by McBain, Ed
“Good,” she said.
“You wish your hands untied?”
“Yes.”
“And your feet, too?”
“Yes.”
“No,” he said, and laughed. “Your feet will stay as they are. I’m going to cut the adhesive that is holding your hands behind your back. Please don’t try to strike out at me when your hands are free. Seriously, I will use the scalpel if I have to. I want your promise. Otherwise, I’ll throw the soup in the toilet bowl and forget about feeding you.”
“I promise,” she said.
“And about screaming. Seriously, no one will hear you but me. I advise you not to scream. I become violent.”
He said the words so earnestly, so matter-of-factly that she believed him at once.
“I won’t scream,” she said.
“It will be better,” he said, and cut the tape on her hands. She was tempted to reach up for the blindfold at once, pull the blindfold loose—but she remembered the scalpel again.
“Is that better?” he said.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Come,” he said, and pulled her to the wall, and propped her against it. She sat with her hands in her lap while he spoon-fed her. The soup was delicious. She did not know what kind of soup it was, but she tasted what she thought were meatballs in it, and noodles, and celery. She kept her hands folded in her lap, opening her mouth to accept the spoon each time it touched her lips. He made small sounds of satisfaction as she ate the soup, and when at last he said, “All gone, Augusta,” it was rather like a father talking to a small child.
“Thank you,” she said. “That was very good.”
“Am I taking good care of you, Augusta?”
“Yes, you are. The soup was very good,” she said.
“Thank you. I’m trying to take very good care of you.”
“You are. But…”
“But you would like to be free.”
She hesitated. Then, very softly, she said, “Yes.”
“Then I will free you,” he said.
“What?”
“Did you not hear me?”
“Yes, but…”
“I will free you, Augusta.”
“You’re joking,” she said. “You’re trying to torment me.”
“No, no, I will indeed free you.”
“Please, will you?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Oh God, thank you. And when you let me go, I promise I won’t—”
“Let you go?” he said.
“Yes, you—”
“No, I didn’t say I would let you go.”
“You said—”
“I said I would free you. I meant I would untie your feet.”
“I thought—”
“You’re interrupting again, Augusta.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Why did you marry him, Augusta?”
“I…please, I…please, let me go. I promise I won’t tell anyone what you—”
“I’m going to untie your feet,” he said. “The door has a deadbolt on it. From either side, it can be opened only with a key. Do not run for the door when I untie you.”
“No. No, I won’t,” she said.
She heard the tape tearing, and suddenly her ankles were free.
“I’m going to take off the blindfold now,” he said. “There are no windows in the room, there is only the door, that is all. It would be foolish for you to try to escape before the ceremony, Augusta, but—”
“What ceremony?” she asked at once.
“You constantly interrupt,” he said.
“I’m sorry. But what—”
“I don’t think you will try to escape,” he said.
“That’s right, I won’t try to escape. But what cere—”
“Still, I must be gone part of the day, you know. I’m a working man, you know. And though the door will be locked, I could not risk your somehow opening it, and getting out of the room, and running down to the street.”
“I wouldn’t do that. Really,” she said, “I—”
“Still, I must protect myself against that possibility,” he said, and laughed.
She smelled a familiar aroma, and started to back away from the sound of his voice, and collided with the wall, and was trying to rip the tape from her eyes when he pulled her hands away and clapped the chloroform-soaked rag over her nose and her mouth again. She screamed. She screamed at the top of her lungs.
But no one came to help her.
At 8:00 on Tuesday morning, as Carella, Kling, and Fat Ollie Weeks were wading through record folders at the Identification Section downtown, Arthur Brown took a call in the squadroom of the 87th.
“Detective Brown?” The Gaucho said.
“Yes, Palacios, what’ve you got?”
“Maybe something, maybe not.”
“Let me hear.”
“You know La Via de Putas?”
“I know it.”
“There’s a place there called Mama Inez, eh?”
“Yes, I know the place.”
“Okay. Was last night a guy in there with one of the hookers, eh? And he drinks too much, he tells the girl he finally has his revenge now. She says, ‘What revenge now, what are you talking about, eh?’ And he tells her, his revenge on a cop.”
“What cop?”
“He doesn’t tell her this.”
“What’s the guy’s name?”
“He’s a regular there, he goes every Monday night, he always asks for a black girl. He digs black girls, eh? It doesn’t matter she’s fat, she’s skinny, she’s bald. She just has to be black.”
“Black is beautiful,” Brown said dryly. “What’s his name?”
“His name is Anthony Hill. Mama Inez don’t know where he lives, but she thinks it’s up in Riverhead, eh? He’s a married man, so like if you go knocking on his door, don’t mention you found out about him from a lady who runs a whorehouse.”
“Yeah, thanks, Palacios.”
“Let me know if it turns out good, eh?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Brown hung up, and walked to where Meyer Meyer was sitting at his desk leafing through Kling’s arrest folders. “Meyer, that was The Gaucho,” he said. “Guy in Mama Inez’s place last night, told one of the girls he’d finally got his revenge on some cop. Think it’s worth a try?”
