Ice

12

Arthur Brown did not want to be doing what he was doing. Arthur Brown wanted to be watching television with his wife.

He did not want to be wading through all this stuff he and Kling had got, first, from Marvin Edelman’s widow, and next, from Marvin Edelman’s safety deposit box. If Arthur Brown had wanted to become an accountant, he would not have taken the patrolmen’s test all those years ago. Accounting bored Brown. Even his own accounting bored him. He normally asked Caroline to balance the family checkbooks, something she did marvelously well.

It was twenty minutes past 11:00.

The news would be over in ten minutes, and Johnny Carson would be coming on. Brown sometimes felt that the only two things uniting the people of the United States were Johnny Carson and the weather. Nothing short of a nuclear war could make everyone in the good old US of A feel more united than Johnny Carson and the weather. This winter, the weather was rotten all over the country. If you flew from here to Minneapolis, the weather would be the same. It gave you a feeling that here and Minneapolis were one and the same place. It united the people in adversity. If you flew from here to Cincinnati, the weather would be rotten there, too, and you’d step off the plane and immediately feel this enormous sense of brotherhood. Then, when you got to the hotel room and ordered your drink from room service, and unpacked your bag, and turned on your television set, why there would be old Johnny Carson at 11:30 P.M. sharp all over the country, and you knew that in Los Angeles they were watching Johnny Carson at the very same time, and in New York they were watching him, and in Kalamazoo, and Atlanta, and Washington, DC, they were all watching Johnny Carson, and it made you feel like an essential part of the greatest people on earth, all of them sitting there with their fingers up their asses, watching Johnny Carson.

Brown figured that if Johnny Carson ran for the presidency, he would win hands down. What he wanted to do right now — well, ten minutes from now — was watch Johnny Carson. He did not want to be cross-checking the contents of Marvin Edelman’s safety deposit box against Marvin Edelman’s bank statements and canceled checks for the past year or so. That was something for an accountant to be doing. What a cop should be doing was sitting on the sofa with his arm around Caroline while they watched Lola Falana, who was scheduled to be Johnny’s guest tonight, and whom Brown considered the most beautiful black woman in the world — next to Caroline, of course. He had never mentioned to Caroline how beautiful he thought Lola Falana was. After all these years on the force, he had learned that you never opened a door until you knew for certain what was behind it, and he wasn’t quite sure what might be lurking behind Caroline’s door these days. Brown had once mentioned that Diana Ross wasn’t bad looking, and Caroline had thrown an ashtray at him. He had threatened to arrest her for attempted assault, and she had told him he could damn well glue the ashtray together himself. That had been a long time ago, and he hadn’t tried opening that particular door since. He had the feeling he might find the same familiar tigress behind it.

He was very happy that Mrs. Edelman had found the duplicate key to her husband’s safety deposit box, because the discovery had saved him and Kling the trouble of going all the way downtown to apply for a court order to open the box, which application might or might not have been granted depending on which magistrate they’d have come up against that afternoon. Some of the judges downtown, you got the feeling they were on the side of the bad guys. You got a judge like Walking Wilbur Harris, you could go into his courtroom with a guy holding a machete in one bloody hand and a severed head in the other, and old Wilbur would cluck his tongue and say, “My, my, we’ve been a naughty boy today, haven’t we? Prisoner released on his own recognizance.” Or he’d set a ridiculous bail like ten thousand bucks for somebody who’d killed his mother, his father, his Labrador retriever, and all his pet goldfish. You got a judge like Walking Wilbur, it sometimes made you feel you were on the job for no reason at all in the world. You worked your tail off out there, you made your collar, and Wilbur let the man walk, sometimes clear to China, never to be heard from since. So what was the use? He was happy he hadn’t had to go downtown today to beg for a court order to open that box.

He had not been happy when he’d seen the size of the safety deposit box, and he had been even less happy when he and Kling discovered just how many papers were inside the damn thing. Those papers were scattered before him on the desk in the spare room now, together with Edelman’s bank statements and canceled checks and a can of beer. From the other room — his daughter Connie’s playroom during the day, his and Caroline’s television room at night — he could hear the identifying theme song of the Johnny Carson Show. He kept listening. He heard Ed McMahon announcing the list of guests (Lola Falana was one of them, sure as hell) and then he heard the familiar “Heeeeeere’s Johnnnnnnnnny!” and he sighed and took a long swallow of his beer, and then started separating the various documents they’d taken from the safety deposit box.

