Ax

1

January.

It refuses to obey the clichés this year. December did not provide a white Christmas, and now there is no lingering snow on the city pavements. The clouds above the jagged skyline are threatening, but it is too warm to snow, and yet there is no real warmth. Neither is there a blustering wind, or frost-rimmed windows. There is instead a sunless lack of cheer, an overall impression of solemn monochromatic gray.

The gray descends from the curving sky in motion, covers the motionless city buildings, gray themselves with the soot of centuries, extends to the gray concrete pavements and the deeper gray of asphalt streets, becomes a part of the residents themselves, a teeming gray mass that moves along the city streets as though suspended in melancholy, captured in the doldrums of January. This is the first month. It contains thirty-one days, year in and

year out. There will be no future days or years for the man lying against the basement wall.

An ax is embedded in his skull.

It is not a hatchet, it is an ax; designed for the felling of trees and the chopping of wood. Its wedge-shaped metallic striking head has been driven with astonishing force into the man’s skull, splitting it wide, covering blade and hair and face and floor and wall with blood and brain matter. There is no question but that this was the final blow, and the condition of the dead man makes it equally clear that this final blow was not at all necessary: there are more than twenty other wounds on the man’s face and body. His jugular is severed and pouring blood, his fingers and hands are mutilated from the repeated slashing of the ax head as he raised his hands to ward off the savage blows. His left arm dangles loosely from the shoulder where a vicious cleaving blow of the ax has left a wide trench across skin and bone. He was undoubtedly dead even before his assassin drove the ax blade into his skull and left it there, the curving wooden handle arcing against the gray wall, the wood stained with blood and pulp.

Blood has no aroma.

There was the smell of coal dust in the basement, and the smell of human sweat, and even the smell of urine from behind one of the coal bins near the furnace, but Detective Steve Carella could smell no blood. The police photographers were snapping pictures and the assistant medical examiner was pronouncing the man dead and waiting for the lab boys to chalk his position on the floor before carting him off to the morgue for autopsy, as if autopsy were needed with an ax sticking out of his head. Detective Cotton Hawes was talking to the two cops sent over by Homicide, and Carella was down on his knees before a boy of about seven who kept trying desperately not to look at the bloody corpse against the wall.

“All right, sonny, what’s your name?” Carella said.

“Mickey,” the boy answered.

“Mickey what?”

“Mickey Ryan. Will there be a ghost?”

“No, son, no ghost.”

“How can you tell?”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Carella said.

“That’s what you think,” Mickey said. “My father saw a ghost one time.”

“Well, there won’t be any ghost this time,” Carella said. “You want to tell me what happened, Mickey?”

“I came down to get my bike, and I found him,” Mickey said. “That’s all.”

“Right where he is? Against the wall there?”

Mickey nodded.

“Where’s your bike, Mickey?”

“Over there. Behind the bin.”

“Well, what brought you over here, on this side of the bin? Did you hear something?”

“No.”

“Then what brought you here? Your bike is all the way over on the other side there.”

“The blood,” Mickey said.

“What?”

“The blood was running across the floor, and I looked down and saw it, and I wondered what it was, so I went to take a look. That’s when I saw Mr. Lasser.”

“Is that his name?”

“Yes. Mr. Lasser.”

“Would you know his first name?”

“George.”

“George Lasser, is that right?”

Mickey nodded.

“And Mr. Lasser is superintendent of the building, is that right?”

“Yeah,” Mickey said, and he nodded again.

“All right, Mickey. After you saw Mr. Lasser, what did you do?”

“I ran.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs.”

“Upstairs where?”

“To my mother.”

“And then what?”

“I told her Mr. Lasser was dead in the basement with an ax in his head.”

“And then what?”

“Then she said, ‘Are you sure?’ and I said I was sure, so she called the police.”

“Mickey, did you see anyone in the basement besides Mr. Lasser?”

“No.”

“Did you see anyone while you were going down to the basement?”

“No.”

“While you were running upstairs?”

“No.”

“Excuse me, but would you mind?” a voice said, and Carella looked up to where a very tall, plain blonde woman wearing a light topcoat had pushed her way past a patrolman near the basement door.

“I’m the boy’s mother,” she said. “I don’t know what the legality of this is, but I’m sure you’re not permitted to question a seven-year-old boy in the basement of a building! Or anywhere, for that matter.”

“Mrs. Ryan, I understand my partner asked your permission before we—”

“He didn’t tell me you were going to take the boy down here again.”

