Ax

5

If you’re a cop, you know all about graft.

You know that if somebody is “taking,” it is usually the senior man on the beat who later splits with the other men who share the beat on a rotating basis. You know this because you also know there is nothing that can screw things up like a plenitude of cops with outstretched hands. When too many hands are reaching, the sucker may suddenly decide that he is really being taken but good, and one fine day the desk sergeant will receive a call from someone who will say, simply, “I want to talk to a detective.”

Sergeant Ralph Corey did not wish to talk to a detective.

This was Monday morning, and he was about to begin five consecutive tours on the 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. shift, after which he would swing for fifty-six hours and then come back to work on Sunday at midnight to begin his next five hours on the graveyard shift, from midnight to 8:00 A.M. The shift after that would be from 4:00 P.M. to midnight, and then the rotation would come full circle and he would be back on the day shift for the next five tours.

A police department is a small army. Even in a big army, you don’t mess around with the sergeant. Corey was not only a sergeant and the senior man on his beat; he also happened to be the senior sergeant of all twelve sergeants in the precinct, with the exception of Dave Murchison. Murchison didn’t count, though, since he handled the switchboard and the muster desk and never walked a beat.

Sergeant Ralph Corey, then, was a VIP, a BMOC, a gonsuh mochuh, a wheel, and a guy around whom you watched your onions.

There was only one trouble.

Steve Carella outranked him.

Steve Carella was, in this small army that was the police force, in this section of the army that was the 87th Precinct, a detective/2nd grade—which is higher than a sergeant. It is two steps higher than a sergeant. Even if Carella had liked Corey, he would have outranked him. Since he didn’t like him, he outranked him in spades. Corey looked like a big, red-faced stereotype of a mean, lousy cop; but in Corey’s case, the stereotype was true. He was a mean cop and a lousy cop, and the only reason he was a sergeant was that he’d shot an escaping bank robber purely by sheer dumb luck back in 1947. His gun had gone off accidentally as he’d pulled it out of his holster—that’s how lucky Corey had been— and the bullet had taken the running thief in the left leg. So Corey had received a commendation and a promotion to sergeant and had damn near made detective/3rd to boot, but hadn’t.

Carella hadn’t liked him back in 1947, and he didn’t like him now, but he smiled as Corey entered the squadroom and then said, “Have a seat, Ralph. Cigarette?” and pushed his pack across the desk while Corey watched him and wondered what this big wop bastard wanted.

Carella wasn’t about to tell him; not just yet he wasn’t. Carella wanted to know how come Corey hadn’t mentioned anything about a crap game on his beat, especially since a man had been killed on Friday, and since the game had allegedly been running in the dead man’s basement, under the dead man’s aegis, for quite some time before he became a dead man. If Corey didn’t know about the game, Carella wanted to know how come he didn’t know about it? And if he did know about it, Carella wanted to know why it hadn’t been mentioned? But in the meantime, he was willing to sit and smile at Corey and smoke a pleasant cigarette with the man, just the way the cops did it on television.

“What’s up, Steve?” Corey asked.

“Well, I wanted your help on something,” Carella said.

Corey managed to suppress a sigh of relief and then smiled and took a deeper drag on his king-sized Chesterfield and said, “Happy to help in any way I can. What’s the problem?”

“A friend of mine is a little short of cash,” Carella said.

Corey, who had the cigarette in his mouth again and who was about to take another drag at it, stopped the action dead and quickly raised his eyes to meet Carella’s across the desk. Being a crooked cop himself, he recognized Carella’s gambit immediately. Carella’s “friend” who was a little short of cash was no one but Carella himself. And when a bull told you he was a little short of cash, he usually meant he wanted a cut of the pie or else he was going to start screaming to the captain about one violation or another.

“How short is your friend?” Corey asked, which meant, How much do you want in order to forget this whole matter?

“Very, very short,” Carella said gravely.

This was worse than Corey had expected. Carella seemed to be indicating that he wanted a bigger bite than any detective should normally expect. Detectives had their own little operations going and, like any good army, the officers didn’t muscle in on the enlisted men’s territory, and vice versa.

