Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

by Ed McBain

  “When was this, Daniels?”

  “I don’t remember the date exactly. It was around Valentine’s Day. A few days before.”

  “The twelfth?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Mike didn’t show up for work on the night of the twelfth. Was that the day you saw him?”

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “When did you see him?”

  “In the afternoon sometime.”

  “And what did he want?”

  “He told me he wouldn’t be on the gig that night, and he give me the key to his pad.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “He said he wanted me to take his drums home for him. So when we quit playing that night, that’s what I done. I packed up his drums and took them here.”

  “So that’s how you got in today. You still have Mike’s key.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that’s how you knew he wouldn’t be here. He never did get that key back from you, did he?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Daniels paused. “I was supposed to call him the next day and we was supposed to meet so I could give him the key. Only I called, and there was no answer. I called all that day, but nobody answered the phone.”

  “This was the thirteenth of February?”

  “Yeah, the next day.”

  “And he had told you he would be with Bubbles Caesar?”

  “Well, not directly. But when he give me the key and the telephone number, he made a little joke, you know? He said, ‘Larry, don’t be calling me in the middle of the night because Bubbles and me, we are very deep sleepers.’ Like that. So I figured he would be making it with Bubbles that night. Listen, I’m beginning to get itchy. I got to get out of here.”

  “Relax, Daniels. What was the phone number Mike gave you?”

  “I don’t remember. Listen, I got to get a shot. I mean, now listen, I ain’t kidding around here.”

  “What was the number?”

  “For Christ’s sake, who remembers? This was last month, for Christ’s sake. Look, now look, I ain’t kidding here. I mean, I got to get out of here. I know the signs, and this is gonna be bad unless I get—”

  “Did you write the number down?”

  “What?”

  “The number. Did you write it down?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Daniels said, but he pulled out his wallet and began going through it, muttering all the while, “I have to get a shot, I have to get fixed, I have to get out of here,” his hands trembling as he riffled through the wallet’s compartments. “Here,” he said at last, “here it is, here’s the number. Let me out of here before I puke.”

  Carella took the card.

  “You can puke at the station house,” he said.

  The telephone number was Economy 8-3165.

  At the squadroom, Carella called the telephone company and got an operator who promptly told him she had no record of any such number.

  “It may be an unlisted number,” Carella said. “Would you please check it?”

  “If it’s an unlisted number, sir, I would have no record of it.”

  “Look, this is the police department,” Carella said. “I know you’re not supposed to divulge—”

  “It is not a matter of not divulging the number, sir. It is simply that I would have no record of it. What I’m trying to tell you, sir, is that we do not have a list labeled ‘Unlisted Numbers.’ Do you understand me, sir?”

  “Yes, I understand you,” Carella said. “But the telephone company has a record of it someplace, doesn’t it? Somebody pays the damn bill. Somebody gets the bill each month. All I want to know is who gets it?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I wouldn’t know who—”

  “Let me talk to your supervisor,” Carella said.

  Charles Tudor had begun walking from his home in The Quarter, and Cotton Hawes walked directly behind him. At a respectable distance, to be sure. It was a wonderful day for walking, a day that whetted the appetite for spring. It was a day for idling along and stopping at each and every store window, a day for admiring the young ladies who had taken off their coats and blossomed earlier than the flowers.

  Tudor did not idle, and Tudor did not admire. Tudor walked at a rapid clip, his head ducked, his hands thrust into the pockets of his topcoat, a big man who shouldered aside any passerby who got in his way. Hawes, an equally big man, had a tough time keeping up with him. The sidewalks of The Quarter on that lovely Saturday were cluttered with women pushing baby carriages, young girls strutting with high-tilted breasts, young men wearing faded tight jeans and walking with the lope of male dancers, young men sporting beards and paint-smeared sweatshirts, girls wearing leotards over which were Bermuda shorts, old men carrying canvases decorated with pictures of the ocean, Italian housewives from the neighborhood carrying shopping bags bulging with long breads, young actresses wearing makeup to rehearsals in the many little theaters that dotted the side streets, kids playing Johnny-on-the-Pony.

  Hawes could have done without the display of humanity. If he were to keep up with Tudor, he’d have to—

  He stopped suddenly.

  Tudor had gone into a candy store on the corner. Hawes quickened his pace. He didn’t know whether or not there was a back entrance to the store, but he had lost Tudor the night before, and he didn’t want to lose him again. He walked past the candy store and around the corner. There was only one entrance, and he could see Tudor inside making a purchase. He crossed the street quickly, took up a post in the doorway of a tenement, and waited for Tudor to emerge. When Tudor came out, he was tearing the cellophane top from a package of cigarettes. He did not stop to light the cigarette. He lighted it as he walked along, three matches blowing out before he finally got a stream of smoke.

  Doggedly, Hawes plodded along behind him.

  “Good afternoon, sir, this is your supervisor; may I help you, sir?”

  “Yes,” Carella said. “This is Detective Carella of the 87th Squad up here in Isola,” he said, pulling his rank. “We have a telephone number we’re trying to trace, and it seems—”

  “Did the call originate from a dial telephone, sir?”

