by McBain, Ed
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The ceremony will be brief. By the time they locate the apartment, we’ll have finished.”
“They’ll find it sooner than you think,” Augusta said. “The kitchen window is broken. They’ll look for a broken window, and once they locate it on the outside of the building—”
“Who, Augusta?”
“Whoever heard me screaming. There’s a building right across the way, I saw windows on the wall there…”
“Yes, it used to be a hat factory. And, until recently, an artist was living there. But he moved out six months ago. The loft has been empty since.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“No.”
“You want me to think no one heard me.”
“Someone may have heard you, Augusta, it’s quite possible. But it really doesn’t matter. As I say, it will be quite some time before we’re found, even if you were heard. Augusta, do you like what I’ve done with your photographs? This didn’t just happen overnight, you know, I’ve been working on it for quite some time. Do you like it?”
“Why did you do all this?” she asked.
“Because I love you,” he said simply.
“Then let me go.”
“No.”
“Please. Please let me go. I promise I won’t—”
“No, Augusta, that’s impossible. Really, it’s quite impossible. We mustn’t even discuss it. Besides, it’s almost time for the ceremony, and if someone heard you screaming, as you pointed out—”
“If you really love me…”
“Ah, but I do.”
“Then let me go.”
“Why? So you can go back to him? No, Augusta. Come now. It’s time for your bath.”
“I don’t want a bath.”
“The article about you—”
“The hell with the article about me!”
“It said you bathed twice daily. You haven’t had a bath since I brought you here, Augusta.”
“I don’t want a goddamn bath!”
“Don’t you feel dirty, Augusta?”
“No.”
“You must bathe, anyway.”
“Leave me alone.”
“You must be clean for the ceremony. Get up, Augusta.”
“No.”
“Get off the floor.”
“Go fuck yourself,” she said.
The scalpel appeared suddenly in his hand. He smiled.
“Go ahead, use it,” she said. “You’re going to kill me, anyway, so what difference—?”
“If I use it now,” he said, “it will not be pleasant. I prefer not to use it in anger, Augusta. Believe me, if you provoke me further, I can make it very painful for you. I love you, Augusta, don’t force me to hurt you.”
They stared at each other across the length of the room.
“Please believe me,” he said.
“But however you kill me—”
“I do not wish to talk about killing you.”
“You said you were going to kill me.”
“Yes. I do not want to talk about it.”
“Why? Why are you going to kill me?”
“To punish you.”
“Punish me? I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you.”
“Then why do you want to punish me?”
“For what you did.”
“What did I do?”
“This is pointless. You are angering me. You should not have screamed. You frightened me.”
“When?”
“When? Just now. When I came into the apartment. You were screaming. You frightened me. I thought someone—”
“Yes, what did you think?”
“I thought someone had got in here and was…was trying to harm you.”
“But you yourself are going to harm me.”
“No,” he said, and shook his head.
“You’re going to kill me. You said you’re—”
“I want to bathe you now,” he said. “Come.” He held out his left hand. In the right hand he was holding the scalpel. “Come, Augusta.”
She took his hand, and he helped her to her feet. As they went through the apartment to the bathroom, she thought she should not have broken the window, she should not have screamed, she should not have done either of those things. The only thing to do with this man was humor him, listen to everything he said, nod, smile pleasantly, agree with him, tell him how nice it was to be in an apartment papered with pictures of herself. Stall for time, wait for Bert to get a line on him, because surely they were working on it right this minute. Wait it out, that was all. Patience. Forbearance. They’d be here eventually. She knew them well enough to know they’d be here.
“I could so easily hurt you,” he said.
She did not answer him. Calm and easy, she thought. Cool. Wait it out. Humor him.
“It is so easy to hurt someone,” he said. “Did I tell you my mother was killed by an intruder?”
“Yes.”
“That was a long time ago, of course. Come, we must bathe you, Augusta.”
In the bathroom, he poured bubble bath into the tub, and she watched the bubbles foaming up, and heard him behind her, tapping the blade of the scalpel against the edge of the sink.
“Do you know why I bought the bubble bath?” he asked. “Yes, because of the magazine article.”
“Is it true that you like bubble baths?”
“Yes.”
“I am going to bathe you now,” he said.
She suffered his hands upon her.
“Now that Baal is clean so far as this job that is concerning us,” Ollie said, “I’d like to move ahead on this other approach I’ve been working on.”
“Which approach is that?” Carella asked warily.
“I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with witnesses—”
“Well, just a little,” Carella said.
“—but I’ve had plenty of experience with them over the years,” Ollie said, completely missing Carella’s tone, “and I’d like to tell you one thing I learned.”
“What’s that?” Carella asked. Ollie was beginning to rankle. Sooner or later, Ollie always began to rankle. That’s because Ollie was bigoted, slovenly, opinionated, crude, insensitive, gross, humorless, unimaginative…No, that wasn’t true. Ollie was imaginative.
