Money, Money, Money

by Ed McBain

  Escovar looked at him blankly.

  “Answer the question, Pancho.”

  “My name iss Manuel,” Escovar said.

  “Answer the fuckin question!”

  “Slow down, Ollie,” Carella warned.

  “Never mind that man behind the curtain,” Ollie said, jerking his thumb at Carella. “He’s just being Good Cop. I’m theBad Cop, Pancho, you dig? And in a minute I’m gonna ask you for your green card.”

  “I hass a green card.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you do.”

  “I hass it home.”

  “I’m sure that’s just where you have it. How’d you know they were Miss Ridley’s girlfriends?”

  “They tole me they wass.”

  “Oh? When was this? When they carried her out of the fuckin elevator? They stopped and told you they were all good girlfriends here, is that it?”

  “Sí,that wass when.”

  “You’re lying, Pancho.”

  “That wass when.”

  “You sure it wasn’t when they camein?”

  Escovar looked at Carella again.

  “Don’t look at him, he ain’t gonna help you. What’d they do, slip you a few bills to let them upstairs without buzzing the apartment?”

  Escovar went pale.

  “That’s it, ain’t it, Pancho?”

  “They had a bahl of champagne,” Escovar said. “They tole me it wass her burr’day. They said they wass good frenns, they wann to sorprise her.”

  “How much did they give you?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  “To let them in, huh?”

  “They said they wass frenns.”

  “Some friends, they stuck a fuckin ice pick in her head. What was she wearing, Pancho?”

  “I tole you. Overcoats.”

  “MissRidley.What wasshe wearing when they carried her out of there? She wasn’t naked, was she?”

  “Naked? No. A gray suit. Jacket, skirt, a suit.”

  “Was she wearing shoes?” Carella asked.

  “Shoes?” Escovar said, looking offended. “Of course, shoes,señor. The two gorlfrenns walk her by where I am holdin dee door open for them, out in the street. I thought she wass drunk,” he said. “I thought it wass dee champagne. I wash them …”

  He watched them as they walked up the street to a black Lincoln Town Car parked just outside the Korean nails place. Both of the girls got in the back seat with Miss Ridley. The car drove off around five, five-fifteen.

  “Chauffeur driving the car?”

  “I theenk so, yes.”

  “You didn’t happen to notice the license plate number, did you?” Carella asked.

  “I’m sorry,señor,” Escovar said. “I did not.”

  It was too early for Christmas presents.

  OR MAYBE NOT .

  At nine that night, when Carella went back to the squadroom to check on any phone calls and to sign out, there was a message that a detective named John Murphy had called to say he’d run the prints he’d lifted from the vic’s apartment and had got hits on an Army lieutenant named Cassandra Jean Ridley and a guy named Wilbur Colley Struthers who’d taken a burglary fall in this city seven years ago. Struthers had dropped the better part of a five-and-dime at Castleview before getting released on parole two years ago. His last known address was 1117 South Twelfth …

  “Right up there in the Eight-Seven,” Murphy said. “Now ain’tthat a stroke of luck?”

  Carella figured maybe it was.

  HE WENT THERE with three other detectives as backup; the man was a convicted felon whose fingerprints had been found all over the vic’s apartment. The building on South Twelfth was a brick walkup, no doorman. The name under the doorbell was W. Struthers. Carella rang every other doorbell in the row. To the first voice that erupted on the speaker, he said, “Police, want to buzz me in, please?”

  “What?” the voice said.

  “Detective Carella, Eighty-seventh Squad,” he said. “Please buzz me in, sir.”

  “What is it?”

  “We need access to the roof. Buzz us in, sir.”

  “But what is it?”

  “An air vent,” Carella said.

  Hawes shook his head, suppressed a smile. The buzz sounded a moment later.

  “Thank you, sir,” Carella said to the speaker, and the four detectives entered the building. Hawes was still shaking his head and smiling. Outside the door to 2C, Carella put his ear to the wood. Meyer was behind him, on his right. Brown was standing to the left of the door. This was ten o’clock on the Saturday night before Christmas, the building was alive with sound. Radios and television sets going, toilets flushing, people talking behind closed doors, there was a city in miniature inside the walls of this building. They had no warrant, hadn’t even bothered to approach a judge for one because they’d felt certain Struthers’ fingerprints alone would not constitute probable cause for arrest. They had to hope that the man inside there did not bolt for a window the minute they knocked on the door and announced themselves as policemen. Like most cops, they considered burglars—even convicted burglars—people who were not particularly dangerous. The “Burglars-Are-Gents” myth persisted, even though a surprised burglar could turn as violent as any other thief in the world.