“Well, what did your friend have in mind?” Corey asked.

“I’d help him myself,” Carella said, “but I’m not sure how.”

“I don’t think I follow you,” Corey said, puzzled now.

“You’re more in contact with things,” Carella said.

“What kind of things?” Corey asked.

“My friend craves action,” Carella said.

“What do you mean?” Corey said, and then squinted. “Dames, you mean?”

“No.”

“I’m not with you, Steve.”

Corey was not being deliberately obtuse. He was simply having difficulty in adjusting his frame of reference. He had come up to the squadroom expecting God knew what kind of bullshit from Carella and then had immediately realized that all Carella wanted was a percentage of the take. This hadn’t surprised him at all, even though the word around the precinct was that Carella was a square cop who didn’t take. Corey had met square cops who didn’t take before. But what it turned out to be, after you knew these square cops for a while, was just that they were very quiet about taking, that was all. So Corey figured Carella wanted a piece of the action, which was all right with him so long as he got off his back, and so long as the tariff wasn’t too steep. He’d begun to get nervous when Carella said he was very short of money, thinking this was going to be a real stickup. But then Carella seemed to switch in mid-stream and started talking about helping his friend himself, so that Corey figured maybe this really was a friend of Carella’s. Then Carella had told him his friend craved action, and Corey had immediately begun thinking again that Carella’s “friend” was really Carella, just as he’d thought all along. What Carella wanted, Corey figured, was for Corey to fix him up quietly with one of the hookers on the beat, easy enough. But no, Carella said it wasn’t dames.

“So what kind of action does your friend crave?” Corey asked, stressing the word “friend” and making it clear he knew Carella’s “friend” was really Carella.

“Cards,” Carella said. “Dice. Anything where he can parlay a small stake into some quick cash.”

“Oh,” Corey said. “I see.”

“Mmm.”

“Gambling action, you mean.”

“Mmm.”

The men fell silent.

Corey drew in on his cigarette.

Carella waited.

“Gee, Steve,” Corey said at last, “I wouldn’t know how to help your friend.”

“You wouldn’t, huh?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“That’s a shame,” Carella said.

“Yeah. But, you know, there’s no gambling on my beat.”

“No.”

“No. Not to my knowledge, anyway,” Corey said, and smiled.

“Mmm,” Carella said.

“Yeah,” Corey said, and drew in on his cigarette again, and again the men were silent.

“That’s too bad,” Carella said, “because I had hoped maybe you’d know of a game.”

“No, I don’t.”

“So I guess I’ll have to scout one up on my own,” Carella said. He grinned. “That can get expensive, of course, since I’d have to do it on my own time.”

“Yeah,” Corey said, “I see what you mean.”

“Mmmm.”

“I could…uh…ask around, I guess. Maybe some of the boys know.”

“Well, I don’t think the boys would know without your knowing, too, would they, Ralph?”

“Sometimes,” Corey said. “You’d be surprised.”

“Yes, I would.”

“Huh?”

“I said I’d be surprised.”

“Well,” Corey said, rising, “I’ll ask around, Steve, and see what I can get for you.”

“Sit down a minute, Ralph,” Carella said. He smiled. “Another cigarette?”

“No. No, thanks, I’m trying to cut down.”

“Ralph,” Carella said, “would you like to tell me about the game in the basement of 4111 South 5th?”

You had to hand it to Corey, Carella thought. His face did not change, he did not bat an eyelash. He simply sat opposite Carella and looked at him serenely for several moments and then said, “4111?”

“Mmm.”

“South Fifth?”

“Mmm,” Carella said.

“Don’t think I know the game you’re referring to, Steve.” Corey looked sincerely interested. “Is it a card game?”

“Nope. Craps,” Carella said.

“I’ll have to look into it. That’s on my beat, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Sit down, Ralph. We’re not finished yet.”

“I thought—”

“Yes, sit down.” Carella smiled again. “Ralph, the man who was cutting the game wound up with an ax in his head. Name’s George Lasser, the super of the building. Do you know him, Ralph?”

“Sure, I do.”

