Eight Black Horses

CHAPTER FOUR

If a person is an armed robber and he moves to another state, chances are he’ll continue the pursuit of his chosen career. He will not, for example, suddenly become a used-car salesman or a television producer, however similar to felony violators those two professionals might be. He will, instead, buy himself a gun that isn’t hot—which is easy to come by in any city in the United States—find himself a mom-and-pop grocery store, and stick it up one fine night. If Mom and Pop are smart and cooperative, they will empty the contents of the cash register into his waiting hands and pray that he departs at once. If Mom and Pop feel that an armed intruder in their store is a personal as well as a criminal violation, they might foolishly resist this invasion of their turf, in which case they might lose more than the cash in the register. An armed robber isn’t armed because he belongs to the National Rifle Association. He is armed because he knows he is looking at twenty years down the pike if he’s caught doing his job, and he is quite ready—and often eager—to use the pistol in his fist. In America the most recent annual figure for deaths caused by handguns was thirty-four thousand nationwide, second only to deaths caused in automobile accidents. That is a whole lot of dead people. Carella sometimes wondered if the members of the NRA, while happily shooting deer in the forest, ever said a silent prayer for all those victims.

Elizabeth Turner had worked for a bank in Los Angeles. She had worked for a bank here in this city, and she had also worked for a bank in Washington, D.C. Honest citizens, like criminals, will most often seek the same line of work when they move from one state to another. Wasn’t it likely, in fact almost mandatory, that Elizabeth would have sought a job in yet another bank upon her return here?

The detectives knew that in this state all employers had to fill out a so-called WRS-2 form, which was a quarterly report of wages that had to be filed with the state’s Department of Taxation and Finance on April 30, July 31, October 31, and January 31. The WRS-2 form listed the name and social security number of each employee, together with the gross wages earned in that quarter. The detectives were in possession of Elizabeth Turner’s social security number. They knew she had left the job in Washington on May 1. They further knew that she had been found dead in Grover Park on October 25. Wasn’t it a likelihood that at least one and perhaps two WRS-2 forms had been filed for her since her return to the city? Carella made a call upstate and spoke to a man named Culpepper there. Culpepper said he would check the WRS-2 forms filed on July 31 and October 31 and get back to him.

He did not get back to him until November 11, a dismally gray, wet, and cold Friday, by which time the case was already seventeen days old. He told Carella that none of the forms filed on July 31 reported wages for an Elizabeth Turner in that quarter.

‘How about the October thirty-first forms?’ Carella asked.

‘Those haven’t been processed yet.’

‘Haven’t you got a computer up there?’

‘Not for these quarterly forms,’ Culpepper said.

‘Well, when do you think they will be processed?’

‘When we get to them.’

‘When will that be?’

‘When we get to them,’ Culpepper said again. ‘Sometime before the next quarter’s filing is due.’

‘You mean in January? Next year?’

‘The WRS-2’s are due on January thirty-first, that’s right.’

‘This is a homicide here,’ Carella said. ‘I’m trying to find out where this girl worked. Can’t you do something to expedite this?’

‘It’d be different if the forms were filed under an employee’s name,’ Culpepper said. ‘Or even his or her social security number. But they’re not. They’re filed under the employer’s name. You don’t know how long it took us to check all those July forms, looking for this Elizabeth Turner. And those forms had already been processed.’

Carella knew exactly how long it had taken. He had made his request six days ago. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s very important for us to find out where...’

‘I’m sorry,’ Culpepper said. ‘I’ll have the October thirty-first forms checked once they’ve been processed, but I can’t do better than that.’

‘Okay, thanks,’ Carella said, and hung up.

He sat staring at his typewriter for a moment, anti then he rolled a D.D. Supplementary Report form into it. He had typed almost a full page when Alf Miscolo came from the clerical office down the hall. There was a plain white envelope in his hand. This one was postmarked November 10. As with the four that had preceded it, the letter was addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella, the name neatly typewritten on the face of the envelope.

‘I thought maybe he’d forgotten us,’ Miscolo said.

