Killer's Payoff

Killer’s Payoff

Ed McBain

Introduction

Are we there yet?

Apparently not.

Ever the slave to the whims of cruel and unusual publishers, I am reluctantly continuing this seemingly incessant string of introductions, each of which is threatening to become as long as the 87th Precinct series itself. How is a mere writer supposed to remember the details of how a novel took shape in the year 1957, when Killer’s Payoff was being written?

I had my instructions.

That much I remember clearly.

Phase out Steve Carella. Carella is not a hero, he is a married man. Instead, give us a handsome hero with whom men can identify and with whom women can fall in love.

This is what I’d been told by the Pocket Books executive whom I prefer calling Ralph lest he turn his goons on me yet another time. Following the gentle persuasion that took place in the offices at 630 Fifth Avenue, I introduced the handsome new hero, Cotton Hawes, in a book titled Killer’s Choice. His debut caused no noticeable critical or popular acclaim. This did not lessen Ralph’s conviction that the series needed the shot-in-the-arm only a character of Hawes’s size and dimension could provide. In fact, and toward that end, Ralph had already concocted a slew of titles with the name “Cotton” in them, hoping to ensnare unsuspecting readers through the use of so-called Instant Newsstand Recognition.

You must remember that none of these books had as yet been published in hardcover. They were all paperback originals, and they sold for a mere twenty-five cents each—about a third of what a hit off a crack pipe will cost you at the time of this writing. In fact, if crack had been around back then, I’m sure Ralph would have suggested Cotton and Crack as one of the new titles in the new approach. As it was, he’d come up instead with such scintillating gems as Cotton and Steel, Cotton and Silk, Cotton and Smoke, and Cotton and God Knows What Else.

Back then, titles were routinely changed by publishers as a matter of course, with little regard for the author’s feelings or the intent of the book. I fought for Killer’s Payoff (which in itself wasn’t such a terrific title) because I’d already written Killer’s Choice, introducing Hawes, and I felt the next novel should echo it somewhat. Besides, I tend to think in terms of three—perhaps because Conan Doyle wrote The Sign of the Four, or perhaps, gee, just maybe because the first Pocket Books contract was for three books, and the second was for another three. Killer’s Payoff was to be the last book in that second contract. After that, Pocket could renew again or not, as they saw fit. I had the feeling that if Hawes didn’t work out as the driving force behind the series, it was goodbye, Charlie.

Upon reflection, it’s interesting to note that the first four books in the series were titled after the sort of criminals a policeman might actually encounter: Cop Hater, The Mugger, The Pusher, and The Con Man. But with the introduction of Cotton Hawes, the titles became sort of…well, private-eye sounding, don’t you think? Killer’s Choice? And then Killer’s Payoff? And I already had the third Killer’s title in mind, which eventually became the book Killer’s Wedge. None of these were as dreadful as the Cotton and titles conjured by Ralph, but they nonetheless had a pulpy, private-eye sound to them, perhaps, gee, just maybe because they were introducing a pulpy, somewhat private-eye character. Let’s face it. Badge or not, Cotton Hawes acted like a private eye!

Well, I hadn’t hired on to do a private-eye series. The series I’d proposed—to reiterate for those of you who haven’t been religiously collecting these remarkable introductions—was to be a realistic look at a squad room of cops who, when put together, would form a conglomerate hero in a mythical city. This meant cops of any stripe or persuasion could come and go, kill and be killed, transfer out or transfer in, without hurting or diluting the overall concept. Ralph seemed to have forgotten the concept (though an innovative television “creator” remembered it only too clearly many years later). Back in 1957, however, I myself seemed in imminent danger of seriously compromising my own vision.

You have to understand that I still considered the Evan Hunter career my main career, even though the novel I’d published under my own name in 1956, the year Cop Hater was published, turned out to be what we call in the trade “a critical failure.” That is to say, all the reviewers loved Second Ending but we sold only two copies of it, one to my mother and the other to my beloved Aunt Fanny. By the time I sat down to write Killer’s Payoff, though, I’d already completed another Evan Hunter novel titled Strangers When We Meet, which sold to the movies before the ink was dry on it (we used to write with feather quills back then) and which went on to become an even bigger bestseller than The Blackboard Jungle, my previously filmed novel. What I’m saying is that I didn’t have to write these 87th Precinct novels, my livelihood did not depend upon them. But I was enjoying doing them and besides I had the feeling they could turn out to be pretty good stuff if I just didn’t listen too hard to anything Ralph had to say.

I decided that I’d give Hawes three books altogether. Killer’s Choice, already published. Killer’s Payoff, which I was starting to write. And Killer’s Wedge, for which I already had the title, but not an idea in my head. If he didn’t become the hero by then, he could be transferred out of the Eight-Seven as easily as he’d been transferred in. (There was still no contract for a third Hawes novel, by the way, but that might prove to be academic.) Meanwhile, I had this novel to write, and my work was cut out for me. All I had to do was move Cotton Hawes deeper into the spotlight at the center of the stage, simultaneously make certain he behaved at least somewhat like a cop, and resist every effort to turn him into a goddamn private eye.

And so to bed.

ED MCBAIN Norwalk, Connecticut July 1993

1.

IT COULD HAVE been 1937.

It might have looked like this on a night in late June, the sidewalks washed with a light drizzle, the asphalt glistening slickly, blackly, in the splash of red and green neons. Despite the drizzle, there would be a balmy touch to the air, the fragrant smell of June, the delicate aroma of bursting greenery. And the perfume of growing things would mingle with the perfume of passing women, mingle with the perfume of people and machines, mingle with the ever-present smell of the city at night.

The clothes would have looked different, the women’s skirts a little shorter, the men’s coats sporting small black-velvet collars, perhaps. The automobiles would have been square and black. The shop windows would have carried the blue eagle of the National Recovery Act. There would have been small differences, but a city does not really change much over the years, because a city is only a collection of people and people are timeless. And the way the automobile came around the corner, it could have been 1937.