“Right now,” Meyer said, “anything’s worth a try.”
The telephone directory listed an Anthony Phillip Hill at 1148 Lowery Drive in Riverhead. The detectives drove uptown and crosstown, and pulled up in front of the yellow brick apartment building at a little past 9:00. The row of mailboxes in the lobby informed them A. P. Hill was in Apartment 44. They took the elevator up to the fourth floor and knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” a woman called.
“Police,” Brown said.
“Police?” she answered. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
She opened the door and peered out into the corridor. She was a slatternly brunette in her late thirties, her hair in curlers, her dark eyes narrow with suspicion. She looked first at Brown and then at Meyer, and then said, “You’ve got badges, I suppose.”
“We’ve got badges,” Brown said wearily, and flashed the tin. The woman studied the shield carefully, as though certain Brown was an imposter. When she was satisfied that she was indeed looking at a detective’s shield, she turned to Meyer and said, “Where’s yours?”
“Why?” Meyer said. “Isn’t his good enough?”
“I don’t let nobody in this apartment without identification,” the woman said.
Meyer sighed and took a small leather case from his hip pocket. He opened this to his shield and his ID card, and as the woman studied them he said, “We’re looking for a man named Anthony Hill. Would he be home right now?”
“He would not be home right now,” the woman said.
“Okay to put this away?” Meyer asked.
“Yes, I guess you’re a
cop,” she said.
“Are you Mrs. Hill?” Brown asked.
“Agnes Hill,” she said, and nodded.
“Know where we can find your husband?”
“He’s at work. Why do you want him?”
“Mrs. Hill, has your husband ever been in trouble with the law?”
“Never. What do you mean? Tony? Never. The law? Never. What do you mean? Trouble with the law?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Never.”
“Where does he work?”
“At the market on Meridian and Folger. He’s the manager at the market there. What do you mean, trouble with the law? What kind of trouble with the law?”
“With a policeman,” Meyer said.
“A policeman?”
“A cop,” Brown said.
“Anthony Phillip Hill is a law-abiding citizen,” his wife said.
Anthony Phillip Hill was a man in his middle forties, with a round moon face, ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, bushy brown eyebrows, and a head not quite as bald as Meyer Meyer’s, but getting there fast. He was wearing a long white apron, and he expressed no surprise when the detectives came into the supermarket. Both Brown and Meyer automatically assumed his wife had telephoned ahead to warn him they were on the way. Hill did not even faintly resemble the thin blond man in the photographs taken at the church, but the detectives could not dismiss him on this count alone. The possibility existed that the man in the photographs had been hired to abduct Augusta—a slim possibility, true, but they recognized it as such, and were merely trying to touch all bases in a game they were still losing. Anthony Hill had mentioned to a prostitute that he’d finally got his revenge on a cop. That’s why they were there; Kling was a cop.
“I’ll get right to it, Mr. Hill,” Brown said. “Last night you were with a hooker in a whorehouse on—”
“Excuse me,” Hill said, “but last night I was here taking inventory.”
“No, last night you were—”
“I take inventory every Monday night,” Hill said.
“Sure,” Brown said. “But last night you were in a house of prostitution run by a fat old broad named Mama Inez, and that’s downtown on Mason Avenue, otherwise known as La Via de Putas, which translates into English as The Street of Whores. Now, that’s where you were last night, Mr. Hill, so let’s stop waltzing around, okay, and get down to business.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Hill said. “I certainly hope you didn’t tell any of this to my wife.”
“No, not yet, we haven’t told any of this to your wife,” Meyer said, and there was such a note of ominous warning in his voice that Hill turned to him immediately. The two men looked at each other. “That’s right,” Meyer said, and nodded. “So you want to talk to us, or what?”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Who’s this cop you got your revenge on?” Brown asked.
“What?”
“He a cop who arrested you one time?”
“You ever been in trouble with the law?” Meyer said.
“Of course not,” Hill said.
“We can check,” Meyer said.
“So check.”
“You’ve never been arrested, huh?”
“Never.”
“Then who’s the cop you were talking about?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You were drunk last night, and you told this hooker you’d finally got your revenge on some cop. Now, who’s the cop?”
“Oh,” Hill said.
“Yeah, oh. Who is he?”
“It’s the cop here.”
“Where?”
“Here. On the beat here.”
“What’s his name?”
“Cassidy. Patrolman Cassidy.”
“What about him?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got plenty of time.”
It really was a long story. It was also a boring story. It was pointless, too, and a remarkable waste of time. They fidgeted while they listened to it. When Hill ended the story, there was a long pregnant silence. Then Brown said, “Let me get this straight.”
“Yes, sir,” Hill said.
“This cop Cassidy is new on the beat.”
“Yes, sir. He’s been here for two months now.”
“And he’s begun giving you static about the boxes out back.”
