Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

17

The landlady said, “Are you here again? Where’s your redheaded friend?”

“Working on something,” Carella said. “I’d like to go through Chirapadano’s room again. That okay with you?”

“Why? You got a clue?”

“Maybe.”

“He owes me two months’ rent,” the landlady said. “Come on, I’ll take you up.”

They walked upstairs. She cleaned the banister with an oily cloth as they went up. She led Carella to the apartment and was taking out the key when she stopped. Carella had heard the sound, too. His gun was already in his hand. He moved the landlady to one side and was backing off against the opposite wall when she whispered, “For God’s sake, don’t break it in. Use my key, for God’s sake!”

He took the key from her, inserted it into the lock, and twisted it as quietly as he could. He turned the knob then and shoved against the door. The door would not budge. He heard a frantic scurrying inside the apartment, and he shouted, “Goddamnit!” and hurled his shoulder against the door, snapping it inward.

A tall man stood in the center of the room, a bass drum in his hands.

“Hold it, Mike!” Carella shouted, and the man threw the bass drum at him, catching him full in the chest, knocking him backward and against the landlady who kept shouting, “I told you not to break it in! Why didn’t you use the key!”

The man was on Carella now. He did not say a word. There was a wild gleam in his eyes as he rushed Carella, disregarding the gun in Carella’s fist as the landlady screamed her admonitions. He threw a left that caught Carella on the cheek and was drawing back his right when Carella swung the.38 in a side-swiping swing that opened the man’s cheek. The man staggered backward, struggling for balance, tripping over the rim of the bass drum, and crashing through the skin. He began crying suddenly, a pitiful series of sobs that erupted from his mouth.

“Now you broke it,” he said. “Now you went and broke it.”

“Are you Mike Chirapadano?” Carella asked.

“That ain’t him,” the landlady said. “Why’d you break the door in? You cops are all alike! Why didn’t you use the key like I told you?”

“I did use the damn key,” Carella said angrily. “All it did was lock the door. The door was already open. You sure this isn’t Chirapadano?”

“Of course I’m sure. How could the door have been open? I locked it myself.”

“Our friend here probably used a skeleton key on it. How about that, Mac?” Carella asked.

“Now you broke it,” the man said. “Now you went and broke it.”

“Broke what?”

“The drum. You broke the damn drum.”

“You’re the one who broke it,” Carella said.

“You hit me,” the man said. “I wouldn’t have tripped if you hadn’t hit me.”

“Who are you? What’s your name? How’d you get in here?”

“You figure it out, big man.”

“Why’d you leave the door unlocked?”

“Who expected anyone to come up here?”

“What do you want here anyway? Who are you?”

“I wanted the drums.”

“Why?”

“To hock them.”

“Mike’s drums?”

“Yes.”

“All right, now who are you?”

“What do you care? You broke the bass drum. Now I can’t hock it.”

“Did Mike ask you to hock his drums?”

“No.”

“You were stealing them?”

“I was borrowing them.”

“Sure. What’s your name?”

“Big man. Has a gun, so he thinks he’s a big man.” He touched his bleeding face. “You cut my cheek.”

“That’s right,” Carella said. “What’s your name?”

“Larry Daniels.”

“How do you know Chirapadano?”

“We played in the same band.”

“Where?”

“The King and Queen.”

“You a good friend of his?”

Daniels shrugged.

“What instrument do you play?”

“Trombone.”

“Do you know where Mike is?”

“No.”

“But you knew he wasn’t here, didn’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t have sneaked up here with your skeleton key and tried to steal his drums. Isn’t that right?”

“I wasn’t stealing them. I was borrowing them. I was going to give him the pawn ticket when I saw him.”

“Why’d you want to hock the drums?”

“I need some loot.”

“Why don’t you hock your trombone?”

“I already hocked the horn.”

“You the junkie Randy Simms was talking about?”

“Who?”

“Simms. Randy Simms. The guy who owns The King and Queen. He said the trombone player on the band was a junkie. That you, Daniels?”

“Okay, that’s me. It ain’t no crime to be an addict. Check the law. It ain’t no crime. And I got no stuff on me, so put that in your pipe and smoke it. You ain’t got me on a goddamn thing.”

“Except attempted burglary,” Carella said.

“Burglary, my ass. I was borrowing the drums.”

“How’d you know Mike wouldn’t be here?”

“I knew, that’s all.”

