Lullaby

by Ed McBain

  Apartment 44, Archibald had told him.

  He kept climbing.

  The tile on the fourth-floor landing had been ripped up and replaced with a tin floor. Kling wondered why. The staircase wound up for another flight, dead-ending at a metal door painted red and leading to the roof. Four apartments here on the fourth floor. Forty-one, two, three, and four, count 'em. No light here on the landing. He could barely make out the numeral forty-four on the door at the far end of the hall. Not a sound coming from behind that door. He stood in the near-darkness, listening. And then, because he was a cop, he put his ear to the wood and listened more intently.

  Nothing.

  He looked at his watch. Squinted in the gloom. Ten minutes past three. He'd told Archibald he'd be here at three.

  He knocked.

  And the shots came.

  He threw himself instinctively to the floor.

  His gun was already in his hand.

  There were two bullet holes in the door.

  He waited. He was breathing very hard. The only sound in the hallway. His breathing. Harsh, ragged. Those two holes in the door right at about the level of where his head had been. His heart was pounding, He waited. His mind raced with possibilities. He'd been set up. Come talk to my wife, mon, she bought herself a .22-caliber pistol, and she has threatened to shoot me with it. Come help me, mon. A woman named Gloria told me about you. You did a burglary for her. A fat lady. Set the cop up because he's been talking to a man who knows that a huge shipment of cocaine will be coming into the city nine days from now. Kill the cop here in Kingston Heights where life is cheap and where those holes in the door did not look as if they'd been drilled by a mere-

  Bam, bam, bam, three more shots in rapid succession and more wood splintering out of the door, showering onto the air like shrapnel.

  And Archibald's voice.

  'You crazy, woman?'

  Kling was on his feet.

  He kicked at the door where the lock was fastened, followed the door into the room as it sprang open, gun fanning the room, eyes following the gun, eyes swinging with the gun to where a skinny woman the color of whole-wheat bread stood near the kitchen sink opposite the door. She was wearing only a pink slip. A substantial-looking piece was in her right hand, a thirty-eight at least, the hand sagging with the weight of it, and Dudley Archibald over there on Kling's left, five shots gone now, Archibald balancing on his feet like a boxer trying to decide which way to duck when the next punch came.

  Kling wished he knew how many bullets were in that gun, but he didn't.

  There were thirty-eights with five-shot capacities.

  There were also thirty-eights with nine-shot capacities.

  'Hey, Imogene,' he said softly.

  The woman turned toward him. Gray-green eyes. Slitted. The big gun sinking in her tiny fist. The big gun shaking but pointed at his chest.

  'Why don't you put down the gun?' he said.

  'Kill the bastard,' she said.

  'No, you don't want to do that,' Kling said. 'Come on. Let me have the gun, okay?'

  Jesus, don't shoot me, he thought.

  'I told you,' Archibald said.

  'Just stay out of this,' Kling said. He did not turn to look at him. His eyes were on Imogene. His eyes were on her eyes.

  'Put down the gun, okay?' he said.

  'No.'

  'Why not? You don't want to get yourself in trouble, do you?'

  'I'm in trouble already,' she said.

  'Nah, what trouble?' Kling said. 'Little family argument? Come on, don't make things worse than they are. Just let me have the gun, nobody's going to hurt you, okay?'

  He was telling the truth.

  But he was also lying.

  He did not plan on hurting her. Not physically. Not he himself.

  But neither he nor the police department were about to forget a lady with a gun. And the criminal justice system would hurt her. As sure as he was standing there trying to talk her out of firing that gun again.

  'What do you say, Imogene?'

  'Who tole you my name?'

  'He did. Put the gun there on the table, okay? Come on, you're gonna hurt yourself with that thing.'

  'I'm gonna hurt him,' she said, and swung the gun from Kling toward her husband.

  'Hey, no!' Kling said at once.

  The gun swung back again.

  One of us is gonna get it, he thought.

  'You're scaring hell out of me,' he said.

  She looked at him.

  'You really are. Are you gonna shoot me?'

  'I'm gonna shoot him!' she said, and again the gun swung onto her husband.

  'And then what? I'm a police officer, Imogene. If you shoot this man, I can't just let you walk out of this apartment. So you'll have to shoot me, too, am I right? Is that what you want to do? Shoot me?'

  'No, but . . .'

  'Then come on, let's quit this, okay? Just give me the gun, and . . .'

  'No!'

  She shouted the word.

  It cracked into the apartment like another pistol shot. Archibald winced. So did Kling. He had the sudden feeling that his watch had stopped. The gun was pointed at him again. He was drenched in sweat. Nineteen degrees out there, he was covered with sweat.

  He did not want to shoot this woman.

  But if she turned that gun toward her husband again, he would make his move.

  Please don't let me shoot you, he thought.

  'Imogene,' he said, very softly.

  The gun was trained on his chest. The gray-green eyes watching.

  'Please don't let me hurt you,' he said.

