by McBain, Ed
“Some fuckin’ weather, huh?” Danny said.
“Miserable.”
“How you been, Steve?”
“Okay. And you?”
“The leg bothers me, this kind of weather. I was born too soon, Steve. If there’d been the Salk shots when I was a kid, I never would’ve got polio, huh?” He shrugged. “Well, what can you do? I ought to move out to Arizona, someplace like that. This fuckin’ rain, it really gets in my bones. Anyway, listen, who wants to hear about my misery, huh? What’s on your mind, Steve?”
“Why’d you ask for a fallback, Danny?”
“Aw, no reason. I’m just getting cautious in my old age, that’s all.”
“Somebody leaning on you?”
“No, no. Well, look, yeah, I’ll tell you the truth, there’s somebody thinks I did a number on him, and the word is he says he’s gonna break my other leg if he catches up with me. He thinks I limp cause I had a broken leg once, he don’t know it’s from polio. The funny thing is I never said a word about this guy to anybody, I swear to God.”
“Who’s the guy?” Carella asked.
“His name is Nick Archese, he’s a fuckin’ two-bit gambler, he thinks he’s a tough guy. I’ll tell you the truth, Steve, you see this cane I’m carrying? You ever see me with a cane before?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Well, this cane is new, there’s a sword inside it. I mean it. You want to see the sword?”
“No,” Carella said.
“Archese comes after me, or even he sends one of his bums after me, there’s gonna be sliced salami on rye, I can tell you. One thing I ain’t gonna do is stand still while some bums jump up and down on my bones.”
“You want me to throw a scare at him?”
“How you gonna do that, Steve? You pick him up and muscle him around, he’s gonna know I work for you guys, am I right? That’ll only make the whole thing worse. Don’t worry about it, I can take care of it myself. Only, if you find somebody with a couple of sword holes in him, don’t come looking for me, okay?” Danny laughed, and then said, “So what is it? What can I do for you?”
“Do you know Bert Kling?” Carella asked. “Have you ever worked with him?”
“Yeah, sure. Tall blond guy?”
“Right. He got married yesterday.”
“Tell him congratulations.”
“Danny, his bride was snatched from their hotel room last night.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I’m saying.”
“That’s got to be a lunatic,” Danny said. “Snatch a cop’s wife? Got to be out of his mind.”
“Or maybe just angry. We were running through Kling’s arrest record early this morning. He sent up too many to count, Danny, we’d be on this all month if we had to track down all the guys who’ve been paroled and are on the streets again. But two of those guys look like possibilities, and we’re anxious to know what they’ve been up to.”
“What are their names?” Danny asked.
“First one is named Manny Baal. Kling busted him for Robbery Two a long time ago. He drew ten, served the full term, parole constantly denied because he’s such a bad apple. When he got convicted, he swore he’d kill Kling one day. Okay, he finally got out of jail last month, and we don’t know where he is.”
“Manny Baal, huh?”
“That’s his name.”
“How does he spell it?”
“B-a-a-l.”
“What is it—Manuel?”
“No, Manfred.”
“Okay, who’s the other guy?”
“The other guy is named Al Brice. Kling busted him on Christmas Eve almost three years ago. He’s a possibility, too, Danny.”
“How so?”
“Kling killed his brother.”
“Let me have the details, huh?”
“Kling was dating a girl whose boyfriend was doing time at Castleview. The Brice boys were pals of the con, and they promised to look after the girl while he was away. So they ganged Kling one night and beat him up—broke one of his ribs, in fact. He caught up with them on Christmas Eve. They were running a chicken barbecue joint on the South Side. They put up a struggle when he tried to make the collar, and he had to kill one of them. The other one got sent up for Assault Two, a Class D felony. He drew a fixed sentence of two and a half years because Kling was a cop and judges don’t like cops getting their heads beat in. Served his full time, got out this June.”
“And you think he might be gunning for Kling?”
“He’s got good reason.”
“Then why go for Kling’s wife?”
“Who knows? Danny, we’re trying for any kind of lead. So far, we haven’t heard a peep from whoever’s got her.”
“That don’t sound like a kidnapping then, does it?”
“Well…sometimes a ransom demand won’t come for days.”
“Mmm,” Danny said. “How does this guy spell his name?”
“Brice. B-r-i-c-e.”
“Al, you said?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that Alfred or Albert?”
“Albert.”
“Okay, I’ll give a listen. Anything else?”
“We need this fast, Danny. So far, we’re in the dark.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I hear,” Danny said.
“How are you fixed for cash?”
“I could use a double sawbuck, if that ain’t pressing you.”
Carella took out his wallet, and handed two ten-dollar bills to Danny. “About this guy who’s leaning on you…”
“I’ll take care of him, don’t worry,” Danny said. “You sure you don’t want to see my sword?”
The man Hal Willis went to see was a different kind of informer. His name was Fats Donner. He was a good informer and a terrible man. Willis didn’t like him, and neither did any of the other precinct detectives. But he had on occasions too numerous to count provided valuable information, and so he was tolerated. Even his penchant for steam baths was tolerated.