“I think there may be a connection between the game and the murder, Ralph.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. That makes it a big-time game, doesn’t it? That makes it a game involved in homicide.”

“I suppose it does. If there’s a connection between the two.”

“Ralph, if there’s a connection between the two, and if it turns out that somebody on the force deliberately withheld information about that game in the basement of 4111 where a man got murdered, that can be pretty serious, Ralph.”

“I suppose it can.”

“Did you know about the game, Ralph?”

“No.”

“Ralph?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to find out.”

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been a cop too long. Never shit a shitter, huh?” Corey smiled. “The guy who was running the game is dead. If I was cutting that game, Steve, and I’m only saying if— if I was cutting that game, the only guy who’d know about it besides me would be the guy who was running the game, right? And he’s dead, Steve. He got killed with an ax, Steve. So who are you trying to con?”

“I don’t like you, Corey,” Carella said.

“I know that.”

“I haven’t liked you from the minute I first saw you.”

“I know that, too.”

“If you’re connected with this…”

“I’m not.”

“If you’re connected with this, Corey, if you’re making my job tougher, if you’re hindering this case…”

“I don’t know anything about your crap game,” Corey said.

“If you do, and if I find out that you do, I’m going to put your ass through the wringer, Corey. You’re never going to look the same again.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Corey said.

“Now get the hell out of here.”

“Big detective,” Corey said, and he went out of the squadroom.

He was smiling.

But he was worried.

The tenants of a building in a slum area do not much give a damn about whether or not cops solve the cases they are working on. As a matter of fact, if one were to take a poll of any tenement building at any given time of the year, one would probably discover that 99 percent of the tenants would like it if every cop in the world immediately dropped dead. Well, perhaps not in April. In April, the air is mild and the breezes are balmy, and brotherly love prevails, even toward cops. In April, it is possible that the tenants might only express the desire for every cop in the city to get hit by a bus—maimed, but not killed.

It was January.

Cotton Hawes had his hands full.

To begin with, the man would not let him into the basement.

He had never seen the man before. He was a giant of a man, perhaps sixty years old, with a European accent Hawes could not accurately place. He stood at the top of the steps leading to the basement and wanted to know just what the hell Hawes wanted, and there seemed to be about him a perfection of parts: the immense head with its thatch of unruly, sandy-colored hair; the bulbous nose and large blue eyes and strong mouth and jaw; the thick neck and wide shoulders and chest, the muscular arms and huge hands—even the blue turtlenecked sweater under the brass-buttoned blue coveralls, all seemed of a piece, as though this man had been sculpted by someone with an excellent eye for proportion.

“I’m a police officer,” Hawes said. “I want to have another look at that basement.”

“Let me see your badge,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Hawes asked.

“My name’s John Iverson. I’m superintendent of the building next door, 4113.”

“Well, what are you doing here, if you’re the super over there?”

“Mr. Gottlieb—he’s the landlord—he asked me if I could help out for a few days. Until he found somebody to take George’s job.”

“Help out doing what?”

“Tend the furnace, get the garbage cans out in the morning. Same as I do next door.” Iverson paused. “Let me see your badge.”

Hawes showed Iverson his shield and then said, “I’m going to be in the building most of the day, Mr. Iverson, part of the time here in the basement and part of the time questioning the tenants.”

“Okay,” Iverson said, as though he were granting Hawes permission to remain. Hawes made no comment. Instead, he went down to the basement. Iverson followed him down the steps.

“Time to check the heat,” he said almost cheerfully and then went over to the black cast-iron furnace sitting in one corner of the basement. He glanced at a gauge, picked up a shovel standing against the wall of the coal bin, and lifted open the furnace door with the blade of the shovel. He threw a dozen shovelfuls of coal into the furnace, slammed the door shut with the shovel, put the shovel back against the wall, and then leaned against the wall himself. Hawes stared at him across the length of the basement room.

“If you’ve got something else to do,” he said, “don’t let me hold you up.”

“I got nothing to do,” Iverson said.

“I thought maybe you wanted to go back next door and check the furnace there.”

“I done that before I come here,” Iverson said.

“I see. Well…” Hawes shrugged. “What’s this back here?” he asked.