“I’m sure he—”

“I turn my back for one minute, and the next thing I know both your partner and the boy are gone, and I haven’t the faintest clue where. I mean, I’m pretty upset anyway, as you can imagine, my seven-year-old son finding a body in the basement with an ax in the head no less, so here he vanishes from the apartment, and I don’t know where he’s gone.”

“He’s been here all along, Mrs. Ryan,” Carella said. “Safe and sound.”

“Yes, with a corpse all full of blood staring him in the face not ten feet away from him.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ryan.”

“My point is he’s only seven years old and he shouldn’t be put through this sort of ordeal. We don’t live in Russia, you know.”

“No, ma’am. But he did discover the body, and we thought it might be easier for him to reconstruct what happened if we—”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I think he’s reconstructed enough,” Mrs. Ryan said.

“Of course, Mrs. Ryan,” Carella said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Is that meant to be sarcastic?” Mrs. Ryan asked.

“No, ma’am, I meant it sincerely,” Carella said.

“Yeah, cops,” Mrs. Ryan said, and she took her son’s hand and pulled him out of the basement.

Carella sighed and walked over to where Hawes was talking with the two Homicide cops. He did not recognize either of the two men.

“My name’s Carella,” he said, “the 8-7.”

“I’m Phelps,” one of the Homicide cops said.

“I’m Forbes,” the other said.

“Where’s Monoghan and Monroe?” Carella asked.

“Vacation,” Phelps said.

“In January?”

“Why not?” Forbes said.

“They both got nice places down in Miami,” Phelps said.

“No reason they shouldn’t go there in January,” Forbes said.

“Best time of the year for Florida,” Phelps said.

“Certainly,” Forbes said.

“What’ve you got so far?” Phelps asked, changing the subject.

“Man’s name is George Lasser,” Carella said. “He was superintendent of the building.”

“That’s what I got from the tenants,” Hawes said.

“Any idea how old he was, Cotton?”

“The tenants put him in his late eighties.”

“Why’d anyone want to kill a man that old?” Forbes asked.

“Ready to kick off anyway,” Phelps said.

“We had a killing once over near Seventh and Culver,” Forbes said. “You know the area?”

“Mmm,” Carella said.

“Guy was a hundred and two years old. In fact, it was his birthday.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding. Somebody shot him while he was cutting his birthday cake. Fell right into the damn thing, a hundred and three candles on it, one to grow on, you know. Guy dropped dead instantly.”

“Who did it?” Hawes asked.

“His mother,” Forbes said.

There was a short silence, and then Hawes said, “I thought you said the guy was a hundred and two years old.”

“That’s right,” Forbes said.

“Then how old was his mother?”

“A hundred and eighteen. She got married when she was sixteen.”

“Why’d she kill him?”

“She couldn’t get along with his wife.”

“I see. He had a wife, too, huh?”

“Sure.”

“How old was she?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Oh, come on,” Hawes said.

“He thinks I’m kidding him,” Forbes said, pushing his elbow into Phelps’s ribs.

“No, he ain’t kidding,” Phelps said, laughing.

“Over in Homicide,” Forbes said, “we get all kinds.”

“I’ll bet you do,” Hawes said.

Phelps looked at his watch. “Well, time we was running along,” he said. “You boys keep us informed now, huh?”

“In triplicate, huh?” Forbes said.

“We’re surprised you came out at all on such a cold day,” Carella said.

“It ain’t so cold,” Forbes said. “Over in Homicide, boy, we get days you could freeze.”

“Listen,” Hawes said, as though suddenly inspired, “why don’t you fellows handle this case yourselves?”

“Nope,” Forbes said.

“Not allowed to,” Phelps said.

“Against regulations,” Forbes said.

“Homicide is to be investigated by the precinct handling the initial complaint,” Phelps said.

“Sure, but I thought—”

“Nope.”

“I thought,” Hawes said, “that since you’ve had experience with geriatric cases, perhaps you’d—”

“What kind of cases?”

“Geriatric,” Hawes said.

“Jerry who?”

“Well, I just thought it was an idea,” Hawes said.

From the corner of his eye, Carella saw the patrolman at the basement steps signaling to him.

“Excuse me,” he said, and walked rapidly to the steps. “What is it?” he asked the patrolman.

“Steve, we got a guy outside, found him wandering around in the alley without a jacket on or anything. I mean, this ain’t weather to go running around in your shirtsleeves, you know what I mean? It’s forty-two degrees out there.”

“Where is he?” Carella said.

“We got him upstairs.”

Carella turned and gestured to Hawes. Hawes moved away from the Homicide cops.

“What is it?”