At 12:00 noon that Monday, Willis found Donner in a sauna cum massage parlor on Culver and Tenth. He had been trying to locate him since 9:00 that morning, and had gone to most of the legit emporiums before considering those that mixed steam with sex. For some reason, perhaps because Donner seemed so fanatically religious about losing weight, Willis simply assumed he never would contaminate or confuse his purpose. Sex, even in its handiest form, seemed something that Donner would engage in privately and perversely (his tastes running to rather young girls), and not in a public place where he was hoping to take off pounds.
The name of the joint was the Arabian Nights, and Willis was greeted in the lobby by a muscular black man wearing red velvet trousers, a black velvet vest with gold piping around the armholes, a red felt fez with a dangling tassel, one gold earring piercing his right earlobe, and a partridge in a pear tree.
“Welcome to the Arabian Nights,” the man said in a heavy Jamaican accent that immediately destroyed any Middle Eastern illusion. “Would you care to step into the King’s Harem, sir?”
Willis showed the man his shield.
The man said, “This is strictly massage and sauna, nothing else.”
“I’m sure,” Willis said.
“You can spot-check any of the rooms. You find one of our girls engaged in any unprofessional activity—”
“Which profession?” Willis asked.
“I mean it, officer. We are sincerely clean. Massage and sauna, that is it, mon.”
“I said I believe you. I’m looking for Fats Donner, would you know him?”
“Might he be a huge mountain of a mon?”
“He might.”
“You will find him in the sauna at the end of the hall. I suggest you undress and put on a towel, sir. It can get mighty hot inside there.”
“Thank you, I will.”
“If you’ll go through the harem, you’ll find lockers just beyond.”
“Thank you,” Willis said.
The
harem was draped with a dozen girls of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colors. Half of them were wearing blond wigs, it being an old wives’ tale that men visiting massage parlors preferred blondes. One or two of the girls were actually pretty. They were all wearing transparent houri pants, gold bracelets on their ankles, and black velvet vests similar to the one the black man outside had on. There was nothing but flesh under the open vests. A disparate array of breasts, running the gamut from the insignificant to the profound, greeted Willis as he entered the room and the girls turned to look at him.
“Just passing through,” he said.
“Big spender,” one of the girls said dryly.
He undressed in a room in which there were a dozen lockers without locks. Taking a towel from a neatly folded stack on a shelf opposite the lockers, he wrapped it securely around his waist, and then headed for the sauna at the end of the hall. In one hand he was carrying his wallet and a small leather case containing his shield and his ID card. In the other hand he was carrying his holstered .38-caliber Detective’s Special. He felt rather like a horse’s ass.
Fats Donner was a great white Buddha of a man sitting in one corner of the wooden sauna, a towel draped loosely over his midsection. His eyes were half closed when Willis came in. He opened his eyes all the way, recognized Willis, and said, “Close the door, man, you’ll let out all the heat.”
Willis closed the door. “I’ve been looking all over the goddamn city for you,” he said.
“So you found me, man,” Donner said.
They began talking about Manfred Baal and Albert Brice then.
The man was a Puerto Rican informer who operated a store that sold medicinal herbs, dream books, religious statues, numbers books, tarot cards, and the like. He also sold a wide variety of so-called marital aids, but he kept these in the back room of the shop and showed them only to special customers. His real name, or at least the name he was known by in the barrio, was Francisco Palacios, and this was the name lettered in gold leaf on the plate-glass window of his shop. But he was known as “The Gaucho” or “The Cowboy” to most of the cops with whom he did business. Only one cop called him “The Prick,” and that was Andy Parker, because once, three years before, Palacios had come up with some very choice information that would have cracked a big narcotics case and meant a promotion for Parker. But Palacios had refused to deliver the information to Parker because he didn’t like him, and had instead given the dope to another cop on the squad (Delgado, a Puerto Rican like Palacios himself), for which Palacios would always be “The Prick” in Andy Parker’s eyes and in his lexicon.
The Gaucho looked up as the bell over his door rang. It was raining outside, and he normally did a brisk trade on rainy days. But the man approaching the counter was not a customer. He was a black detective from the 87th Precinct, and his name was Arthur Brown, and The Gaucho had done business with him before.
“Good afternoon, señor,” he said. “Something I can help you with?”
“Let’s go in the back, Cowboy,” Brown said.
In the back room, surrounded by a sophisticated array of dildoes, French ticklers, open-crotch panties, vibrators (eight-inch and ten-inch), leather executioner’s masks, chastity belts, whips with leather thongs, and ben-wa balls in both plastic and gold plate, Brown described the two men they were looking for.
The Gaucho nodded, and said, “I try, eh?”
Fat Ollie Weeks came up to the squadroom at 2:00 that afternoon.