“Sure. But how? Do you know where he is right this minute?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“But you knew he wasn’t here.”

“I don’t know nothing.”

“A dope fiend,” the landlady said. “I knew it.”

“Where is he, Daniels?”

“Why do you want him?”

“We want him.”

“Why?”

“Because he owns a suit of clothes that may be connected with a murder. And if you withhold information from us, you can be brought in as an accessory after the fact. Now how about that, Daniels? Where is he?”

“I don’t know. That’s the truth.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Just before he made it with the dame.”

“What dame?”

“The stripper.”

“Bubbles Caesar?”

“That’s her name.”

“When was this, Daniels?”

“I don’t remember the date exactly. It was around Valentine’s Day. A few days before.”

“The twelfth?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Mike didn’t show up for work on the night of the twelfth. Was that the day you saw him?”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“When did you see him?”

“In the afternoon sometime.”

“And what did he want?”

“He told me he wouldn’t be on the gig that night, and he give me the key to his pad.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“He said he wanted me to take his drums home for him. So when we quit playing that night, that’s what I done. I packed up his drums and took them here.”

“So that’s how you got in today. You still have Mike’s key.”

“Yeah.”

“And that’s how you knew he wouldn’t be here. He never did get that key back from you, did he?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Daniels paused. “I was supposed to call him the next day and we was supposed to meet so I could give him the key. Only I called, and there was no answer. I called all that day, but nobody answered the phone.”

“This was the thirteenth of February?”

“Yeah, the next day.”

“And he had told you he would be with Bubbles Caesar?”

“Well, not directly. But when he give me the key and the telephone number, he made a little joke, you know? He said, ‘Larry, don’t be calling me in the middle of the night because Bubbles and me, we are very deep sleepers.’ Like that. So I figured he would be making it with Bubbles that night. Listen, I’m beginning to get itchy. I got to get out of here.”

“Relax, Daniels. What was the phone number Mike gave you?”

“I don’t remember. Listen, I got to get a shot. I mean, now listen, I ain’t kidding around here.”

“What was the number?”

“For Christ’s sake, who remembers? This was last month, for Christ’s sake. Look, now look, I ain’t kidding here. I mean, I got to get out of here. I know the signs, and this is gonna be bad unless I get—”

“Did you write the number down?”

“What?”

“The number. Did you write it down?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Daniels said, but he pulled out his wallet and began going through it, muttering all the while, “I have to get a shot, I have to get fixed, I have to get out of here,” his hands trembling as he riffled through the wallet’s compartments. “Here,” he said at last, “here it is, here’s the number. Let me out of here before I puke.”

Carella took the card.

“You can puke at the station house,” he said.

The telephone number was Economy 8-3165.

At the squadroom, Carella called the telephone company and got an operator who promptly told him she had no record of any such number.

“It may be an unlisted number,” Carella said. “Would you please check it?”

“If it’s an unlisted number, sir, I would have no record of it.”

“Look, this is the police department,” Carella said. “I know you’re not supposed to divulge—”

“It is not a matter of not divulging the number, sir. It is simply that I would have no record of it. What I’m trying to tell you, sir, is that we do not have a list labeled ‘Unlisted Numbers.’ Do you understand me, sir?”

“Yes, I understand you,” Carella said. “But the telephone company has a record of it someplace, doesn’t it? Somebody pays the damn bill. Somebody gets the bill each month. All I want to know is who gets it?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I wouldn’t know who—”

“Let me talk to your supervisor,” Carella said.

Charles Tudor had begun walking from his home in The Quarter, and Cotton Hawes walked directly behind him. At a respectable distance, to be sure. It was a wonderful day for walking, a day that whetted the appetite for spring. It was a day for idling along and stopping at each and every store window, a day for admiring the young ladies who had taken off their coats and blossomed earlier than the flowers.

Tudor did not idle, and Tudor did not admire. Tudor walked at a rapid clip, his head ducked, his hands thrust into the pockets of his topcoat, a big man who shouldered aside any passerby who got in his way. Hawes, an equally big man, had a tough time keeping up with him. The sidewalks of The Quarter on that lovely Saturday were cluttered with women pushing baby carriages, young girls strutting with high-tilted breasts, young men wearing faded tight jeans and walking with the lope of male dancers, young men sporting beards and paint-smeared sweatshirts, girls wearing leotards over which were Bermuda shorts, old men carrying canvases decorated with pictures of the ocean, Italian housewives from the neighborhood carrying shopping bags bulging with long breads, young actresses wearing makeup to rehearsals in the many little theaters that dotted the side streets, kids playing Johnny-on-the-Pony.