“Patrolmen found a wanderer in the alley. In his shirtsleeves.”

“Uh-oh,” Hawes said.

The man they had found wandering in the alley was a huge Negro wearing only dungaree trousers and a white shirt open at the throat. He was very black, and very mean-looking, with a scar across the bridge of his nose and with enormous muscles bulging beneath the white cotton of his shirt. He was wearing sneakers, and he seemed to be balancing himself on the balls of his feet as Carella and Hawes approached, almost as though ready to begin throwing punches. A patrolman was standing alongside him with his nightstick in his hands, but the Negro paid no attention at all to him. With his eyes slitted, his legs widespread, and his weight balanced, he watched the approaching detectives.

“What’s your name?” Carella said.

“Sam.”

“Sam what?”

“Sam Whitson.”

“What were you doing in the alley out there, Sam?”

“I works here in this building,” Whitson said.

“What do you mean?”

“I works for Mr. Lasser,” Whitson said.

“Doing what?” Carella asked.

“I chops wood for him,” Whitson said.

There was a deep silence for the space of a heartbeat. Carella glanced at Hawes and then back to Whitson. The two patrolmen—the one who had been standing alongside Whitson with his nightstick at the ready, and the one who had come to fetch Carella—both stepped a pace backward from the huge Negro, their hands moving imperceptibly toward their service revolvers.

“What were you doing in the alley, Sam?” Carella asked.

“I tole you,” Whitson said. “I works for Mr. Lasser. I chops wood for him.”

“You were chopping wood out there?”

“Yes, sir,” Whitson said, and then shook his head violently. “No, sir. I was gettin’ ready to chop my wood, yes, sir.”

“How were you doing that?” Hawes asked. “Getting ready, I mean.”

“Well, I was on my way to get the ax.”

“Where was the ax?”

“We keeps it out in the toolshed.”

“Where’s that?”

“Out back.”

“Out back where?”

“In the toolshed,” Whitson said.

“You trying to get smart with me, Whitson?” Hawes asked.

“No, sir.”

“Well, take my advice, don’t.”

“I wasn’t,” Whitson said.

Carella, watching, said nothing. There was a mean and menacing look on the Negro’s face, and his size was frightening. He looked as if he were capable of tearing the building down with his bare hands, and it did indeed seem as if he were answering Hawes’s questions in a deliberately evasive and somewhat snotty manner, perhaps in order to provoke a fight. Carella had no doubt that if this man decided to begin swinging, he would not stop swinging until everyone and everything in sight had been reduced to rubble. Confronted with a man as strong and as big as this one, the best thing anyone could do would be to tip his hat, say “Good afternoon,” and get the hell home. Unless you happened to be a cop, in which case you wondered why Whitson had been roaming around in an alley in his shirtsleeves with the temperature at forty-two degrees and a dead man with an ax in his head there in the basement. You wondered about such things, and you let Whitson know that you expected straight answers to straight questions without any crap, while all the time you figured he might just possibly reach out and pick you up in one hand and squeeze you to a pulp in his fist. Listen, who told you to become a cop?

“You want to tell me where that toolshed is?” Hawes said.

“I already tole you. Out back.”

“How about pinpointing it for me, Whitson?”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell me where it is exactly.”

“Near the clothesline.”

“Where’s that?”

“Near the pole.”

“And where’s that?”

“Out back,” Whitson said.

“Okay, wise guy,” Hawes said. “If that’s the way you—”

“No, hold it a second, Cotton,” Carella said. Listening to Whitson, he had suddenly realized that the man was really trying his best to cooperate. But he happened to look surly and evil, and his size was terrifying, and he wasn’t really very bright. So he stood there like a huge, blinking monster ready to wreak seven kinds of havoc, answering questions as well as he could, and coming across only as a wise guy spoiling for a fight.

“Sam,” Carella said gently, “Mr. Lasser is dead,”

Whitson blinked. “What you mean?” he asked.

“He’s dead. Someone killed him. Now, Sam, you’d better pay close attention to what we ask you, and you’d better tell the truth when you answer, because now that you know someone’s been killed, you also know you can get in a lot of trouble. Okay?”

“I didn’t kill him,” Whitson said.

“No one said you did. We just want to know what you were doing out in the alley in only your shirt in this kind of weather.”

“My job is chopping the wood,” Whitson said.

“What wood?”

“The firewood.”

“Sam, the furnace in this building burns coal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then why do you chop firewood?”

“Some of the tenants, they got fireplaces in they apartments. Mr. Lasser brings logs to work with him in his truck, and I splits them up for him, and he gives me fifty cents an hour. Then he sells the firewood to the tenants.”

