by Ed McBain
“‘Cept me, of course.”
“Did you look out into the alley before you locked the door?”
“Nope. Why should I do that?”
“Did you hear anything outside while you were locking the door?”
“Nope.”
“Or at anytime before you locked it?”
“Well, there’s always noise outside when they’re leaving, you know. They got friends waiting for them, or else they go home together, you know, there’s always a lot of chatter when they go out.”
“But it was quiet when you locked the door.”
“Dead quiet,” the old man said.
The woman who took the chair beside Detective Meyer Meyer’s desk was perhaps thirty-two years old, with long straight black hair trailing down her back, and wide brown eyes that were terrified. It was still October, and the color of her tailored coat seemed suited to the season, a subtle tangerine with a small brown fur collar that echoed an outdoors trembling with the colors of autumn.
“I feel sort of silly about this,” she said, “but my husband insisted that I come.”
“I see,” Meyer said.
“There are ghosts,” the woman said.
Across the room, Kling unlocked the door to the detention cage and said, “Okay, pal, on your way. Try to stay sober till morning, huh?”
“It ain’t one-thirty yet,” the man said, “the night is young.” He stepped out of the cage, tipped his hat to Kling, and hurriedly left the squadroom.
Meyer looked at the woman sitting beside him, studying her with new interest because, to tell the truth, she had not seemed like a nut when she first walked into the squadroom. He had been a detective for more years than he chose to count, and in his time had met far too many nuts of every stripe and persuasion. But he had never met one as pretty as Adele Gorman with her welltailored, fur-collared coat, and her Vassar voice, and her skillfully applied eye makeup, lips bare of color in her pale white face, pert and reasonably young and seemingly intelligent—but apparently a nut besides.
“In the house,” she said. “Ghosts.”
“Where do you live, Mrs. Gorman?” he asked. He had written her name on the pad in front of him, and now he watched her with his pencil poised and recalled the lady who had come into the squadroom only last month to report a gorilla peering into her bedroom from the fire escape outside. They had sent a patrolman over to make a routine check, and had even called the zoo and the circus (which was coincidentally in town, and which lent at least some measure of possibility to her claim), but there had been no ape on the fire escape, nor had any simians recently escaped from their cages. The lady came back the next day to report that her visiting gorilla had put in another appearance the night before, this time wearing a top hat and carrying a black cane with an ivory head. Meyer had assured her that he would have a platoon of cops watching her building that night, which seemed to calm her at least somewhat. He had then led her personally out of the squadroom, and down the iron-runged steps, and through the high-ceilinged muster room, and past the hanging green globes on the front stoop, and onto the sidewalk outside the station house. Sergeant Murchison, at the muster desk, shook his head after the lady was gone, and muttered, “More of them outside than in.”
Meyer watched Adele Gorman now, remembered what Murchison had said, and thought, Gorillas in September, ghosts in October.
“We live in Smoke Rise,” she said. “Actually, it’s my father’s house, but my husband and I are living there with him.”
“And the address?”
“374 MacArthur Lane. You take the first access road into Smoke Rise, about a mile and a half east of Silvermine Oval. The name on the mailbox is Van Houten. That’s my father’s name. Willem Van Houten.” She paused and studied him, as though expecting some reaction.
“Okay,” Meyer said, and ran a hand over his bald pate, and looked up, and said, “Now, you were saying, Mrs. Gorman…”
“That we have ghosts.”
“Um-huh. What kind of ghosts?”
“Ghosts. Poltergeists. Shades. I don’t know,” she said, and shrugged. “What kinds of ghosts are there?”
“Well, they’re your ghosts, so suppose you tell me,” Meyer said.
The telephone on Kling’s desk rang. He lifted the receiver and said, “87th Squad, Detective Kling.”
“There are two of them,” Adele said.
“Male or female?”
“One of each.”
“Yeah,” Kling said into the telephone, “go ahead.”
