Lullaby

by Ed McBain

  'He told me everything was okay. I told him it never hurts to check. He and that's right, Al, and off he went.'

  'Did he seem sober?'

  'Oh, yes.'

  'Sober when he got here?'

  'Sober when he got here, sober when he left.'

  'Any blood on his clothing?'

  'Blood?'

  'Or his hands?'

  'Blood?' Di Stefano said, appalled. 'Mr Hodding? Blood? No, sir. No blood at all. No, sir!'

  'Were you still here when he came home with Mrs Hodding?'

  'I was here all night. Till eight in the morning.'

  'And what time was that? When they got home?'

  'Around two-thirty. Well, a little before.'

  'Okay,' Carella said. 'Thanks a lot.'

  'Don't you want to hear the Le Baron commercial?' Di Stefano asked.

  * * * *

  She could not get Eileen Burke out of her mind.

  'My wife says I drink too much,' the detective was telling her. 'Her father was a drunk, so she thinks anybody has a few drinks, he's a drunk, too. She says I get dopey after a few drinks. It makes me want to punch her out. It's her goddamn upbringing, you can't grow up in a house with a drunk and not start thinking anybody takes a sip of elderberry wine is a fuckin' alcoholic.

  'We were out last night with two other couples. I had the day shift, we're investigating this murder, somebody sawed off this woman's head and dropped it in a toilet bowl at the bus terminal. That is what I was dealing with all day yesterday. A fuckin' woman's head floating in a toilet bowl. From eight-thirty in the morning till six at night when I finally got outta that fuckin' squadroom. So I get home, we live in Bethtown, we got this garden apartment there near the bridge, I pour myself a Dewar's in a tall glass with ice and soda, I'm watching the news and drinking my drink and eating some peanuts and she comes in and says "Do me a favor, don't drink so much tonight." I coulda busted her fuckin' nose right then and there. She's already decided I'm a drunk, I drink too much, don't drink so much tonight, meaning I drink too much every night. Which I don't.

  'I had a fuckin' heart attack last April, I can't eat what I want to eat, I have to walk two fuckin' miles every morning before I go to work, I used to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and now I can't smoke any at all, and she's giving me no, no, no concerning a couple of drinks I allow myself when I get home after a head floating in a toilet bowl. Two fucking drinks! Was all I had before we left the house! So we meet these two other couples at this Chinese restaurant on Potter, one of the guys is an assistant DA, the other one's a computer analyst, their wives I don't know what they do. We're sharing, you know, the way you're supposed to when you're eating Chinks, and we order a bottle of wine goes around the table once and it's empty. Well, there's six people there, you know. So we order another bottle of wine, and that makes two glasses of wine I have, which is what everybody at that table had, including my fuckin' Carry Nation wife with her hatchet.

  'Now it's ten-thirty, and we're leaving the restaurant, all of us together, and she takes her keys out of her bag and says so everybody can hear it, 'I'll drive, Frank.' So I say 'Why?' and she says 'Because I don't trust you.' The assistant DA laughs, this is a guy I work with, we call him in whenever we got real meat, make sure the case'll stick, you know, he's laughing at what my wife says. A guy I work with. The other guy, the computer analyst, he picks up on it, he says, 'I hope you've got the day off tomorrow, Frank.' Like they're all taking the cue from Cheryl, that's her name, my wife, and making Frank the big drunk who can't drive a car and who maybe can't even walk a straight line to the fuckin' car.

  'On the way home, I tell her I don't want to start an argument, I'm tired, I worked a long hard day, that fuckin' head in the toilet bowl. She tells me I didn't work harder than any of the other men at the table, and I say 'What do you mean?' and she says 'You know what I mean,' and I say 'Are you saying I drank more than Charlie or Phil, are you saying I'm drunk?' and she says 'Did I say you're drunk?' and all at once I want to break every fuckin' bone in her body. All at once, I'm yelling. I'm supposed to avoid stress, am I right? It was stress caused the fuckin' heart attack, so here I am yelling like a fuckin' Puerto Rican hooker, and when we get home I go in the television room to sleep, only I can't sleep because I'm thinking I better throw my gun in the river 'cause if she keeps at me this way, I'm gonna use it on her one day. Or hurt her very bad some other way. And I don't want to do that.'

  Detective Frank Connell of the Four-Seven looked across the desk at her.

  'I don't know what to do,' he said. 'It's like I've got an enemy for a wife instead of a friend. A wife is supposed to be a friend, ain't she? Ain't that why people get married? So there'll be somebody they can trust more than anybody else in the world? Instead, she makes me look like a fuckin' fool. I wouldn't do that to her in a million years, ridicule her in front of people she works with. She works in a law office, she's a legal secretary. I would never go in there and say she's this or that, she's no good at this or that, I would never hurt her that way. The way she hurts me when she says I'm a drunk.'