Hawes could have done without the display of humanity. If he were to keep up with Tudor, he’d have to—

He stopped suddenly.

Tudor had gone into a candy store on the corner. Hawes quickened his pace. He didn’t know whether or not there was a back entrance to the store, but he had lost Tudor the night before, and he didn’t want to lose him again. He walked past the candy store and around the corner. There was only one entrance, and he could see Tudor inside making a purchase. He crossed the street quickly, took up a post in the doorway of a tenement, and waited for Tudor to emerge. When Tudor came out, he was tearing the cellophane top from a package of cigarettes. He did not stop to light the cigarette. He lighted it as he walked along, three matches blowing out before he finally got a stream of smoke.

Doggedly, Hawes plodded along behind him.

“Good afternoon, sir, this is your supervisor; may I help you, sir?”

“Yes,” Carella said. “This is Detective Carella of the 87th Squad up here in Isola,” he said, pulling his rank. “We have a telephone number we’re trying to trace, and it seems—”

“Did the call originate from a dial telephone, sir?”

“What call?”

“Because if it did, sir, it would be next to impossible to trace it. A dial telephone utilizes automatic equipment and—”

“Yes, I know that. We’re not trying to trace a call, operator, we’re trying to—”

“I’m the supervisor, sir.”

“Yes, I know. We’re—”

“On the other hand, if the call was made from a manual instrument, the possibilities of tracing it would be a little better. Unless it got routed eventually through automatic—”

“Lady, I’m a cop, and I know about tracing telephone calls, and all I want you to do is look up a number and tell me the party’s name and address. That’s all I want you to do.”

“I see.”

“Good. The number is Economy 8-3165. Now would you please look that up and give me the information I want?”

“Just one moment, sir.”

Her voice left the line. Carella drummed impatiently on the desk top. Bert Kling, fully recovered, furiously typed up a DD report at the adjoining desk.

Tudor was making another stop. Hawes cased the shop from his distant vantage point. It was set between two other shops in a row of tenements, and so the possibility of another entrance was unlikely. If there was another entrance, it would not be one accessible to customers of the shop.

Hawes lighted a cigarette and waited for Tudor to make his purchase and come into the street again.

He was in the shop for close to fifteen minutes.

When he came out, he was carrying some white gardenias.

Oh great, Hawes thought, he’s going to see a dame.

And then he wondered if the dame could be Bubbles Caesar.

“Sir, this is your supervisor.”

“Yes?” Carella said. “Have you got—?”

“You understand, sir, that when a person requests an unlisted or unpublished telephone number, we—”

“I’m not a person,” Carella said, “I’m a cop.” He wrinkled his brow and thought that one over for a second.

“Yes, sir, but I’m referring to the person whose telephone number this is. When that person requests an unpublished number, we make certain that he understands what this means. It means that there will be no record of the listing available, and that no one will be able to get the number from anyone in the telephone company, even upon protest of an emergency condition existing. You understand that, sir?”

“Yes, I do. Lady, I’m a cop investigating a murder. Now will you please—”

“Oh, I’ll give you the information you requested. I certainly will.”

“Then what—?”

“But I want you to know that an ordinary citizen could not under any circumstances get the same information. I simply wanted to make the telephone company’s policy clear.”

“Oh, it’s perfectly clear, operator.”

“Supervisor,” she corrected.

“Yes, sure. Now who’s that number listed for, and what’s the address?”

“The phone is in a building on Canopy Street. The address is 1611.”

“Thank you. And the owner of the phone?”

“No one owns our telephones, sir. You realize that our instruments are provided on a rental basis, and that—”

“Whose name is that phone listed under, oper — supervisor? Would you please—?”

“The listing is for a man named Charles Tudor,” the supervisor said.

“Charles Tudor?” Carella said. “Now what the hell—?”

“Sir?” the supervisor asked.

“Thank you,” Carella said, and he hung up. He turned to Kling. “Bert,” he said, “get your hat.”

“I don’t wear any,” Kling said, so he clipped on his holster instead.

Charles Tudor had gone into 1611 Canopy Street, unlocked the inner vestibule door, and vanished from sight.