“Yes, sir. The corrugated-cardboard cartons. The cartons the merchandise arrives in. We use some of them at the checkout for when people have bottles or—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Brown said.
“—other heavy items that might tear a bag.”
“Yeah. So what you used to do, if I understand this correctly—”
“That’s right,” Hill said, and nodded.
“—what you used to do before Cassidy came on the beat, what you used to do was pile the cartons out back there every day, and your garbage man would come pick them up on Mondays and Thursdays.”
“That’s right,” Hill said, and nodded again. “But Cassidy said it was a violation.”
“It is a violation,” Meyer said.
“That’s what Cassidy said,” Hill said.
“He was right. It’s a violation to have those boxes standing out there all the time unless it’s the day the garbage man is coming to pick them up. That’s a fire hazard, all those cartons standing out there.”
“Yes, that’s what Cassidy said.”
“So what happened?”
“He wrote a ticket, and I had to go to court, and it cost me a fifty-dollar fine. I told the judge I’d been stacking my cartons out there since the beginning of time and nobody’s said anything about it, and the judge said, ‘Well, it’s a violation, and we can’t fault the splendid work this police officer has done.’ That’s what the judge said.”
“He was right,” Meyer said. “It is a violation.”
“That’s what the judge said, and also what Cassidy said,” Hill said.
“So now,” Brown said, “if I understand this correctly…”
“What I do now is I keep the cartons inside, except on the days the garbage man is coming. We’ve got this storeroom just to the right of the meat counter, if you’d like to see it…”
“No, that’s all right,” Brown said.
“It’s where I keep the cartons now, except on Mondays and Thursdays, when I put them outside for the garbage man.”
“That would be proper,” Meyer said. “That wouldn’t be a violation.”
“What I don’t understand is how you got your revenge on Cassidy,” Brown said.
“Oh, that was a hot one,” Hill said, and chuckled, remembering it all over again.
“Would you mind explaining it again, please?”
“Not at all,” Hill said, still chuckling. “I didn’t put the cartons out.”
“I understand that. What you do is you put them out on Mondays and Thursdays when the—”
“No, no.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then, what?” Brown said.
“I didn’t put them out at all! I got the idea last month. What’s today’s date?”
“Tuesday, the eleventh,” Meyer said.
“Right. I got the idea on October twenty-fourth, the day after I paid the fifty-dollar fine. That was when I stopped putting out the cartons. Because Cassidy comes around to check, you know. He comes around to make sure there’s nothing out back there except on Mondays and Thursdays, when the garbage man is coming. The twenty-fourth was a Thursday, and I stopped putting out the cartons on that day, even though the garbage man was coming. And I didn’t put them out the following Monday, either. Nor the Thursday after that, nor the Monday after…”
“I get the idea,” Brown said.
“Five whole garbage collections!” Hill said, and burst out laughing. “Five whole collections, I didn’t put the cartons out! And Cassidy snooping around out back there to make sure I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but not a carton in sigh
t for him to see. You know why?”
“Why?” Meyer asked.
“Because I had them all in the storeroom! I wouldn’t put them out! I was hoarding those cardboard cartons as if they were made of solid gold.”
“Then what?” Brown said.
“Then yesterday was Monday. Garbage collection day, right?”
“Right.”
“I hauled out those cartons. I carried them out of the storeroom. I did it personally. Hundreds of cartons. Thousands of them! I piled them up out back. It looked like a fortress out back there. Cassidy walked by about ten o’clock in the morning, before the garbage truck got here. His teeth almost fell out of his mouth. I could see him trying to figure out whether it was a violation or not, but I knew it wasn’t, I was doing everything according to the letter. Oh God,” Hill said, and began laughing again, “you should have seen the look on Cassidy’s face.”
“So that was your revenge,” Brown said.
“Yes, sir. That was my revenge.”
“But didn’t all those boxes piled up in the storeroom cause a problem?”
“Oh sure,” Hill said. “Could hardly get anything else in there. But it was worth it, believe me. Just seeing the look on Cassidy’s face, it was worth all the inconvenience.”
“Revenge is sweet,” Brown said dryly.
“Yes, sir, it most certainly is,” Hill said, beaming.
Judging from the photographs taken inside the church, they were possibly (but only possibly) looking for a white Caucasian male, approximately five feet seven or eight inches tall, twenty-five to thirty years old, with light eyes, no visible scars, wearing a dark suit, a white shirt, a narrow dark tie, and a dark overcoat. None of the photos had been close-ups, but Alexander Pike had blown them up for the police, and the enlargements showed some wrinkles around the man’s eyes and mouth, which had caused them to estimate his age slightly higher than a perusal of the smaller prints had at first led them to believe. The height was strictly surmise; the man was sitting in all of the photographs and an exact height was impossible to ascertain, but judging from the size of his head and trunk, the educated guess put him in the medium-height range. The overcoat was folded on his lap and visible in only two of the pictures, both of which had been shot from the side aisle, directly across the pew in which the blond man was sitting as Augusta came down the center aisle.