  'Are you a drunk?' Karin asked.

  'No. I swear to God I am not.'

  'Do you want or need a drink when you get up in the morning?'

  'Absolutely not. I go walk my fuckin' two miles, I eat my breakfast, and I go to work.'

  'Do you really have only two drinks when you get home at night?'

  'Two. I swear.'

  'How big?'

  'What do you mean? Like a regular drink. Some booze, some ice, some soda . . .'

  'How much booze?'

  'Two, three ounces.'

  'Which?'

  'Three.'

  'That's six ounces.'

  'Which ain't a lot.'

  'Plus whatever wine you'll drink at . . .'

  'Only when we go out. When we eat home, I usually have a Pepsi with dinner.'

  'Would you say you're a heavy drinker?'

  'A moderate drinker. I know guys drink non-stop, day and night, I'm not one of . . .'

  'Do you consider them drunks?'

  'I consider them alcoholics. I rarely see them drunk, but I know they have drinking problems, I know they can't control their drinking.'

  'But you can.'

  'I do not consider two fucking drinks a day a drinking problem!'

  'Now you're getting mad at me, huh?' Karin said, and smiled.

  'I don't like being called a fuckin' drunk! It infuriates me! I'm not here because I have a drinking problem, I'm here 'cause I have a fucking wife problem. I love her to death, but . . .'

  'But you've been talking about hurting her,' Karin said.

  'I know.'

  'Physically hurting her.'

  'Yes.'

  'Punching her out. Breaking her nose . . .'

  Connell nodded.

  'Breaking every bone in her body.'

  He nodded again.

  'Even using your gun on her.'

  'This is what's tearing me apart,' Connell said. 'She's my wife, but when she starts on me I'd like to kill her.'

  'You said you love her to death,' Karin said. 'Do you?'

  Connell thought about this for a moment.

  'I guess so,' he said, and fell silent.

  Eileen Burke popped into her head again.

  And do you love him?

  Asking her about Bert Kling.

  Eileen thinking it over.

  And saying, 'I guess so.'

  In which case, why had she stopped seeing him?

  * * * *

  The offices of the David Pierce Advertising Agency were midtown on Jefferson Avenue, where most of the city's advertising agencies grew like poisonous toadstools. Carella and Meyer arrived there together at seven minutes past three that Friday afternoon. Peter Hodding was still out to lunch. This was the twentieth day of January. His daughter would be dead three weeks tomorrow. They were wondering if he'd killed her.

  They were sitting on a chrome and leather sofa in the waiting ro
om when he came in. He was wearing a raccoon fur coat. Cheeks ruddy from the cold outside, straight brown hair windblown, he looked the way Chastity Kerr had described him looking after his early morning walk on New Year's Eve. He seemed happy to see them. Asked them at once if there was any news. Led them to his private office in the agency's recesses.

  Two walls painted yellow, a third painted a sort of lavender, the last banked with windows that looked out over a city hushed by snow. Photocopies of print ads tacked to the walls with pushpins. A storyboard for a television commercial. A desk with an old-fashioned electric typewriter on it. Sheet of paper in the roller. Hodding sat behind the desk. He offered the detectives chairs. They sat.

  'Mr Hodding,' Carella said, 'did you at any time on New Year's Eve leave the party at the apartment of Mr and Mrs Jeremy Kerr?'

  Hodding blinked.

  The blink told them they had him.

  'Yes,' he said.

  'At what time?' Meyer asked.

  Another blink.

  'We left at a little after two.'

  'To go home. You and your wife.'

  'Yes.'

  'How about before then?'

  Another blink.

  'Well, yes,' he said.

  'You left the Kerr apartment before then?'

  'Yes.'

  'At what time.'

  'Around one o'clock.'

  'Alone?'

  'Yes.'

  'Where'd you go?' Carella asked.

  'For a walk. I was drunk. I needed some air.'

  'Where'd you walk?'

  'In the park'

  'Which direction?'

  'I don't know what you mean. Anyway, what's . . . ?'

  'Uptown, downtown, crosstown? Which way did you walk?'

  'Downtown. Excuse me, but what . . . ?'

  'How far downtown did you walk?'

  'To the statue and back.'

  'Which statue?'

  'The Alan Clive statue. The statue there.'

  'At the circle?'

  'Yes. Why?'

  'Are you sure you didn't walk uptown?' Carella said.

  Hodding blinked again.

  'Are you sure you didn't walk uptown on Grover Avenue?' Meyer said.

  'Four blocks uptown?' Carella said.

  'To your apartment?'

  'Getting there at ten after one, a quarter after one?'

  'And staying there for a half-hour or so?'

  There was a long painful silence.

  'Okay,' Hodding said.