  Watching.

  'Please put the gun down on the table.'

  Watching, watching.

  'Please, Imogene.'

  He waited for what seemed forever.

  First she nodded.

  He waited.

  She kept nodding.

  Then she walked to the table, and looked down at the table top, and looked at the gun in her hand as if first discovering it, and then she nodded again, and looked at Kling, and put the gun on the table. He walked to the table slowly, picked up the gun, slipped it into his coat pocket, and said, 'Thank you.'

  He was putting the handcuffs on her when Archibald, safe now, shouted, 'Bitch!'

  * * * *

  Kling made the phone call from the super's apartment downstairs.

  People had gathered in the hallway. They all knew there'd been shooting on the fourth floor. Some of them seemed disappointed that no one had been killed. In a neighborhood where violence was commonplace, a shooting without a corpse was like scrambled eggs without onions. It would have been nice, in fact, if the cop had been killed. Not many people in this neighborhood liked cops. Some of the people in the hallway began jeering Kling as he led Imogene out.

  At that moment, he didn't feel very good about himself, anyway. He was thinking that the system would wring Imogene out like a dirty dishcloth. Ninety-six pounds if she weighed a nickel, the system would destroy her. Not twenty minutes ago, all he'd been thinking about was his own skin. Heard shots, figured they were meant for him. Ambush for the big detective. A genuine family dispute erupting into a lady-with-a-gun situation, and all he could think at the time was that someone had set him up. Maybe he deserved to be jeered.

  They came out of the building into the bitter cold.

  Imogene in handcuffs.

  Archibald on one side of her, looking penitent now that it was all over, Kling on the other side, holding her elbow, guiding her toward the patrol car atthe curb.

  He did not notice a tall, thin black man standing in a doorway across the sheet.

  The man was watching him.

  The man was Lewis Randolph Hamilton.

  * * * *

  9

  It was Fat Ollie Weeks who came up with the lead on Doctor Martin Proctor.

  Fat Ollie was not an informer; he was a detective working out of the Eight-Three. Fat Ollie was not as fat as Fats Donner; hence Ollie's obes
ity was in the singular whereas Donner's was in the plural. The men did have two things in common, however: they were both very good listeners and nobody liked either one of them. Nobody liked Fats Donner because his sexual preferences ran to prepubescent girls. Nobody liked Fat Ollie because he was a bigot. Moreover, he was that rare sort of bigot who hated everyone.

  The cops of the Eight-Seven still remembered Roger Havilland, who'd been an Ollie Weeks sort of person before he got thrown through a plate glass window to his final reward. No one - well, hardly anyone - wished such a dire fate would befall Ollie, but they did wish he would bathe every now and again. On a fair day with a brisk wind, you could smell Ollie clear across Grover Park.

  On Monday morning, the sixteenth day of January, Ollie walked into the Eight-Seven's squadroom as if he owned the joint. Pushed his way familiarly through the slatted rail divider, his beer barrel belly preceding him as surely as did his stench, wearing only a sports jacket over his open-collared shirt, despite the frigid temperature outside. His cheeks were rosy red, and he was puffing like a man actively seeking a heart attack. He walked directly to where Carella was typing at his desk, clapped him on the shoulder, and said, 'Hey, Steve-a-rino, how you been?'

  Carella winced.

  'Hello, Ollie,' he said unenthusiastically.

  'So you're looking for the Doctor, huh?' Ollie said, and put his finger to the side of his nose like a Mafia sage. 'You come to the right person.'

  Carella hoped Ollie didn't mean what he thought Ollie meant.

  'Martin Proctor,' Ollie said. 'Sounds like a Jew, don't he? The Martin, I mean. You ever heard of anybody named Martin who wasn't a Jew?'

  'Yes, Martin Sheen,' Carella said.

  'He's worse than a Jew,' Ollie said, 'he's a fuckin' Mexican. His son's name is Emilio Estevez, so where does he come off usin' an American name like Sheen? There was this bishop in New York, his name was Sheen, wasn't it? So who's this fuckin' Mexican using a Jewish first name and an Irish last name?'

  Carella was suddenly sorry he'd brought it up.

  But Ollie was just gathering steam.

  'You get these fuckin' immigrants, they change their names so nobody can tell they're foreigners. Who do they think they're kiddin'? Guy writes a book, he's a fuckin' wop, he puts an American name on the book, everybody knows he's really a wop, anyway. Everybody says. You know what his real name is? His real name ain't Lance Bigelow, it's Luigi Mangiacavallo. Everybody knows this. Behind his back, they laugh at him. They say Good morning, Lance, how are you? Or Good evening, Mr Bigelow, your table is ready. But who's he kidding? They all know he's only a wop.'

  'Like me,' Carella said.

  'That's true,' Ollie said, 'but you're okay otherwise.'

  Carella sighed.

  'Anyway, you got me off the track with your fuckin' Martin Sheen,' Ollie said. 'You want what I got on Proctor, or you want to talk about Mexicans who put makeup on their faces to earn a living?'