“You’ve got to help witnesses,” he said.
“Help them?” Carella said. “What do you mean?”
“This fellow Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home,” Ollie said.
“What about him?”
“He’s the only witness we’ve got. He saw a truck parked out there in the service courtyard, am I right? Isn’t that what he told you?”
“That’s right,” Carella said.
“Okay. Now, that is all we have to go on, Steve-a-reeno,” he said, and Carella winced. “We have got an old fart of a man who says he saw a white truck through a greasy window. That is right here in your report, m’friend, right here for one and all to see, ah, yes.” Carella winced again; if anything, Ollie was even more obnoxious when he was imitating W. C. Fields. “It also says in your report,” Ollie said, falling back into his natural voice, and tapping the typed sheets with his forefinger, “that old Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home doesn’t know what kind of truck it was, all he knows is it was a white truck. That is not much to go on, Steve-a-reeno. There must be hundreds of different kinds of white trucks in this city, am I right?”
“Right,” Carella said. “Yes, right. Right.”
“Which is where old Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home needs a little help.”
“Ollie, I wish you wouldn’t do that each time you mention the man.”
“Do what?” Ollie asked.
“Repeat the whole title of the song. It’s not necessary to do that each time you mention the man’s name. Let’s just call him Bill Bailey, okay? Because, to tell the truth, it’s beginning to r
ankle, your giving the full title of the song each time you mention—”
“You’ve got to keep calm,” Ollie said pleasantly. “Steve, you and the rest of the fellows up here are very nice guys, I mean that sincerely. But you ain’t thinking too clearly on this case, as witness the fact that you haven’t given old Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home any help. That’s because you’re all very close to Bert Kling, I can understand that. But you can’t allow that to muddle up your thinking, Steve. I mean that sincerely. Which is why it’s a good thing I’m on the case with you. We need a clear head around here. What I’m saying, Steve, is somebody’s got to keep this thing in perspective, and I guess that’s me.”
“I guess so,” Carella said, and sighed.
“How many different kinds of white trucks did you say were in the city?”
“I didn’t say,” Carella said.
“How many would you say?” Ollie asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Guess.”
“Ollie…”
“What time did I leave here this afternoon, would you remember that?” Ollie asked.
“Ollie, I wish you wouldn’t talk to me as if I were a suspect being interrogated,” Carella said. “If you have something to say, I wish you’d just say it straight out, instead of asking me leading questions designed to—”
“You mean to tell me you don’t remember what time I left here this afternoon?”
“It must’ve been about three-thirty,” Carella said, and sighed again.
“That’s right. Do you know where I went?”
“Where did you go?”
“I went to Ainsley Avenue, the stretch of Ainsley Avenue where all the automobile showrooms are. It took me ten minutes to get there. I went into each and every one of those showrooms, and that took me another twenty minutes, and then it took me ten minutes to get back here…”
“Ollie, I don’t need a timetable.”
“Do you know why I went to those showrooms, Steve?”
“Why?”
“To get these,” Ollie said, and lifted his dispatch case from the floor, and placed it in the center of Carella’s desk. “Now I’m going to tell you without further ado, m’friend, what is in this dispatch case here on the desk before me,” Ollie said. “What’s in this little case here is a rare collection of folders, ah, yes, containing photographs of every type of truck and van made by the major American and foreign automobile manufacturers, yes, indeed. I have dozens and dozens of different pictures in this little dispatch case. Do you know what I am going to do with those pictures, m’boy?”
“I can guess,” Carella said.
“I am going to show them to old Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home,” Ollie said.
Alexander Pike had some pictures, too.
He came up to the squadroom at 4:17 P.M., exactly three minutes after Ollie had gone out to talk to old Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home. Carella had casually mentioned to him that Bailey didn’t get to work till 10:00 each night, but Ollie quickly reported that he had already called the R & M Luncheonette (which name he had got from Carella’s report, ah, yes), and they’d given him Bailey’s home address. Now Pike was here in the squadroom. And Pike had some pictures too.
“I still had a roll in the camera,” he said. “I put it in on Sunday night, and forgot it was in there, and I didn’t use that particular camera again till this morning. I shot the rest of the roll this morning. Do you understand what I’m saying so far?”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“And this afternoon I developed the roll. Because what I shot this morning was for a job, you understand. And I had to make some contacts, so I could—”
“Yes, I understand,” Carella said.
“Well, the first picture on the roll, the one I’d forgotten was still in the camera, was a picture Kling took on Sunday night.”
“Kling took it?”
“Yes. I asked him to take it. It’s a picture of me and Augusta.”
“I see,” Carella said patiently.
“It was taken in the hotel lobby.”
“Um-huh.”
“Just inside the revolving doors.”
“Yes, um-huh.”
“There was a fifty-millimeter lens on the camera, and Kling was shooting with the strobe light. That’s what gave the depth of field and focus. Otherwise everything behind me and Augusta might have been in darkness.”
“I see, yes,” Carella said, nodding.