“George’s workbench.”

“What kind of work did he do?”

“Oh, odds and ends,” Iverson said.

Hawes studied the bench. A broken chair was on its top and alongside that a partially completed rung that would have replaced the broken one. There were three shelves hanging on the basement wall over the bench, all dust-covered, all crammed full of jars and tin cans containing nails, screws, and assorted hardware. Hawes looked at the shelves again. They were not, as he had first thought, all dust-covered. The middle one, in fact, had been wiped clean of dust.

“Anybody been down here since Friday?” he asked Iverson.

“No, I don’t think so. They wouldn’t let anyone come down. They were taking pictures, you know.”

“Who was?”

“The police.”

“I see,” Hawes said. “Well, was anyone down here this morning?”

“Not from the police, no.”

“Anyone from the building?”

“Tenants come down here all the time,” Iverson said. “There’s a washing machine down here, same as in my building next door.”

“Where’s that? The washing machine.”

“Over there. No, behind you.”

Hawes turned and saw the machine standing against one wall, its door open. He walked over toward it.

“Then anyone could have come down here this morning, is that right?” he asked. “To use the machine?”

“That’s right,” Iverson said.

“Did you see anyone come down?”

“Sure, I seen lots of tenants down here.”

“Which ones? Would you remember?”

“No.” “Try.”

“I don’t remember,” Iverson said.

Hawes grunted, barely audibly, and walked back to the workbench. “Was Lasser working on this chair?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Iverson said. “I guess so. If it’s on his workbench, then I guess he was working on it.”

Hawes looked at the middle shelf again. It had definitely been wiped clean. He pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket, tented it over his hand, and pulled open one of the drawers under the workbench. The drawer was cluttered with old pencils, a straightedge, thumbtacks, a plumber’s snake, a broken stapler, rubber bands, and a dusty package of Chiclets. Hawes closed the drawer. It went halfway into the bench and then refused to move. He shoved at it again, cursed mildly, and then got on his hands and knees and crawled under the bench. He looked up at the drawer. The plumber’s snake had caught on one of the cross supports, snagging the drawer. With one hand on the basement floor, close to the right rear leg of the bench, Hawes reached up and shoved at the snake, coiling it back into the drawer. He slid out from under the bench, dusted off his trousers, and closed the drawer.

“Is there a sink down here?” he asked.

“Over near the washing machine,” Iverson answered.

He walked away from the workbench and over to the sink against the opposite wall. A small covered drain was set into the basement floor in front of the sink. Hawes stopped with his feet on the drain cover, turned on the faucet, and began washing his hands with a bar of laundry soap that was resting in the basin.

“It gets dirty in basements,” Iverson said.

“Yeah,” Hawes answered.

He dried his hands on his handkerchief and then left the basement, walking directly out of the building and to the corner and into a candy store. From a pay phone he called the Police Laboratory and asked to talk to Detective-Lieutenant Sam Grossman.

“Hello?” Grossman said.

“Sam, this is Cotton Hawes. I’m here on South Fifth, just came from the basement. They tell me your boys were down there taking pictures.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Grossman said.

“Sam, have you got any pictures of the dead man’s workbench?”

“Which one is this, Cotton? Which case?”

“The ax murder. 4111 South 5th.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah. The workbench, huh? I think we’ve got some. Why?”

“Have you looked them over yet?”

“Only casually. I just got to the office a little while ago. My brother got married last night.”

“Congratulations,” Hawes said.

“Thanks. What about the workbench?”

“Take another look at the pictures,” Hawes said. “I don’t know if it’ll show or not, but there are three shelves over the bench. The middle shelf’s been wiped clean of dust.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll take a look,” Grossman said. “If it’s anything, I’ll follow it up.”

“Let us know, will you, Sam?”

“Who’s working this with you?”

“Steve Carella.”

“Okay, I’ll get back to you. Cotton?”

“I’m here.”

“This may take a while.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll have to send a man down there, look over the place again, more pictures, maybe tests.”

“Okay, just let us know.”

“Right. Thanks a lot.”