The man walking on the sidewalk didn’t even look up when the sedan squealed around the corner. He was city-born and city-bred, and the sound of shrieking tires was not an alien sound to him. He walked with nonchalant arrogance, this man, dressed in expensive good taste. He walked with the sure knowledge that all was right with the world, the certainty that he was master of all he surveyed. The automobile squealed around the corner and headed directly for the curb. It pulled up about ten feet ahead of the walking man. The windows on the side facing the curb were open. The engine idled.

The muzzle of a rifle appeared at one of the windows. The man walking broke his stride for just an instant. The person about to fire the rifle was looking through a telescopic sight down the length of the barrel. The distance between the muzzle’s end and the walking man was no more than eight feet. There was a sudden blurring flash of yellow, and then a shockingly loud explosion. The man’s face erupted in flying fragments; the rifle was pulled back from the window. There was a moment, and then the car gunned away from the curb, tires burning rubber, shrieking into the night. The man on the sidewalk lay bleeding profusely, and the drizzle softly covered him like a shroud.

It could have been 1937.

But it wasn’t.

A PAIR OF GREEN GLOBES straddled the entrance doorway to the precinct. For the benefit of those who might have missed one or another of the globes, the numerals 87 were lettered onto both in black paint. Seven gray stone steps led from the sidewalk to the entrance doorway. Just inside the doorway, the desk sergeant sat behind the high desk, looking like a defrocked magistrate. A sign on the desk warned all visitors that they must stop there before proceeding further. Just beyond the desk and opposite it, a rectangle of wood that had been shaped into a pointing hand and then painted white announced, DETECTIVE DIVISION. The pointing hand indicated a double flight of metal stairs that led to the second floor of the precinct building. The locker room was at one end of the corridor on the second floor. The detective squadroom was at the other end, separated from the corridor by a slatted rail divider. Between the locker room and the squadroom, there were two benches, the clerical office, the men’s lavatory, and a room marked INTERROGATION.

The squadroom behind the slatted rail divider was sometimes called the “Bull Pen” by the uniformed cops of the precinct. The title was delivered with affectionate envy, for it was here that the detectives, the élite, the bulls of the 87th, conducted their business.

On the morning of June twenty-seventh, Detective Bert Kling’s business was with a man named Mario Torr.

Torr had come to the station house of his own volition, had mounted the seven gray stone steps, stopped at the desk as requested, asked for the detectives, and been directed to the pointing hand opposite the desk. He had climbed to the second floor of the building, entered the dimly lighted corridor there, hesitated a moment, and then walked to the end of the corridor, where he’d waited outside the railing until one of the detectives had asked him what he wanted. Torr was dressed in ready-to-wear mediocrity. There are men who can make a thirty-five-dollar suit look as if it were handtailored. Torr was not one of these men. He wore his brown sharkskin as if it belonged to his fatter brother. His tie had been picked up in a three-for-a-dollar tie shop along The Stem. His white shirt had been laundered too often. The cuffs and collar were frayed.

There was, in fact, a frayed appearance to the entire man who was Mario Torr. He needed a haircut, and he had not shaved too closely that morning, and his teeth did not look very white or very clean. Worse, he looked as if he knew he was not dapper. He looked as if he had wilted and didn’t know how the hell to unwilt.

He sat opposite Kling at one of the desks, and his eyes blinked nervously. He was apparently not too comfortable inside a police precinct, and even less comfortable talking to a detective in a squadroom. He spoke to Kling with the hesitant, distrustful sincerity of a disbeliever on a psychiatrist’s couch for the first time. All the while, his eyes blinked and his hands picked imaginary lint from the too clean, spotlessly mediocre, brown sharkskin suit.

“You know his name was Sy Kramer, huh?” Torr asked.

“Yes,” Kling said. “We got a positive identification from his fingerprints.”

“Sure. I figured you already knew that.”

“Besides, he was carrying a wallet with identification. And five hundred dollars in cash.”

Torr nodded reflectively. “Yeah, he was a big spender, Sy was.”

“He was a blackmailer,” Kling said flatly.

“Oh, you know that, too, huh?”

“I told you we identified him from his prints, didn’t I?”

“Mmm,” Torr said. “Tell me something.”

“What would you like to know?”

“You figure this for a gang kill?”

“It looks that way,” Kling said.

“Does that mean you’ll just let it drop?”

“Hell, no. Murder is murder.”

“But you’re starting with gang stuff, huh?”

“We’ve got a few feelers out,” Kling said. “Why? Are you selling information, Torr? Is that why you’re here?”

“Me?” Torr looked seriously offended. “Do I look like a stoolie?”

“I don’t know what you look like. Why are you here?”

“Sy was a friend of mine.”

“A close friend?”

“Well, we shot a game of pool together every now and then. Who’ll be working on this case?”

“Detectives Carella and Hawes caught the squeal. It’s their case. The rest of us’ll help if we’re needed. You still haven’t told me why you’re here, Torr.”

“Well, I don’t think this was a gang kill. The papers said a hunting rifle got him. Is that right?”

“According to Ballistics, it was a .300 Savage, yes.”

“Does that sound like a gang kill? Listen, I asked around. Nobody had anything against Sy. There was no beef. How could there be? He was a loner. He never got involved with any of the racket boys. Blackmail you do alone. The more people who know, the more ways you’ve got to split.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” Kling said.

“Well, I get around.”

“Sure.”

“So it’s my idea that one of Sy’s marks—you know, somebody he was giving the squeeze—decided it was time to get rid of him. That’s my idea.”

“Would you happen to know who his marks were?”

“No. But they must’ve been big. Sy always had plenty of money. A big spender he was, Sy.” Torr paused. “Do you? Know who the marks were, I mean?”

“No,” Kling said, “but of course we’ll look into it. I still don’t know why you’re so interested, Torr.”

“He was my friend,” Torr said simply. “I want to see justice done.”

“You can rest assured we’ll do everything in our power,” Kling said.

“Thanks,” Torr said. “It’s just cause he was my friend, you understand. And I think you’re taking the wrong approach with this ‘Gangland Murder’ garbage the newspapers are printing.”

“We have no control over the press, Mr. Torr,” Kling said.

