The Mugger

by Ed McBain

  “As well as anyone, I suppose. I don’t think she had many friends.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You can tell. That lost-soul look. A beautiful kid, but lost. God, what I wouldn’t have given for the looks she had.”

  “You’re not so bad,” Kling said, smiling. He sipped more brandy.

  “That’s the warm, amber glow of the cognac,” Claire advised him. “I’m a beast in broad daylight.”

  “I’ll just bet you are,” Kling said. “How’d you first meet her?”

  “At Tempo. She came down one night. I think her boyfriend sent her. In any case, she had the name of the club and the address written on a little white card. She showed it to me, almost as if it were a ticket of admission, and then she just sat in the corner and refused dances. She looked…It’s hard to explain. She was there, but she wasn’t there. Have you seen people like that?”

  “Yes,” Kling said.

  “I’m like that myself sometimes,” Claire admitted. “Maybe that’s why I spotted it. Anyway, I went over and introduced myself, and we started talking. We got along very well. By the end of the evening we’d exchanged telephone numbers.”

  “Did she ever call you?”

  “No. I only saw her at the club.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Oh, a long time now.”

  “How long?”

  “Let me see.” Claire sipped her cognac and thought. “Gosh, it must be almost a year.” She nodded. “Yes, just about.”

  “I see. Go ahead.”

  “Well, it wasn’t hard to find out what was troubling her. The kid was in love.”

  Kling leaned forward. “How do you know?”

  Claire’s eyes did not leave his face. “I’ve been in love, too,” she said tiredly.

  “Who was her boyfriend?” Kling asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t she tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t she mention his name ever? I mean, in conversation?”

  “No.”

  “Hell,” Kling said.

  “Understand, Mr. Kling, that this was a new bird taking wing. Jeannie was leaving the nest, testing her feathers.”

  “I see.”

  “Her first love, Mr. Kling, and shining in her eyes, and glowing on her face, and putting her in this dream world of hers where everything outside it was shadowy.” Claire shook her head. “God, I’ve seen them green, but Jeannie…” She stopped and shook her head again. “She just didn’t know anything, you know? Here was this woman’s body…Well, had you ever seen her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know what I mean. This was the real item, a woman. But inside…a little girl.”

  “How do you figure that?” Kling asked, thinking of the autopsy results.

  “Everything about her. The way she used to dress, the way she talked, the questions she asked, even her handwriting. All a little girl’s. Believe me, Mr. Kling, I’ve never—”

  “Her handwriting?”

  “Yes, yes. Here, let me see if I’ve still got it.” She crossed the room and scooped her purse from a chair. “I’m the laziest girl in the world. I never copy an address into my address book. I just stick it in between the pages until I’ve…” She was thumbing through a little black book. “Ah, here it is,” she said. She handed Kling a white card. “She wrote that for me the night we met. Jeannie Paige and then the phone number. Now, look at the way she wrote.”

  Kling looked at the card in puzzlement. “This says ‘Club Tempo,’” he said. “‘1812 Klausner Street.’”

  “What?” Claire frowned. “Oh, yes. That’s the card she came down with that night. She used the other side to give me her number. Turn it over.”

  Kling did.

  “See the childish scrawl? That was Jeannie Paige a year ago.”

  Kling flipped the card over again. “I’m more interested in this side,” he said. “You told me you thought her boyfriend might have written this. Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. I just assumed he was the person who sent her down, that’s all. It’s a man’s handwriting.”

  “Yes,” Kling said. “May I keep this?”

  Claire nodded. “If you like.” She paused. “I guess I have no further use for Jeannie’s phone number.”

  “No,” Kling said. He put the card into his wallet. “You said she asked you questions. What kind of questions?”

  “Well, for one, she asked me how to kiss.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. She asked me what to do with her lips, whether she should open her mouth, use her tongue. And all this delivered with that wide-eyed, baby-blue stare. It sounds incredible, I know. But, remember, she was a young bird, and she didn’t know how strong her wings were.”

