Fiddlers

by Ed McBain

  ‘Oh, madonna!’ Luigi said. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘I just found out this minute. Did you ever have such trouble? When your kids were small?’

  He still thought of April as ‘small.’ Lipstick. High heels. Small. But thirteen. And smoking marijuana.

  ‘Yes. Well, not dope, no, although there is plenty of that here, too,’ Luigi said. ‘But yes, when Annamaria was fourteen, she started running with a bad crowd, is that how you say it? Un brutto giro?’

  ‘A bad crowd, yes.’

  ‘Alcohol, wild parties, everything. Fourteen years old! My baby!’

  ‘Yes,’ Carella said. ‘That’s just it, Luigi.’

  ‘You must talk to April at once. You must let her know this will not be tolerated in our family.’

  ‘Is that what you did?’

  ‘The very moment I learned what was happening. We would not let her out of the house for a month. Not until she got herself loose of these bad people. I told her I would call the police! But you are a police, no, Steve? Tell her. This will not be tolerated! Our family will not be shamed this way! Luisa would die! Shall I tell her? Do you want me to tell her, Steve? Figliolo, may I tell Mama?’

  Figliolo, Carella thought. Son, he thought. May I tell Mama?

  ‘Not yet, Luigi, please,’ he said. ‘Let me call you after we’ve talked to April. Be better that way.’

  ‘Si, meglio cosi. I will wait for your call. Give my love to Teddy. Let me know what happens. Please.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Allora, ci sentiamopresto,’ Luigi said, and hung up.

  ‘Thanks…’ Carella started, but the line had already gone dead and there was only a dial tone.

  He’d almost said, Thanks, Pop.

  Well, next time, he thought.

  He tried the words silently.

  Thanks, Pop.

  Then, aloud into the dead phone, he said, ‘Thanks, Pop,’ and then, louder, ‘Thanks, Papa,’ and replaced the phone gently on its receiver.

  * * * *

  When the limo didn’t show up by six fifteen, Charles Purcell went back into the lobby and asked the concierge to dial the car company’s number for him. The dispatcher he spoke to told him that the car had got caught in heavy traffic near the Calm’s Point Bridge…

  ‘Well, where is he now?’ he asked.

  ‘Just coming off the Drive, sir.’

  Charles looked at his watch.

  ‘Then cancel it,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a taxi.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, we…”

  ‘That’s all right, another time,’ he said, and hung up. He went directly out of the hotel to the curb, where he asked the doorman to hail a cab for him. Once seated inside, he gave the driver Reggie’s address on North Hastings and told him there’d be a twenty-dollar tip for him if he got there before six thirty. He looked at his watch again. The driver pulled away from the curb in a screech of rubber.

  Charles had made the dinner reservation for six thirty, but now he figured they’d be fifteen or so minutes late, that damn limo company. Well, still time enough, maybe, the way the cabbie was weaving his way in and out of traffic. Amazing what the promise of a little money could do. He was rather getting used to this lifestyle. Pity it wouldn’t last forever, but then again, nothing ever did.

  She was waiting on the steps outside her building when the taxi pulled up. Charles asked the driver to keep the meter running, and then he got out of the car and was walking toward her, a grin on his face, when all at once everything seemed to happen in a rush. In that single instant, he was transported back to Nam, the way in Nam things suddenly erupted everywhere around you, and you didn’t realize at first that this was really happening to you, that this attack was directed at you.

  The man who seemed to materialize out of nowhere was perhaps six feet tall, with wide shoulders and a massive chest, a six-hundred-pound gorilla wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, black running shoes, striding toward where Reggie was standing on the front steps of her building, turned away from him, looking at Charles as he approached from the opposite direction, a smile forming on her mouth when she recognized him and started down the steps. Just then the man in the black T-shirt seized her right wrist, and yanked her full off the steps and onto the sidewalk. As Charles watched in shocked disbelief, the man smacked her across the face, so hard that she would have fallen over backward had he not been holding tight to her wrist.

  ‘Lost your way?’ he asked sweetly, and smacked her again.

