The Heckler
Page 19
His mind was churning with probabilities. Jump for the ferry? No, because I’m unarmed and the captain will take me into custody. Run for the street? No, because the patrolman will gun me down before I’m halfway across the dock, all that money, all that sweet money, predicted error, Idid predict the error, dammit, I did take into account that fact that some policemen would undoubtedly be somewhere on our escape route, but an ice-cream pop, God, an ice-cream pop! the river is the only way, and he ran for the fence.
“Halt!” the patrolman shouted. “Halt, or I’ll fire!”
The deaf man kept running. How long can I hold my breath under water? he wondered. How far can I swim?
The patrolman fired over his head, and then he aimed at the deaf man’s legs as the deaf man scrambled over the cyclone fence separating the dock from the water.
He stood poised on the top of the fence for just a moment, as if undecided, as if uncertain that the percentages were truly with him, and then suddenly he leaped into the air and away from the fence and the dock, just as the patrolman triggered off another shot. He hung silhouetted against the gray sky, and then dropped like a stone to the water below. The patrolman rushed to the fence.
Five shots, the deaf man thought. He’ll have to reload. Quickly, he surfaced, took a deep, lung-filling breath, and then ducked below the surface again.
All that money,he thought.Well—next time.
The patrolman’s hammer clicked on an empty chamber. He reloaded rapidly and then fired another burst at the water.
The deaf man did not resurface.
There was only a widening circle of ripples to show that he had existed at all.
17.
IT WAS SURPRISING how co-operative a thief can become when he has a bullet wound in his shoulder and he knows the jig is up. Even before they carted Rafe off to the hospital, he had given them the names of his confederates waiting in the rented house. The Majesta cops picked up Chuck and Pop in five minutes flat.
It is surprising, too, how consistent thieves are. It was one thing to be facing a rap for a bank holdup. It was quite another to be facing charges like wholesale murder, arson, riot and—man, this was the clincher—possible treason. A bright boy in the D.A.’s office looked up the Penal Law and said that these birds had committed treason against the state by virtue of having leviedwar against the people of the state. Now that was a terrifying charge, even if it didn’t carry a death penalty. War against the people of the state?War? My God!
The three thieves named Rafe, Chuck and Pop were somehow up to their necks in something more than they had bargained for. They didn’t mind spending the rest of their lives in Castleview Prison upstate, but there was a certain electrically wired chair up there in which they had no particular desire to sit. And so, in concert, they recognized that a ready-made scapegoat was at hand. Or, if not quite at hand, at least somewhere below the surface of the River Harb.
And, in concert, they consistently repeated that the man in the river was responsible for all the mayhem and all the death, that he and he alone had shot John Smith and set all those bombs, thathe had waged the war, and that their part in this little caper was confined to the robbery of the bank, did they look like the kind of men who valued human life so cheaply? Did they look like fellows who would derail trains and set fires in baseball stadiums just for a little money? No, no, the fellow in the river was responsible for all that.
And the fellow’s name?
Consistently, and in concert, they identified him solely as “the deaf man.” More than that, they could not, or would not say.
Their consistency was admirable, to be sure.
And, admirably, they were booked and arraigned oneach of the charges for acting in concert, and it was the opinion of the police and the District Attorney’s office that all three of them had a very good chance of frying, or at the very least, spending the rest of their natural lives behind bars at Castleview Prison upstate. The probabilities were good either way, the police felt.
On May 21, Dave Raskin came up to the squadroom. He walked directly to Meyer Meyer’s desk and said, “So what do you think, Meyer?”
“I don’t know,” Meyer said. “What should I think?”
“I’m moving out of that loft.”
“What?”
“Sure. Who needs that cockamamie loft? I tell you the truth, without the bank downstairs, I got nobody to look at out the window. Before, it was a busy place. Now, nothing.”
“Well,” Meyer said, and he shrugged.
“How’s the cop who got shot?”
“He’ll be out of the hospital in a few weeks,” Meyer said.
“Good, good. I’m glad to hear that. Listen, if your wife needs some nice dresses, stop around, okay? I’ll pick out some pretty ones for her, compliments of Dave Raskin.”
“Thank you,” Meyer said.
Raskin went back to the loft on Culver Avenue where Margarita was packing their stock preparatory to the move, flinging her unbound breasts about with renewed fervor. Raskin watched her for a few moments, pleased with what he saw. The telephone rang suddenly. Still watching Margarita’s energetic acrobatics, Raskin picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” he said.
“Raskin?” the voice asked.
“Yes? Who’s this?”
“Get out of that loft,” the voice said. “Get out of that loft, you son of a bitch, or I’ll kill you!”
“You!” Raskin said. “You again!”
And suddenly he heard chuckling on the other end of the wire.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“Meyer Meyer,” the voice said, chuckling.
“You dirty bastard,” Raskin said, and then he began laughing, too. “Oh, you had me going there for a minute. For a minute, I thought my heckler was back.” Raskin laughed uproariously. “I got to hand it to you. You’re a great comedian. Since your father died, there hasn’t been such a comedian. You’re just like your father! Just like him!”
Meyer Meyer, at the other end of the wire, listened, exchanged the amenities, and then hung up.
Just like my father,he thought.
Suddenly, he felt a little ill.
“What’s the matter?” Miscolo said, coming in from the Clerical Office.
“I don’t feel so hot,” Meyer said.
“You’re just upset because a patrolman cracked a case you couldn’t.”