Hawes hung up and walked back to Lasser’s building. He wanted more than ever now to question the tenants in the building. Someone had wiped off that middle shelf, and he wondered who, and he wondered why.

It was unfortunate that he was a cop who looked like a cop. That’s the worst kind of cop you can possibly be when you’re questioning people who dislike cops as a matter of principle. Hawes was six foot two inches tall, and he weighed 190 pounds. He had blue eyes and a square jaw with a cleft chin. His hair was red, except for a streak over his left temple where he had once been knifed and where the hair had curiously grown in white after the wound had healed. He had a straight, unbroken nose and a good mouth with a wide lower lip, but there was a look of arrogance on his face, even when he was in a good mood. He was not in a good mood when he began questioning the tenants in the building, and he was in a worse mood after he had gone through two and a half floors of snotty answers and surly attitudes.

It was now 12:00 noon, and he was hungry, but he wanted to wrap up the third floor before he went to lunch, which would leave him three more floors to tackle in the afternoon. There were four apartments on each floor, and he had already questioned the tenants of 3-A and 3-B, which left 3-C and 3-D and then twelve more tenants on floors four to six inclusive. Some way to spend a Monday. The word had flashed through the building the moment he’d climbed the front stoop and entered the rank-smelling foyer, so everyone in the building knew that fuzz was on the scene, which wasn’t very surprising anyway, considering the fact that old Georgie Lasser had had his head opened for him on Friday afternoon last week. Nobody liked fuzz, especially on Monday, especially in January, so Hawes had his work cut out for him.

He knocked on the door to 3-C and, getting no answer, knocked again. He was about to move on to 3-D when he heard a voice inside the apartment say, “Georgie? Is that you?”

The voice was a young voice, and a weak one, and Hawes at first thought it belonged to someone who was sick, and then a couple of things occurred to him as he backed up to the door again. First, since everyone in the building knew John Law was here, why did that voice inside apartment 3-C ask if he was Georgie? And, second, Georgie who? The only Georgie that Hawes could think of at the moment was a dead man named George Lasser.

He knocked on the door again.

“Georgie?” the voice asked. The voice was still quiet, subdued. Hawes tried to remember where he had heard a similar voice before.

“Yes,” he answered. “It’s Georgie.”

“Just a minute,” the voice said.

He waited.

He heard footsteps approaching the door. Whoever did the walking was barefoot. He heard the rigid bar of a police lock being taken out of its plate screwed into the door, and then a chain being slipped out of its metal track, and then the door’s regular lock being turned, the tumblers falling, the door opening a crack.

“You’re not—” the voice said, but Hawes’s foot was already in the door. Whoever was behind the door tried to slam it shut, but Hawes pushed his shoulder against it at just that moment and the door flew back and inward, and Hawes was inside the apartment.

The apartment was dark. The shades were drawn, and there was the smell of urine and stale cigarette smoke and human perspiration and something else. The man standing before Hawes was in rumpled striped pajamas. A five-day stubble covered his face, and he was badly in need of a haircut. His feet were dirty and there were yellow stains on his fingers and on his teeth. Through the open door behind him, Hawes could see a bedroom and a bed with twisted sheets. A girl was on the bed. She was wearing only a soiled slip, the nylon pulled high up over one scarred thigh.

If nothing else in the apartment spelled junkie, the girl’s thigh did.

“Who the hell are you?” the man asked.

“Police,” Hawes said.

“Prove it.”

“Don’t get smart, sonny boy,” Hawes said, pulling his wallet from his pocket. “From the looks of this, you’re in enough trouble already.”

“Maybe you’re in trouble for unlawful entry,” the man said, looking at Hawes’s shield held up in front of his face. Hawes put the wallet back into his trouser pocket and walked to the kitchen window. He raised the shade and opened the window and, over his shoulder, said, “Have you given up breathing, or what?”

“What the hell do you want, cop?” the man asked.

“What’s your name?”

“Bob Fontana.”

“And the girl?”

“Ask her,” Fontana said.

“I will, when she comes around. Meanwhile, suppose you tell me.”

“I forget,” Fontana said, and he shrugged.