  There was music behind the closed door, coming from either a radio, an audio system, or a TV set, Carella couldn’t tell which. Christmas music. He kept listening. He heard nothing but the music.

  He turned to the others, shrugged.

  Nobody said anything.

  They all stood there with drawn weapons pointing up at the ceiling. Meyer Meyer, bald and blue-eyed and burly, looking patient and attentive and somewhat bored, to tell the truth; Cotton Hawes standing tall and square and redheaded, a white streak in the temple over his left ear, memento of an assailant whose name he’d long since forgotten, still looking amused by Carella’s doorbell bullshit; Arthur Brown resembling nothing so much as a dark, scowling Sherman tank. Stalwarts of the law. Waiting for a signal either to come down the chimney or go home.

  Carella shrugged again, knocked on the door.

  There was silence except for the music, and then, “Yes?”

  A man’s voice.

  “Police,” Carella said, what the hell.

  “Shit, what is itthis time?” the man said.

  They heard footsteps approaching the door. Heard a lock turning, tumblers falling, a chain coming off. The door opened wide. The man inside backed away the instant he saw four guys standing outside there with guns in their hands. He was about six feet tall in his bare feet, Carella guessed, wearing blue jeans and a brown woolen sweater with the sleeves shoved up to his elbows. His hair was a muddy blond color and his eyes were blue, opened wide now in either fear or surprise or both. A Christmas special was on the television set behind him.

  “For Christ’s sake, don’t shoot,” he said, and threw his hands up alongside his head. The cops in the hallway suddenly felt like horses’ asses.

  “Okay to come in?” Carella asked, and showed the tin.

  “Yes, fine, come in,” the man said, his hands still up. “Just watch how you handle them pieces, okay?”

  “Your name Struthers?” Brown asked.

  “Yes, sir, that’s my name,” Struthers said.

  “Wilbur Struthers?”

  “But you can call me Will, sir. Is this the kidnapping again?”

  “What kidnapping?” Carella asked at once.

  The detectives were maneuvering so that he was the center of a loose circle, their guns still drawn, nobody even dreaming of holstering them now that they’d heard the word “kidnapping,” which was a federal offense that carried with it the death penalty.

  “Is it the President’s been kidnapped?” Struthers asked, and Carella thought, Oh dear, we’ve got ourselves a nutcase here, but he still didn’t put up the gun.

  “Know anybody named Cassandra Jean Ridley?” he asked.

  Recognition flashed in Struthers’ eyes.

  �
�Do you know her?” Carella asked.

  “I have met her, yes. But I do notknow her, sirs. I would not say I trulyknowher. Excuse me, Officers, but it’s been my experience that when there are firearms on the scene, one of them is bound to go off, either because of undue excitement or some other impulse of the moment. So, if it’s all right with you, I’d appreciate it …”

  “How’d your fingerprints get in her apartment?” Carella asked.

  “Her goods and her money have already been returned,” Struthers said.

  The detectives looked at each other.

  “What goods? What money?” Carella asked.

  “I gave it all back to her yesterday,” Struthers said.

  “What are you saying?”

  “He’s saying he burglarized the joint,” Brown said.

  “Is that it?”

  “No, no. There was a misunderstanding, that’s all,” Struthers said.

  “What kind of misunderstanding?”

  “Two of her furs came into my possession, was all. And a little cash, too. But everything was returned to her yesterday. Officers, if you think I’m armed and dangerous, why not simply frisk me, so I can put my hands down?”

  Hawes frisked him. He was still smiling. He was finding all of this somehow very comical. He nodded okay to the other detectives. They all holstered their guns except Brown, who had grown up in a neighborhood where people sometimes hid weapons up their asses. Struthers lowered his hands. He looked relieved.

  “When yesterday?” Carella asked.

  Struthers blinked at him, puzzled.

  “Did you return her stuff?” Carella explained.

  “Oh. She came here around ten-thirty in the morning.”

  “How’d she know where to find you?”

  “I think through my eyeglasses,” Struthers said.

  Carella was still thinking the man was a bit off his rocker. Hawes was still smiling. Brown still had his gun in his hand. Meyer was wondering what the man had meant about a kidnapping.

  “What kidnapping?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, through your eyeglasses?” Carella asked.

  “I think she may have found my eyeglasses. She said she was delivering my eyeglasses.”

  “Found them where?” Carella asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What kidnapping?” Meyer asked again.

  “The man from the Secret Service said there’d been a kidnapping.”

  Next comes the CIA giving him instructions, Carella thought. Through his radio or his television set.

  “Said the President had been kidnapped?” he asked.