  ‘You!’ Charles yelled, pointing his finger at him. In the next instant, he was running toward the man, who was now dragging Reggie behind him on the sidewalk. She was wearing a shiny silver dress, cut high on the thigh, high-heeled, silver-toned, patent-leather slippers. She dug in her heels, resisting, but the man had her tight by the wrist, and when she tried to pull away, he smacked her again, and then again. By this time, Charles was on him.

  ‘Oh?’ the man said, and shook Charles off like a dog shedding water. Charles rushed him again. The man hit him full in the face, hard. His nose began spurting blood. ‘You son of a bitch!’ Reggie yelled, and yanked off one of the silver-toned slippers and swung the heel at his head. The man brushed the blow aside. He was bringing back his arm to hit Reggie again, when suddenly he saw the gun in Charles’s hand.

  ‘Hey now,’ he cautioned, but Charles was already firing.

  Reggie screamed.

  Charles kept firing until the gun was empty.

  The taxi roared away from the curb.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ Reggie whispered.

  Charles grabbed her hand.

  Together, they ran off into the night.

  * * * *

  The brilliant fiddlers of the Eighty-seventh Squad were burning the midnight oil. More accurately, it was now 12:02 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the twenty-ninth of June, and they were burning with the need to tell each other how clever they’d been in coming up with a name for the guy they suspected had drilled five victims with the same nine-millimeter Glock. Yes, they had all, each and separately, come up with a name, ta-ra! Or variations on a name, actually, but certainly one and the same name; whether it was Carlie, Chuck, or Charlie, the given name was undoubtedly Charles, and the surname most definitely was Purcell.

  But more than that - and Hawes took credit for this one, because it was Jennifer Purcell who’d told him her uncle Charles might still be living out on Sands Spit - they found a telephone listing for a Charles Purcell in a little town called Oatesville, not an hour outside the city in Russell County. Their law enforcement directory gave them a listing for the Sheriff’s Department in Russell County. Hawes made the call, speaking to a deputy sheriff named Lyall Farr, and requesting a 410 Graham Lane drive-by, with a P&D on Charles Purcell, murder suspect. Farr said they’d do the courtesy pick-up, but delivery to the city was out of the question as Russell was extremely shorthanded at the moment. Hawes settled for a Pick-Up and Hold. Twenty minutes later, Farr called back to say the house was dark and locked, so what now? Hawes told him to break in, there was a murder suspect living there. Farr told Hawes there was no way Russell would break in without a No-Knock warrant. Besides, the next-door neighbor had seen Purcell leaving with a suitcase at the beginning of the month, said he planned to spend some time in the city.

  ‘House has been empty since then,’ Farr told him.

  ‘In the city where?’ Hawes asked.

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Spending some time where in the city?’

  ‘Didn’t say. Looks to me like you’re a day late and a dollar short.’

  Or so it seemed until the phone call came at 12:47 A.M., from a Detective David Bannerman of the Eighty-sixth Squad, not two miles away from the old Eight-Seven.

  * * * *

  Bannerman told them that at first it had looked like a Domestic Dispute. Lady taking the air on the front steps of her building, husband or boyfriend walks up to her, starts yelling at her, slapping her around. Family quarrel, pure and simp
le, something for routine handling by the blues on patrol.

  Then all at once it turned into something else. Guy getting out of a taxi pulls a gun, goes after the goon doing the slapping, empties the gun into him. Seventeen slugs, leaves the goon looking like Swiss cheese on the sidewalk. So now this is beginning to have all the earmarks of a gangland slaying, right? You empty a gun into somebody? You want to make sure he’s dead, right? Also, the goon turns out to have a record goes back to when he’s still a juve, this has to be gang shit, correct?

  ‘We got a description of the shooter from one of the witnesses,’ Bannerman said. ‘He was about six feet tall, slender, wearing a dark blue suit and a tie. He was bald. Entirely bald. No sideburns, nothing. Witness said he looked very white. Pale. Almost Oriental. Or ascetic, was her exact word. Pale and ascetic. Like a holy man. The Dalai Lama? She referred to the Dalai Lama, you know what he looks like? Neither do I. But like that. A holy man.’