“Sure, but I wanted you to know what I thought. Cause he was my friend, Sy was.”

“We’ll look into it,” Kling said. “Thanks for coming up.”

THE FIRST THING KLING DID when Torr left the squadroom was to call the Bureau of Criminal Identification.

The bureau was located at Headquarters, downtown on High Street. It was open twenty-four hours a day, and its sole reason for existence was the collection, compilation, and cataloguing of any and all information descriptive of criminals. The I.B. maintained a Fingerprint File, a Criminal Index File, a Degenerate File, a Parolee File, a Released Prisoner File, a Known Gamblers, Known Rapists, Known Burglars, Known Muggers, Known Any-and-All Kinds of Criminal File. Its Modus Operandi File contained more than 80,000 photographs of known criminals. And since all persons charged with and convicted of a crime were photographed and fingerprinted, as specified by law, the file was continually growing and continually being brought up to date. The I.B. received and classified some 206,000 sets of prints yearly, and it answered requests for some 250,000 criminal records from police departments all over the country. When Kling asked for whatever they had on a man named Mario Torr, the I.B. dug into its files and sent Kling the photostated tickets before noon.

Kling was not at all interested in the fingerprints that were in the envelope. He scanned them rapidly, and then picked up the copy of Mario Torr’s sheet.

There was in the Penal Law a subtle distinction between extortion and blackmail.

Section 850 defined extortion as “the obtaining of property from another, or the obtaining the property of a corporation from an officer, agent or employee thereof, with the consent, induced by a wrongful use of force or fear, or under color of official right.”

Section 851 picked up where 850 left off, with a definition of what threats may constitute extortion: “Fear, such as will constitute extortion may be induced by an oral or written threat: 1. To…,” etc., etc. The subdivision utilized in the charge against Torr had been subdivision 4: “…oral or written threat: 4. To expose any secret affecting him or any of them.”

Such was the nature of extortion.

Blackmail was extortion in writing.

Section 856 of the Penal Law stated that “A person who…causes to be forwarded or received…any letter or writing, threatening: 1. To accuse…2. To do any injury…3. To publish or connive at publishing any libel…4. To expose…,” etc., is guilty of blackmail.

The distinction was indeed a subtle one in that blackmail had to be in writing, whereas extortion could be either oral or written. In any case, Torr was both a convicted extortionist and an accused blackmailer.

Kling shrugged and looked through the rest of the photostated material in the I.B.’s packet. Torr had served a year at Castleview, the state’s—and possibly the nation’s—worst penitentiary. He had been released on parole at the end of that time, after receiving a guarantee of employment from a construction company out on Sand’s Spit. He had in no way violated his parole. Nor had he been arrested again since his prison term had ended. He was, at present, still gainfully employed by the same Sand’s Spit construction company, earning good wages as a laborer.

He seemed to be a decent, upright, honest citizen.

And yet he was interested in the apparent gangland murder of a known blackmailer.

And Bert Kling wondered why.

2.

THERE HAD BEEN A TIME when Detective Steve Carella had considered Danny Gimp just another stool pigeon. He had considered him a good stoolie, true, and a valuable stoolie—but nonetheless a pigeon, a somewhat-pariah who roamed the nether world between criminal and law-enforcement officer. There had been a time when, had Danny Gimp dared to call Carella “Steve,” the detective would have taken offense.

All that had been before December.

In December, Steve Carella had managed to get himself shot. He would never forgive himself for having been shot that day in December. In fact, he would always refer to December twenty-second as the day of his idiocy, and he would allow that idiotic day to live in his memory as a reminder never to rush in where angels feared. He truthfully had come very close to joining the band of angels on those few days before Christmas. Somehow, miraculously, he’d managed to survive.

And it was then that he had learned Danny Gimp was waiting downstairs to see him.

Steve Carella had been a very surprised cop. Danny Gimp entered the hospital room. He’d been wearing his good suit, and a clean shirt, and he’d carried a box of candy under his arm, and he’d embarrassedly handed Carella the gift and then mumbled, “I’m…I’m glad you made it, Steve.” They had talked until the nurse had said it was time for Danny to go. Carella had taken his hand in a firm clasp, and it was then that Danny had ceased being just another stool pigeon and become a human being.

On the morning of June twenty-eighth, after a call from Carella, Danny limped into the squadroom of the 87th Precinct. The bulls on the squad had recently wrapped up the murder of a girl who’d worked in a liquor store, and now they were up to their ears in another homicide, and this one seemed to require the special talents of Danny Gimp. The men of the 87th would not be called for testimony in the trial of Marna Phelps until August—but this was June, and there was work to be done, and you didn’t sit around on your ass waiting for trials if you wanted to earn your salary. If you wanted to earn your salary, you got up from behind your desk the moment you saw Danny standing at the slatted rail divider. You went to him with your hand extended, and you greeted him the way few policemen greet stool pigeons. But Danny Gimp was not a stool pigeon to you. Danny Gimp was a human being.

“Hello, Steve,” Danny said. “Hot enough for you?”

“Not too bad,” Carella said. “You’re looking good. How’ve you been?”

“Fine, fine,” Danny said. “The rain slaughtered my leg, but you know how that is. I’m glad it cleared up.”

Danny Gimp had had polio as a child. The disease had not truly crippled him, although it had left him with the limp that would provide his lifelong nickname. Carella knew that old wounds ached when it rained. He had old wounds to prove it. It came as no surprise that Danny’s leg had bothered him during the past week of rain. It would have come as a surprise to Carella to learn that Danny harbored no ill feeling toward his leg or the disease that had caused his limp. It would have come as a greater surprise to learn that Danny Gimp lighted a candle in church each week for a man named Jonas Salk.

The men walked into the squadroom. At a near-by desk, Cotton Hawes looked up from his typing. Bert Kling, closer to the grilled windows that fronted on Grover Park, was busy talking on the telephone. Carella sat, and Danny sat opposite him.

“So what can I sell you?” Danny asked, smiling.

“Sy Kramer,” Carella said.

“Yeah,” Danny answered, nodding.

