by Ed McBain
“Then how we gonna buy the coke?” Constantine asked.
“We ain’t gonna buy it,” Lonnie said. “We gonna steal it.”
Of course, Suzie thought.
Otherwise it would be too damn simple, am I right?
10
ON FRIDAY MORNING, AFIS—the Automated Fingerprint Identification Section—identified the larger of the prints, the man’s prints, as belonging to Lester Lyle Henderson, who had served a stint with the U.S. Air Force during the Gulf War. Some of the smaller prints matched the ones Pamela Henderson had allowed them to take. For the other small prints, presumably left by the Carrie who’d written the letters, there was nothing.
The lab downtown identified the plain white envelopes as a product of the Haley Paper Company, available in any variety store, any office supply store, any supermarket across the entire nation. Carella suddenly felt like the FBI trying to track down the envelopes used by whoever’d been mailing anthrax hither and yon.
The monogrammed stationery was another matter.
The lab identified it as a quality paper made by Generation Paper Mills in Portland, Maine, a supplier to Carter Paper Products in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the manufacturer of an exclusive line of stationery called Letter Perfect, which was carried by only two department stores and seven specialty shops in the city. Both department stores were located in the midtown area. Carella and Kling went to visit them first.
Except for charge customers, neither of the stores kept sales records going back earlier than a year ago. Within the past year, there was no record of any customer—cash or charge—having ordered Letter Perfect stationery with the monogram JSH. One of the stores did not keep charge records for more than two years. The other did not keep them for more than eighteen months. In any case, it would take some time to peruse the earlier files; they would have to get back to Carella.
The prospect was even dimmer at the seven specialty shops. None of them remembered a customer with the initials JSH, and none of them had time to go through their back records just now. They promised to call the detectives if anything turned up.
Carella still felt like the FBI.
THE OFFICES OF Councilman Lester Lyle Henderson were close to City Hall, in a part of town still referred to as the Old City. Here stood the ocean-battered seawall the Dutch had built centuries ago, the massive cannons atop it seeming to control the approach from the Atlantic even now, though their barrels had long ago been filled with cement. Here at the very tip of the island, you could watch the Dix and the Harb churning with crosscurrents where the two rivers met. The streets down here had once accommodated only horse-drawn carriages, and were now too narrow to permit the passage of more than a single automobile. Where once there had been two-story wooden taverns, a precious few of which still survived, there were now concrete buildings soaring into the sky, infested redundantly with lawyers and financiers. And yet—perhaps because the Atlantic was right here to touch, rumbling majestically off toward the Old World that had given the city its life—there was still the feel here of what it must have been like when everyone was still very young and very innocent.
There was no sense of the Old World in Henderson’s offices. Neither was there the slightest whiff of innocence. Youth, however, was in rich abundance. The girl sitting behind the reception desk couldn’t have been older than twenty-three. Pert and blond, wearing a very short green mini and a white-buttoned navy blue blouse, she sensed immediately that Kling was the single guy in this dynamic duo, and turned her full attention to him.
“How can I help you?” she asked, smiling radiantly.
She sounded Southern. North Carolina? Georgia? Kling wondered what she was doing in a politician’s office up north.
“We’re here for Alan Pierce,” Kling said.
“Is he expecting you?”
“He is.”
“And you are?” she asked.
Kling felt as if he’d just asked her to dance at the senior prom, and she wanted to know which home room he was in.
“Detective Kling,” he said, and opened the leather fob to which his shield was pinned. “This is my partner, Detective Carella.”
“Is he in?” Carella asked.
“Let me see, sir,” she asked.
Sir. Made Carella feel like forty. Which he was.
The blonde lifted a phone receiver, tapped a button on the phone base, smiled up at Kling, listened, and then said, “Alan, there are two detectives here to see you.” She listened again, said, “Right,” and then put the phone back on the receiver. Smiling at Kling again, she said, “Through the door there, and into the main office. Then through that to Mr. Pierce’s office at the far end. If you need me, just whistle.”
The line sounded familiar to Kling.
They walked past a wall hung with framed campaign posters of bygone years to an unmarked door with a brass knob. Beyond that door was a huge open room banked on one side with windows now open to breezes that blew in off the water where the rivers clashed. There were perhaps twenty desks in this room, all of them the same color as the computers sitting on top of them, an array of greens and purples and grays that seemed as cheerful as springtime. Behind each desk sat the so-called T-Generation, kids who had come of age when the terrorists bombed America, none of them older than twenty-five, all of them staring at their computers as if transfixed, fingers flying, performing God only knew what political tasks for their now deceased leader. None of them looked up as Carella and Kling worked their way to the rear of the room where three identical doors sat like props in a stage farce. One of them bore a plaque that read: A. PIERCE.
“Lauren Bacall,” Carella said. “To Have and Have Not.”
Kling looked at him.
“The next line is, ‘You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.’”
“Oh,” Kling said. “Yeah,” and knocked on the door.