  “What call?”

  “Because if it did, sir, it would be next to impossible to trace it. A dial telephone utilizes automatic equipment and—”

  “Yes, I know that. We’re not trying to trace a call, operator, we’re trying to—”

  “I’m the supervisor, sir.”

  “Yes, I know. We’re—”

  “On the other hand, if the call was made from a manual instrument, the possibilities of tracing it would be a little better. Unless it got routed eventually through automatic—”

  “Lady, I’m a cop, and I know about tracing telephone calls, and all I want you to do is look up a number and tell me the party’s name and address. That’s all I want you to do.”

  “I see.”

  “Good. The number is Economy 8-3165. Now would you please look that up and give me the information I want?”

  “Just one moment, sir.”

  Her voice left the line. Carella drummed impatiently on the desk top. Bert Kling, fully recovered, furiously typed up a DD report at the adjoining desk.

  Tudor was making another stop. Hawes cased the shop from his distant vantage point. It was set between two other shops in a row of tenements, and so the possibility of another entrance was unlikely. If there was another entrance, it would not be one accessible to customers of the shop.

  Hawes lighted a cigarette and waited for Tudor to make his purchase and come into the street again.

  He was in the shop for close to fifteen minutes.

  When he came out, he was carrying some white gardenias.

  Oh great, Hawes thought, he’s going to see a dame.

  And then he wondered if the dame could be Bubbles Caesar.

  “Sir, this is your supervisor.”

  “Yes?” Carella said. “Have you got—?”

  “You underst
and, sir, that when a person requests an unlisted or unpublished telephone number, we—”

  “I’m not a person,” Carella said, “I’m a cop.” He wrinkled his brow and thought that one over for a second.

  “Yes, sir, but I’m referring to the person whose telephone number this is. When that person requests an unpublished number, we make certain that he understands what this means. It means that there will be no record of the listing available, and that no one will be able to get the number from anyone in the telephone company, even upon protest of an emergency condition existing. You understand that, sir?”

  “Yes, I do. Lady, I’m a cop investigating a murder. Now will you please—”

  “Oh, I’ll give you the information you requested. I certainly will.”

  “Then what—?”

  “But I want you to know that an ordinary citizen could not under any circumstances get the same information. I simply wanted to make the telephone company’s policy clear.”

  “Oh, it’s perfectly clear, operator.”

  “Supervisor,” she corrected.

  “Yes, sure. Now who’s that number listed for, and what’s the address?”

  “The phone is in a building on Canopy Street. The address is 1611.”

  “Thank you. And the owner of the phone?”

  “No one owns our telephones, sir. You realize that our instruments are provided on a rental basis, and that—”

  “Whose name is that phone listed under, oper—supervisor? Would you please—?”

  “The listing is for a man named Charles Tudor,” the supervisor said.

  “Charles Tudor?” Carella said. “Now what the hell—?”

  “Sir?” the supervisor asked.

  “Thank you,” Carella said, and he hung up. He turned to Kling. “Bert,” he said, “get your hat.”

  “I don’t wear any,” Kling said, so he clipped on his holster instead.

  Charles Tudor had gone into 1611 Canopy Street, unlocked the inner vestibule door, and vanished from sight.

  Hawes stood in the hallway now and studied the mailboxes. None of them carried a nameplate for Bubbles Caesar or Charles Tudor or Mike Chirapadano or anyone at all with whom Hawes was familiar. Hawes examined the mailboxes again, relying upon one of the most elementary pieces of police knowledge in his second study for the nameplates. For reasons known only to God and psychiatrists, when a person assumes a fictitious name, the assumed name will generally have the same initials as the person’s real name. Actually, this isn’t a mystery worthy of supernatural or psychiatric secrecy. The simple fact is that a great many people own monogrammed handkerchiefs, or shirts, or suitcases, or dispatch cases, or whatever. And if a man named Benjamin Franklin who has the initials B. F. on his bags and his shirts and his underwear and maybe tattooed on his forehead should suddenly register in a hotel as George Washington, a curious clerk might wonder whether or not Benjy came by his B. F. luggage in an illegal manner. Since a man using an assumed name is a man who is not anxious to attract attention, he will do everything possible to make things easier for himself. And so he will use the initials of his real name in choosing an alias.

  One of the mailboxes carried a nameplate for a person called Christopher Talley.

  It sounded phony, and it utilized the C. T. initials, and so Hawes made a mental note of the apartment number: 6B.

  Then he pressed the bell for apartment 2A, waited for the answering buzz that released the inner door lock, and rapidly climbed the steps to the sixth floor. Outside apartment 6B, he put his ear to the door and listened. Inside the apartment, a man was talking.

  “Barbara,” the man said, “I brought you some more flowers.”

  In the police sedan, Carella said, “I don’t get it, Bert. I just don’t get it.”

  “What’s the trouble?” Kling asked.

  “No trouble. Only confusion. We find a pair of hands, and the blood group is identified as ‘O,’ right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. Mike Chirapadano is in that blood group. He’s also a big guy, and he vanished last month, and so that would make him a good prospect for the victim, am I right?”

