Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

16

The clothes turned up the next morning.

They were wrapped in a copy of the New York Times. A patrolman in Calm’s Point found them in a trash basket. His local precinct called Headquarters because there was a bloodstain on the black raincoat, and Headquarters promptly called the 87th. The clothes were sent to the lab where Grossman inspected them thoroughly.

Besides the raincoat, there was a black flannel suit, a pair of black lisle socks, and a black umbrella.

An examination of the clothing turned up some rather contradictory facts, and all of these were passed on to Carella who studied them and then scratched his head in puzzlement.

To begin with, the bloodstain on the raincoat belonged to the “O” group, which seemed to tie it in with the hands, and to further tie in with Mike Chirapadano whose service record had listed him as belonging to that blood group. But a careful examination of the black suit had turned up a subsequent small bloodstain on the sleeve. And this bloodstain belonged to the “B” group. That was the first contradiction.

The second contradiction seemed puzzling all over again. It had to do with three other stains that were found on the black suit. The first of these was of a hair preparation, found on the inside of the collar where the collar apparently brushed against the nape of the neck. The stain was identified as coming from a tonic called Strike. It was allegedly designed for men who had oily scalps and who did not wish to compound the affliction by using an oily hair tonic.

But side by side with this stain was the second stain, and it had been caused by a preparation known as Dram, which was a hair tonic designed to fight dandruff and dry, flaky scalps. It seemed odd that these two scalp conditions could exist in one and the same man. It seemed contradictory that a person with a dry, flaky scalp would also be a person with an oily scalp. Somehow, the two hair preparations did not seem very compatible.

The third stain on the suit jacket was identified as coming from the selfsame Skinglow cosmetic that had been found in the corner of the airline’s bag, and this led to some confusion as to whether a man or a woman had worn the damn suit. Carella concluded that a man had worn it, but that he had embraced a woman wearing Skinglow. This accounted for that stain, but not for the hair tonic stains, which were still puzzling and contradictory.

But there were more contradictions. The human hairs that clung to the fiber of the suit, for example. Some were brown and thin. Others were black and thick and short. And still others were black and thin and very long. The very long black ones presumably were left on the suit by the dame who’d worn the Skinglow. That embrace was shaping up as a very passionate one. But the thin brown hairs? And the thick black short ones? Puzzlement upon puzzlement.

About one thing, there was no confusion. There was a label inside the suit jacket, and the label clearly read: Urban-Suburban Clothes.

Carella looked up the name in the telephone directory, came up with a winner, clipped on his holster, and left the squadroom.

Cotton Hawes was somewhere in the city glued to Charles Tudor, whose trail he had picked up again early in the morning.

Urban-Suburban Clothes was one of those tiny shops that are sandwiched in between two larger shops and that would be missed entirely were it not for the colorful array of offbeat clothes in the narrow window. Carella opened the door and found himself in a long narrow cubicle that had been designed as a coffin for one man and that now held twelve men, all of whom were pawing through ties and feeling the material of sports coats and holding Italian sports shirts up against their chests. He felt an immediate attack of claustrophobia, which he controlled, and then he began trying to determine which of the twelve men in the shop was the owner. It occurred to him that thirteen was an unlucky number, and he debated leaving. He was carrying the bundle of clothes wrapped in brown paper and the bundle was rather bulky and this did not ease the crowded atmosphere of the shop at all. He squeezed past two men who were passing out cold over the offorange tint of a sports shirt that had no buttons.

“Excuse me,” he said, “excuse me.” And he executed an offtackle run around a group of men who were huddled at the tie rack. The ties apparently were made of Indian madras in colors the men were declaring to be simultaneously “cool,” “wild,” and “crazy.” Carella felt hot, tamed, and very sane.

He kept looking for the owner of the shop, and finally a voice came at his elbow. “May I help you, sir?” And a body materialized alongside the voice. Carella whirled to face a thin man with a Fu Manchu beard, wearing a tight brown suit over a yellow weskit, and leering like a sex maniac in a nudist camp.

“Yes, yes, you can,” Carella said. “Are you the owner of this shop?”

“Jerome Jerralds,” the young man said, and he grinned.

“How do you do, Mr. Jerralds?” Carella said. “I’m—”

“Trouble?” Jerralds said, eying the bundle of wrapped clothes. “One of our garments didn’t fit you properly?”