It was going to be a long night.

When the telephone rang, it startled Kling.

The phone was on an end table beside the bed, and the first ring slammed into the silence of the room like a pistol shot, causing him to sit bolt upright, his heart pounding. He grabbed for the receiver.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hi, this is Eileen,” she said.

“Oh, hi,” he said.

“You sound out of breath.”

“No, I... it was very quiet in here. When the phone rang, it surprised me.” His heart was still pounding.

“You weren’t asleep, were you? I didn’t—”

“No, no, I was just lying here.”

“In bed?”

“Yes.”

“I’m in bed, too,” she said.

He said nothing.

“I wanted to apologize,” she said.

“What for?”

“I didn’t know about the divorce,” she said.

“Well, that’s okay.”

“I wouldn’t have said what I said if I’d known.”

What she meant, he realized, was that she hadn’t known about the circumstances of the divorce. She had found out since yesterday, it was common currency in the department, and now she was apologizing for having described what she’d called an “uh-oh!” scene, the wife in bed with her lover, the husband coming up the steps, the very damn thing that had happened to Kling.

“That’s okay,” he said.

It was not okay.

“I’ve just made it worse, haven’t I?” she said.

He was about to say, “No, don’t be silly, thanks for calling,” when he thought, unexpectedly, Yes, you have made it worse, and he said, “As a matter of fact, you have.”

“I’m sorry. I only wanted—”

“What’d they tell you?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Come on,” he said. “Whoever told you about it.”

“Only that there’d been some kind of problem.”

“Uh-huh. What kind of problem?”

“Just a problem.”

“My wife was playing around, right?”

“Well, yes, that’s what I was told.”

“Fine,” he said.

There was a long silence on the line.

“Well,” she said, and sighed. “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry if I upset you yesterday.”

“You didn’t upset me,” he said.

“You sound upset.”

“I am upset,” he said.

“Bert...,” she said, and hesitated. “Please don’t be mad at me, okay? Please don’t!” and he could swear that suddenly she was crying. The next thing he heard was a click on the line.

He looked at the phone receiver.

“What?” he said to the empty room.

The trouble with Edelman’s records was that they didn’t seem to add up. Or maybe Brown was just adding them up wrong. Either way, the arithmetic didn’t come out right. There seemed to be large sums of money unaccounted for. The constant factor in Brown’s calculations was the $300,000 they’d found in Edelman’s safe. To Brown, this indicated at least one cash transaction. Possibly a series of cash transactions, fifty thou a throw, say, allowed to accumulate in his safe before—

Before what?

According to his bank statements and canceled checks, Edelman had not made any truly large deposits or withdrawals during the past year. His various outlays for business expenses were for trips to Amsterdam, Zurich, and other European cities — the air fares, the hotel rooms, the checks written to gem merchants in the Dutch city. But the purchases he’d made (and he was, after all, in the business of buying and selling precious gems) were relatively small ones: $5,000 here, $10,000 here, a comparatively big check for $20,000 written to one Dutch firm. The subsequent bank deposits here in America seemed to indicate that Edelman turned a good, if not spectacular, profit on each of his purchases abroad.

From what Brown could figure, Edelman did a business somewhere in the vicinity of $200,000 to $300,000 a year. His current tax return had not yet been prepared — this was still only February, and it was not due till April 15 — but on the last return he’d filed, he’d indicated a gross income of $265,523.12 for the year, with a taxable income of $226,523.12 after allowable deductions and business expenses. A little calculation told Brown that Edelman had deducted about 15 percent from his gross. With Uncle Sam, he was playing it entirely safe: the tax due had been $100,710.56; a check written on April 14 last year indicated that Edelman had completely satisfied his obligation to the government — at least on the income he’d reported.

It was the $300,000 in cash that kept bothering Brown.