“Bogart’s name was Steve,” Carella explained. “In the picture.”
“Come in,” a voice called.
Alan Pierce was a man in his late thirties, Carella guessed, old by comparison to the cadre of kids manning the computers outside. He came from behind his desk with his hand extended, a tall, slender man exhibiting the obvious end results of hours in the gym, a flat tummy, a narrow waist, and wide shoulders clearly his own since he was in shirtsleeves. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Nice to see you. Sit down. Please.”
Carella wondered if Pierce was doing an imitation of President Bush, who couldn’t seem to get through a sentence longer than five words without parsing it. “We are. Going to. Find and destroy. The Evil One.” Pierce here seemed to go him one better. Or perhaps this was just a memorized way of greeting people. He shook hands vigorously now, as if he were soliciting votes.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
Same words the blond receptionist had used. Carella wondered if this was office protocol. He suddenly realized he did not trust politicians. And he wondered if this attitude had been reinforced by the letters Henderson had received from someone named Carrie—which, after all, was why they were here today.
“Mr. Pierce,” he said, “I under…”
“Alan,” he said. “Please.”
“Alan,” Carella said, and cleared his throat, “I understand that you and Mr. Henderson flew up to the state capital together last…”
“Yes, we did.”
“That would have been last Saturday, is that right?”
“Yes. Saturday morning.”
“April twentieth, right?”
“Yes.”
“Just the two of you?” Carella asked.
“Just the two of us, yes.”
“And you came back the next morning, is that correct?”
“Correct. Sunday the twenty-first.”
“Alone.”
“I came back alone, yes.”
“You left Mr. Henderson up there and flew back alone.”
“Yes. I had some personal matters
to attend to here in the city. And he no longer needed me.”
“What’d you guys do up there, anyway?” Kling asked.
“Attended meetings. As you probably know, the Governor had approached Lester about running for mayor. We met with his people on Saturday. And Lester had a lunch meeting with the Governor himself scheduled for Sunday. That’s why he stayed over. It was a summit thing, just the two of them.”
The telephone rang.
Pierce picked up the receiver.
“Yes?” he said. “Who? Oh, yes, certainly, put him through. Sorry,” he said to the detectives, and then, into the phone again, “Hello, Roger,” he said, “how can I help you?”
There it is again, Carella thought. How can I help you?
“Well, I have to tell you frankly,” Pierce said, “I find it not only premature but also somewhat ghoulish for you people to be asking that question so soon after we put the councilman in the ground.” He listened and then said, “I don’t care what the Governor’s office is putting out. No one has talked to me about it, and I just told you I don’t wish to entertain any questions about it.” He listened and then said, “Then can you please extend me that courtesy?” He looked at the detectives, rolled his eyes, listened again, and then said, “When I’m ready to discuss it. When a decent interval has passed. If then. Goodbye, Rog,” he said, “thanks for calling.”
He put the receiver back on the cradle rest, said, “I’m sorry, gentlemen. They keep asking me if I plan to run for mayor now that Lester…” He shook his head. “No fucking decency left in this world, is there? Forgive me, but they’re like animals.” He sighed heavily, sat in the big leather chair behind his desk again, and said, “We were discussing?”
“Your coming back home early,” Kling said.
“No, I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. I never expected to stay any longer.”
“I thought…”
“No.”
“When you said you had some personal matters…”
“Yes, but I knew before I went upstate that Lester would be lunching with the Governor. This wasn’t something that came as a surprise.”
“Sorry I misinterpreted it,” Kling said.
“Sorry if I misled you.”
“What sort of meetings did you have up there?” Carella asked.
“Well, first with some members of the Governor’s exploratory committee, it’s called, and then with the Governor’s campaign people, and then with people from the national party itself. Mayor of this city is a big deal, you know. Both parties would like their own man in there.”
“This was all day long?” Carella asked. “The meetings.”
“Well, the first one was at ten Saturday morning. We broke for lunch, and then met with the campaign people at two. Our last meeting was at four.”
“What time did that end?” Carella asked.
“Oh, around six, six-thirty.”
“What then?”
“We had dinner and went to sleep. I had an early flight the next morning.”
“You had dinner together?” Kling asked.
“Well, no, actually. I called room service. I don’t know where Lester ate. I imagine he did the same thing. We’d had a long day.”
“Did he say he was going to call room service?”
“Well, no. I’m just assuming…I really don’t know.”
“Was there a restaurant in the hotel?”
“Oh, sure.”
“So he might’ve had dinner there.”
“He might’ve. Or anywhere else in town, for that matter. There are lots of good restaurants up there. Italian ones, especially. There’s a large Italian constituency up there. Population, I should say.”
“Did you talk to him on Sunday morning?”
“No. I was catching a seven A.M. flight.”
“Didn’t want to wake him, was that it?” Carella asked.
“Exactly. Besides, there was really nothing more to say. We’d said it all the night before.”
“Had a talk the night before?”
“Yes. After our last meeting.”