‘No such luck,’ Carella said and tore open the flap of the envelope.

The same single white sheet of paper inside.

And pasted to it:

‘That looks to me like four police hats,’ Miscolo said.

‘Yes,’ Carella said.

‘You think he’s a cop?’ Miscolo asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then why’s he sending us pictures of all this police shit? Walkie-talkies, shields, handcuffs? Police hats?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t like the idea of somebody sending us pictures of police paraphernalia,’ he said. ‘It’s spooky.’

He was not a handsome man, Miscolo. His nose was massive and his eyebrows were bushy, and I here was a thickness about his neck that created the impression of head sitting directly on shoulders. But normally there was an animation to his face and a sparkle to his dark eyes—never more evident than when he was defending the truly abominable coffee he brewed in his office—and this was totally lacking now as he stared disconsolately at the sheet of paper in Carella’s hand.

A police station was sacrosanct to men like Miscolo and Carella. Whatever happened out there on the streets, it did not come into the station house except in handcuffs. Although once—as they both remembered well—a woman with a gun and a bottle of nitroglycerin had held this very room hostage for more hours than either of them cared to count. For the most part, though, the precinct was as much a castle to these men as was a shabby row house to a British miner. It was enormously troubling to Miscolo that someone was using police equipment to make whatever the hell point he was trying to make. He felt as if he’d wandered into a filthy subway toilet and found his wife’s monogrammed towels on one of the sinks.

He knew what the other four messages had—well, advertised, if that was the correct word. They were all posted side by side on the squadroom bulletin board in the order in which they’d been received:

Eight black horses.

Five walkie-talkies.

Three pairs of handcuffs.

Six police shields.

And now this.

Four police hats.

Except for the horses, it was as if somebody was putting together a policeman piece by piece.

‘They all got to do with cops., you realize that?’ he said. ‘Except the horses.’

‘Cops still ride horses in this city,’ Carella said.

‘Them shields on the hats got no numbers on them, you realize that? He prolly cut out a picture of a hat someplace and then Xeroxed it.’

‘There’s a number on this picture of the shields, though.’

‘You suppose that’s a real shield?’

‘I don’t know.’

“Cause you can Xerox anything nowadays,’ Miscolo said. ‘You lay something on the glass there, you close the cover, you press the button, you get a pretty good picture of it.’

‘Yeah,’ Carella said.

‘If it is a real one ... where’d he get it?’ Miscolo asked.

‘Maybe I oughta check it out,’ Carella said. ‘Trouble is...’

‘Yeah, I know. You’d feel like a jerk.’

‘I mean, we’re getting these dumb letters...’

‘I know...’

‘I make a call to Personnel, ask if a cop lost a potsie with the number seventy-nine on it...’

‘You’d feel like a jerk.’

‘Which is how we’re supposed to feel,’ Carella said.

‘I don’t like this guy, I really don’t like him,’ Miscolo said, and looked at the picture of the four police hats again. ‘What’s he trying to tell us anyway?’

‘I don’t know,’ Carella said, and sighed heavily.

‘You want some coffee?’ Miscolo asked.

‘Thanks, not right now,’ Carella said.

‘Yeah, well,’ Miscolo said, and shrugged and left the squadroom.

The rain lashed the windows.

Carella wondered if he should call Personnel to run a check on shield number seventy-nine.

He looked at the D.D. form in his typewriter. Years ago you had to use carbon paper to make duplicate, triplicate, even quadruplicate copies. Now you just ran down the hall and asked Miscolo to run off Xerox copies for you. The way the Deaf Man—it had to be the Deaf Man—had Xeroxed the pictures he’d been sending them. The form—just as he’d typed it, errors, overscoring, and all—read:

That was as far as he’d got.

He was about to throw the Elizabeth Turner case into the Open File. Open. A euphemism for dead end. A case waiting for a miracle to happen. Open. In that years from now, by some impossible stroke of luck, they might arrest a man dropping another dead woman in yet another park, and he would confess to the first murder and perhaps a dozen murders before that one.

He looked at the form again.