  “She found out,” Kling said.

  “Huh?”

  “Jeannie Paige was pregnant when she died.”

  “No!” Claire said. She put down the brandy glass. “No, you’re joking!”

  “I’m serious.”

  Claire was silent for several moments. Then she said, “First time at bat and she gets beaned. Dammit! Goddammit!”

  “But you don’t know who her boyfriend was?”

  “No.”

  “Had she continued seeing him? You said this was a year ago. I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. Yes, the same one. She’d been seeing him regularly. In fact, she used the club for that.”

  “He came to the club!” Kling said, sitting erect.

  “No, no.” Claire was shaking her head impatiently. “I think her sister and brother-in-law objected to her seeing this fellow. So she told them she was going down to Tempo. She’d stay there a little while, just in case anyone was checking, and then she’d leave.”

  “Let me understand this,” Kling said. “She came to the club and then left to meet him. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “This was standard procedure? This happened each time she came down?”

  “Almost each time. Once in a while she’d stay at the club until things broke up.”

  “Did she meet him in the neighborhood?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I walked her down to the El once.”

  “What time did she generally leave the club?”

  “Between ten and ten-thirty.”

  “And she walked to the El, is that right? And you assume she took a train there and went to meet him.”

  “I know she went to meet him. The night I walked her, she told me she was going downtown to meet him.”

  “Downtown where?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “What did he look like, this fellow?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “She never described him?”

  “Only to say he was the handsomest man in the world. Look, who ever describes his love? Shakespeare, maybe. That’s all.”

  “Shakespeare and seventeen-year-olds,” Kling said. “Seventeen-year-olds shout their love to the rooftops.”

  “Yes,” Claire said gently. “Yes.”

  “But not Jeannie Paige. Dammit, why not her?”

  “I don’t know.” Claire thought for a moment. “This mugger who killed her—”

  “Um?”

  “The police don’t think he was the fellow she was seeing, do they?”

  “This is the first anyone connected with the police is hearing about her love life,” Kling said.

  “Oh. Well, he…he didn’t sound that way. He sounded gentle. I mean, when Jeannie did talk about him, he sounded gentle.”

  “But she never mentioned his name?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  Kling rose. “I’d better be going. That is dinner I smell, isn’t it?”

  “My father’ll be home soon,” Claire said. “Mom is dead. I whip something up when I get home from school.”

  “Every night?” Kling asked.

  “What? I’m sorry…”

&nbs
p; He didn’t know whether to press it or not. She hadn’t heard him, and he could easily have shrugged his comment aside. But he chose not to.

  “I said, ‘Every night?’”

  “Every night what?”

  She certainly was not making it easy for him. “Do you prepare supper every night? Or do you occasionally get a night off?”

  “Oh, I get nights off,” Claire said.

  “Maybe you’d enjoy dinner out some night?”

  “With you, do you mean?”

  “Well, yes. Yes, that’s what I had in mind.”

  Claire Townsend looked at him long and hard. At last, she said, “No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry. Thanks. I couldn’t.”

  “Well…uh…” Quite suddenly, Kling felt like a fool. “I…uh… guess I’ll be going, then. Thanks for the cognac. It was very nice.”

  “Yes,” she said, and he remembered her discussing people who were there and yet not there, and he knew exactly what she meant because she was not there at all. She was somewhere far away, and he wished he knew where. With sudden, desperate longing, he wished he knew where she was because, curiously, he wanted to be there with her.

  “Good-bye,” he said.

  She smiled in answer and closed the door behind him.

  The dime in the slot brought him Peter Bell.

  Bell’s voice was sleepy. “I didn’t wake you, did I?” Kling asked.

  “Yes, you did,” Bell said, “but that’s all right. What is it, Bert?”

  “Well, is Molly there?”

  “Molly? No. She went down to pick up a few things. What is it?”