  'Mr Hodding, did you commit those murders?' Carella asked.

  'No, sir, I did not,' Hodding said.

  * * * *

  The affair with Annie Flynn . . .

  He couldn't even properly call it an affair because their love wasn't fashioned in the classic adulterers' mold, it was more like . . .

  He didn't know what to call it.

  'How about cradle-snatching?' Carella suggested.

  'How about seducing a girl half your age?' Meyer suggested.

  They didn't particularly like this man.

  To them, he was a cut above Fats Donner - who dug Mary Jane shoes and white cotton panties.

  He wanted them to know that he'd never done anything like this before in his life. He'd been married to Gayle for the past five years now, he'd never once even looked at another woman until Annie began sitting for them. Annie was the only woman he'd ever . . .

  'A girl,' Carella reminded him.

  'A sixteen-year-old girl,' Meyer said.

  Well, there were girls who became women at a very early age, listen she wasn't a virgin, this wasn't what you'd call seduction of the innocent or anything, this was-

  'Yes, what was it?' Carella asked.

  'Exactly what would you call it?' Meyer asked.

  'I loved her,' Hodding said.

  Love.

  One of the only two reasons for murder.

  The other being money.

  It had started one night early in October. She'd begun sitting for them in September, shortly after they'd adopted the baby, he remembered being utterly surprised by Annie's maturity. You expected a teenage girl to be somehow bursting with raucous energy, but Annie . . .

  Those thoughtful green eyes.

  The subtlety of her glances.

  Secrets unspoken in those eyes.

  The fiery red hair.

  He'd wondered if she was red below.

  'Look,' Meyer said, 'if you don't fucking mind . . .'

  Meyer rarely used profanity.

  'I didn't kill her,' Hodding said. 'I'm trying to explain . . .'

  'Just tell us what . . .'

  'Let him do it his own way,' Carella said gently.

  'The son of a bitch was fucking a sixteen-year . . .'

  'Come on,' Carella said, and put his hand on Meyer's arm. 'Come on, okay?'

  'I loved her,' Hodding said again.

  In October, the beginning of October, she'd sat for them while he and his wife attended an awards dinner downtown at the Sherman. He remembered that it was a particularly mild night for October, the temperature somewhere in the seventies that day, more like late spring than early fall. Annie came to the apartment dressed in the colors of autumn, a rust-colored skirt, and a pale orange cotton shirt, a yellow ribbon in her hair, like the song. She had walked the seven blocks from her own apartment, schoolbooks cradled in her arms against abundant breasts, smiling, and bursting with energy and youth and . . .

  Sexuality.

  Yes.

  'I'm sorry, Detective Meyer, but you have to understand . . .'

  'Just get the fuck on with it,' Meyer said.

  . . . there was an enormous sexuality about Annie. A sensuousness. The smoldering green eyes, the somewhat petulant full-lipped mouth, the volcanic red hair, lava erupting, hot, overflowing. The short green skirt revealing long, lovely legs and slender ankles, French-heeled shoes, the short heels exaggerating the curve of the leg and the thrust of her buttocks and breasts, naked beneath the thin cotton shirt, nipples puckering though it was not cold outside.

  They did not get home until almost three in the morning.

  Late night. The dinner had been endless, they'd gone for drinks with friends after all the prizes were awarded - Hodding had taken one home for the inventive copywriting he'd done on his agency's campaign for a cookie company, he'd shown the plaque to Annie, she'd ooohed and ahhhed in girlish delight.

  Three in the morning.

  You sent a young girl out into the streets alone at three in the morning, you were asking for trouble. This city, maybe any city. Gayle suggested that her husband call down, ask Al the Doorman to get a taxi for Annie. Hodding said, No, I'll walk her home, I can use some air.

  Such a glorious night.

  A mild breeze blowing in off Grover Park, he suggested that perhaps they ought to take the park path home.

  She said Oh, gee, Mr Hodding, do you think that'll be safe?

  Innuendo in her voice, in her eyes.

  She knew it would not be safe.

  She knew what he would do to her in that park.

  She told him later that she'd been wanting him to do it to her from the minute she'd laid eyes on him.

  But he didn't know that at the time.

  Didn't know she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  It was only seven blocks from his apartment to where she lived with her parents. Well, seven and a half, because she lived in the middle of the block, off the avenue. He had seven and a half blocks to do whatever it was he planned to do ...

  He didn't have any plan.

  . . . whatever it was he longed to do ...

  He yearned for her with every fiber in his being.

  She began talking about her boyfriend. A kid named Scott Handler. Went to school up in Maine someplace. The asshole of creation, she said. She looked at him. Smiled. Green eyes flashing. Had she deliberately used this mild profanity? To tell him what? I'm a big girl now?

  She said she'd been going with Handler since she was f
ifteen . . .