“Anything?”

“A crumb,” Danny said. “Blackmail, extortion, the works. Living high on the hog for the past nine months or so. He musta latched onto something good.”

“Any idea what it was?”

“Nope. Want me to go on the earie?”

“I think so. What about this killing the other night?”

“Lots of scuttlebutt on it, Steve. A thing like that, you figure right away the racket boys. Not so, from what I can pick up.”

“No, huh?’

“If it was, it’s being kept mighty cool. This is old hat, anyway, this torpedo crap. Who hires guns nowadays? And if you do, you don’t do it up dramatic, you dig me, Steve? This crap went out with movies about bootleg whisky. If you need somebody out of the way, you get him out of the way—but you don’t come screaming around corners in black limousines with machine guns blazing. Once in a while you get something with flair. The rest of the time it’s a quiet plop, not a noisy bang. You dig?”

“I dig,” Carella said.

“And if this was a gang thing, I’d’ve heard about it. There ain’t much I don’t hear. If this was a gang thing, there’d be some jerk havin’ a beer and spillin’ over at the mouth. I figure it different.”

“How do you figure it?”

“One of Kramer’s suckers got tired of havin’ Kramer on his back. He got himself a car and a gun, and he went on a shooting party. Good-by, Sy, say hello to the man with the horns and the pitchfork.”

“Whoever did the shooting was pretty good, Danny. Only one shot was fired, and it took away half of Kramer’s face. That doesn’t sound like an amateur.”

“There’s lotsa amateurs who can shoot good,” Danny said. “It don’t mean a damn thing. Somebody wanted him dead pretty bad, Steve. And from what I can pick up, it ain’t the gangs. Half the racket boys never even hearda Kramer. If you’re workin’ what he was workin’, you do it alone. It’s common arithmetic. If you work it with a partner, you have to split everything but the prison sentence.”

“You’ve got no idea who he was milking?” Carella asked.

“If I knew, I’d have tried to get in on it myself,” Danny said, smiling. “I’ll try to find out. But the secret of extortion is just that: the secret. If too many people know about it, it ain’t a secret any more. And if it ain’t a secret, why should anybody pay off to protect it? I’ll listen around, I’ll go on the earie. But this is a tough thing to find out.”

“What do you know about a man named Mario Torr?”

“Torr, Torr,” Danny said. “Torr. It don’t ring a bell.”

“He took a fall for extortion in 1952,” Carella said. “Got one-to-two on the state, paroled in fifty-three. Had a previous arrest for blackmail. He’s allegedly honestly employed now, but he’s interested in Kramer’s death, claims he was a good friend of Kramer’s. Know him?”

“It still don’t ring,” Danny said. “Maybe he really did go straight, who knows? Listen, miracles can happen, you know.”

“Not often enough,” Carella said. “Have you seen any imported talent around?”

“You’re thinking Kramer was important enough to hire an out-of-town gun? Steve, believe me, this is crazy reasoning.”

“Okay, okay. But is there any imported stuff around?”

“A hood from Boston. They call him Newton, cause that’s where he’s from.”

“A gun?”

“I think he cooled a few, but you can’t prove it by me. He ain’t here for that, though.”

“Why’s he here?”

“They’re tryina set up something between here and Boston. This Newton is just a messenger boy, so the Bigs don’t hafta be seen together. He ain’t the guy who cooled Kramer.”

“Where is this Newton?”

“He’s shacked in a hotel on The Stem, downtown. The Hotel Rockland. His last name’s Hall.” Danny chuckled. “He sounds like a girls’ finishing school, don’t he? Newton Hall.” Danny chuckled again.

“You don’t think he’s worth looking up?” Carella asked.

“A waste of time. Listen, do what you want to do. I don’t run the squad. But you’re wastin’ time. Let me listen a little. I’ll buzz you if I get anything.”

“What do I owe you?” Carella asked, reaching into his pocket.

“Wait’ll I give you something,” Danny said.

He shook hands and left the precinct. Carella walked over to Hawes’s desk.

“Get your hat, Cotton,” he said. “There’s a bum I want to pick up.”

COTTON HAWES was a recent transfer to the 87th Squad.

He was six feet two inches tall, and he weighed one hundred and ninety pounds bone dry. 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. His straight nose was clean and unbroken, and he had a good mouth with a wide lower lip.

He also had good ears. He had been with the 87th for a very short time, but he had learned during those weeks that Steve Carella was a good man to listen to. When Carella spoke, Hawes listened. He listened to him all the way down to the Hotel Rockland in the police sedan. He listened to Carella when he flashed his tin at the desk clerk and asked for the key to Hall’s room. He stopped listening only when Carella stopped talking, and Carella stopped talking the moment they stepped out of the elevator into the fourth-floor corridor.

There was, perhaps, no need for extreme caution. Unless Hall had been in on the Kramer kill, in which case there was need for extreme caution. In any case, both detectives drew their service revolvers. When they reached the door to Hall’s room, they flanked it, and Carella’s arm was the only portion of his body that presented a target as—standing to one side of the door—he inserted the key and rapidly twisted it. He flung open the door.

Newton Hall was sitting in a chair by the window, reading. He looked up with mild surprise on his face, and then his eyes dropped to the guns both men were carrying, and fear darted into those eyes.

“Police,” Carella said, and the fear vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

“Jesus,” Hall said, “you scared me for a minute. Come on in. Put away the hardware, will you? Sit down.”

“Get up, Hall,” Carella said.

Hall rose from the chair. Hawes quickly frisked him.

“He’s clean, Steve.”

Both men holstered their guns.

“You got identification, I suppose,” Hall said.

Carella was reaching for his wallet when Hall put out his hand to stop him. “Never mind, never mind,” he said. “I was just asking.”

“When’d you get to town, Hall?” Carella asked.

“Monday night,” Hall said.

“The twenty-fourth?”

“Yeah. Listen, did I do something?”

“You tell us.”

“What is it you want to know?”

“Where were you Wednesday night?” Hawes asked.

“Wednesday night?” Hall asked. “Let me see. Oh yeah, I was with a broad.”

