Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here!

by Ed McBain

  “There was a Marine…” Kapek said tentatively.

  “Hm?” Lennie asked with a polite smile, and then lifted his glass and threw down the rest of the whiskey. He said, “Mmm, boy,” coughed again, dabbed at his watering eyes, and then said, “Yes, yes, but he came in later.”

  “After they threw that kid out, you mean?”

  “Oh yes, much later. Were you here when the Marine came in?”

  “Oh, sure,” Kapek said.

  “Funny we didn’t notice each other,” Lennie said, and shrugged and signaled to the bartender. The bartender slouched toward them, shooting Kapek his own warning glance: This guy’s a good steady customer. If I lose him ‘cause you’re pumping him for information here, I’m gonna get sore as hell.

  “Yeah, Lennie?” the bartender said.

  “I’ll have another double, please,” Lennie answered. “And please see what my friend here is having, won’t you?”

  The bartender shot the warning glance at Kapek again. Kapek stared back at him implacably and said, “I’ll just have another beer.” The bartender nodded and walked off.

  “There was this girl in here about then,” Kapek said to Lennie. “You remember her?”

  “Which girl?”

  “Colored girl in a red dress,” Kapek said.

  Lennie was watching the bartender as he poured whiskey into the tumbler. “Hm?” he said.

  “Colored girl in a red dress,” Kapek repeated.

  “Oh yes, Belinda,” Lennie answered.

  “Belinda what?”

  “Don’t know,” Lennie said.

  His eyes brightened as the bartender came back with his whiskey and Kapek’s beer. Lennie lifted the tumbler immediately and drank. “Mmm, boy,” he said, and coughed. The bartender hovered near them. Kapek met his eyes, decided if he wanted so badly to get in on the act, he’d let him.

  “Would you happen to know?” Kapek said.

  “Know what?”

  “There was a girl named Belinda in here last night. Wearing a red dress. Would you know her last name?”

  “Me,” the bartender said, “I’m deaf, dumb, and blind.” He paused. “This guy’s a cop, Lennie, did you know that?”

  “Oh yes, certainly,” Lennie said, and fell off his stool and passed out cold.

  Kapek got up, bent, seized Lennie under the arms, and dragged him over to one of the booths. He loosened his tie and then looked up at the bartender, who had come over and was standing with his hands on his hips.

  “You always serve booze to guys who’ve had too much?” he asked.

  “You always ask them questions?” the bartender said.

  “Let’s ask you a couple instead, okay?” Kapek said. “Who’s Belinda?”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “Okay. Just make sure she never hears of me”

  “Huh?”

  “You were pretty anxious just now to let our friend here know I was a cop. I’m telling you something straight, pal. I’m looking for Belinda, whoever the hell she is. If she finds out about it, from whatever source, I’m going to assume you’re the one who tipped her. And that might just make you an accessory, pal.”

  “Who you trying to snow?” the bartender said. “I run a clean joint here. I don’t know nobody named Belinda, and whatever she done or didn’t do, I’m out of it completely. So what’s this ‘accessory’ crap?”

  “Try to forget I was in here looking for her,” Kapek said. “Otherwise you’re liable to find out just what this ‘accessory’ crap is. Okay?”

  “You scare me to death,” the bartender said.

  “You know where Lennie lives?” Kapek asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “He married?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Call his wife. Tell her to come down here and get him.”

  “She’ll kill him,” the bartender said. He looked down at Lennie and shook his head. “I’ll sober him up and get him home, don’t worry about it.”

  He was already talking gently and kindly to the unconscious Lennie as Kapek went out of the bar.

  Ramon Castaneda was in his undershirt when he opened the door for Delgado.

  “Si, qui quiere usted?” he asked.

  “I’m Detective Delgado, 87th Squad,” Delgado said, and flipped his wallet open to show his shield. Castaneda looked at it closely.

  “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

  “May I come in, please?” Delgado said.