“How long have you been holed up in here?”

“I don’t know. What’s today?”

“Monday.”

“Monday? Already?”

“You mind if I let some more air in here?”

“What are you? A fresh-air fiend?”

Hawes went into the bedroom and opened the two windows there. The girl on the bed did not stir. As he rounded the bed, he pulled the slip down over the backs of her legs.

“What’s the matter, cop?” Fontana asked. “You don’t like pussy?”

“How long has she been stoned like that?” Hawes asked.

“How do I know? I can’t even remember her name.”

“Is she alive?” Hawes asked.

“I hope so. She’s breathing, ain’t she?”

Hawes lifted the girl’s wrist and felt for the pulse. “Barely,” he said. “When did you shoot up?”

“I don’t know what you mean by shoot up,” Fontana said.

Hawes picked up a charred tablespoon from the seat of a chair alongside the bed. “What’s this, Fontana?”

“It looks like a spoon to me. Maybe somebody was having some soup.”

“All right, where is it?”

“Where’s what? The soup?”

“The junk, Fontana.”

“Oh, is that what you came in here for?”

“It’s all gone, huh?” Hawes said.

“Well, now, I don’t know. You seem to be asking the questions and answering them all at the same time.”

“Okay,” Hawes said, “let’s take it from the top. How long have you been in this apartment?”

“Since New Year’s Eve.”

“Celebrating, huh? And the girl?”

“The girl is my sister. Don’t bug me,” Fontana said.

“What’s her name?”

“Louise.”

“Louise Fontana?”

“Yeah.”

“Where does she live?”

“Here—where do you think?”

“And you?”

“Here.” Fontana saw Hawes’s look. “Get your mind out of the gutter, cop. I sleep on the couch there.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-two.”

“And you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“How long have you been hooked?”

“I don’t know what hooked means. You got something to pin on me, pin it. Otherwise get the hell out.”

“Why? You expecting someone?”

“Yeah, I’m expecting the president. He’s coming here to discuss the Russian situation. He comes here every Monday for lunch.”

“Who’s Georgie?” Hawes said.

“I don’t know. Who’s Georgie?”

“When I knocked on the door, you asked if I was Georgie.”

“Did I?”

“Georgie who?”

“Georgie Jessel. He comes with the president every Monday.”

“Or maybe some other Georgie, huh?” Hawes said. “You mind if I go through some of these drawers?”

“I think you’d better get a search warrant before you go messing up my underwear,” Fontana said.

“Well, that poses a slight dilemma,” Hawes said, “Maybe you can help me with it.”

“Sure, glad to help the law any time,” Fontana said, and rolled his eyes.

“There’s no law against being an addict—you know that, I guess.”

“I don’t even know what an addict is.”

“But there is a law against possessing certain specified amounts of narcotics. Now here’s the dilemma, Fontana. I can’t pinch you unless I can prove possession. Well, I can’t prove possession unless I make a search. And I can’t make a search without a warrant. But if I go downtown for a warrant, by the time I come back you’ll have flushed whatever I was looking for down the toilet. So what do I do?”

“Why don’t you go home and sleep it off?” Fontana said.

“Of course, if I make an illegal search and come up with six pounds of uncut heroin—”

“Fat chance.”

“—why then nobody’s going to worry about whether or not I had a warrant, are they?”

“Who’s gonna worry, anyway? Who you trying to kid, cop? The last time I seen a cop with a search warrant in this neighborhood, it was snowing inside the church in the middle of July. You’re worried about a warrant, don’t make me laugh. You bust down the door, and then suddenly you get legal? Ha!”

“Nobody broke down the door, Fontana.”

“No, you just give me the foot-and-shoulder treatment, that’s all. Listen, I know cops. You’re gonna search the pad, anyway, so what’s the song and dance? Get it over with so I can get back to sleep.”

“You know what, Fontana?”

“What?”

“I think you’re clean.”

“You know it, cop.”

“Otherwise you wouldn’t be so anxious for me to search.”

“Cool. So if you’re done here, why don’t you cut out, huh?”

“Why? Don’t you want me to be here when Georgie arrives?”