“No, it’s—”

“Did you make the purchase yourself, or was it a gift?”

“No, this—”

“You didn’t buy the garment yourself?”

“No,” Carella said. “I’m a—”

“Then it was a gift?”

“No. I’m—”

“Then how did you get it, sir?”

“The police lab sent the clothes over,” Carella answered.

“The poli—?” Jerralds started, and his hand went up to stroke the Chinese beard, a cat’s-eye ring gleaming on his pinky.

“I’m a cop,” Carella explained.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a pile of clothes here. I wonder if you can tell me anything about them.”

“Well, I—”

“I know you’re busy, and I won’t take much of your time.”

“Well, I—”

Carella had already unwrapped the package. “There’s a label in the suit,” he said. “Urban-Surburban Clothes. This your suit?”

Jerralds studied it. “Yes, that is our suit.”

“How about the raincoat? It looks like the kind of thing you might sell, but the label’s been torn out. Is it your coat?”

“What do you mean, it looks like the kind of thing we might sell?”

“Stylish,” Carella said.

“Oh, I see.”

“With a flair,” Carella said.

“Yes, I see.”

“Important-looking,” Carella said.

“Yes, yes.”

“Cool,” Carella said. “Wild. Crazy.”

“That’s our raincoat, all right,” Jerralds said.

“How about this umbrella?”

“May I see it, please?”

Carella handed him the tagged umbrella.

“No, that’s not ours,” Jerralds said. “We try to offer something different in men’s umbrellas. For example, we have one with a handle made from a ram’s horn, and another fashioned from a Tibetan candlestick, which—”

“But this one is yours, right?”

“No. Were you interested in—?”

“No, I don’t need an umbrella,” Carella said. “It’s stopped raining, you know.”

“Oh, has it?”

“Several days ago.”

“Oh. It gets so crowded in here sometimes—”

“Yes, I can understand. About this suit and this raincoat, can you tell me who bought them?”

“Well, that would be difficult to... ” Jerralds stopped. His hand fluttered to the jacket of the suit, landed on the sleeve, scraped at the stain there. “Seem to have got something on the sleeve,” he said.

“Blood,” Carella answered.

“Wh—?”

“Blood. That’s a bloodstain. You sell many of these suits, Mr. Jerralds?”

“Blood, well it’s a popular... blood? Blood?” He stared at Carella.

“It’s a popular number?” Carella said.

“Yes.”

“In this size?”

“What size is it?”

“A forty-two.”

“That’s a big size.”

“Yes. The suit was worn by a big man. The raincoat’s big, too. Can you remember selling both these items to anyone? There’s also a pair of black socks here someplace. Just a second.” He dug up the socks. “These look familiar?”

“Those are our socks, yes. Imported from Italy. They have no seam, you see, manufactured all in one—”

“Then the suit, the raincoat, and the socks are yours. So the guy is either a steady customer, or else someone who stopped in and made all the purchases at one time. Can you think of anyone? Big guy, size forty-two suit?”

“May I see the suit again, please?”

Carella handed him the jacket.

“This is a very popular number,” Jerralds said, turning the jacket over in his hands. “I really couldn’t estimate how many of them we sell each week. I don’t see how I could possibly identify the person who bought it.”

“There wouldn’t be any serial numbers on it anywhere?” Carella asked. “On the label maybe? Or sewn into the suit someplace?”

“No, nothing like that,” Jerralds said. He flipped the suit over and studied both shoulders. “There’s a high padding on this right shoulder,” he said almost to himself. To Carella, he said, “That’s odd because the shoulders are supposed to be unpadded, you see. That’s the look we try to achieve. A natural, flowing—”

“So what does the padding on that right shoulder mean?”

“I don’t know, unless... Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Yes, yes, I’ll bet this is the suit.”

“Go ahead,” Carella said.

“This gentlemen came in, oh, it must have been shortly after Christmas. A very tall man, very well built. A very handsome man.”

“Yes?”

“He... well, one leg was slightly shorter than the other. A halfinch, a quarter-inch, something like that. Not serious enough to produce a limp, you understand, but just enough to throw the line of his body slightly out of kilter. I understand there are a great number of men whose—”

“Yes, but what about this particular man?”

“Nothing special. Except that we had to build up the right shoulder of the jacket, pad it, you know. To compensate for that shorter leg.”

“And this is that jacket?”

“I would think so, yes.”

“Who bought it?”