  “Who is it, Ray?” a woman called from somewhere in the apartment.

  “Policeman,” Castaneda said over his shoulder. “Come in,” he said to Delgado.

  Delgado went into the apartment. There was a kitchen on his right, a living room dead ahead, two bedrooms beyond that. The woman who came out of the closest bedroom was wearing a brightly flowered nylon robe and carrying a hairbrush in her right hand. She was quite beautiful, with long black hair and a pale complexion, gray-green eyes, a full bosom, ripely curving hips. She was barefoot, and she moved soundlessly into the living room and stood with her legs slightly apart, the hairbrush held just above her hip, somewhat like a hatchet she had just unsheathed.

  “Sorry to bother you this way,” Delgado said.

  “What is it?” the woman said.

  “This is my wife,” Castaneda said. “Rita, this is Detective… What’s your name again?”

  “Delgado.”

  “You Spanish?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Castaneda said.

  “What is it?” Rita said again.

  “Your partner Jose Huerta…”

  “What’s the matter with him?” Castaneda asked immediately. “Is something the matter with him?”

  “Yes. He was attacked by four men this morning…”

  “Oh my God!” Rita said, and brought the hand holding the hairbrush to her mouth, pressing the back of it to her lips as though stifling a scream.

  “Who?” Castaneda said. “Who did it?”

  “We don’t know. He’s at Buenavista Hospital now.” Delgado paused. “Both his legs were broken.”

  “Oh my God!” Rita said again.

  “We’ll go to him at once,” Castaneda said, and turned away, ready to leave the room, seemingly anxious to dress and leave for the hospital immediately.

  “If I may…” Delgado said, and Castaneda remembered he was there, and paused, still on the verge of departure, and impatiently said to his wife, “Get dressed, Rita,” and then said to Delgado, “Yes, what is it? We want to see Joe as soon as possible.”

  “I’d like to ask some questions before you go,” Delgado said.

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “How long have you and Mr. Huerta been partners?”

  The woman had not left the room. She stood standing slightly apart from the two men, the hairbrush bristles cradled on the palm of one hand, the other hand clutched tightly around the handle, her eyes wide as she listened.

  “I told you to get dressed,” Castaneda said to her.

  She seemed about to answer him. Then she gave a brief complying nod, wheeled, and went into the bedroom, closing the door only partially behind her.

  “We have been partners for two years,” Castaneda said.

  “Get along with each other?”

  “Of course. Why?” Castaneda put his hands on his hips. He was a small man, perhaps five feet seven inches tall, and not particularly good looking, with a pockmarked face and a longish nose and a mustache that sat just beneath it and somehow emphasized its length. He leaned toward Delgado belligerently now, defying him to explain that last question, his brown eyes burning as fiercely as had his partner’s through the hospital bandages.

  “A man has been assaulted, Mr. Castaneda. It’s routine to question his relatives and associates. I meant no—”

  “It sounded like you meant plenty,” Castaneda said. His hands were still on his hips. He looked like a fighting rooster Delgado had once seen in a cockfight in the town of Vega Baja, when he had gone back to th
e island to visit his dying grandmother.

  “Let’s not get excited,” Delgado said. There was a note of warning in his voice. The note informed Castaneda that whereas both men were Puerto Ricans, one of them was a cop entitled to ask questions about a third Puerto Rican who had been badly beaten up. The note further informed Castaneda that however mild Delgado’s manner might appear, he wasn’t about to take any crap, and Castaneda had better understand that right from go. Castaneda took his hands from his hips. Delgado stared at him a moment longer.

  “Would you happen to know whether or not your partner had any enemies?” he asked. His voice was flat. Through the partially open door of the bedroom, he saw Rita Castaneda move toward the dresser and then away from it, out of sight.

  “No enemies that I know of,” Castaneda replied.

  “Would you know if he’d ever received any threatening letters or phone calls?”

  “Never.”

  The flowered robe flashed into view again. Delgado’s eyes flicked momentarily toward the open door. Castaneda frowned.