He looked at the Deaf Man’s most recent message.

Four police hats.

No faces under them.

Anonymous hats.

The form in Carella’s typewriter was about to be thrown into the vast anonymity of the Open File, another piece of paper in a maze of information that confirmed the ineffectiveness of the police in a city where far too many murders were committed. The Open File was a gaping maw that swallowed victims. And in the process swallowed victimizers as well.

The proximity of the Deaf Man’s anonymous hats and the imminently anonymous form in the typewriter made him suddenly angry. It was entirely possible that there was no connection whatever between Elizabeth Turner and the Deaf Man. Seeking such a connection would most certainly be time-consuming and, in the long run, perhaps foolish. But she had been found dead in the park across the street. And there had been five letters from the Deaf Man to date, and if he wasn’t sticking his finger in their collective eye, then it certainly seemed that way. Throw Elizabeth Turner’s corpse into the Open File, and he’d be throwing the Deaf Man into it as well.

He ripped the D.D. report from his typewriter.

He carried the Deaf Man’s most recent greeting to the bulletin board and was about to tack it up with the others there, when it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps they were meant to be read in numerical rather than chronological order.

He began shifting them around, retacking them to the board in a single horizontal line.

Three pairs of handcuffs. Four police hats. Five walkie-talkies. Six police shields. Eight black horses.

So what? he thought.

They still meant nothing.

Not realizing how close he’d come to at least a beginning, he walked back to his desk, checked his book of police department phone listings, and then dialed Personnel downtown on High Street.

‘Personnel, Sergeant Mullaney,’ a voice answered.

‘Detective Carella at the Eight-Seven,’ he said. ‘I need a name and address for a possible police officer.’

‘A possible officer?’ Mullaney said.

‘Yes. All I’ve got is a shield number.’

‘What’s the number?’ Mullaney asked

‘Seventy-nine.’

‘You gotta be kidding,’ Mullaney said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Seventy-nine? You know what number we’re up to now? Don’t even ask. You know how many cops been through this system since the police department was started? Don’t ask.’

‘Check it anyway, okay?’

‘This guy’s got to be kidding,’ Mullaney said to no one. ‘Where’d you get this number?’

‘On a picture of a shield.’

‘A picture of a shield?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it says seventy-nine on it?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s your number, Coppola?’

‘Seven-one-four, five-six, three-two. And it’s Carella.’

‘That’ll give you some idea where we are now with the shield numbers. So you want me to check a shield some guy was a kid when the fuckin’ Dutch were still here?’

‘Just do me the favor, okay? This is a homicide we’re working.’

‘I ain’t surprised. A guy with shield number seventy-nine, he’s been dead for at least three centuries. Hold on, okay?’

Carella held on.

Mullaney came back onto the line some five minutes later.

‘No active shield number seventy-nine,’ he said. ‘Just like I figured.’

‘How about past records?’

‘We don’t go back to Henry Hudson,’ Mullaney said.

‘Check your past records,’ Carella said impatiently. ‘This is a goddamn homicide here.’

‘Don’t get your ass in an uproar, Coppola,’ Mullaney said, and left the phone again.

Carella waited.

When Mullaney came back, he said, ‘I got a badge number seventy-nine from 1858. There were eight-hundred thousand people in this city then, and we had a police force of fourteen hundred men. You’ll be interested in learning, no doubt, that in those days the police department was also charged with cleaning the streets.’

‘So what’s changed?’ Carella said.

‘Nothing,’ Mullaney said. ‘You want this guy’s name?’

‘Please,’ Carella said.

‘Angus McPherson,’ Mullaney said. ‘He died in 1872. You’ll be interested in learning, no doubt, that by then we had a population of a million-four and a police force of eighteen hundred men. Also, by then, there was a street cleaning department. Cops didn’t have to shovel horse manure anymore. All they had to worry about was getting shot. Which was what happened to this guy McPherson. Where’d you get a picture of his shield? In an antiques shop?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Carella said. ‘Thanks a lot, Maloney.’

