Ax

10

There were two patrolmen sitting on Sam Whitson’s legs when Carella and Hawes arrived. Another two had pinned down his huge outstretched arms, and yet another cop straddled his chest. The immense Negro gave a sudden lurch into the air, his midsection bucking, as the detectives came closer to where he was pinned to the basement floor. The cop sitting on his chest flew into the air and then grabbed for the lapels of Whitson’s Eisenhower jacket and landed again on his chest with a heavy thud.

“You son of a bitch,” Whitson said, and a patrolman standing by and watching the others struggling with their prisoner suddenly hit Whitson on the sole of his right foot with his nightstick. At one side of the basement, his head bleeding from a cut across the scalp and forehead, sat John Iverson, the superintendent of the building at 4113 South 5th, next door to 4111 where George Lasser had worked. The buildings were side by side and attached, like two halves of the same embryo. Iverson’s basement was a mirror image of Lasser’s, except for its contents. He sat now on an empty milk crate and nursed his broken head while the patrolmen struggled with Whitson who kept trying to shake them off at regular intervals. The one patrolman who was not engaged in the struggle kept hitting Whitson with his nightstick at regular intervals, too, until finally one of the other cops yelled, “For Christ’s sake, Charlie, will you cut it out? Every time you hit the bastard he jumps in the air.”

“I’m trying to calm him,” Charlie said, and hit Whitson’s shoe sole again.

“Lay off,” Carella said, and he walked to where the cops swarmed over the fallen Negro. “Let him up.”

“He’s pretty dangerous, sir,” one of the policemen said.

“Let him up,” Carella repeated.

“Okay, sir,” the spokesman for the patrolmen said, and then they all jumped off Whitson at precisely the same moment, as though by prearranged signal, and backed far away from him as Whitson sprang to his feet with his fists clenched and murder in his eyes.

“It’s okay, Sam,” Carella said gently.

“Who says so?” Whitson wanted to know. “I’m goan kill that son of a bitch.”

“You’re not going to kill anybody, Sam. Sit down and cool off. I want to know what happened here.”

“Get outa my way,” Whitson said. “This ain’t none of your affair.”

“Sam, I’m a police officer,” Carella said.

“I know what you is,” Whitson said.

“Okay. I got a call saying you tried to kill the super. Is that right?”

“You goan get another call in jus’ a few minutes,” Whitson said. “It’s goan tell you I did kill the super.”

Carella, in spite of himself, burst out laughing. The laughter surprised Whitson, who unclenched his fists for a moment and stared at Carella with a dumfounded expression on his face.

“It ain’t funny,” Whitson said.

“I know it’s not, Sam,” Carella answered. “Let’s sit down and talk it over.”

“He came at me with a goddamn ax,” Whitson said, pointing to Iverson.

For the first time since they had come into that basement, Carella and Hawes were fully aware of Iverson as something more than an innocent assault victim. If Whitson was immense, Iverson was just as large. If Whitson was capable of wreaking havoc, Iverson could easily have caused much the same destruction. He sat on the milk crate with his forehead and scalp bleeding, but the cut did nothing to diminish the feeling of power and strength that emanated from him like the smell of a jungle beast. As Whitson pointed to him, he lifted his eyes, and the detectives suddenly sensed his alert tension, a nervous energy that transmitted itself as surely as did his stench of power, so that they themselves approached him with a wariness they would not ordinarily have exercised on a bleeding man.

“What does he mean, Iverson?” Carella asked.

“He’s crazy,” Iverson said.

“He just said you came at him with an ax.”

“He’s crazy.”

“What’s this?” Hawes asked, and he bent to pick up an ax that was lying on the basement floor some ten feet from where Iverson was sitting. “This looks like an ax to me, Iverson.”

“It is an ax,” Iverson said. “I keep it down here in the basement. I use it for chopping up things.”

“What’s it doing on the floor?”

“I must have left it there,” Iverson said.

“He’s lying,” Whitson said. “When he come at me with that ax, I hit him, and he drop it there on the floor. That’s what it’s doing on the floor there.”

“What’d you hit him with?”

“I picked up the rake there. I hit him with that.”

“Why?”

“I just told you. He come at me with that ax.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“ ‘Cause he a cheap bastard,” Whitson said. “That’s why.”