“Do you work for him every day, Sam?”

“No, sir. I come to work every Wednesday and Friday. But this year, Wednesday is New Year’s Day, and Mr. Lasser he say I shouldn’t come in, so I didn’t come in Wednesday this week. I come in today instead. Friday.”

“Do you always come in at this time?”

“Yes, sir. Three o’clock in the afternoon. Yes, sir, that’s the time I usually comes in.”

“Why so late?”

“Well, I got jobs in other buildings around.”

“Doing what?”

“Helping out the supers.”

“How’d you happen to get this job with Mr. Lasser?” Carella asked.

“I got it for him,” a voice just inside the open foyer door said, and they all turned to find themselves looking at a thin Negro woman with a scowl on her face and fire in her eyes. She was wearing a flowered housedress and a pair of men’s house slippers, but she walked past the patrolman with great dignity and took up a position beside Whitson, her back ramrod-stiff, her head high. Standing beside the huge Whitson, she seemed even more thin and fragile than she really was. But Carella, watching her, suddenly noticed the similarity of her features and Whitson’s, and realized the woman was Whitson’s mother. As if to corroborate his guess, she immediately said, “What have you been doing to my boy?”

“Are you his mother, ma’am?” Hawes asked.

“I am,” she said. She had a clipped manner of speaking, and she held her head cocked to one side as though drawing a bead on the speaker and ready to let him have it right between the eyes if he said anything contrary to her way of thinking. She kept her lips pursed as she watched, her arms folded across her narrow breast, her body balanced exactly the way her son had balanced his earlier, as though expecting a lynch party at the front door almost any time now.

“We were asking him some questions,” Carella said.

“My son didn’t kill Mr. Lasser,” she said, looking Carella directly in the eye.

“No one said he did, Mrs. Whitson,” Carella answered, looking her back in the eye.

“Then what are you questioning him about?”

“Mrs. Whitson, about half an hour ago, at exactly two twentyseven to be exact, actually more than half an hour ago, we received a telephone call from a Mrs. Ryan in this building, who told us her son had seen the building superintendent dead in the basement with an ax sticking out of his skull. We got over here as soon as we could, and located the body down there near one of the coal bins, and then talked to some of the tenants and the boy who’d found the body, and that was when one of our patrolmen found your son wandering around outside in his shirtsleeves.”

“What of it?” Mrs. Whitson snapped.

“Pretty cold to be walking around in his shirtsleeves,” Carella said.

“Cold for who?”

“For anyone.”

“For someone chopping wood?” Mrs. Whitson asked.

“He wasn’t chopping wood, ma’am.”

“He was about to,” Mrs. Whitson said.

“How do you know that?”

“He gets paid for chopping wood, and that’s why he comes here,” Mrs. Whitson said.

“Do you work in this building, too?” Carella asked.

“Yes. I do the floors and windows.”

“And you got this job for your son?”

“Yes. I knew Mr. Lasser needed someone to split those big logs he brings in from the country, and I suggested my son. He’s a good worker.”

“Do you always work outside in your shirtsleeves, Sam?” Carella asked.

“He always does,” Mrs. Whitson answered.

“I asked him,” Carella said.

“Tell him, son.”

“I always does,” Whitson said.

“Were you wearing a coat when you came to work today?” Hawes asked.

“No, sir. I was wearing my Eisenhower jacket.”

“You were in the Army?”

“He fought in the Korean War,” Mrs. Whitson said. “He was wounded twice, and he lost all the toes on his left foot from frostbite.”

“Yes, sir, I was in the Army,” Whitson said softly.

“Where’s your jacket now?”

“I put it on the garbage cans out back.”

“When did you do that?”

“When I headed for the toolshed. You see, Mr. Lasser dumps the logs right out back there in the alley near the shed, and that’s where I chops them up. So what I usually does, I comes right down the alley and I puts my jacket on the garbage cans, and then I goes to the shed to get the ax and begin work. Only today I couldn’t begin work because this policeman he stop me.”

“Then you don’t know whether or not the ax is still in that shed, do you?”

“No, sir.”

“How many axes are in that shed, usually?”

“Just the one, sir.”

Carella turned to the nearest patrolman. “Murray, you want to check out back? See if there’s a jacket on those garbage cans, like he says, and also look in the shed for an ax.”

“You’re not gonna find no ax out there,” Mrs. Whitson said.

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s right down there in the basement, ain’t it? Sticking in Mr. Lasser’s head?”