* * * *

He had told Charlie Henkins that his name was Dennis Dove, and had asked him to make it ‘Den’ for short. Charlie didn’t realize it, but the words den dove were Swedish. In Swedish the word den meant ‘the,’ but dove was not a white bird of peace. The word wasn’t even pronounced the way it was in English. In Swedish dove meant ‘deaf man.’ Den Hove, then, was the Deaf Man.

‘The thing I still don’t understand,’ Charlie said, ‘is why you want to do it on Christmas Eve. I mean, the situation is exactly the same on any night. The money’ll be there in the vault any night we pick.’

‘Yes, but that’s when I want to do it,’ the Deaf Man said.

Charlie scratched his head. He was not a particularly bright human being, but then again most armed robbers weren’t. The Deaf Man had chosen him because he knew how to use a gun and was not afraid to use it. Charlie had, in fact, served a great deal of time at Castleview Prison upstate precisely because he’d used a gun while holding up a liquor store. The owner of the store was now confined to a wheelchair for life, a minor detail that disturbed Charlie not in the least. The way Charlie figured it, he’d had to burn the owner of the store because the man was reaching for his own gun under the counter. Charlie hadn’t considered the fact that two cops in a cruising police car up the street would hear the shots and would, within the next three minutes, have Charlie in handcuffs. Those were the breaks. He who hesitates is lost, dog eat dog, and easy come, easy go. Charlie knew all the proverbs and tricks of the trade, and he had learned a few more of them while serving his time upstate. Everybody learned a few tricks in the slammer. The Deaf Man figured Charlie was perfect for the job he’d planned. Charlie had twinkling blue eyes and a little round pot belly.

‘What I usually like to do on Christmas Eve,’ Charlie said, ‘is I like to watch television. They do a lot of specials on Christmas Eve. Last Christmas Eve I watched Perry Como on television. He used to be a barber, you know? My cousin Andy used to be a barber, too, before he got into doing burglaries. Not that Perry Como does burglaries.’

‘You’ll be home by seven-thirty,’ the Deaf Man said. ‘You can watch television all night long, if you like.’

‘I go in at a quarter to seven, huh?’ Charlie said.

‘Into the vault at a quarter to seven,’ the Deaf Man said.

‘Yeah, sure, that’s what I meant.’ He scratched his head again. ‘You sure Lizzie gave you the right numbers?’

‘Positive.’

‘The combinations, I mean.’

‘Yes, I know what you mean. The numbers are absolutely correct.’

‘And there’s this little push-button pad on the outer door, right?’ Charlie said.

‘Yes. Set in a panel to the right of the door.’

‘Steel door, huh?’

‘Steel.’

‘And another door after that one.’

‘Yes, with another pad and a second set of numbers.’

‘And inside there’s the safe with still more numbers.’

‘Yes.’

‘Think it was fuckin’ Fort Knox they got there.’ Charlie said.

‘Not quite,’ the Deaf Man said, and smiled.

‘Still. Three sets of fuckin’ numbers.’

‘Don’t worry about the numbers,’ the Deaf Man said. ‘You’ll have them memorized long before you actually use them.’

‘Yeah,’ Charlie said.

‘Before we’re through, you’ll know those numbers the way you know your own name.’

‘Well, yeah,’ Charlie said.

‘Does that bother you? Learning the numbers?’

‘No, no, I just don’t want anything to go wrong, that’s all.’

‘Nothing’ll go wrong if we’re prepared for the eventuality of something going wrong. It’s possible, of course, that you’ll forget those combinations even after we’ve gone over them a thousand times. But it’s not probable.’

‘I don’t even know what that means, probable,’ Charlie said.

‘A possibility is something that is capable of happening or being true without contradicting proven facts, laws, or circumstances. A probability, on the other hand, is something that is likely to happen or to be true. To put it in simpler terms...’

‘Yeah, please,’ Charlie said.

‘It is possible that our Christmas Eve adventure may go terribly awry, in which case we will both spend a good deal of time behind bars. It is probable, however, that all will go as planned, and we’ll come out of it richer by half a million dollars.’