“Maybe so,” Meyer answered.
“Cheer up,” Miscolo said. “You want some coffee?”
“Just like my father,” Meyer said sadly.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. But a guy works all his life trying to…” Meyer shook his head. “Just like my father.”
“You want the coffee or not?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll have the coffee. Stop heckling me!”
“Who’s heckling?” Miscolo said, and he went out for the coffee.
From his desk across the squadroom, Bert Kling said, “It’ll be summer soon.”
“So?”
“So there’ll be more kids in the streets, and more gang wars, and more petty crimes, and shorter tempers and—”
“Don’t be so pessimistic,” Meyer said.
“Who’s pessimistic? It sounds like it’ll be a lovely summer. Just lovely.”
“I can hardly wait,” Meyer answered.
He pulled a typewritten list closer to the phone, and then dialed the first of a group of eyewitnesses to a burglary.
Outside the squadroom, May seemed impatient for the suffocating heat of July and August.
This is the twelfth published novel of the 87th Precinct. If I may, I would like to offer my sincere gratitude at this time to Herbert Alexander, who has worked with me on this series from the time it was conceived, and whose editorial suggestions have never failed to stimulate my imagination and enlarge my original concept. Thank you, Herb.
E.McB.
Afterword
WAY BACK WHEN—early in 1959, it must have been—I was still marri
ed to a woman whose maiden name was Anita Melnick. Her father’s name was Harry Melnick, to whom this book is dedicated. He’s dead now, but he got a big kick out of the book when it was first published. I hope my former wife enjoys it as much now. Memories don’t come cheap, you know.
Harry used to own a women’s dress shop on West 14th Street in New York City. All at once, most of the things that happen to Dave Raskin in these pages started happening to my father-in-law. Eventually, all the pranks stopped. Harry never found out who had targeted him for all the practical jokes. Nor was there a bank under his loft. But he had provided me with an idea—and the springboard for a new character.
Before I wroteThe Heckler , eleven 87th Precinct novels had already been published. We were trying to establish a new series, you see. A rule of thumb for any new mystery series is that if you haven’t hit the bestseller list after five tries, go hang up your sweat-pants, Gertie.
I wrote the first three books of the series in 1956, and the next two in 1957. By my count, that came to five books—and still no bestseller. Maybe because they were still being published as paperback originals. I don’t think there evenwas a paperback bestseller list back then. Progress, lads, progress!
The first book published in 1958 was also a paperback original. But withKiller’s Wedge that same year, Simon and Schuster brought out the first of the books in hardcover. It startled the entire civilized world! I jest, Maude. It would take a long, long time before one of the Eight-Sevens hit theNew York Times bestseller list. So much for rules of thumb about mystery series. And, besides, who’s counting?
Anyway, there were eleven published books by the end of 1959, when I must have deliveredThe Heckler because it was first published in hardcover sometime in 1960; I’m not now sure of the month. But I can remember an evening long before then—in 1955, to be exact, while I was still writingCop Hater , the first book in the series. I was riding in a car with a friend of mine on our way to meeting his wife and my then-wife (yes, Harry Melnick’s daughter, Anita), whom we were taking to dinner. I was inordinately silent, and suddenly I snapped my fingers and shouted, “A deaf mute!” which was the equivalent back then of the wordEureka!
I had been pondering what kind of girlfriend would be right for Steve Carella, you see. Carella was merely one of the cops in the first book. I chose a deaf mute (I know, I know, the politically correct expression these days is “speech and hearing impaired,” but Teddy Carella knows where she’s coming from, and so do I) because I felt I could place her in desperate situations from which she had to be rescued by her stalwart police detective husband. I soon tired of these “Mr. and Mrs. North” shenanigans, however. Teddy was too strong a character to need rescuing all the time.
By the time I started concocting the villain ofThe Heckler , I knew that the person Steve Carella loved most in the entire universe was his wife, Teddy Carella, who was deaf and could not speak, but whom neither he nor she herself considered “handicapped.” It occurred to me: Hey! What if the guy who’s bugging Dave Raskin isalso deaf? I had no idea at the time that the “deaf man” would become a recurring character—he’s now been in five books—or that he would grow to become Steve Carella’s nemesis, in much the same way that Moriarty was Sherlock Holmes’s. I don’t believe in the concept of good and evil. Evil is a theological term. But I knew that Teddy Carella was deaf and reallygood , and I figured if I could make this guy deaf and reallybad , I would have a very nice contrast.
I think it’s interesting, by the way, that most people don’t waste too much sympathy on deaf persons. They’ll risk their lives to help a blind man cross the street in heavy traffic, but the best a deaf person can hope to evoke is impatience. I hope the deaf man in these pages inspires a bit more than that. Fear perhaps? Perhaps even awe. It ain’t easy being a villain.
It ain’t easy writing about one, either.
There would be more than five deaf man novels were it not for the fact that’s he’s brilliant, and I’m not. He must forever come up with these extraordinary schemes, you see, which are foiled not by the Keystone Kops of the Eight-Seven, but instead by accident. That’s hard to do. I like to think there’ll be another deaf man novel down the pike. He still owes something to a woman named Gloria, I believe, who shot him and left him tied to a bed inMischief . Oh dear, one mustn’t do such things to someone like the deaf man, must one?
But we shall see.
Meanwhile…
Harry…thanks again.
Without you, this book wouldn’t have happened.
Ed McBain
Weston, CT
June 2002
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