  “Right,” Kling said.

  “Okay. But when we find the clothes the murderer was wearing, it turns out they belonged to Mike Chirapadano. So it turns out that he’s a good prospect for the murderer, too.”

  “Yeah?” Kling said.

  “Yeah. Then we get a line on Bubbles Caesar’s hideout, the place she and Chirapadano used, the place we’re going to right now—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah; and it turns out the phone is listed for Charles Tudor, Bubbles’s agent. Now how does that figure?”

  “There’s 1611 up ahead,” Kling said.

  Standing in the hallway, Hawes could hear only the man’s voice, and the voice definitely belonged to Charles Tudor. He wondered whether or not he should crash the apartment. Scarcely daring to breathe, trying desperately to hear the girl’s replies, he kept his ear glued to the wood of the door, listening.

  “Do you like the flowers, Barbara?” Tudor said.

  There was a pause. Hawes listened, but could hear no reply.

  “I didn’t know whether or not you liked gardenias, but we have so many of the others in here. Well, a beautiful woman should have lots of flowers.”

  Another pause.

  “You do like gardenias?” Tudor said. “Good. You look beautiful today, Barbara. Beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking so beautiful. Did I tell you about the police?”

  Hawes listened for the reply. He thought instantly of Marla Phillips’s tiny voice, and he wondered if all big girls were naturally endowed with the same voices. He could not hear a word.

  “You don’t want to hear about the police?” Tudor said. “Well, they came to see me again yesterday. Asking about you and me. And Mike. And asking whether or not I owned a black raincoat and umbrella. I told them I didn’t. That’s the truth, Barbara. I really don’t own a black raincoat, and I’ve never liked umbrellas. You didn’t know that, did you? Well, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me. I’m a very complex person. But we have lots of time. You can learn all about me. You look so lovely. Do you mind my telling you how beautiful you look?”

  This time, Hawes heard something.

  But the sound had come from behind him, in the hallway.

  He whirled, drawing his .38 instantly.

  “Put up the gun, Cotton,” Carella whispered.

  “Man, you scared the hell out of me!” Hawes whispered back. He peered past Carella, saw Kling standing there behind him.

  “Tudor in there?” Carella asked.

  “Yeah. He’s with the girl.”

  “Bubbles?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay, let’s break it open,” Carella said.

  Kling took up a position to the right of the door, Hawes to the left. Carella braced himself and kicked in the lock. The door swung open. They burst into the room with their guns in their hands, and they saw Charles Tudor on his knees at one end of the room. And then they saw what was behind Tudor, and each of the men separately felt identical waves of shock and terror and pity, and Carella knew at once that they would not need their guns.

  The room was filled with flowers. Bouquets of red roses and white roses and yellow roses, smaller bouquets of violets, long-stemmed gladioli, carnations, gardenias, rhododendron leaves in waterfilled vases. The room was filled with the aroma of flowers—fresh flowers and dying flowers, flowers that were new, and flowers that had lost their bloom. The room was filled with the overwhelming scent of flowers and the overwhelming stench of something else.

  The girl, Bubbles Caesar, lay quite still on the table around which the flowers were massed. Her black hair trailed behind her head, her long body was clad only in a nightgown, her slender hands were crossed over her bosom. A ruby necklace circled her throat. She lay on the table and stared at the ceiling, and she saw nothing, because she was stone c
old dead and she’d been that way for a month and her decomposing body stank to high heaven.

  Tudor, on his knees, turned to look at the detectives.

  “So you found us,” he said quietly.

  “Get up, Tudor.”

  “You found us,” he repeated. He looked at the dead girl again. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” he asked of no one. “I’ve never known anyone as beautiful as she.”

  In the closet, they found the body of a man. He was wearing only his undershorts. Both of his hands had been amputated.

  The man was Mike Chirapadano.

  Oh, he knew that she was dead; he knew that he had killed them both. They stood around him in the squadroom, and they asked their questions in hushed voices because it was all over now and, killer or not, Charles Tudor was a human being, a man who had loved. Not a cheap thief, and not a punk, only a murderer who had loved. But yes, he knew she was dead. Yes, he knew that. Yes, he knew he had killed her, killed them both. He knew.

  And yet, as he talked, as he answered the almost whispered questions of the detectives, it seemed he did not know, it seemed he wandered from the cruel reality of murder to another world, a world where Barbara Cesare was still alive and laughing. He crossed the boundary line into this other world with facility, and then recrossed it to reality, and then lost it again until there were no boundaries any more, there was only a man wandering between two alien lands, a native of neither, a stranger to both.

  “When they called me from the club,” he said, “when Randy Simms called me from the club, I didn’t know what to think. Barbara was usually very reliable. So I called her apartment, the one she shared with the other girls, and I spoke to one of her roommates, and the roommate told me she hadn’t seen her since early that morning. This was the twelfth, February twelfth; I’ll remember that day as long as I live, it was the day I killed Barbara.”

  “What did you do after you spoke to the roommate, Mr. Tudor?”

  “I figured perhaps she’d gone to the other apartment, the one on Canopy Street.”