  ‘Some holy man,’ Carella said.

  He was wondering why Bannerman was giving him this long song and dance.

  ‘So we figured some wiseguy went after this Benjamin Bugliosi - is the vic’s name - and did him in good. But that was before Ballistics called ten minutes ago…”

  Uh-oh, Carella thought.

  ‘… and told us the gun used to dust Bugliosi was the same Model 17 used in the five homicides you guys are already investigating. So FMU prevails, pal, and you now got yourselves six vics - which rhymes when you come to think of it. Mazeltov.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Carella said.

  The clock on the squadroom wall now read 1:27 A.M.

  * * * *

  As revealed on the computer, Benjamin ‘The Bug’ Bugliosi’s B-sheet listed his first offense as a simple assault when he was sixteen. Kindly, understanding judge, suspended sentence. His most recent brush with the law - his twelfth, by the way - was six years ago, another assault this time, aggravated this time. Seems he’d been working as a bouncer for a private ‘club’ called Sophisticates, a thinly disguised whore house cum escort service, when a drunk and obstreperous client tried to insert the muzzle of a pistol into the vagina of one of the club’s virginal maidens. Bugliosi threw the man down the stairs and then repeatedly banged his head against the foyer wall before heaving him out onto the sidewalk and kicking his head to a bloody pulp. In the rain, no less. Tsk-tsk. No wonder he’d subsequently served time at Castleview Prison upstate.

  The record further revealed that he’d been paroled last November, was apparently gainfully employed again, and was dutifully reporting for each of his scheduled parole-office visits. The parole office was closed at this hour, and would not open again till nine in the morning. The FBI profile on serial killers maintained that the murders only grew more vicious as time went by…

  (Seventeen slugs this time around.)

  If Purcell was indeed a serial killer…

  (There were now six vics.)

  ‘Let’s see if Bugliosi went back to work for Sophisticates,’ Carella said.

  * * * *

  It had been a long while since either Carella or Meyer had been inside a whore house at two thirty in the morning. Sophisticates occupied the entire four-story building on a quiet midtown side street. It had begun raining lightly by the time the detectives announced themselves over a wall-speaker set in the doorjamb downstairs, giving everybody upstairs an opportunity to pull up his pants or put on her panties; they weren’t here looking for a vice bust. Indeed, everything appeared decorous and in fact almost homey when after a ten-minute wait they were allowed into the lobby and then upstairs to the waiting room, where black, white, Latina, and Asian ladies lounged about in negligees and lacy lingerie, but where nary a soul could be seen copulating or doing any other such dirty thing.

  One of the girls was truly beautiful. Tall blonde girl in her mid-twenties, they guessed, wearing a black silk robe open over risky tap pants and skimpy bra, beamed them a big welcoming smile when they came in, even though she had to know they were cops. Carella wondered what the hell she was doing in a whore house - not that you’d guess this was one, with its smoky mirrored walls, and its tufted velveteen banquettes. Looked more like a lounge in a hotel lobby. In fact, the only male in evidence was a big black dude who introduced himself as Roger, and said he was the night manager here at Sophisticates, would the gentlemen care for a cup of coffee?

  ‘Benjamin Bugliosi,’ Meyer said.

  ‘Benny the Bug,’ Carella said.

  Roger looked blank.

  ‘Does he work here?’

  ‘Not on my watch.’

  ‘Whose then?’

  ‘Don’t believe I know the man,’ Roger said.

  ‘Would you know where he might have been last night around six thirty?’

  ‘I come on at midnight,’ Roger said.

  ‘We’re looking for whoever might’ve killed him at that time.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Roger said.

  ‘Tall white guy, bald as I am,’ Meyer said.

  ‘Wouldn’t know him, either,’ Roger said.

  ‘I know them both,’ the good-looking blonde said.

  ‘Shut up, cunt,’ Roger told her.

  ‘They sent him

  ‘I said shut up,’ Roger said, and moved on her.

  ‘Hold it,’ Meyer said, and slammed the flat of his hand against Roger’s chest. Roger bunched his fists, and |

  his eyes glared, but he stopped dead in his tracks.

