaned back against the pillow afterward and smoked a cigarette in the dark.

  And somehow Kling’s loss seemed enormously magnified.

  728 Peterson Avenue was in the heart of Riverhead in a good middle-class neighborhood dotted with low apartment buildings and two-story frame houses. Ralph Townsend lived there in apartment number 47. At 9:00 on Sunday morning, October 15, Detectives Meyer Meyer and Steve Carella rang the bell outside the closed door and waited. Kling had told them the night before that Claire’s father was a night watchman, and he’d advised them to call at the apartment around 9:00, when the old man would be returning home from his shift and before he went to bed. As it was, they caught Townsend in the middle of breakfast. He invited them into the apartment and then poured coffee for them. They sat together in the small kitchen, with sunlight streaming through the win
dow and burnishing the oilcloth on the table. Townsend was in his middle fifties, a man with all his hair, as black as his daughter’s had been. He had a huge barrel chest and muscular arms. He wore a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up over his biceps. He wore bright-green suspenders. He also wore a black tie.

  “I won’t be going to sleep today,” he said. “I have to go over to the funeral parlor.”

  “You went to work last night, Mr. Townsend?” Meyer asked.

  “A man has to work,” Townsend said simply. “I mean… well, you didn’t know Claire, but…well, you see, in this family, we thought…her mother died when she was just a little girl, you know, and…we…we sort of made up between us that what we owed to Mary—that was her name, Claire’s mother—we made up that what we owed to Mary was to live, you see. To carry on. To live. So…I feel I owe the same thing to Claire. I owe it to her to… to miss her with all my heart, but to go on living. And working is a part of life.” He fell silent. Then he said, “So I went to work last night.” And he fell silent again. He sipped at his coffee. “Last night I went to work, and today I’ll go to the funeral parlor where my little girl is lying dead.” He sipped at the coffee again. He was a strong man, and the grief on his face was strong, in keeping with his character. There were no tears in his eyes, but sorrow sat within him like a heavy stone.

  “Mr. Townsend,” Carella said, “we have to ask you some questions. I know you’ll understand…”

  “I understand,” Townsend said, “but I’d like to ask you a question first, if that’s all right.”

  “Sure,” Carella said.

  “I want to know…Did this have anything to do with Bert?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I like Bert,” Townsend said. “I liked him the minute Claire brought him around. He did wonders for her, you know. She’d been through that thing where her boyfriend was killed, and for a while she…she forgot about living, do you know what I mean? I thought…I thought we’d agreed on…on what to do when her mother died, and then…then this fellow she was going with got killed in the war, and Claire just slipped away. Just slipped away. Until Bert came along—and then she changed. She became herself again. She was alive again. Now…”