  “No, that wasmy notion.”

  “Youthought the President had been kidnapped.”

  “Well, why else the Secret Service?”

  Why else indeed? Carella thought.

  Hawes was still smiling. Nodding his head and smiling. This was turning out to be a very amusing evening after all. Meyer was thinking if the Secret Service had really been here, then maybe someone in the White House had really been kidnapped. Brown was beginning to think along the same lines as Carella: the man was a loonie. He kept his gun in his hand, just in case.

  “When was the Secret Service here?” Meyer asked.

  “Day before yesterday,” Struthers said, “around four in the afternoon. And he came back again that night, around ten, ten-thirty.”

  “Who was this? Did he give you a name?”

  “Yes, sir, he did. Special Agent David A. Horne. With an ‘e.’ ”

  “Show you any ID?”

  “Showed me his badge, yes, sir.”

  “What’d it look like?”

  “You know that gold star the Texas Rangers carry? It looked a lot like that.”

  “And he told you he was with the Secret Service, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir. The U.S. Treasury Department.”

  “What’d he want here?”

  “He said a hundred-dollar bill I’d spent earlier in the day had serial numbers that matched the ones paid as ransom in a kidnapping. Which is why I thought it might be the President, the Secret Service and all.”

  “Naturally,” Carella said.

  “He took the rest of the money with him,” Struthers said.

  “The rest ofwhat money?” Hawes asked.

  “The money that was part of the misunderstanding between me and the Ridley woman.”

  “The money youburglarized,” Brown said, and waved the nine for emphasis.

  Struthers looked at the gun.

  “I’m not admitting to any burglary here,” he said. “Or anything else.”

  “Like what?” Carella asked.

  “Like anything at all,” Struthers said.

  “Maybe you’d like to tell us how your prints got in her apartment,” Brown said.

  “I took down her drapes,” Struthers said.

  Carella tried to remember if there’d been any drapes in the dead woman’s apartment.

  “Because I was going to paint the place for her,” Struthers said. “Which is why I thought she wanted the furs moved. So they wouldn’t get any paint on them.” He nodded to the detectives, seeking approval and encouragement. “That was the misunderstanding,” he said.“I thought she wanted the furs moved, whereasshe didn’t want them moved.”

  “How about the money?” Brown asked.

  “That, too,” Struthers said.

  “You didn’t want to get paint all over the money, is that it?”

  “Exactly. There was just a misunderstanding, is all. She didn’t know I was planning to move it, you see.”

  “Maybe she thought you’d be painting the place green.”

  “Huh?” Struthers said.

  “The color of money.”

  “No, no …”

  “In which case it wouldn’t’ve mattered if you got paint all over it.”

  “No, it was beige.”

  “Which made a difference, of course.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you moved the furs and the cash before you took down the drapes and got your fingerprints all over everything.”

  “Well … yes.”

  “Man, you are so full of shit,” Brown said.

  “It wouldn’t have been eight thousand in cash, would it?” Carella asked.

  “The money was returned to her,” Struthers said. “And I didn’t kill her.”

  Whoa now, Carella thought.

  “Who said anything about her beingdead?” he asked.

  “Television,” Struthers said.

  They all looked at him.

  “I saw you and some fat cop on television early this morning. At the zoo? Where some lady got tossed to the lions? That was her, wasn’t it? That’s what this is all about, ain’t it?”

  THE MAN THEY KNEW ONLY as Frank Holt was waiting in the other room while they tasted and tested the cocaine. What he was selling them here was a hundred kilos divided into ten-kilo packets. He was getting a million-nine for the lot, so they wanted to make sure it was good stuff. If it was anything but what he’d advertised it to be, they would kill him. He knew that, he was no fool.

  The apartment they were in was a second-floor walkup on Decatur and Eighth. Tigo and Wiggy the Lid were in the second bedroom, such as it was. The man who called himself Frank was waiting outside, in what passed for a living room, chatting with a third man whose name was Thomas, and who was carrying a nine-millimeter Uzi. A radio playing rap music was on in the living room. Frank was the only white man in the apartment. He and Thomas were talking about recent movies they had seen. Thomas was saying he didn’t believe none of the gunplay shit in any of the so-called action-adventure movies because all that ricochet stuff and sparks flying and sound effects like zing zang zing was all full of shit. Most gun fights didn’t last an hour and a half, anyway. You shot somebody, he was either dead or gonna shoot you soyou were dead. Frank tended to agree, though he himself had never been in a gun fight. He admitted this to Thomas now.

  “You never shot nobody
?” Thomas said.

  “Never,” Frank said.