  ‘What’s your name, miss?’ Carella said.

  ‘Trish,’ she said.

  * * * *

  She told them that two weeks ago, it must’ve been…

  ‘You lose track of time up here. Was it two weeks ago? Around then, anyway. Me and this other girl who works here, Regina - that’s her real name - went on an all-night out-call to this bald guy you were telling Roger about, looked like a monk or something, no hair at all, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, nothing. Hung like a stallion, but no hair, strange. We were there with him all night, this was a Thursday night, the nineteenth, was it? Is that two weeks ago? What’s today, anyway?’

  ‘It’s the twenty-ninth,’ Carella said.

  ‘Already?’

  ‘All day,’ he said.

  They were sitting in Roger’s office, the door closed. She kept glancing over her shoulder at the closed door, afraid it would open and Roger would be standing there, telling her to shut up, cunt.

  ‘So it was less than two weeks,’ Trish said, and shrugged. The silk robe fell free of her shoulder. Idly, she moved it back into place. ‘Anyway, Regina doesn’t show up for work here after that night. Called in to say she just got the Curse, but then nothing after that, silence. Sophisticates don’t go for freelancing, you know what I mean? So I heard them telling the Bug to go find her, teach her a lesson. I tried to call her, warn her, but she wasn’t answering the phone, and her machine wasn’t on, either, which is strange for a hooker. A telephone is a hooker’s lifeline, you know what I mean? So I figured she’d made some kind of private arrangement with Baldy, he was throwin money around like it was goin out of style. Did he hurt her bad, the Bug?’

  “We don’t know,’ Meyer said.

  ‘I hope not,’ she said, and shrugged again. The robe fell free again. This time, she did not bother to adjust it. ‘I better not come back here no more, huh?’ she said, and looked over her shoulder at the closed door.

  ‘This out-call on the nineteenth, you said it was,’ Carella said.

  ‘Around then, yeah.’

  “What was the man’s name, would you remember?’

  ‘Charles,’ she said.

  ‘Charles what?’

  ‘Didn’t say. They never do.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘The Albemarle Hotel. Downtown on Holman.’

  She glanced at the closed door again. Sitting with her robe open, her breasts exposed in their skimpy black bra, her hands folded in her lap, she suddenly looked as forlorn as a six-year-old whose lollipop had fallen into the sandbox.
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  ‘Can I walk down with you guys when you leave?’ she asked.

  * * * *

  ‘Nobody ever did anything like that for me in my entire life,’ Reggie said.

  She was cuddled in his arms in the big king-sized bed in the master bedroom of the executive suite on the fourteenth floor of the Albemarle Hotel, the same big bed they’d been sleeping in together for the past it seemed forever now. They were both naked. It was almost three in the morning; they’d made love the moment they got back here to the hotel, and they’d been talking since.

  ‘My hero,” she said.

  ‘Some hero,’ he said. But he was pleased.

  ‘He could’ve killed me.’

  ‘I thought he was going to.’

  ‘Dead-Eye Dick here,’ she said, and grinned. ‘I love you so much, Chaz.’

  ‘I love you, too, Reg.’

  ‘You killed a man for me!’ she said.

  ‘Not so loud,’ he warned playfully.

  ‘Did you ever kill anyone before? I know you were in Vietnam…”

  ‘I killed five other people since the sixteenth of June,’ he said.

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘The Glock Murders? You read about them? That’s me.’

  ‘You’ll give me a heart attack!’

  ‘No, no, please

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  ‘Get out,’ she said again.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘Counting that man last night, I’ve already killed six people in this city.’

  ‘And here I thought I was special,’ she said, and kissed him teasingly on the mouth. ‘Why’d you kill all these people, Chaz?’

  ‘I killed the man last night because he was hurting you,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe I am special,’ she said, and kissed him again, more seriously this time. ‘And the others?’

  ‘Because they hurt me.’

  ‘I better never hurt you,’ she said.

  ‘I know you never would.’

  ‘Never,’ she said, and looked into his face, his eyes, studied his mouth, touched his cheek. ‘So now we better get out of here, right? Cause you’re a wanted desperado here, right?’