Doggedly, he turned to the documents they had taken from Edelman’s safety deposit box.

Kling looked at the telephone for a long time.

Had she been crying?

He hadn’t wanted to make her cry, he hardly knew the girl. He went to the window and stared out at the cars moving steadily across the bridge, their headlights piercing the night. It was snowing again. Would it ever stop snowing? He had not wanted to make her cry. What the hell was wrong with him? Augusta is wrong with me, he thought, and went back to bed.

It might have been easier to forget her if only he didn’t have to see her face everywhere he turned. Your average divorced couple, especially if there were no kids involved, you hardly ever ran into each other after the final decree. You started to forget. Sometimes you forgot even the good things you’d shared, which was bad but which was the nature of the beast called divorce. With Augusta, it was different. Augusta was a model. You couldn’t pass a magazine rack without seeing her face on the cover of at least one magazine each and every month, sometimes two. You couldn’t turn on television without seeing her in a hair commercial (she had such beautiful hair) or a toothpaste commercial, or just last week in a nail-polish commercial, Augusta’s hands fanned out in front of her gorgeous face, the nails long and bright red, as if they’d been dipped in fresh blood, the smile on her face — ahh, Jesus, that wonderful smile. It got so he didn’t want to turn on the TV set anymore, for fear Augusta would leap out of the tube at him, and he’d start remembering again, and begin crying again.

He lay fully dressed on the bed in the small apartment he was renting near the bridge, his hands behind his head, his head turned so that he could see through the window, see the cars moving on the bridge to Calm’s Point — the theater crowd, he guessed; the shows had all broken by now, and people were heading home. People going home together. He took a deep breath.

His gun was in a holster on the dresser across the room.

He thought about the gun a lot.

Whenever he wasn’t thinking about Augusta, he was thinking about the gun.

He didn’t know why he’d let Brown take all that stuff home with him, he’d have welcomed the opportunity to go through it himself, give him something to do tonight instead of thinking about either Augusta or the gun. He knew Brown hated paperwork, he’d have been happy to take the load off his hands. But Brown had tiptoed around him, they all tiptoed around him these days, No, Bert, that’s fine, you just go out and have a good time, hear? I’ll be through with this stuff by morning, we’ll talk it over then, okay? It was as if somebody very close to him had died. They all knew somebody had died, and they were uncomfortable with him, the way people are always uncomfortable with mourners, never knowing where to hide their hands, never knowing what to say in condolence. He’d be doing them all a favor, not only himself. Take the gun and...

Come on, he thought.

He turned his head on the pillow, and looked up at the ceiling.

He knew the ceiling by heart. He knew every peak and valley in the rough plaster, knew every smear of dirt, every cobweb. He didn’t know some people the way he knew that ceiling. Sometimes, when he thought of Augusta, the ceiling blurred, he could not see his old friend the ceiling through his own tears. If he used the gun, he’d have to be careful of the angle. Wouldn’t want to have the bullet take off the top of his skull and then put a hole in the ceiling besides, not his old friend the ceiling. He smiled. He figured somebody smiling wasn’t somebody about to eat his own gun. Not yet, anyway.

Damn it, he really hadn’t wanted to make her cry.

He sat up abruptly, reached for the Isola directory on the end table, and thumbed through it, not expecting to find a listing for her, and not surprised when he didn’t. Nowadays, with thieves getting out of prison ten minutes after you locked them up, not too many cops were eager to list their home numbers in the city’s telephone books. He dialed Communications downtown, a number he knew by heart, and told the clerk who answered the phone that he wanted extension 12.

“Departmental Directory,” a woman’s voice said.

“Home number for a police officer,” Kling said.

“Is this a police officer calling?”

“It is,” Kling said.

“Your name, please?”

“Bertram A. Kling.”

“Your rank and shield number, please?”

“Detective/third, 74579.”

“And the party?”

“Eileen Burke.”

There was a silence on the line.

“Is this a joke?” the woman said.

“A joke? What do you mean?”

“She called here ten minutes ago, wanting your number.”

“We’re working a case together,” Kling said, and wondered why he’d lied.

“So did she call you?”