  Carella sighed again.

  He did not for a moment doubt that Ollie Weeks had a line on Martin Proctor. But he did not want favors from Ollie. Favors had to be paid back. Favors owed to a bigot were double-edged favors. However good a cop Ollie Weeks was - and the sad truth was that he happened to be a very good cop - Carella did not want to owe him, did not want Ollie to come back later to say the note he'd signed was due. But a six-month-old baby and her sitter had been murdered.

  'What've you got?' he asked.

  'Ah yes, the man is interested,' Ollie said, doing his world-famous W. C. Fields imitation.

  Carella looked at him.

  'Very definitely interested, ah yes,' Ollie said, still doing Fields. 'Let us say for the sake of argument that there is a certain lady who frequents a bar, ah yes, in the Eighty-Third Precinct, which some of us mere mortals call home, ah yes. Let us further say that this lady has on occasion in the past dispensed certain favors and information to certain detectives in this fair city who have looked the other way while the lady was plying her trade, do I make my point, sir?'

  Carella nodded.

  Weeks was banging a hooker in the Eight-Three.

  'What's her name?' He asked.

  'Ah yes, her name. Which, may I say, sir, is none of your fucking business, ah yes.'

  'Could you please drop the Fields imitation?' Carella said.

  'You knew it was him, huh?' Ollie said, pleased. 'I also do Ronald Reagan.'

  'Don't,' Carella said.

  'I do Ronald Reagan after they cut off his legs.'

  'What about this hooker?'

  'Who said she was a hooker?'

  'Gee, for some reason I thought she was a hooker.'

  'Whatever she may be, let us say she got to talking the other night . . .'

  'When?'

  'Saturday night.'

  'And?'

  'And seeing as I am a law enforcement officer, and seeing as how we were sharing a few intimate moments together . . .'

  'Get to it, Ollie.'

  'The lady inquired as to whether I knew why the police were looking for Martin the Doctor. This was like a strange situation, Steve. Usually, I'm the one pumping her. But there we were . . .'

  His sex life, no less, Carella thought.

  '. . . both of us naked as niggers in the jungle, and she's the one tryin'a get information outa me. Can you see how peculiar that was?'

  Carella waited.

  But Ollie hadn't intended the question rhetorically.

  'Do you see how peculiar that was?' he repeated.

  'Yes,' Carella said. 'Very peculiar.'

  'I mean, she is riding me bareback like a fuckin' Indian on a pony and she wants to know why the cops are lookin' for Proctor, who I don't know from a hole in the wall'

  'So?'

  'So I get outa bed afterward, and I go wipe my dick on the drapes . . . do you know that joke?'

  'No.'

  'It's what a Jewish guy does to get his wife excited after he comes. He wipes his dick on the drapes, you get it? To get his wife excited. Because Jewish girls . . .'

  'I get it,' Carella said.

  'I didn't really wipe my dick on the drapes,' Ollie said. 'I mean, I know I'm a fuckin' slob but I'm not that big a slob.'

  'What did you use?' Carella asked. 'Your tie?'

  'That's very funny,' Ollie said, but he didn't laugh. 'Anyway, while she's squatting over a basin rinsing herself out, she tells me this friend of hers is a friend of Proctor's, and he was wonderin' why the cops were snoopin' around Proctor's old address, lookin' for him. And if I knew anything about it, she would appreciate it if I would tell her, seeing as we were old friends and all. So she could pass the information on to her friend. Who I guess, but she didn't say, would then pass it on to Proctor, saving his ass from whatever terrible thing we had in mind for him, the cops. I told her I would sniff around.'

  'So where is he?'

  'Proctor? One thing at a time. Don't you want to hear what a brilliant detective I am?'

  'No.'

  'Okay, then I won't tell you how I went to this spic snitch named Francisco Palacios, who is also known as The Gaucho, or sometimes The Cowboy, and who runs a little store that sells in the front medicinal herbs, dream books, religious statues, numbers books, tarot cards and such, but in the back French ticklers, open-crotch panties, vibrators, dildoes, benwa balls and the like, not that this is against the law. I won't tell you how The Cowboy mentioned to me that another stoolie named Donner had been in asking about this very same Doctor Proctor who it seems the boys of the Eight-Seven have been inquiring about. I won't tell you how it occurs to me that perhaps it was somebody from up here who was nosing around 1146 Park Street, which was Proctor's last known address, who according to The Cowboy he has busted parole and is being very cautious, anyway. I will not tell you all this, Steve-arino,' Ollie said, and grinned.

  'What will you tell me?'

  'Not where Proctor is, 'cause I don't know.'

  'Terrific,' Carella said. 'So what are you doing up here?'
>
  'My friend? This lady I was telling you about?'

  'Yeah?'

  'I know her friend's name.'

  * * * *

  Eileen hadn't said a word for the past twenty minutes.