“I don’t know.”

“He wasn’t a regular customer of yours?”

“No. He came in off the street. Yes, I remember now. He bought the suit, and the raincoat, and several pairs of socks, and black knit tie. I remember now.”

“But you don’t remember his name?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Do you keep sales slips?”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you list a customer’s name on the slip?”

“Yes, but—”

“But what?”

“This was shortly after Christmas. January. The beginning of January.”

“So?”

“Well, I’d have to go through a pile of records to get to—”

“I know,” Carella said.

“We’re very busy now,” Jerralds said. “As you can see—”

“Yes, I can see.”

“This is Saturday, one of our busiest days. I’m afraid I couldn’t take the time to—”

“Mr. Jerralds, we’re investigating a murder,” Carella said.

“Oh.”

“Do you think you can take the time?”

“Well... ” Jerralds hesitated. “Very well, would you come into the back of the store, please?”

He pushed aside a curtain. The back of the store was a small cubbyhole piled high with goods in huge cardboard boxes. A man in jockey shorts was pulling on a pair of pants in front of a fulllength mirror.

“This doubles as a dressing room,” Jerralds explained. “Those trousers are just for you, sir,” he said to the half-clad man. “This way; my desk is over here.”

He led Carella to a small desk set before a dirty, barred window.

“January, January,” he said, “now where would the January stuff be?”

“Is this supposed to be so tight?” the man in trousers said.

“Tight?” Jerralds asked. “It doesn’t look at all tight, sir.”

“It feels tight to me,” the man said. “Maybe I’m not used to these pants without pleats. What do you think?” he asked Carella.

“Looks okay to me,” Carella said.

“Maybe I’m just not used to it,” the man answered.

“Maybe so.”

“They look wonderful,” Jerralds said. “That color is a new one. It’s sort of off-green. Green and black, a mixture.”

“I thought it was gray,” the man said, studying the trousers more carefully.

“Well, it looks like gray, and it looks like green, and it also looks like black. That’s the beauty of it,” Jerralds said.

“Yeah?” The man looked at the trousers again. “It’s a nice color,” he said dubiously. He thought for a moment, seeking an escape. “But they’re too tight,” and he began pulling off the trousers. “Excuse me,” he said, hopping on one leg and crashing into Carella. “It’s a little crowded back here.”

“The January file should be... ” Jerralds touched one temple with his forefinger and knotted his brow. The finger came down like the finger of doom circling in the air and then dived, tapping a carton that rested several feet from the desk. Jerralds opened the carton and began rummaging among the sales slips.

The man threw the trousers onto the desk and said, “I like the color, but they’re too tight.” He walked to the carton over which he had draped his own trousers and began pulling them on. “I can’t stand tight pants, can you?” he asked Carella.

“No,” Carella answered.

“I like a lot of room,” the man said.

“No, this is February,” Jerralds said. “Now where the devil did I put the January slips? Let me think,” and again the finger touched his temple, hesitated there until the light of inspiration crossed his bearded face, and then zoomed like a Stuka to a new target. He opened the second carton and pulled out a sheaf of sales slips.

“Here we are,” he said. “January. Oh, God, this is going to be awful. We had a clearance sale in January. After Christmas, you know. There are thousands of slips here.”

“Well, thanks a lot,” the man said, secure in his own loose trousers now. “I like a lot of room, you understand.”

“I understand,” Jerralds said as he leafed through the sales slips.

“I’ll drop in again sometime. I’m a cab driver, you see. I need a lot of room. After all, I sit on my ass all day long.”

“I understand,” Jerralds said. “I think it was the second week in January. After the sale. Let me try those first.”

“Well, so long,” the cab driver said. “Nice meeting you.”

“Take it easy,” Carella answered, and the cabbie pushed through the hanging curtains and into the front of the shop.

“Three shirts at four-fifty per... no, that’s not it. This is a job, you know. If you weren’t such a nice person, I doubt if I’d... one pair of swim trunks at... no... ties, no... one raincoat black, one suit charcoal, three pair lisle... here it is, here it is,” Jerralds said. “I thought so. January tenth. Yes, it was a cash sale.”

“And the man’s name?”

“It should be on the top of the slip here. It’s a little difficult to read. The carbon isn’t too clear.”

“Can you make it out?” Carella asked.

“I’m not sure. Chirapadano, does that sound like a name? Michael Chirapadano?”