“What was her name?”

“Carmela.”

“Carmela what?”

“Carmela Fresco.”

“Where’d you go?”

“We stayed right here.”

“All night?”

“Yeah.”

“From what time to what time?”

“From about nine o’clock until the next morning. She left after breakfast.”

“What’d you do all that time?” Hawes asked.

Hall grinned. “What do you think we did?”

“I don’t know. You tell us.”

Hall was still grinning. “We played Parchesi,” he said.

“Leave the room at all during that time?”

“Nope. Here all night. I like Parchesi.”

“Do you know a man named Sy Kramer?” Carella asked.

“Oh,” Hall said. “That. I mighta known.”

“Did you know him?”

“No. Never met him. I read about the killing in the newspapers.”

“But you’d never met him?”

“Nope.”

“Ever hear of him before?”

“Nope.”

“Why’d you come here from Boston?”

“A little rest. See some of the shows. You know. Like that.”

“What shows have you seen so far?” Hawes asked.

“None,” Hall admitted. “It’s pretty rough to get tickets, you know? Except for the longhair stuff. Who wants to see the longhair stuff? I like musicals. Songs, girls, that’s for me. Good-time Charlie, that’s me.” He snapped his fingers. “I got a friend who gets ice, you know what that is?”

“What is it?” Hawes asked.

“Free tickets. Not really free. Well, like they’re paid for at box-office prices, but he sells them back a little higher, you know what I mean? The difference between the box-office price and what he gets is called ice. So he gets ice. Only he can’t fix me up yet. Tickets are hard to get nowadays.”

“And that’s why you’re here, right? To see a few shows.”

“Yeah, and to take a rest.”

“But you haven’t seen any shows yet?”

“No.”

“Have you rested?”

“Well, you know…”

“Good-time Charlie, that’s you,” Carella said.

“Sure. Good-time Charlie, that’s me.”

“Where do we get in touch with this Carmela Fresco?”

“Why drag her into this?” Hall said.

“Have you got a better alibi?”

“No, but…She’s just a kid. I know her, and we…”

“How old?” Hawes snapped.

“Nothing like that,” Hall said. “She ain’t underage, don’t worry about that. I wasn’t born yesterday. But she’s a kid. You go around asking questions, you’ll scare the hell out of her. Also, you might ruin a good thing for me.”

“That’s too bad,” Carella said.

“What makes you think I had anything to do with the Kramer kill, anyway?” Hall said.

“Do you know who did?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

“Why?”

“Let’s assume I did know, okay? Let’s assume I know who hired some guys to kill Kramer. To kill him, now. Not to scare him or warn him or anything like that. To kill him. Cool him. Put him away. So these guys mean business, right? These guys ain’t playing around. So do you think I would open my mouth on these guys who mean business, these guys who ain’t playing around, these guys who hired some other guys to kill a guy? To kill him! Oh, you got to be real foolish to open your mouth on these rough fellows, don’t you?”

“Are there some rough fellows in this, Hall?”

“I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t know. That’s the truth. I don’t usually assist bul—detectives, but this time I think you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. If this was a rackets thing, I woulda heard about it. And I didn’t hear nothin’.”

“There’s another possibility, of course,” Hawes said.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“You could have killed Kramer.”

“The only thing I killed on Wednesday night was a girl named Carmela Fresco. I send that kid, believe me. I send her! When she leaves me, she’s killed. Dead. Unconscious.” Hall smiled. “I tell you the truth, she kills me, too. It’s a good arrangement.”

“Like Murder, Incorporated,” Carella said.

“Something like that. A mutual stoning society, so to speak. We stone each other. Oh Jesus, does that kid stone me!”

“How do we reach her, Hall?”

“She’s in the book.”

“What’s the number?”

“I told you. She’s in the book.”

“We can’t read,” Hawes said.

“Aw, come on, don’t let me be the bastard, huh?” Hall said. “This way you can tell her you got it from the book. You’ll be tellin’ the truth.”

“We don’t mind lying a little,” Carella said. “What’s her number? We’ll say we got it from the book.”

Hall shrugged. “Hunter 1-3800,” he said. “I wish you’d leave her out of it.”

“You’re not out of it yourself yet,” Hawes told him.

“Oh, brother, I’m clean,” Hall said. “I wish I was always so clean as I am on this one. I’m so clean, I glisten. I shine. I gleam.”

“We’ll see about that,” Hawes said.

They started for the door. At the door, Carella turned.

“Oh. One more thing, Sun God.”

“Yeah?” Hall said.

“Don’t go back to Boston before checking with us.”

“I’ll be around,” Hall said tiredly. “I got a few shows to see. Music, girls, you know. Good-time Charlie, that’s—”

The door slammed on his sentence.

CARMELA FRESCO was somewhat shy and hesitant at the beginning. She was a good girl, she insisted, who would certainly never spend the night in any man’s hotel room. What kind of girl did they think she was, anyway? Did she look like that kind of girl? Had this man Newton—or whatever his name was—said that she was that kind of girl?

Carella and Hawes were very patient with her.

The girl repeated her story again and again. She had certainly not been with this Newton—or whatever his name was—on Wednesday night or any other night. Over and over again, Carella and Hawes had her repeat the story of how she’d gone to a church bingo with her mother that night.

And then, in the middle of a sentence, she hesitated and then shouted, “That son of a bitch! Does he think I’m a slut, telling everybody in the world I spent the goddamn night with him?”

And that was it.

The reputation of Carmela Fresco may have emerged in a somewhat blemished condition. But the alibi of Newton Hall was clean, and glistening, and shining, and gleaming.

Hawes called him and told him he was free to go back to Boston any damn time he wanted to—the sooner the better, in fact.

3.

ON THE NIGHT OF June twenty-sixth, when Sy Kramer was murdered, a passer-by came upon the body lying on the pavement and immediately telephoned the police. The call was taken by a patrolman who sat at one of the two Headquarters switchboards with a pad of printed forms before him. He took down the information exactly as it was excitedly delivered to him.