“Well, I was looking at the contacts with a magnifying glass, really trying to second-guess the ones the editor would pick, when I saw the picture Kling had taken. The one of me and Augusta. Oh, he was maybe three feet away from us when he took the picture. And just behind us, coming through the revolving doors in the background, there’s a man. Strobe lit him beautifully, you can see him plain as day. He looked familiar, Mr. Carella. So I made an enlargement of the picture, and it’s the same man, all right.”
“What man?”
“The one who was sitting in church watching the wedding. The man with the blond hair and the light eyes.”
“May I see the enlargement, please?” Carella said.
“Certainly,” Pike said, and unclasped a manila envelope, and took from it an eight-by-ten black-and-white glossy, which he placed before Carella on the desk. The photograph showed a beaming Pike and Augusta in the foreground. In the background, apparently having just come through the revolving doors, was the unidentified blond man. The photograph had caught him turning away from the camera, his hand coming up toward his face, as though to shield it.
“That’s him, all right,” Carella said.
“See his hand there?” Pike said. “There’s a ring on it. In all those pictures I took inside the church, his hands were folded in his lap, and the ring wasn’t visible. In fact, his hands weren’t even visible except in the two pictures I shot across him toward the center aisle, and that was from the left, so the right hand couldn’t be seen, there was just both hands clasped on that dark overcoat, with the left hand facing the lens. Do you remember the pictures I mean?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But the ring is visible in this picture Kling took, and I figured there’d be no harm blowing it up, so I started zeroing in on it, and I finally brought it up as big as I could without losing definition. The one I did after this one is all grainy, you can’t tell anything from it. But this one is pretty good.” He reached into the manila envelope and put another eight-by-ten glossy on the desk. “Your eyes are probably sharper than mine,” he said, “and even I can read what’s on that ring.”
Carella looked at the photograph. It was a remarkably clear enlargement of what was unmistakably a graduation ring. The stone in the center of the ring was multifaceted, light in tone, possibly an amethyst. It was set into the massive body of the ring, and the circle surrounding the stone was stamped with the words RAMSEY UNIVERSITY
“That’s right here in the city, isn’t it?” Pike said.
“Yes,” Carella said briefly, and glanced up at the clock. It was almost 4:30. Without another word to Pike, he pulled the telephone directory to him.
Old Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home looked even older than Ollie thought he would. The minute Ollie laid eyes on him, in fact, he doubted Bailey would be of any assistance at all; one look at those cheaters told him the man was blind as a bat. He showed his shield, anyway, and introduced himself and asked if he could come into the apartment. The apartment smelled of cat shit, which was strange, since there weren’t any cats in evidence anywhere around.
“Detective Carella tells me you saw a white truck in the hotel’s service courtyard late Sunday night…”
“That’s right,” Bailey said.
“What I’m here for right now, Mr. Bailey, is to see if I can’t help you identify that truck for us.”
“Well, I already told the other detective…What’d you say his name was?”
“Carella.”
“Carella, t
hat’s right, I already told him I didn’t know what kind of truck it was.”
“Well, it so happens, Mr. Bailey,” Ollie said, unclasping his dispatch case, “that I’ve got several pictures of trucks here, trucks of different sizes and shapes, and I wonder if you might take a look at them and see if any of them ring a bell. See if we can’t zero in on the kind of truck it might have been, okay?”
“Okay.”
“These are folders from all the automobile companies, we’ll just leaf through them, okay? See if we can’t spot the kind of truck you saw on Sunday night.”
“Okay,” Bailey said.
“Okay, fine,” Ollie said. “Let’s start with these right here, this is the whole line of Ford pickup trucks. These two on the cover, did the truck you saw—”
“No, it didn’t look anything like those,” Bailey said.
“In what way was it different?”
“Well, it didn’t have an open back. It just wasn’t that kind of a truck.”
“No cargo box, you mean?”
“That space in the back there.”
“That’s right, the cargo box.”
“That’s right, it didn’t have one of those.”
“Well, okay then,” Ollie said, “let’s put aside the pickups and take a look at some of these other folders. Now, I’m just assuming, Mr. Bailey, that it wasn’t a big trailer truck in that alley there.”
“No, no, nothing as big as a trailer truck.”
“Okay, let’s take a look at this Chevy folder here, the one marked ‘Bus Chassis.’”
“It wasn’t a bus,” Bailey said.
“Well, I realize it wasn’t a school bus like this yellow one on the cover…”
“It wasn’t a bus at all.”
“But you see, there are these smaller ones inside,” Ollie said. “This one they call the Suburban, that seats nine kids…”
“No, it was bigger than that.”
“How about this one here, this Sportvan that seats twelve?”
“No, it was bigger than that, too.”
“Are we moving in the right direction, though? Was it a kind of van? Is that the type of truck it was? What you would call a van?”
“Well, it wasn’t a pickup truck, that’s for sure. It was a truck closed all around.”