“I told you, I’m sleepy. I want to get back to bed.”

“On the couch.”

“Yeah, on the couch,” Fontana said. “She really is my sister, so quit bugging me.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lois.”

“You said Louise last time around.”

“I said Lois.”

“Do you always refer to your sister as pussy?”

“It’s what she is, ain’t it? Being my sister don’t make her better than anybody else. Girls are pussy, and that’s all they are.”

“You’re a sweet guy, Fontana. When did you have a bath last?”

“What are you? A cop or a department of sanitation? If you’re finished, goodbye. I’m sick of this jazz.”

“Suppose I told you Georgie isn’t coming today?”

“No?”

“No. Suppose I told you he isn’t coming ever again?”

“Why not?”

“Guess.”

“That’s the oldest trick in the book, cop. You want me to say, ‘Georgie ain’t coming ‘cause he got busted,’ and then you’ll say, ‘Busted for what?’ Only I ain’t biting, cop.”

“Try this one for size,” Hawes said.

“Yeah?”

“Georgie ain’t coming ‘cause he’s dead.”

Fontana said nothing. He looked at Hawes silently and then wiped a hand over his mouth.

“Yeah,” Hawes said. “Dead as a mackerel.”

“I’m from Missouri,” Fontana said.

“You’ve been in here since New Year’s Eve,” Hawes said. “That was last Tuesday. Georgie got it Friday.”

“When Friday?”

“In the afternoon. Sometime between one and two, near as we can make it.”

“Where?”

“Downstairs in the basement,” Hawes said.

“What the hell was Georgie doing in the basement?” Fontana asked.

Hawes stared at him.

“You didn’t answer me,” Fontana said.

“Georgie Lasser?” Hawes said. “Is that who we’re...?”

Fontana smiled.

“Wrong number, cop,” he answered.

Bob Fontana had been expecting a visit from someone named Georgie when Hawes knocked on the door. It was unfortunate that the Georgie he’d been expecting hadn’t turned out to be the dead Georgie Lasser because that would have meant Lasser was involved with narcotics which could have explained a lot of things. Narcotics is very big-time all over the world, bigger than prostitution and bigger than gambling, in fact probably the biggest of all underworld activities in terms of energy expended and capital realized. If a man is messing around with the dope business, anything can be anticipated—including an ax in the head. It was therefore unfortunate that Bob Fontana was not expecting Georgie Lasser, but some other Georgie instead. If Lasser had been a pusher, the cops might have had a new place to hang their hats. Instead, they were stuck with the same empty pegs.

Anyway, so it shouldn’t be a total loss, Hawes decided to stick around until Georgie Whatever-His-Name-Was showed up. The day was half shot anyway, so he figured he might as well make a narcotics pinch, thereby helping out the much-overworked men in the city’s Narcotics Division. The only trouble was that everyone in the building knew there was fuzz on the third floor, in Bobby the Junkie’s apartment to be exact. Which might have explained why Georgie never showed up that afternoon.

Hawes hung around waiting for Georgie until almost 3:00. He kept asking Fontana what Georgie’s last name was, but Fontana kept telling him to go to hell. Hawes searched the apartment and, as he’d expected, found nothing but a lot of dirty socks. At 2:30, the girl woke up. Hawes asked her what her name was, and she said Betty O’Connor. He asked her how old she was, and she said twenty-two, which meant he couldn’t even get Fontana on a morals charge. At 2:35 the girl asked Hawes if he had a cigarette, and Hawes gave her one and then she asked him if Georgie had arrived yet. Fontana quickly informed the girl that Hawes was a cop. The girl looked Hawes over, figured she was in some kind of trouble, not sure just which kind yet because she had just come back from a long journey over soft white hills on the backs of giant purple swans; but cops meant trouble, and when you’re in trouble you do what your mother taught you to do.

“Would you like to get laid?” she asked Hawes very sweetly.

It was the best offer he’d had all day, that was for sure. But he turned it down, anyway. Instead, he left the apartment, questioned the rest of the people in the building, and got back to his own place at 7:35 that night.

He called Carella to tell him he had found two dusty shelves and a clean one.