He rolled the complaint form into its metal carrier and sent it by pneumatic tube into the radio room, where a dispatcher put his number into the appropriate space, consulted the huge precinct map on the wall behind him, and then dispatched a radio motor-patrol car to the scene of the crime. He indicated the time of the dispatch on the form, and then added it to the pile of forms on one side of his desk. The patrolman who’d taken the call meanwhile informed the Detective Division of the 87th Precinct, and asked them to report back if it was truly a homicide so that he could then inform Homicide South.

The detectives who caught the squeal were Carella and Hawes, and so the case was officially theirs.

They were, of course, free to call upon other members of the Squad for assistance if they needed it, provided Detective Lieutenant Byrnes—who commanded the Squad—felt he could spare those men. And Homicide South would begin its own investigation while noisily advising the 87th that homicide was not a precinct squad’s cup of tea. In truth, whether the two homicide squads (North and South) chose to admit it or not, they would have been completely swamped had they tried to handle the city’s flood of homicide cases unaided. So whereas they bore the official titles and whereas they made a lot of noise about squad interference in murder cases, they tacitly agreed that the majority of homicide cases could be handled (and were, in fact, being handled) by the detective squads of the precincts in which the murders had taken place. The role of the two homicide squads, except in rare cases, was usually advisory, sometimes supervisory. Busily, noisily, they went about trying to convince themselves that they alone were qualified to handle homicide cases. Secretly, quietly, they realized they were like job foremen watching other men digging a trench, watching other men doing the actual labor.

The case, then, for all actual purposes, belonged to Carella and Hawes.

They had been out of the office when Mario Torr arrived with his theories about the shooting, and so Kling had naturally spoken to the man, later passing on the information to his colleagues. At bull sessions in the office, he would feel free to air any theories he had about the slaying, putting his two cents into the pot. The men of the 87th Squad worked well together. Each had his two cents’ worth to deliver on any case being investigated—and it doesn’t take long for two cents from each man to add up to a sound dollar.

On Saturday, June twenty-ninth, Cotton Hawes—one of the two detectives officially investigating the untimely demise of Sy Kramer—went to bed with the erstwhile mistress of Kramer, and made an amazing discovery about himself.

He discovered that he could fall in and out of love with consummate ease. He discovered this personality defect—or asset, as the case might be—with some trepidation, some amusement, and some speculation.

Kramer’s ex-mistress, he supposed, was partly to blame. But Hawes had never been a man to hide behind a woman’s skirts, and he would not do so now. When it was all over, he accepted his equal share of the blame—or the credit, as the case might be—and congratulated himself upon what he considered an honorable seduction. He had used his shield as neither a threat nor an inducement. Cotton Hawes the man had gone to bed with this woman, not Cotton Hawes the cop. He had, in fact, even waited until he was off-duty before consummating the distinct and definite animal awakening he had felt that afternoon while questioning her.

The girl’s name was Nancy O’Hara.

Her hair was red, but none of her friends or relations called her Scarlett. Passing strangers, passing drunks, had been known to say to her, “O’Hara, huh? Now, could it be Scarlett O’Hara?” as if they had originated the wittiest remark of the century. Nancy usually answered such devastating wit with a slightly embarrassed smile and the quietly spoken answer, “No, I’m John O’Hara. The writer.”

She was, in truth, neither Scarlett O’Hara nor John O’Hara.

She was Nancy O’Hara, and she had been the mistress of Sy Kramer.

Cotton Hawes had fallen in love with her the moment she opened the door of her Jefferson Avenue apartment, even though she was not dressed in a manner that was conducive to falling in love. She was, in fact, dressed like a slob.

She was wearing dungarees, the bottoms of which were wet to the knee. She wore a man’s dress shirt, the tails hanging over the dungarees, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She had bright-green eyes, and her full mouth was on the edge of panic, and she didn’t at all look like an extortionist’s mistress, whatever an extortionist’s mistress looks like.

She opened the door, and immediately said, “Thank God you’re here! It’s this way. Come with me.”

Hawes followed her through a luxurious living room, and then into an equally luxurious bedroom, and then through that into a bathroom that—at the moment—had all the charm of a small swimming pool.

“What took you so long?” Nancy said. “A person could drown by the time—”

“What’s the trouble?” he asked.

“I told you on the phone. I can’t turn off the shower. Something’s stuck. The whole damn apartment’ll float away unless we turn it off.”

Hawes took off his jacket. Nancy glanced at the shoulder holster and the sturdy butt of the .38 protruding from the leather.

“Do you always carry a gun?” she asked.

“Always,” he said.

She nodded soberly. “I always suspected plumbing was a hazardous profession.”

Hawes had already reached into the tub. Grasping the knobs on the fixtures, he said, “They’re stuck.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Did you call a plumber?”

“If you’re not the plumber,” she said, “you entered this apartment under false pretenses.”

Hawes tugged at the stubborn fixtures. “I never said I was a plumber. I’m getting wet.”

“What are you?”

“A cop.”

“You can get right out of the bathroom,” Nancy said.

“Shhh, it’s beginning to turn, I think.”

“You’re supposed to have a warrant before—”

“There it goes,” Hawes said. “Now all I’ve got to—OW!” He pulled his hand back and began shaking it.

“What’s the matter?”

“I must have turned off the cold water. I burned myself.”

Steam was beginning to pour into the small bathroom.

“Well, do something,” Nancy said. “For God’s sake, you’ve made it worse.”

“If I can turn up that nozzle…” Hawes said, half to himself. He reached up and directed the spray of hot water toward the far tile wall. “There.” And then he began struggling with the hot water knob. “It’s giving,” he said. “How’d you manage to get them stuck?”

“I was going to take a shower.”

“In your dungarees?”

“I put these on after I called the plumber.”

“There it goes,” Hawes said. He twisted the knob, and the water suddenly stopped. “Phew.”

Nancy looked at him. “You’re soaking wet,” she said.

“Yes.” Hawes grinned.

She studied him, and then reluctantly said, “Well, take off your shirt. You can’t walk around all dripping like that. I’ll get you something to wear.”