“She called me.”

“So why didn’t you ask her what her number was?”

“I forgot,” Kling said.

“This isn’t a dating service,” the woman said.

“I told you, we’re working a case together,” Kling said.

“Sure,” the woman said. “Hold on, let me run this through.”

He waited. He knew she was making a computer check on him, verifying that he was a bona fide cop. He looked through the window. It was snowing more heavily now. Come on, he thought.

“Hello?” the woman said.

“I’m still here,” Kling said.

“Our computers are down, I had to do it manually.”

“Am I a real cop?” Kling said.

“Who knows nowadays?” the woman answered. “Here’s the number, have you got a pencil?”

He wrote down the number, thanked her for her time, and then pressed one of the receiver rest buttons on top of the phone. He released the button, got a dial tone, was about to dial, and then hesitated. What am I starting here? he wondered. I don’t want to start anything here. I’m not ready to start anything. He put the phone back on the cradle.

The contents of the safety deposit box were very interesting indeed. The way Brown was finally coming to understand it, Edelman’s precious-gems business was a mere avocation when compared to what appeared to be his true business — the accumulation of real estate in various foreign countries. The deeds to land, houses, and office buildings in such diverse countries as Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and England were dated from as far back as five years ago to as recently as six months ago. In July of last year alone, Edelman had purchased 40,000 square meters of land in a place called Porto Santo Stefano, for 200 million Italian lire. Brown did not know where Porto Santo Stefano was. Neither did he know how much the Italian lira had been worth six months ago. But a look at the financial pages of the city’s morning paper told him that the current exchange rate was 100 lire for 12¢ US. Brown had no idea how much the exchange rate had fluctuated during the past six months. But basing the purchase price on today’s money market, Edelman would have spent something like $240,000 for the land he’d bought.

All well and good, Brown thought. A man wants to buy himself a big olive grove in Italy, fine, there was no law against that. But where was the canceled check, in either US dollars or Italian lire, for the deal Edelman had closed in Rome on the eighth day of July last year? Two hundred forty thousand dollars — more than that, when you figured in the legal fees and closing costs and taxes listed on the Italian closing statement — had exchanged hands last July.

Where had the $240,000 come from?

Kling kept pacing the room. He owed her an apology, didn’t he? Or did he? What the hell, he thought, and went back to the phone, and dialed her number.

“Hello?” she said. Her voice sounded very small and a trifle sniffly.

“This is Bert,” he said.

“Hello,” she said. The same small sniffly voice.

“Bert Kling,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“That’s okay,” she said.

“Really, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she said again.

There was a long silence on the line.

“So... how are you?” he said.

“Fine, I guess,” she said.

There was another long silence.

“Is your apartment cold?” she asked.

“No, it’s fine. Nice and warm.”

“I’m freezing to death here,” she said. “I’m going to call the Ombudsman’s Office first thing tomorrow morning. They’re not supposed to turn off the heat so early, are they?”

“Eleven o’clock, I thought.”

“Is it eleven already?”

“It’s almost midnight.”

“Another day, another dollar,” Eileen said, and sighed. “Anyway, they’re not supposed to turn it off entirely, are they?”

“Sixty-two, I think.”

“The radiators here are ice cold,” she said. “I have four blankets on the bed.”

“You ought to get an electric blanket,” Kling said.

“I’m afraid of them. I’m afraid I’ll catch on fire or something.”

“No, no, they’re very safe.”

“Do you have an electric blanket?”

“No. But I’m told they’re very safe.”

“Or electrocuted,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. And really, I am sorry for—”

“Me, too.” She paused. “This is the ‘I’m-Sorry-You’re-Sorry’ scene, isn’t it?” she said.

“I guess so.”

“Yeah, that’s what it is,” she said.

Silence again.

“Well,” he said, “it’s late, I don’t want to—”

“No, don’t go,” she said.

Silence again.

“Well,” he said, “it’s late, I don’t want to—”

“No, don’t go,” she said. “Talk to me.”