  “I’ve been…Well, she asked me to check around a little.”

  “Oh? Did she?”

  “Yeah. I went to Club Tempo this afternoon, and I also talked with a girl named Claire Townsend. Nice girl.”

  “What did you find out, Bert?”

  “That Jeannie was seeing some guy regularly.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, that’s just it. Miss Townsend didn’t know. She ever mention anybody’s name to you or Molly?”

  “No, not that I can remember.”

  “That’s too bad. Might give me something to go on, you know, if we had even a first name. Something to work with.”

  “No,” Bell said, “I’m sorry, but…” He stopped dead. There was a painful silence on the line, and then he said, “Oh my God!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “She did, Bert. She did mention someone. Oh my God!”

  “Who? When was this?”

  “We were talking once. She was in a good mood, and she told me…Bert, she told me the name of the fellow she was seeing.”

  “What was the name?”

  “Clifford! My God, Bert! His name is Clifford!”

  It was Roger Havilland who brought in the first real suspect in the alleged mugger murder.

  The suspect was a kid named Sixto Fangez, a Puerto Rican boy who had been in the city for a little more than two years. Sixto was twenty years old and had, until recently, been a member of a street gang known as “The Tornadoes.” He was no longer active, having retired in favor of marriage to a girl named Angelita. Angelita was pregnant.

  Sixto had allegedly beat up a hooker and stolen $32 from her purse. The girl was one of the better-known prostitutes in the precinct territory and had, in fact, rolled in the hay on a good many occasions with members of the legion in blue. Some of these policemen had paid her for the privilege of her company.

  In ordinary circumstances, in spite of the fact that the girl had made a positive identification of Sixto Fangez, Havilland might have been willing to forget the whole matter in consideration of a little legal tender. Assault charges had been known to slip the minds of many policemen when the right word, together with the right amount of currency, was exchanged.

  It happened, however, that the newspapers were giving a big play to the funeral of Jeannie Paige—a funeral which had been delayed by the extensive autopsy examination performed on the body—on the morning that Sixto was brought upstairs to the squadroom. The newspapers were also pressuring the cops to do something about the rampant mugger, and so perhaps Havilland’s extreme enthusiasm could have been forgiven.

  He booked a bewildered and frightened Sixto, barked “Follow me!” over his shoulder, and then led him to a room politely marked INTERROGATION. Inside the room, Havilland locked the door and calmly lighted a cigarette. Sixto watched him. Havilland was a big man who, in his own words, “took nonsense from nobody.” He had once started to break up a street fight and, in turn, had his arm broken in four places. The healing process, considering the fact that the bones would not set properly the first time and had to be rebroken and reset, was a painful thing to bear. The healing process had given Havilland a lot of time to think. He thought mostly about being a good cop. He thought also about survival. He formed a philosophy.

  Sixto was totally unaware of the thinking process that had led to the formation of Havilland’s credo. He only knew that Havilland was the most hated and most feared cop in the barrio. He watched him with interest, a light film of sweat beading his thin upper lip. His eyes never left Havilland’s hands.

  “Looks like you’re in a little trouble, huh, Sixto?” Havilland said.

  Sixto nodded, his eyes blinking. He wet his lips.

  “Now, why’d you go and beat up on Carmen, huh?” Havilland said. He leaned against the table in the room, leisurely blowing out a stream of smoke.

  Sixto, thin, birdlike, wiped his bony hands on the coarse tweed of his trousers. Carmen was the prostitute he’d allegedly mugged. He knew that she had, on occasion, been friendly with the bulls. He did not know the extent of her relationship with Havilland. He maintained a calculating silence.

  “Huh?” Havilland asked pleasantly, his voice unusually soft. “Now, why’d you go and beat up on a nice-looking little girl like Carmen?”

  Sixto remained silent.

  “Were you looking for some trim, huh, Sixto?”

  “I am married,” Sixto said formally.