“Thanks,” Hawes said. Nancy left the bathroom. He unstrapped the holster and laid it across the top of the toilet tank. Then he pulled his shirt out of his trousers and unbuttoned it. He was pulling his tee shirt over his head when Nancy came back.

“Here,” she said. “It’ll probably be small for you.” She handed him a pale-blue, long-sleeved sports shirt with the monogram SK over the left breast pocket.

“Mr. Kramer’s?” Hawes asked, putting on the shirt.

“Yes.” Nancy paused. “That’s an expensive shirt, imported from Italy. But I don’t think he’ll mind your wearing it.”

Hawes put on the shirt and rolled up the sleeves. The shirt was tight across his broad chest, skimpy where his shoulders threatened the luxurious cloth. He picked up his jacket, his wet clothes, and his shoulder rig.

“Give me the clothes,” she said. “I have a dryer.”

“Thanks.”

“You can sit in the living room,” she told him.

“Thanks.”

“There’s whisky in the cabinet.”

“Thanks.”

She went into a small alcove off the kitchen. Hawes went into the living room and sat. He could hear her starting the automatic dryer. She came into the room and stood looking at him.

“What’s your name?”

“Detective Hawes.”

“Have you got a warrant, Mr. Hawes?”

“I only want to ask some questions, Miss O’Hara. I don’t need a warrant for that.”

“Besides, you did fix my shower.” She had a sudden idea. “I better phone the super and tell him to call off the plumber. Excuse me a minute.” She stopped on the way out of the room. “I better change my pants, too. Don’t you want a drink?”

“Not allowed,” Hawes said.

“Oh, bull,” she answered, and left.

Hawes walked around the room. A framed picture of Sy Kramer was on the grand piano. A humidor with six pipes in it rested on a table near one of the easy chairs. The room was a masculine room. He felt quite at home in it, and, curiously, he began to admire the late Sy Kramer’s expensive good taste.

When Nancy returned, she had tucked the man’s shirt into a pair of striped tapered slacks.

“Typical petty officialdom,” she said.

“Huh?”

“The super. I told him not to bother sending the plumber. He said, ‘What plumber?’ I could be lying drowned for all he cares. I owe you my thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Won’t you have a drink?”

“No, thanks, I’m really not supposed to.”

“Nobody does what he’s supposed to these days,” Nancy said. “What do you drink?”

“Scotch,” he said.

“Sy had good Scotch, I understand. I never drink Scotch, but I understand it’s good.” She poured a glass for him. “Anything in it?”

“Just some ice.”

She dropped the cubes into the glass, and then poured herself some gin over one ice cube. “Am I rushing the season?” she asked.

“What?”

“Gin.”

“I don’t think so.”

She brought him his drink. “Here’s to the plumbers of America,” she said.

“Cheers.”

They drank.

“What questions did you want to ask, Mr. Hawes?”

“Just some routine stuff.”

“About Sy?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you get to me?”

“Were you and he supposed to be a secret?” Hawes asked.

“No,” she said. “I expected the police. I just wondered…”

“We asked around.”

“Well, what do you want to know?”

“How long had you been living together?”

“Since last September.”

“What happens now?”

Nancy shrugged. “The rent’s paid up for next month. After that, I move.”

“Where to?”

“Someplace.” She shrugged again. “I’m”—she paused—“a dancer. I’ll get work. I’ll begin making the rounds again.”

“How’d you meet Kramer?”

“Along The Stem. I’d been making the rounds one morning, and I was pooped. I stopped for a cup of coffee at one of the drugstores, a hangout for the kids in the business. Sy started talking to me at the counter. We began dating.” Again she shrugged. “Here I am.”

“Um-huh.”

“Don’t look so puritanical,” Nancy said.

“Was I?”

“Yes. I wasn’t exactly a pure-white lily when I met Sy. I’m twenty-seven years old, Mr. Hawes. I was born and raised in this city. I’m not a farm girl who was lured here by the bright lights. Sy didn’t comb the hayseed out of my hair.”

“No?”

“No. I’m a pretty good dancer, but a person gets tired as hell making those rounds. Do you know how many dancers there are in this town?”

“How many?”

“Plenty. For every chorus line, there are probably five hundred girls who answer the casting call. I had an idea once.”

“Yes.”

“I thought I’d lay my way to the top.”

“Did it work?”

“I’m still unemployed,” Nancy said. “Sy’s proposition sounded like a good one. Besides, he was a nice guy. I liked him. I wouldn’t have lived with him if I didn’t like him. I’ve lived with starving actors in the Quarter and didn’t like them half as much.”

“Did you know he had a criminal record?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know he was an extortionist?”

“No. Was he?”

“Yes.”

“He told me he’d been in jail once because he’d got into a fight over a girl in a bar.”

“How did he explain his income to you?”

“He didn’t. And I never asked.”

“Did he keep regular working hours?”

“No.”

“And you never suspected he might be involved in something illegal?”

“No. Well, to be truthful, yes, I did. But I never asked him about it.”

“Why not?”

“A man’s business is his business. I don’t believe in prying.”

“Um-huh,” Hawes said.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you. I was hoping you’d be able to give us a lead onto his victim or victims.” Hawes shrugged. “But if you don’t know anything about—”

“I don’t.” Nancy was thoughtful for a moment. “Where’d you get the white streak?”

“Huh? Oh.” Hawes touched his hair. “I got knifed once.”

“It’s attractive.” She smiled. “The very latest thing, you know.”

“I try to keep in tune with the new fashions,” Hawes said, returning the smile. “Do you have any idea how much money Kramer was making?”

“No. A lot, I suppose. This apartment isn’t exactly a cold-water flat.”

“Hardly,” Hawes said. “Do you know what the rental runs?”

“I think it’s three-fifty a month.”

Hawes whistled.

“Who invents these stories about crime not paying?” Nancy said.

“Does it?” Hawes asked.

“Well, look at—”

“Kramer died in a gutter,” Hawes said flatly.

“But he lived in a penthouse,” Nancy answered.

“I’d rather live in Calm’s Point and die in bed.”

“Do many cops die in bed?”