  “Would you have had any business deals recently that caused any hard feelings with anyone?”

  “None,” Castaneda said. He moved toward the open bedroom door, took the knob in his hand, and pulled the door firmly shut. “We’re real estate agents for apartment buildings. We rent apartments. It’s as simple as that.”

  “No trouble with any of the tenants?”

  “We hardly ever come into contact with them. Once in a while we have trouble collecting rents. But that’s normal in this business, and nobody bears a grudge.”

  “Would you say your partner is well liked?”

  Castaneda shrugged.

  “What does that mean, Mr. Castaneda?”

  “Well liked, who knows? He’s a man like any other man. He is liked by some and disliked by others.”

  “Who dislikes him?” Delgado asked immediately.

  “No one dislikes him enough to have him beaten up,” Castaneda said.

  “I see,” Delgado answered. He smiled pleasantly. “Well,” he said, “thank you for your information. I won’t keep you any longer.”

  “Fine, fine,” Castaneda said. He went to the front door and opened it. “Let me know if you find the men who did it,” he said.

  “I will,” Delgado answered, and found himself in the hallway. The door closed behind him. In the apartment, he heard Castaneda shout, “Rita, esta lista?”

  He put his ear to the door.

  He could hear Castaneda and his wife talking very quietly inside the apartment, their voices rumbling distantly, but he could not tell what they were saying. Only once, when Rita raised her voice, did Delgado catch a word.

  The word was hermano, which in Spanish meant “brother.”

  It was close to 2:00 P.M., and things were pretty quiet in the squadroom.

  Kapek was looking through the Known Muggers File, trying to get a lead on the black girl known only as “Belinda.” Carella had arrived in time to have lunch with Brown, and both men sat at a long table near one of the windows, one end of it burdened with fingerprinting equipment, eating tuna fish sandwiches and drinking coffee in cardboard containers. As they ate, Brown filled him in on what he had so far. Marshall Davies at the lab, true to his word, had gone to work on the Snow White mask the moment he received it and had reported back not a half hour later. He had been able to recover only one good print, that being a thumbprint on the inside surface, presumably left there when the wearer was adjusting the mask to his face. He had sent this immediately to the Identification Section, where the men on Sunday duty had searched their Single-Fingerprint File, tracking through a maze of arches, loops, whorls, scars, and accidentals to come up with a positive identification for a man named Bernard Goldenthal.

  His yellow sheet was now on Brown’s desk, and both detectives studied it carefully:

  A man’s yellow sheet (so called because the record actually was duplicated on a yellow sheet of paper; bar owners were not the only imaginative people in this city) was perhaps not as entertaining, say, as a good novel, but it did have a shorthand narrative power all its own. Goldenthal’s record had the added interest of a rising dramatic line, a climax of sorts, and then a slackening of tension just before the denouement—which was presumably yet to come.

  His first arrest had been at the age of sixteen, for burglary and juvenile delinquency, and he had been remanded to the Jewish Home for Boys, a correctional institution. Less than a year later, apparently back on the streets again, he had been arrested again for burglary, with the charge reduced to unlawful entry, and (the record was incomplete here) the courts had apparently shown leniency in consideration of his age—he was barely seventeen at the time—and let him off scot-free. Progressing to bigger and better things during the next year, he was arrested first on a robbery charge and then on a robbery with a gun charge, and again the courts showed mercy and let him go. Thus emboldened and encouraged, he moved on to grand larceny first and burglary third, was again busted, and this time was sent to prison. He had probably served both terms concurrently and was released on parole sometime before 1959, when apparently he decided to knock over a truck crossing state lines, thereby inviting the Federal Bureau of Investigation to step in. Carella and Brown figured the “3 yrs to serve” were the three years remaining from his prior conviction; the courts were again being lenient.