“How old would you say they were?”
“Centuries, I would guess.”
“No, I mean…”
“Oh, how old do they look? Well, the man…”
“You’ve seen them?”
“Oh, yes, many times.”
“Um-huh,” Meyer said.
“I’ll be right over,” Kling said into the telephone. “You stay there.” He slammed down the receiver, opened his desk drawer, pulled out a holstered revolver, and hurriedly clipped it to his belt. “Somebody threw a bomb into a storefront church. 1733 Culver Avenue. I’m heading over.”
“Right,” Meyer said. “Get back to me.”
“We’ll need a couple of meat wagons. The minister and two other people were killed, and it sounds as if there’re a lot of injured.”
“Will you tell Dave?”
“On the way out,” Kling said, and was gone.
“Mrs. Gorman,” Meyer said, “as you can see, we’re pretty busy here just now. I wonder if your ghosts can wait till morning.”
“No, they can’t,” Adele said.
“Why not?”
“Because they appear precisely at two forty-five A.M., and I want someone to see them.”
“Why don’t you and your husband look at them?” Meyer said.
“You think I’m a nut, don’t you?” Adele said.
“No, no, Mrs. Gorman, not at all.”
“Oh, yes you do,” Adele said. “I didn’t believe in ghosts, either, until I saw these two.”
“Well, this is all very interesting, I assure you, Mrs. Gorman, but really we do have our hands full right now, and I don’t know what we can do about these ghosts of yours, even if we did come over to take a look at them.”
“They’ve been stealing things from us,” Adele said, and Meyer thought, Oh, we have got ourselves a prime lunatic this time.
“What sort of things?”
“A diamond brooch that used to belong to my mother when she was alive. They stole that from my father’s safe.”
“What else?”
“A pair of emerald earrings. They were in the safe, too.”
“When did these thefts occur?”
“Last month.”
“Isn’t it possible the jewelry was mislaid someplace?”
“You don’t mislay a diamond brooch and a pair of emerald earrings that are locked inside a wall safe.”
“Did you report any of these thefts?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew you’d think I was crazy. Which is just what you’re thinking right this minute.”
“No, Mrs. Gorman, but I’m sure you can appreciate the fact that we, uh, can’t go around arresting ghosts,” Meyer said, and tried to smile.
Adele Gorman did not smile back. “Forget the ghosts,” she said. “I was foolish to mention them, I should have known better.” She took a deep breath, looked him squarely in the eye, and said, “I’m here to report the theft of a diamond brooch valued at six thousand dollars and a pair of earrings worth thirty-five hundred dollars. Will you send a man to investigate tonight, or should I ask my father to contact your superior officer?”
“Your father? What’s he got to…?”
“My father is a retired Surrogate’s Court judge,” Adele said.
“I see.”
“Yes, I hope you do.”
“What time did you say these ghosts arrive?” Meyer asked, and sighed heavily.
/> Between midnight and 2:00, the city does not change very much. The theaters have all let out, and the average Saturday night revelers, good citizens from Bethtown or Calm’s Point, Riverhead or Majesta, have come into the Isola streets again in search of a snack or a giggle before heading home to their separate beds. The city is an ants’ nest of after-theater eateries ranging from chic French cafes to pizzerias to luncheonettes to coffee shops to hot dog stands to delicatessens, all of them packed to the ceilings because Saturday night is not only the loneliest night of the week, it is also the night to howl. And howl they do, these good burghers who have put in five long hard days of labor and who are anxious now to relax and enjoy themselves before Sunday arrives, bringing with it the attendant boredom of too damn much leisure time, anathema for the American male. The crowds shove and jostle their way along The Stem, moving in and out of bowling alleys, shooting galleries, penny arcades, strip joints, nightclubs, jazz emporiums, souvenir shops, lining the sidewalks outside plateglass windows in which go-go girls gyrate, or watching with fascination as a roast beef slowly turns on a spit. Saturday night is a time for pleasure, and even the singles can find satisfaction, briefly courted by the sidewalk whores standing outside the shabby hotels in the side streets off The Stem, searching out homosexuals in gay bars on the city’s notorious North Side or down in The Quarter, thumbing through dirty books in the myriad “back magazine” shops, or slipping into darkened screening rooms to watch 16mm films of girls taking off their clothes, good people all or most, with nothing more on their minds than a little fun, a little enjoyment of the short respite between Friday night at 5:00 and Monday morning at 9:00.