It seemed evident to Brown, as he studied the purchase prices on Edelman’s various real estate documents — and translated the French francs, Spanish pesetas, Portuguese escudos, and British pounds to US dollars — that Edelman had been involved in cash transactions that totaled some $4 million over the past five years. His recorded transactions, the purchases and sales covered by his various checks and subsequent deposits, amounted to some $1,275,000 over that same period of time. That left almost $3 million unaccounted for — and unaccountable to the Internal Revenue Service.

The trips to Zurich, five in the past year alone, suddenly seemed to make sense, especially in view of the fact that the only expenses he’d incurred there had been for food and lodging. Apparently, Edelman conducted no business in the city of Zurich, no gem business, anyway. Then why did he go there? And why had his visits there been followed invariably by side excursions to other cities on the continent? His itineraries, based on the flow of checks in each city, seemed to follow a consistent pattern: Amsterdam, Zurich, Paris, London, with an occasional side trip to Lisbon. Brown guessed that Edelman’s trips to Zurich were prompted not so much by a desire to visit the Alps as they were by a need to visit his money.

There was no way of finding out whether or not he had a Swiss bank account; Swiss bankers were as tight with information as hookers were with free trade. Perhaps Mrs. Edelman knew something more about her husband’s various trips abroad and his ownership (in his name only, Brown noticed) of real estate in five foreign countries. Perhaps she knew why Zurich had been an essential stop on all of his little journeys. Or perhaps, faced with what now looked like a simple case of tax evasion, she would claim she was an “innocent spouse” who knew nothing about her husband’s business activities. Perhaps she didn’t.

In any case, it now looked as if they had a mildly prosperous gem merchant who kept honest books on the little baubles he bought and sold here and there, deducted his operating expenses from his small profits, and then paid the tax man whatever was due on his net income. In the meantime, this same guy was spending large sums of cash for the unreported purchase of gems abroad, selling those gems for cash here in the United States — again without reporting the transactions — and then using his huge profits to buy not only more gems for resale later, but real estate as well. It did not take a financial genius to recognize that a cash buyer in today’s real estate market, when mortgage interest rates both here and abroad were astronomical, would be welcomed with open arms in any country on the face of the earth. Edelman had been buying like a drunken Arab; his real business was netting him millions of dollars, none of it reported to Uncle Sam.

Brown reached for the phone on his desk and dialed Kling’s home number.

The line was busy.

She had asked him not to go, she had asked him to talk to her, and suddenly he could think of nothing else to say. The silence on the line lengthened. On the street outside, he heard the distinctive wail of a 911-Emergency truck, and wondered which poor bastard had jumped off a bridge or got himself pinned under a subway train.

“Do you ever get scared?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“I mean, on the job.”

“Yes.”

“I’m scared,” she said.

“What about?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“The nurse thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, just don’t—”

“I mean, I’m always a little scared, but not like this time.” She hesitated. “He blinded one of them,” she said. “One of the nurses he raped.”

“Boy,” Kling said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, what you have to do... just be careful, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I’m always careful,” she said.

“Who’s your backup on this?”

“Two of them. I’ve got two of them.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Abrahams and McCann, do you know them?”

“No.”

“They’re out of the Chinatown Precinct.”

“I don’t know them.”

“They seem okay, but... well, a backup can’t stay glued to you, you know, otherwise he’ll scare off the guy you’re trying to catch.”

“Yeah, but they’ll be there if you need them.”

“I guess.”

“Sure, they will.”

“How long does it take to put out somebody’s eyes?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t worry about that, really, that’s not going to help, worrying about it. Just make sure you’ve got your hand on your gun, that’s all.”

“In my bag, yeah.”

“Wherever you carry it.”

“That’s where I carry it.”

“Make sure it’s in your hand. And keep your finger inside the trigger guard.”

“Yeah, I always do.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to carry a spare, either.”

“Where would I carry a spare?”

“Strap it to your ankle. Wear slacks. Nurses are allowed to wear slacks, aren’t they?”

“Oh, sure. But they like a leg show, you see. I’ll be wearing the uniform, you know, like a dress. The white uniform.”

“Who do you mean? Rank? They told you to wear a dress?”