  And perhaps this leniency was finally paying off. The violations he’d been convicted of since his second release from prison were not too terribly serious, especially when compared to grand larceny or interstate theft. Section 974 of the Penal Law was defined as “keeping a place for or transferring money in the game of policy” and was a misdemeanor. Section 974a was a bit heavier—“Operating a policy business”—and was a felony punishable by imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years. In either case, Goldenthal seemed to have moved into a more respectable line of work, employing himself in the “policy” or “numbers game,” which many hardworking citizens felt was a perfectly harmless recreation and hardly anything for the Law to get all excited about. The Law had not, in fact, got too terribly excited about Goldenthal’s most recent offenses. He could have got five years on his last little adventure, when in fact all he had drawn was a fine of a $150 or sixty days, on a reduced charge of unlawful possession of policy slips, Section 975 of the Penal Law.

  Goldenthal had begun his criminal career at the age of sixteen. He was now almost forty years old and had spent something better than ten years of his adult life in prison. If they found him, and busted him again, and convicted him of the grocery store holdup and murder, he would be sent away forever.

  There were several other pieces of information in the packet the IS had sent uptown—a copy of Goldenthal’s fingerprint card, with a complete description of him on the reverse side; a final report from his probation officer back in ‘69; a copy of the Detective Division report on his most recent arrest—but the item of chief interest to Carella and Brown was Goldenthal’s lastknown address. He had apparently been living in uptown Isola with his mother, a Mrs. Minnie Goldenthal, until the time of her death three months ago. He had then moved to an apartment downtown and was presumably still living there.

  They decided to hit it together.

  They were no fools.

  Goldenthal had once been arrested on a gun charge, and either he or his partner had put three bullets into two men not seven hours before.

  The show began ten minutes after Carella and Brown left the squadroom. It had a cast of four and was titled Hookers’ Parade. It starred two young streetwalkers who billed themselves as Rebecca and Sally Good.

  “Those are not your real names,” Kapek insisted.

  “Those are our real names,” Sally answered, “and you can all go to hell.”

  The other two performers in the show were the patrolman who had answered the complaint and made the arrest, and a portly gentleman in a pinstriped suit who looked mortally offended though not at all em
barrassed, rather like a person who had wet his pajamas in a hospital bed, where illness is expected and annoying but certainly nothing to be ashamed of.

  “All right, what’s the story, Phil?” Kapek asked the patrolman.

  “Well, what happened—”

  “If you don’t mind,” the portly gentleman said, “I am the injured party here.”

  “Who the hell injured you, would you mind telling me?” Rebecca said.

  “All right, let’s calm down here,” Kapek said. He had finished with the Known Muggers File and was anxious to get to the Modus Operandi File, and he found all this tumult distracting. The girls, one black and one white, were both wearing tan sweaters, suede miniskirts, and brown boots. Sally, the white one, had long blonde hair. Rebecca, the black one, had her hair done in an Afro cut and bleached blonde. They were both in their early twenties, both quite attractive, long and leggy and busty and brazen and cheap as a bottle of 90C/ wine. The portly gentleman sat some distance away from them, on the opposite side of Kapek’s desk, as though afraid of contracting some dread disease. His face was screwed into an offended frown, his eyes sparked with indignation.

  “I wish these young ladies arrested,” he said. “I am the man who made the complaint, the injured party, and I am willing to press charges, and I wish them arrested at once.”

  “Fine, Mr….” Kapek consulted his pad. “Mr. Searle,” he said. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “I am from Independence, Missouri,” Searle said. “The home of Harry S. Truman.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kapek said.

  “Big deal,” Sally said.

  “I am here in the city on business,” Searle said. “I usually stay midtown, but I have several appointments in this area tomorrow morning, and I thought it would be more convenient to find lodgings in the neighborhood.” He paused and cleared his throat. “There is a rather nice hotel overlooking the park. The Grover.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kapek said.

  “Or at least I thought it was a rather nice hotel.”

  “It’s a fleabag,” Rebecca said.

  “How about knocking it off?” Kapek said.