  “Looking for a little gash, huh, Sixto?”

  “No, I am married. I don’t go to the prostitutes,” Sixto said.

  “What were you doing with Carmen, then?”

  “She owe me money,” Sixto said. “I went to collec’ it.”

  “You lent her money, is that right, Sixto?”

  “Si,” Sixto said.

  “How much money?”

  “Abou’ forty dollars.”

  “And so you went to her and tried to collect it, is that right?”

  “Si. Iss my money. I lenn it to her maybe three, maybe four munns ago.”

  “Why’d she need it, Sixto?”

  “Hell, she’s a junkie. Don’t you know that?”

  “I heard something along those lines,” Havilland said, smiling pleasantly. “So she needed a fix and she came to you for the loot, that right, Sixto?”

  “She dinn come to me. I happen to be sittin’ in the bar, an’ she say she wass low, so I lay the forty on her. Thass all. So now I wenn aroun’ to collec’ it. So she gave me a hard time.”

  “What kind of a hard time?”

  “She say business iss bad, an’ she don’t get many johns comin’ from downtown, an’ like that. So I tell her I don’t care abou’ her business. All I wann is my forty dollars back. I’m a married man. I’m gonna have a baby soon. I cann fool aroun’ lennin money to hookers.”

  “You working, Sixto?”

  “Si. I work in a res’aurant downtown.”

  “How come you needed this forty bucks so bad right now?”

  “I tol’ you. My wife’s pregin. I got doctor bills, man.”

  “So why’d you hit Carmen?”

  “Because I tell her I don’t have to stann aroun’ bullin’ with a hooker. I tell her I wann my money. So she come back and say my Angelita iss a hooker, too! Man, thass my wife. Angelita! She’s clean like the Virgin Mary! So I bust her in the mouth. Thass what happen.”r />
  “And then you went through her purse, huh, Sixto?”

  “Only to get my forty dollars.”

  “And you got thirty-two, right?”

  “Si. She still owe me eight.”

  Havilland nodded sympathetically and then slid an ashtray across the tabletop. With small, sharp stabs, he stubbed out his cigarette. He looked up at Sixto then, a smile on his cherubic face. He sucked in a deep breath, his massive shoulders heaving.

  “Now, what’s the real story, Sixto?” he said softly.

  “Thass the real story,” Sixto said. “Thass the way it happen.”

  “What about these other girls you’ve been mugging?”

  Sixto looked at Havilland unblinkingly. For a moment, he seemed incapable of speech. Then he said, “What?”

  “These other girls all over the city? How about it, Sixto?”

  “What?” Sixto said again.

  Havilland moved off the table gracefully. He took three steps to where Sixto was standing. Still smiling, he brought his fist back and rammed the knuckles into Sixto’s mouth.

  The blow caught Sixto completely by surprise. His eyes opened wide, and he felt himself staggering backward. Then he collided with the wall and automatically wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. A red smear stained the tan of his fingers. He blinked his eyes and looked across at Havilland.

  “What for you hit me?” he asked.

  Tell me about the other girls, Sixto,” Havilland said, moving toward him again.

  “What other girls? What are you crazy or something? I hit a hooker to get back my—”

  Havilland lashed out backhanded, then swung his open palm around to catch Sixto’s other cheek. Again, the hand lashed back, forward, back, forward, until Sixto’s head was rocking like a tall blade of grass in a stiff breeze. He tried to cover his face, and Havilland jabbed out at his stomach. Sixto doubled over in pain.

  “Ave Maria,” he said, “why are you—”

  “Shut up!” Havilland shouted. Tell me about the muggings, you spic son of a bitch! Tell me about that seventeen-year-old blonde you killed last week!”

  “I dinn kill—”

  Havilland hit him again, throwing his huge fist at Sixto’s head. He caught Sixto under the eye, and the boy fell to the floor, and Havilland kicked him with the point of his shoe.

  “Get up!”