‘Which we split three ways, right?’ Charlie said. ‘You, me, and Lizzie.’

‘Three ways, yes,’ the Deaf Man said.

Charlie nodded, but he looked troubled. ‘Just two broads inside the vault there, huh?’ he said.

‘Just the cashier and her assistant, yes.’

‘And you want me to take care of both of them, huh?’

‘Immediately. As soon as you’re in the vault.’

‘Well, that’s the easy part, taking care of them,’ Charlie said.

‘What’s the hard part?’ the Deaf Man asked.

‘Well ... learning the combinations, I guess. There’s eighteen numbers to learn, you know. Six on each of those pads.’

‘You’ll learn them, don’t worry. You mustn’t think of them as a single set of eighteen numbers. ‘They’ll be easier to remember if you think of them as three separate sets of six numbers each.’

‘Yeah,’ Charlie said.

‘Three separate and distinct combinations.’

’Yeah.’

‘In fact,’ the Deaf Man said, smiling, ‘combinations are a good way of differing between possibility and probability.’

Charlie looked at him blankly.

‘Let’s start with something simple,’ the Deaf Man said. ‘Take two numbers. How many possible ways are there of arranging those two numbers?’

‘Two?’ Charlie asked uncertainly.

‘Exactly. If the numbers are, for example, one and two, you can either arrange them as one-two or two-one. There are no other possibilities capable of being true without contradicting proven facts, laws, or circumstances. Now let’s add another number. The number three. We now have three numbers. One, two, and three. How many possible ways can we arrange those three numbers?’

‘Easy,’ Charlie said. ‘Three ways.’

‘Wrong. They can be arranged in six different ways. Here,’ he said, and picked up a pencil and moved a pad into place on the table. Writing swiftly, he listed the six possible combinations of the numbers one, two, and three:

1-2-3

1-3-2

2-1-3

2-3-1

3-1-2

3-2-1

‘Hey, how about that?’ Charlie said.

‘The way one calculates the possible ways of arranging any amount of numbers is to multiply the highest number by the one below it and then multiply the result by the number below that, and so on. For example, we have three numbers: one, two, and three. All right, we multiply three by two and we get six. Then we multiply six by one, and we get six again. The answer is six. And, as we just saw, there are, in fact, only six possible ways of arranging those three numbers.’

‘I was never good in arithmetic,’ Charlie said.

‘It gets more complicated when there are more numbers,’ the Deaf Man said. ‘For example, those pads outside each of the doors have nine numbers on them. Do you realize how many possible ways there are of arranging those nine numbers?’

Again Charlie looked at him blankly.

‘Well,’ the Deaf Man said, ‘do the multiplication. Nine by eight by seven by six by five by four and so on down to one. Nine times eight is seventy-two. Seventy-two times seven is five hundred and four. Five hundred and four times six is three thousand and twenty four. And so on. If you carry it all the way through, you’ll discover that there are three hundred and sixty-two thousand, eight hundred and eighty possible ways of arranging nine numbers. What, I ask you, is the probability—the likelihood—of anyone accidentally hitting upon the combination of six numbers that will unlock the outer door? And a different combination of six numbers for the inner door? And yet a third combination for the safe itself?’

‘There ain’t no way to figure that,’ Charlie said, shaking his head.

“Well, there is, but it would take forever. Which is exactly why combination locks were invented.’

‘Which is why Lizzie was invented, you mean.’

‘Yes, of course,’ the Deaf Man said, smiling. ‘To provide us with the combinations.’

‘For which she gets a third of the take,’ Charlie said, looking troubled again. ‘You think that’s fair?’

‘Do I think what’s fair?’

‘Her getting a third.’

‘Without her we wouldn’t be going in at all.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Charlie said, ‘it ain’t us going in, it’s me going in.’

‘I know that.’

‘Yeah, but you just said we’d be going in.’

‘One of us has to be outside,’ the Deaf Man said. ‘You know that.’ He hesitated and then asked, ‘Would you rather I went in?’

‘Well, I guess I look more the part,’ Charlie said.

‘Exactly.’