“I’m sorry, what—”

“You said they like a leg show—”

“Oh. I meant the lunatics out there. They like a little leg, a little ass. Shake your boobs, lure them out of the bushes.”

“Yeah, well,” Kling said.

“I’ll be wearing one of those starched things, you know, with a little white cap, and white panty hose, and this big black cape. I already tried it on today, it’ll be at the hospital when I check in tomorrow night.”

“What time will that be?”

“When I get to the hospital, or when I go out?”

“Both.”

“I’m due there at eleven. I’ll be hitting the park at a little after midnight.”

“Well, be careful.”

“I will.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Maybe I could tuck it in my bra or something. The spare.”

“Yeah, get yourself one of those little guns—”

“Yeah, like a derringer or something.”

“No, that won’t help you, that’s Mickey Mouse time. I’m talking about something like a Browning or a Bernardelli, those little pocket automatics, you know?”

“Yeah,” she said, “tuck it in my bra.”

“As a spare, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“You can pick one up anywhere in the city,” Kling said. “Cost you something like thirty, forty dollars.”

“But those are small-caliber guns, aren’t they?” she asked. “ .22s? Or .25s?”

“That doesn’t mean anything, the caliber. A gun like a .22 can do more damage than a .38. When Reagan got shot, everybody was saying he was lucky it was only a .22 the guy used, but that was wrong thinking. I was talking to this guy at Ballistics... Dorfsman, do you know Dorfsman?”

“No,” Eileen said.

“Anyway, he told me you have to think of the human body like a room with furniture in it. You shoot a .38 or a .45 through one wall of the room, the slug goes right out through another wall. But you shoot a .22 or a .25 into that room, it hasn’t got the power to exit, you understand? It hits a sofa, it ricochets off and hits the television set, it ricochets off that and hits a lamp — those are all the organs inside the body, you understand? Like the heart, or the kidneys, or the lungs, the bullet just goes bouncing around inside there doing a lot of damage. So you don’t have to worry about the caliber, I mean it. Those little guns can really hurt somebody.”

“Yeah,” Eileen said, and hesitated. “I’m still scared,” she said.

“No, don’t be. You’ll be fine.”

“Maybe it’s because of what I told you yesterday,” she said. “My fantasy, you know. I never told that to anyone in my life. Now I feel as if I’m tempting God or something. Because I said it out loud. About... you know, wanting to get raped.”

“Well, you don’t really want to get raped.”

“I know I don’t.”

“So that’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Except for fun and games,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Getting raped.”

“Oh.”

“You know,” she said. “You tear off my panties and my bra, I struggle a little... like that. Pretending.”

“Sure,” he said.

“To spice it up a little,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“But not for real.”

“No.”

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “It’s too bad tomorrow night is for real.”

“Take the spare along,” Kling said.

“Oh, I will, don’t worry.”

“Well,” he said, “I guess—”

“No, don’t go,” she said. “Talk to me.”

Suddenly, and again, he could think of nothing else to say.

“Tell me what happened,” she said. “The divorce.”

“I’m not sure I want to,” he said.

“Will you tell me one day?”

“Maybe.”

“Only if you want to,” she said. “Bert...” She hesitated. “Thank you. I feel a lot better now.”

“Well, good,” he said. “Listen, if you want to—”

“Yes?”

“Give me a call tomorrow night. When you come in, I mean. When it’s all over. Let me know how it went, okay?”

“Well, that’s liable to be pretty late.”

“I’m usually up late.”

“Well, if you’d like me to.”

“Yes, I would.”

“It’ll be after midnight, you know.”

“That’s okay.”

“Maybe later, if we make the collar. Time we book him—”

“Whenever,” Kling said. “Just call me whenever.”

“Okay,” she said. “Well,” she said.

“Well, good night,” he said.

“Good night, Bert,” she said, and hung up.

He put the receiver back on the cradle. The phone rang again almost instantly. He picked up the receiver at once.

“Hello?” he said.

“Bert, it’s Artie,” Brown said. “You weren’t asleep, were you?”

“No, no.”

“I’ve been trying to get you for the past half hour. I thought maybe you took the phone off the hook. You want to hear what I’ve got?”

“Shoot,” Kling said.