Iverson got to his feet and took a step toward Whitson. Carella moved between them and shouted, “Sit down! What does he mean, Iverson?”

“I don’t know what he means. He’s crazy.”

“Offering me twenty-five cents,” Whitson said indignantly. “I told him what he could do with his twenty-five cents. Twenty-five cents!”

“What are you talking about, Whitson?” Hawes asked, and then seemed to discover he was still holding the ax in his hands. He propped it against the wall of the coal bin just as Whitson wheeled toward Iverson again.

“Now just hold it, goddamn it!” Hawes yelled, and Whitson stopped dead in his tracks. “What’s all this about twenty-five cents?”

“He offered me twenty-five cents to chop his wood. I told him to shove it up his—”

“Let me get this straight,” Carella said. “You wanted him to chop wood for you, is that right, Iverson?”

Iverson nodded and said nothing.

“And you offered him twenty-five cents?”

“Twenty-five an hour,” Iverson said. “That’s what I always paid him before.”

“Yeah, and that’s why I quit choppin’ wood for you, you cheap bastard. That’s why I start workin’ for Mr. Lasser.”

“But you used to work for Mr. Iverson here, is that it?” Hawes asked.

“Las’ year, I used to work for him. But he was only paying me twenty-five cents an hour, and Mr. Lasser he offers me fifty cents an hour, so I quits here and goes there. I ain’t no fool.”

“Is this true, Iverson?”

“I gave him more work,” Iverson said. “I paid less, but there was more work, more hours.”

“That was only until Mr. Lasser start getting all your customers,” Whitson said.

“What do you mean?” Hawes asked.

“All the people here in this building, they starts going next door for they wood. To Mr. Lasser.”

They were staring at Iverson now, staring at the huge man with his hands dangling clumsily at his sides, his teeth nibbling at the soft flesh inside his mouth, his eyes wary and alert, a look of animal disarray about him.

“Is this true, Mr. Iverson?” Carella asked.

Iverson did not answer.

“Mr. Iverson, I want to know if this is true,” Carella said.

“Yes, yes, it’s true,” Iverson said.

“That all your customers started going to Mr. Lasser for their wood?”

“Yes, yes,” Iverson said. “That don’t mean nothing. It don’t mean I…”

Iverson cut himself off. The basement was silent.

“What doesn’t it mean, Mr. Iverson?”

“Nothing.”

“You were about to say something, Mr. Iverson.”

“I said all I got to say.”

“Your customers all began going to Mr. Lasser, is that right?”

“I told you yes! What do you want from me? My head is bleeding. He hit me on the head. Why are you asking me the questions?”

“How did you feel about that?” Carella asked.

“About what?”

“About your wood customers leaving you?”

“I…look, I…I had nothing to do with it.”

“With what?”

“I was angry, yes, but…”

Again Iverson stopped talking. He stared at Carella and Hawes who were watching him quietly and solemnly. And then, for whatever reasons of his own, perhaps because he felt he could no longer communicate, perhaps because he felt he had walked into a trap and the jaws had closed upon him, his face changed and a decision moved across it as visibly as if it had been stamped there in ink. Without another word he turned swiftly and reached for the ax Hawes had propped against the side of the bin. He lifted the ax easily and effortlessly, so quickly that Carella barely had time to move out of its path as it swung around like a baseball bat aimed at his head.

“Duck!” Hawes shouted, and Carella immediately threw himself flat on the floor, rolling over onto his left shoulder as Hawes’s shot rang out behind him, reaching for the service revolver in the holster at his hip just as Hawes got off his second shot. He heard someone grunt in pain, and then Iverson was standing over him with a huge blot of blood spreading on the front of his overalls, the ax raised high over his head, the way it must have been raised on that Friday afternoon just before he had finally sunk it into the skull of George Lasser. Carella knew there was no time to raise the pistol. He knew there was no time to scramble away, no time to dodge the blow. The ax was already at its apogee. It would descend in another split instant.