‘Still.’

‘What is it, Charlie?’ the Deaf Man said. ‘Tell me everything that’s troubling you. I don’t want any problems, not now and not later either.’

‘Okay, here’s what’s botherin’ me,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m the one goes in the vault with a gun. I’m the one has to take care of the two broads in there. You’re waitin’ outside, and Lizzie ain’t nowhere even near the scene. So, okay, it was your idea, the whole heist. I ain’t begrudgin’ you your share, especially since you’re the one takes the fall if they catch you with the loot, by which time I’m already home free. But where does Lizzie come off takin’ a third when all she done is give us the layout?’

‘And the combinations.’

‘Yeah, well, the combinations.’

‘Without which there wouldn’t be a job at all.’

‘It’s just a question of what’s fair, that’s all,’ Charlie said. ‘You and me are takin’ the biggest risks...’

‘In a sense, Charlie,’ the Deaf Man said gently, ‘you’re the one who’s taking the greatest risk.’

‘Well, thank you,’ Charlie said, ‘I’m glad you said that, I really am. But it’s your job, and fair is fair. And also you’re taking a risk, too. It’s that Lizzie ain’t takin’ no risk at all.’

‘Maybe you’ve got a point.’

‘I think I do.’

‘I’ll have to talk to her. What would you suggest, Charlie?’

‘Well, there’s five hundred K in that vault, supposed to be five hundred K, anyway...’

‘Perhaps more.’

‘So I thought, if we gave Lizzie a hundred thou for setting it up, then you and me split the rest.’

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ the Deaf Man said. ‘Fair is fair.’

‘It is.’

‘We’ll give Lizzie a flat hundred, as you suggest. But I’ll take only a hundred and fifty, and you’ll get the lion’s share, two hundred and fifty.’

‘Hey, no, I wasn’t suggesting nothing like that,’ Charlie said.

‘Fair is fair, Charlie.’

‘Well,’ Charlie said.

‘Does that please you?’

‘Well, if it’s okay with you.’

‘It’s fine with me.’

‘‘Cause I didn’t want to say nothin’ about like I’m the one lookin’ at two counts of murder, you know what I mean?’

‘I know exactly what you mean. And I appreciate it.’

‘And I appreciate what you’re doin’, too, the jester you just made. I really appreciate that, Den.’

‘Good. Are we agreed then?’

‘I couldn’t be happier,’ Charlie said, and then looked troubled again.

‘What is it?’ the Deaf Man asked.

‘You think she’ll go along with it? Lizzie?’

‘Oh, I’m sure she will.’

‘I hope so. I wouldn’t want her blowin’ the wlnsile ‘cause she thinks she ain’t gettin’ what she should be gettin’.’

‘No, don’t worry about that, Charlie.’

‘Where is she, anyway?’ Charlie asked. ‘Shouldn’t she be here when we go over all this shit?’

‘She’s done her job already,’ the Deaf Man said. ‘She’s no longer needed.’

He looked at Charlie, wondering if he even suspected that once he carried that cash out of the vault he’d have done his job and he, too, would no longer be needed.

‘Now then,’ he said, ‘the combinations.’

‘Yeah, the fuckin’ combinations,’ Charlie said.

‘Think of them as three different sets, Charlie, forget that there are eighteen numbers in all.’

‘Okay, yeah.’

‘Can you give me the first set? The six numbers for the outer door?’

‘Seven-six-one, three-two...’

‘Wrong.’

‘Seven-six-one...’

‘Yes?’

‘Three-two...’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Three-two...’

‘No, it’s two-three.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Two-three, yeah. Two-three-eight.’

‘And the inner door?’

‘Nine-two-four, three-eight-five.’

‘Correct. And the safe?’

‘Two-four-seven, four-six-three.’

‘Good, Charlie. Try it from the top again.’

‘Seven-six-one. Two-three-eight.’

‘Again.’

‘Seven-six-one, two-three-eight.’

‘Again.’

‘Seven-six-one, two-three-eight.’

‘And the inner door?’

‘Nine-two-four...’

* * * *