But along around 2:00 A.M., the city begins to change.
The citizens have waited to get their cars out of parking garages (more damn garages than there are barbershops) or have staggered their way sleepily into subways to make the long trip back to the outlying sections, the furry toy dog won in the Pokerino palace clutched limply in arms that may or may not later succumb to less than ardent embrace, the laughter a bit thin, the voice a bit croaked, a college song being sung on a rattling subway car, but without much force or spirit, Saturday night has ended, it is really Sunday morning already, the morning hours are truly upon the city now, and the denizens appear.
The hookers brazenly approach any straying male, never mind the “Want to have a good time, sweetheart?”, never mind the euphemisms now. Now it’s “Want to fuck, honey?”, yes or no, a quick sidewalk transaction and the attendant danger of later getting mugged and rolled or maybe killed by a pimp in a hotel room stinking of Lysol while your pants are draped over a wooden chair. The junkies are out in force, too, looking for cars foolishly left unlocked and parked on the streets, or—lacking such fortuitous circumstance—experienced enough to force the side vent with a screwdriver, hook the lock button with a wire hanger, and open the door that way. There are pushers peddling their dream stuff, from pot to hoss to speed, a nickel bag or a twenty-dollar deck; fences hawking their stolen goodies, anything from a transistor radio to a refrigerator, the biggest bargain basement in town; burglars jimmying windows or forcing doors with a Celluloid strip, this being an excellent hour to break into apartments, when the occupants are asleep and the street sounds are hushed. But worse than any of these people (for they are, after all, only citizens engaged in commerce of a sort) are the predators who roam the night in search of trouble. In cruising wedges of three or four, sometimes high but more often not, they look for victims—a taxicab driver coming out of a cafeteria, an old woman poking around garbage cans for hidden treasures, a teenage couple necking in a parked automobile, it doesn’t matter. You can get killed in this city at any time of the day or night, but your chances for extinction are best after 2:00 A.M. because, paradoxically, the night people take over in the morning. There are neighborhoods that terrify even cops in this lunar landscape, and certain places they will not enter unless they have first checked to see that there are two doors, one to get in by, and the other to get out through, fast, should someone decide to block the exit from behind.
The Painted Parasol was just such an establishment.
They had found in Mercy Howell’s appointment book a notation that read, “Harry, 2 A.M., The Painted Parasol,” and since they knew this particular joint for exactly the kind of hole it was, and since they wondered what connection the slain girl might have had with the various unappetizing types who frequented the place from dusk till dawn, they decided to hit it and find out. The front entrance opened on a long flight of stairs that led down to the main room of what was not a restaurant, and not a club, though it combined features of both. It did not possess a liquor license, and so it served only coffee and sandwiches, but occasionally a rock singer would plug in his amplifier and guitar and whack out a few numbers for the patrons. The back door of the—hangout?—opened onto a side-street alley. Hawes checked it out, reported back to Carella, and they both made a mental floor plan in case they needed it later.