Hawes stood in the hallway now and studied the mailboxes. None of them carried a nameplate for Bubbles Caesar or Charles Tudor or Mike Chirapadano or anyone at all with whom Hawes was familiar. Hawes examined the mailboxes again, relying upon one of the most elementary pieces of police knowledge in his second study for the nameplates. For reasons known only to God and psychiatrists, when a person assumes a fictitious name, the assumed name will generally have the same initials as the person’s real name. Actually, this isn’t a mystery worthy of supernatural or psychiatric secrecy. The simple fact is that a great many people own monogrammed handkerchiefs, or shirts, or suitcases, or dispatch cases, or whatever. And if a man named Benjamin Franklin who has the initials B. F. on his bags and his shirts and his underwear and maybe tattooed on his forehead should suddenly register in a hotel as George Washington, a curious clerk might wonder whether or not Benjy came by his B. F. luggage in an illegal manner. Since a man using an assumed name is a man who is not anxious to attract attention, he will do everything possible to make things easier for himself. And so he will use the initials of his real name in choosing an alias.

One of the mailboxes carried a nameplate for a person called Christopher Talley.

It sounded phony, and it utilized the C. T. initials, and so Hawes made a mental note of the apartment number: 6B.

Then he pressed the bell for apartment 2A, waited for the answering buzz that released the inner door lock, and rapidly climbed the steps to the sixth floor. Outside apartment 6B, he put his ear to the door and listened. Inside the apartment, a man was talking.

“Barbara,” the man said, “I brought you some more flowers.”

In the police sedan, Carella said, “I don’t get it, Bert. I just don’t get it.”

“What’s the trouble?” Kling asked.

“No trouble. Only confusion. We find a pair of hands, and the blood group is identified as ‘O,’ right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Mike Chirapadano is in that blood group. He’s also a big guy, and he vanished last month, and so that would make him a good prospect for the victim, am I right?”

“Right,” Kling said.

“Okay. But when we find the clothes the murderer was wearing, it turns out they belonged to Mike Chirapadano. So it turns out that he’s a good prospect for the murderer, too.”

“Yeah?” Kling said.

“Yeah. Then we get a line on Bubbles Caesar’s hideout, the place she and Chirapadano used, the place we’re going to right now—”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah; and it turns out the phone is listed for Charles Tudor, Bubbles’s agent. Now how does that figure?”

“There’s 1611 up ahead,” Kling said.

Standing in the hallway, Hawes could hear only the man’s voice, and the voice definitely belonged to Charles Tudor. He wondered whether or not he should crash the apartment. Scarcely daring to breathe, trying desperately to hear the girl’s replies, he kept his ear glued to the wood of the door, listening.

“Do you like the flowers, Barbara?” Tudor said.

There was a pause. Hawes listened, but could hear no reply.

“I didn’t know whether or not you liked gardenias, but we have so many of the others in here. Well, a beautiful woman should have lots of flowers.”

Another pause.

“You do like gardenias?” Tudor said. “Good. You look beautiful today, Barbara. Beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking so beautiful. Did I tell you about the police?”

Hawes listened for the reply. He thought instantly of Marla Phillips’s tiny voice, and he wondered if all big girls were naturally endowed with the same voices. He could not hear a word.

“You don’t want to hear about the police?” Tudor said. “Well, they came to see me again yesterday. Asking about you and me. And Mike. And asking whether or not I owned a black raincoat and umbrella. I told them I didn’t. That’s the truth, Barbara. I really don’t own a black raincoat, and I’ve never liked umbrellas. You didn’t know that, did you? Well, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me. I’m a very complex person. But we have lots of time. You can learn all about me. You look so lovely. Do you mind my telling you how beautiful you look?”

This time, Hawes heard something.

But the sound had come from behind him, in the hallway.

He whirled, drawing his.38 instantly.

“Put up the gun, Cotton,” Carella whispered.

“Man, you scared the hell out of me!” Hawes whispered back. He peered past Carella, saw Kling standing there behind him.

“Tudor in there?” Carella asked.

“Yeah. He’s with the girl.”

“Bubbles?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, let’s break it open,” Carella said.

Kling took up a position to the right of the door, Hawes to the left. Carella braced himself and kicked in the lock. The door swung open. They burst into the room with their guns in their hands, and they saw Charles Tudor on his knees at one end of the room. And then they saw what was behind Tudor, and each of the men separately felt identical waves of shock and terror and pity, and Carella knew at once that they would not need their guns.