Whitson threw himself for what seemed the length of the basement, sailing into the air in a flying leap, the entire huge and muscular hulk of him colliding with Iverson’s immense body. Iverson staggered back against the furnace and the ax head crashed against the cast-iron door with a furiously ringing clang and then fell clattering to the cement floor. Iverson pushed himself off the furnace and reached for the ax again, but Whitson had drawn back his right hand, the fist bunched, and then his arm shot out with stunning force, straight and true and unerring, and Iverson’s head snapped back as though his neck were broken, and he collapsed to the floor.

“You okay?” Hawes asked.

“I’m okay,” Carella said. “Sam?”

“I’m fine,” Whitson said.

“He did it for the wood business,” Hawes said, astonished. “He did it for the lousy two-bit wood business.”

I did it for the wood business, Iverson said.

I did it because he stole the wood business from me. The wood business was my idea. Before I became super in 4113, the fireplaces was all boarded up and plastered up. It was me who made the fireplaces work, give the tenants heat. It was me who first thought up the idea of the wood business.

George stole the business from me.

First he starts bringing in big logs from the country where he lives, him and his crazy wife. Then he steals the handyman away from me. He offers him 50¢ an hour to chop up the logs—sure he’s going to take it, who wouldn’t? I don’t mind when he sells the wood to his own tenants. That’s his building, he can do what he wants. But then he starts selling to my tenants, and that I don’t like.

When I go down the basement next door the beginning of the year to tell him about it, I didn’t mean to kill him. He’s sitting there counting his money, putting it in a coffee can, writing down his sales in a black book, putting that in the coffee can, too. When I tell him he has to leave my tenants alone, he starts to laugh. So I went out back to the toolshed and then I came down the basement again with the ax. When he sees the ax, he starts laughing again, so I hit him with it. He comes at me, and he grabs for my clothes, but I keep hitting him, and finally I hit him across the throat. I know he is dead from that one, but I keep hitting him anyway, and he falls down, and I put the ax in his head and leave it there.

I emptied the money from the coffee can—there was $7.50, it rightfully belonged to me. I also took the black book because half the tenants in it, they belong to me.

I wiped off the shelf and also the coffee can. I didn’t want to leave no fingerprints. Then I filled the coffee can with things from the other cans, so no one would know there’d been money in it.

I killed that policeman, too.

I went down there to look for my button. George ripped one of the buttons from my overalls when we were fighting down there, and I knew if somebody found the button, I would be in trouble. So I kept going down to look for it, and the day I found it there was that cop down there, too. He saw the button, so I had to kill him. That was all there was to it. I would have killed the handyman today, too, but he was too strong for me.

I never killed anybody before George in my life.

He shouldn’t have stolen the wood business from me.

On his way home that night, Steve Carella stopped into the bookstore called The Bookends in Riverhead. It was close to 7:00, and they were getting ready to close the shop, but he found Allie the Shark Spedino sitting behind his cash register and watching the few remaining customers in the store.

“Uh-oh,” Spedino said. “Trouble.”

“No trouble,” Carella answered.

“Then what brings the law here?” Spedino asked.

“Three things.”

“Like?”

“Like one, we found the killer. You can stop worrying.”

“Who was worrying?” Spedino said. “I don’t know what you thought, but I knew I didn’t do it.”

“Number two, no more crap games in our precinct, Spedino.”

“What crap games? I haven’t been to a crap game in—”

“Spedino, don’t snow me. We know you were there. I’m telling you no more crap games or I go straight to your wife. Okay?”

“Okay, okay.” Spedino shook his head. “Boy.”

“And number three, I’d like to buy a rhyming dictionary.”

“A what?”

“A rhyming dictionary,” Carella said.

“What for?”

“I promised somebody I’d find a rhyme.”

“Okay,” Spedino said, and he shook his head again. “Boy.”

Carella left the shop with the dictionary under his arm. Night had come upon the city suddenly, and the streets were dark and bitter cold. He walked to where he had parked his car, and then he sniffed deeply of the brittle air and opened the car door and slid onto the seat.

For a moment he sat looking through the windshield at the city, locked in upon itself, the barren January streets, the flickering neon, the black sky behind the silent buildings. For a moment— only for a moment—the city overwhelmed him and he sat in almost stunned silence and thought of the poor goddamn janitor in a slum building who’d killed another man for what amounted to a few dollars a week.

He hunched his shoulders against the cold. He started the engine and turned on the heater, and slowly edged the car out into traffic.