Carella went down the long flight of steps first, Hawes immediately behind him. At the bottom of the stairway, they moved through a beaded curtain and found themselves in a large room overhung with an old Air Force parachute painted in a wild psychedelic pattern. A counter upon which rested a coffee urn and trays of sandwiches in Saran Wrap was just opposite the hanging beaded curtain. To the left and right of the counter were perhaps two dozen tables, all of them occupied. A waitress in a black leotard and black high-heeled patent leather pumps was swiveling among and around the tables, taking orders. There was a buzz of conversation in the room, hovering, captured in the folds of the brightly painted parachute. Behind the counter, a man in a white apron was drawing a cup of coffee from the huge silver urn. Carella and Hawes walked over to him. Carella was almost six feet tall, and he weighed 180 pounds, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist and the hands of a street brawler. Hawes was six feet two inches tall, and he weighed 195 pounds bone-dry, and his hair was a fiery red with a white streak over the left temple, where he had once been knifed while investigating a burglary. Both men looked like exactly what they were: fuzz.
“What’s the trouble?” the man behind the counter asked immediately.
“No trouble,” Carella said. “This your place?”
“Yeah. My name is Georgie Bright, and I already been visited, thanks. Twice.”
“Oh? Who visited you?”
“First time a cop named O’Brien, second time a cop named Parker. I already cleared up that whole thing that was going on downstairs.”
“What whole thing going on downstairs?”
“In the men’s room. Some kids were selling pot down there, it got to be a regular neighborhood supermarket. So I done what O’Brien suggested, I put a man down there outside the toilet door, and the rule now is only one person goes in there at a time. Parker came around to make sure I was keeping my part of the bargain. I don’t want no narcotics trouble here. Go down and take a look if you like. You’ll see I got a man watching the toilet.”
“Who’s watching the man watching the toilet?” Carella asked.
“That ain’t funny,” Georgie Bright said, looking offended.
“Know anybody named Harry?” Hawes asked.
“Harry who? I know a lot of Harrys.”
“Any of them here tonight?”
“Maybe.”
“Where?”
“There’s one over there near the bandstand. The big guy with the blond hair.”
“Harry what?”
“Donatello.”
“Make the name?” Carella asked Hawes.
“No,” Hawes said.
“Neither do I.”
“Let’s talk to him.”
“You want a cup of coffee or something?” Georgie Bright asked.
“Yeah, why don’t you send some over to the table?” Hawes said, and followed Carella across the room to where Harry Donatello was sitting with another man. Donatello was wearing gray slacks, black shoes and socks, a white shirt open
at the throat, and a double-breasted blue blazer. His long blond hair was combed straight back from the forehead, revealing a sharply defined widow’s peak. He was easily as big as Hawes, and he sat with his hands folded on the table in front of him, talking to the man who sat opposite him. He did not look up as the detectives approached.
“Is your name Harry Donatello?” Carella asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“Police officers,” Carella said, and flashed his shield.
“I’m Harry Donatello, what’s the matter?”
“Mind if we sit down?” Hawes asked, and before Donatello could answer, both men sat, their backs to the empty bandstand and the exit door.
“Do you know a girl named Mercy Howell?” Carella asked.
“What about her?”
“Do you know her?”
“I know her. What’s the beef? She underage or something?”
“When did you see her last?”
The man with Donatello, who up to now had been silent, suddenly piped, “You don’t have to answer no questions without a lawyer, Harry. Tell them you want a lawyer.”
The detectives looked him over. He was small and thin, with black hair combed sideways to conceal a receding hairline. He was badly in need of a shave. He was wearing blue trousers and a striped shirt.
“This is a field investigation,” Hawes said drily, “and we can ask anything we damn please.”
“Town’s getting full of lawyers,” Carella said. “What’s your name, counselor?”
“Jerry Riggs. You going to drag me in this, whatever it is?”
“It’s a few friendly questions in the middle of the night,” Hawes said. “Anybody got any objections to that?”
“Getting so two guys can’t even sit and talk together without getting shook down,” Riggs said.
“You’ve got a rough life, all right,” Hawes said, and the girl in the black leotard brought their coffee to the table and then hurried off to take another order. Donatello watched her jiggling behind as she swiveled across the room.
“So when’s the last time you saw the Howell girl?” Carella asked again.
“Wednesday night,” Donatello said.