“At around six, six-thirty?”
“Around then, yes. We had a drink in the lobby…”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yes. To rehash the day. Then I went to my room, had dinner, and went to bed. I don’t know where Lester went.”
“He didn’t say where he might be going, did he?”
“No.”
“But you think he might have called room service.”
“That was just a guess. He seemed tired…that was just an educated guess.”
“Were there any women at these meetings?” Kling asked.
“Oh yes. This isn’t Afghanistan, you know,” Pierce said, and smiled.
“Did any of these women come up from the city?” Carella asked.
“No. They were all based up there.”
“Any of them named Carrie?”
“Carrie?”
“C-A…”
“No, not that I recall. Carrie? Where’d that come from?” Pierce asked.
“Does that name mean anything to you?”
“No. Who is she?”
“You don’t know anyone named Carrie?”
“No one at all.”
“Did Mr. Henderson know anyone named Carrie?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“This wouldn’t have to be professionally,” Carella said.
“I’m not sure I…”
“Personally. This would have been someone he knew personally.”
“You’d have to ask Pamela about that. She’d be more familiar with their personal acquaintances.”
“She doesn’t know anyone named Carrie,” Carella said.
“I don’t, either. I’m sorry.”
“You were Mr. Henderson’s aide…”
“Yes.”
“His assistant.”
“Yes.”
“His right hand man.”
“Yes?”
“He would have told you if he knew someone named Carrie, wouldn’t he?”
“I suppose so. Gentlemen, I’m still not sure I under…”
“How do you suppose a letter without a return address on it got through to Mr. Henderson?”
“I have no idea. Everything coming into the office is screened. No one in public life takes any chances nowadays.”
“Would anyone besides Mr. Henderson have had access to an envelope marked ‘Personal and Private’?”
“An envelope with no return address on it?” Carella said.
“Well…Josh maybe.”
“Coogan?”
“Yes.”
“We’d like to talk to him. Is he here?”
“No, I’m sorry, he’s not.”
“When will he be back?”
“He won’t. He’s gone for the day. You have no idea how many calls we’ve had following Lester’s murder. Both of us have been running around like crazy.”
“I’m sure,” Carella said. “Can we reach him at home?”
“I’ll give you his address, sure,” Pierce said. “But you’d have a better shot at the school.”
“The school?”
“Ramsey U. He takes film courses there at night. He wants to be a director.”
“What time is he usually there?”
“Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Seven to eleven.”
“Today’s Friday,” Kling said.
“So it is,” Pierce said, and both cops suddenly disliked him intensely.
“Just one other question,” Carella said. “When you were upstate with Mr. Henderson, did you at any time see him in the company of a nineteen-year-old girl?”
“Not that I can recall. Do you mean at any of our meetings? Most of the women were older than…”
“No, I mean alone. Alone with a nineteen-year-old girl.”
“No. Never. Lester? Never.”
“Thank you,” Carella said.
In the corridor outside, Kling
said, “He’s lying about the girl.”
“I know,” Carella said.
AINE DUGGAN pronounced her name Anya Doogan. This was surprising to Emilio, but then again he wasn’t Irish. She told him onetime, while they were both stoned on crack when it was still fashionable, that Aine was an old Celtic name. He believed her. She certainly looked Irish. Or even Celtic, what with her bright green eyes, when she wasn’t stoned, and hair that had a burnt October look, somewhat like what he imagined Livvie’s hair to be. He had known Aine for it had to’ve been seven, eight years now, when crack was all the rage and you could get high for a few bucks, man, those were the days. That was before either of them started hooking.
Back then, Aine was still bartending and Emilio was working as a dishwasher at the same little Italian restaurant down near the Quarter. But even after they both began using, there always seemed to be enough money for their daily needs plus a movie every now and then or a rock concert out on The Bight, crack was so friggin cheap then. It was one of the busboys first turned them on to crack. Emilio hardly ever saw Aine socially anymore. No time for music or flicks anymore, too busy out there rushing the buck.
She looked tired these days.
Twenty-five years old, she looked tired.
He wondered if he looked the same way.
“What I’m searching for is a bar named O’Malley’s,” he said.
“Must be ten thousand bars named O’Malley’s in this city,” Aine said.
She still talked with a Calm’s Point accent, the Irish variety, not the Italian or black style. On the telephone, Emilio always could tell if he was talking to a Spanish person like himself or somebody Irish or Italian or black or Jewish. Some people said you couldn’t tell a book by its cover, but that was all democracy bullshit. On the telephone, the minute anybody opened his mouth, Emilio nailed him. When Aine opened her mouth, it was like you pulled a cork from a bottle and shamrocks fell all over the table. She was wearing this afternoon a flared skirt and a white blouse, white ankle socks and brown loafers. She looked like an Irish teenager instead of a junkie, except that she also looked so friggin tired.
“No, that’s what I thought, too,” he said, “but I looked in the phone books, and there ain’t no O’Malley’s.”