He was not to be confused with Fats Donner, not that he ever was. When they stood side by side (a proximity neither of the men had ever achieved), one could easily discern a sizable difference between them: Fat Ollie was fat in the singular; Fats Donner was fat in the plural. There were other differences as well. Fats Donner was an informer, but Fat Ollie Weeks was a detective working out of the Eight-Three. Fats Donner, because he could be found more often than not in the nearest neighborhood steam bath, was as clean as a whistle and smelled like a freshly bathed baby. Fat Ollie Weeks stank to high heaven, and those who stood close to him sometimes wondered why he did not draw flies. Fats Donner was a tolerant man; his friends over the years had included black girls, Mexican girls, Chinese girls, and (on one occasion) a full-blooded Cherokee Indian girl who was fifteen years old. Fat Ollie Weeks was a raging bigot. “Screw your sister?” he might have remarked to anyone of a duskier shade. “I won’t even drink your water!”
When Carella saw him walking toward the slatted rail divider that separated the squadroom from the corridor outside, he wanted to hide. The squadroom was as open as a flasher’s raincoat. Ollie came through the gate in the railing and walked heavily toward Carella’s desk, his hand extended.
“Hi there, Steve-a-reeno,” he said, and Carella winced. “What’s this I hear?”
“What do you hear?” Carella asked. Ollie had grasped his hand and was shaking it the way a terrier shakes a rodent. He dropped it suddenly, apparently mistaking it for dead, and immediately pulled a chair out from the desk near Carella’s. Drawing it up close to where Carella was sitting, Ollie lowered his voice and said, “Is it true about this guy Kling?”
“Yes,” Carella said. “Word travels fast, doesn’t it?”
“It’s all over the city. If you guys’re trying to keep it a secret or something, forget it.”
“Where’d you hear it?”
“Desk sergeant gave it to me. I’m gonna tell you something, Steve, case you don’t know it. The desk sergeants in this city, they’ve got like a party line, you understand me? You know, like in those movies about Vermont or New Hampshire, they show everybody gossiping on the party line? That’s what it is with the desk sergeants here in this city. A man farts in Midtown East, you can bet they’ll hear about it ten minutes later up at the Hun’ Third in Riverhead. That’s the way it works. Who’s this guy Kling, anyway? I don’t think I ever met him.”
“He’s a good cop,” Carella said simply.
“So he lets somebody steal his wife from right under his nose?” Ollie said, and snorted derogatively. “What is he, a Jew, this Kling? That sounds Jewish, Kling.”
“No, he’s not Jewish.”
“You sure? Some of these kikes, they try to make out they’re—”
“Ollie, we have all kinds of people in this squadroom,” Carella said, “and we don’t usually—”
“Oh sure, it takes all kinds,” Ollie said. “Kikes, spies, niggers…Listen, don’t you think I know? We got all kinds up at the Eight-Three, too.”
Carella sighed.
“So what’ve you got so far?” Ollie asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s what I figured. That’s why I come up here, figured I’d lend you guys a hand.”
“Well, we appreciate that, Ollie, but…”
“What would you guys do without me, huh?” Ollie said, and grinned.
“We’ve got the thing sort of organized, you know, so…”
“Yeah, how?”
“What do you mean, how?”
“How have you got it organized?” Ollie said, and then held out his left hand and with his right hand began ticking off points on his fingers. “Have you got the phone wired, and the phone company alerted? Have you put out bulletins and teletypes to all neighboring police forces, all airports, railroad stations, and bus depots? Have you checked your files for arrests Kling may have made in the past? Who’s still in jail? Who’s out on the street? Have you checked whether him or his new wife were fucking around with anybody else on the side? Either of them owe large sums of money to anybody? Any threatening letters or phone calls? Anybody lurking around in recent weeks? Or following either one of them? Anybody at the church or the reception who wasn’t invited? Did you do all those things, Steve?”
“Most of them. We know Kling pretty well, so some of them—”
“Yeah, you think you know somebody till you open the closet door and find the skeleton hanging there.”
“Well, I can tell you, for example, that Kling wasn’
t fooling around with anybody. He’s a one-woman man, he—”
“How about her?”
“Well, I didn’t ask him that.”
“So why don’t you ask him that?”
“Well, frankly, it would embarrass me to ask him something like that.”
“It wouldn’t embarrass me,” Ollie said. “You want me to ask him?”
“No.”
“It might be important.”
“I don’t think Augusta—”
“Is that her name?”
“Augusta, yes.”
“What was her maiden name?”
“Blair.”
“Augusta Blair, right,” Ollie said, and wrote the name down in his little black book. “Her parents at the wedding?”
“Her father was. Her mother is dead.”
“He live here in this city?”
“Seattle, Washington.”
“Does he know his daughter’s been snatched?” Ollie asked, writing.
“Yes.”
“Where’s he staying, Steve?”
“At the Hollister.”
“Any ransom demand yet?”
“No.”
“Not to either of them? Kling or the old man?”
“Nothing.”
“What time was she snatched?”
“Eleven-thirty last night.”
Ollie looked up at the clock. “Getting late for a ransom call, ain’t it?” he said.
“A little.”
“A lot,” Ollie said. “You wouldn’t have a copy of the guest list, would you?”
“Yeah, we picked one up at Kling’s apartment.”
“Can you get it Xeroxed for me? How many people were at the reception, anyway?”
“About two hundred.”
“All of them go to the church first?”