“Most of them,” Hawes said. “Did Kramer have an address book?”

“Yes. Shall I get it for you?”

“Later. Any bankbooks?” Hawes paused. “Check-books?”

“One of each,” Nancy said.

“A safety deposit box?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re pretty, Miss O’Hara,” Hawes said.

“I know,” she answered.

“I know you know. That doesn’t make you any less pretty.”

“Has the routine questioning stopped?” she asked. “Are we ready to do the sex bit?”

“I—”

“You were beginning to sound like most agents and producers in this town. I thought cops were above that sort of stuff. Except cops on the vice squad.”

“I didn’t think you’d mind being told you’re pretty,” Hawes said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re pretty, too,” Nancy answered. “The compliment has been returned, now let’s drop the bit. Are there any more questions?”

“Did Kramer ever entertain here?”

“Sometimes.”

“What kind of friends did he have?”

“All kinds.”

“Criminals?”

“I wouldn’t know a forger if he signed a check for me.”

“You must have listened to conversations.”

“I did. Crimes were never discussed. The people Sy entertained seemed like respectable citizens with wives and children.”

“Thieves have wives and children, too,” Hawes said.

“I don’t think these people were thieves. One was an architect, I think. Another a lawyer.”

“Did Kramer have any interests besides his—ah—work?” Hawes asked.

“Like what?”

“Hobbies? Organizations? You know.”

“He liked to hunt. He went on hunting trips every now and then.”

“Where?”

“The mountains.”

“Take you with him?”

“No. I don’t like to kill animals.”

“Did you and Kramer get along, Miss O’Hara?”

“Very well. Why?”

“Do you personally know any criminals, Miss O’Hara?”

“You mean did I hire the person who shot Sy?”

“If you prefer.”

“No. I did not hire him, and I do not know any criminals. I know only one person connected with crime, and he is beginning to bore me.”

Hawes smiled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to ask questions. That’s what I’m paid for.”

“Shall I get that stuff for you?”

“Please. It might help us. Or don’t you care whether or not we find his murderers?”

Nancy thought this over gravely. “Sy’s dead,” she said simply. “Our relationship was a temporary one. I liked him a lot, and I suppose I’d like to see justice triumph. I’ll help you in any way possible. Will I weep bitterly? No, I will not. Will I think of Sy six months from now? Probably not. Do I sound hard and cynical?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps it’s because I am hard and cynical.”

The words came from Hawes’s mouth before he knew he was about to speak them. “You look soft and sentimental,” he said.

“Here comes the sex bit again,” she answered.

“Yes, here comes the sex bit. Will you get me the bankbook, the checkbook, and the address book, please?”

“Sure,” she said. She rose and started out of the room. At the door she turned and said, “Maybe I will weep bitterly. I liked Sy.”

“Good.”

“And I suppose men always make passes. I suppose it’s the nature of the beast.”

“I suppose so,” Hawes said.

“I shouldn’t have squelched you.”

“Maybe I was out of line.”

“Maybe you weren’t.”

She looked at Hawes steadily.

“Miss O’Hara,” he said, “I’ve never dated a redhead.”

“No?”

“No. I’m leaving the office at six thirty tonight. Do you think we might have dinner together?”

“To find out more about Sy and his bad associates?”

“No. To find out more about you.”

“I have a very hearty appetite. I’m an expensive date.”

Hawes grinned. “I received my graft rake-off today,” he said.

“I believe you.”

“Can you be out of those dungarees by seven thirty?”

“I can,” she said. “It’s a question of whether I will.”

“Will you?”

“Yes.” She paused. “Don’t expect…”

“I’m not.”

“Okay.” She left the room to get the items he wanted.

* * *

THEY HAD DINNER in one of the city’s better restaurants. Nancy O’Hara was very pleasant company, and Cotton Hawes fell hopelessly in love with her. He would fall hopefully out of love with her by the next day, but for now she was the only woman in the universe. And so they ate a nourishing meal. And so they talked and laughed and drank. And so they went to a late movie. And so they went back to Nancy’s apartment for a nightcap.

And so to bed.

4.

The passbook for the savings account looked like this:

The account had been started in October with the sum of $21,000. In January there had been an additional deposit of $9,000, and in April a third deposit of $15,000. The interest, computed on April first and indicated in the passbook at the time the April eleventh deposit had been made, was $187.50. Kramer had not made a withdrawal since the account had been opened.

The checking account was a working account. There were regular deposits and withdrawals. The deposits were usually made around the first of each month, give or take a week. The deposits were made in three unvarying amounts: $500, $300, and $1,100. The withdrawals were made in varying amounts—to pay bills and for pocket money. The savings account, it seemed, had been Kramer’s nest egg. The checking account was the one that had sustained him in his daily pursuit of happiness, to the tune of $1,900 a month.

The bank, on Monday morning, July first, had two checks that were waiting to be deposited in Kramer’s checking account. The checks had apparently been mailed together with a deposit slip on the afternoon Kramer had been killed. They had not reached the bank until Friday morning, had not been got to that afternoon, and so were still waiting for deposit on Monday.

Both checks were made payable to cash.

One check was in the amount of $500.

The other was in the amount of $300.

One was signed by a woman named Lucy Mencken.

The other was signed by a man named Edward Schlesser.

Both checks had been endorsed for deposit by Sy Kramer.

LUCY MENCKEN tried hard not to appear voluptuous. It was impossible. She wore a man-tailored suit and low walking shoes, and her long brown hair was pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she tried to give the impression of a sedate exurban matron, but it was impossible.

Steve Carella happened to be married to a voluptuous woman. He knew all about voluptuousness or voluptuity or whatever Webster called it; Carella had never taken the time to look it up. He knew that his wife, Teddy, was voluptuous, and using her as a measuring rod, he knew there wasn’t a woman alive who could fool him into thinking she was not voluptuous simply by wearing a dowdy-looking suit and Army shoes. In the terraced back yard of the exurban estate, overlooking the swimming pool in the distance, Carella sat with Lucy Mencken and wondered why she wore Army shoes.

The trees rustled with a gentle breeze, cool for July. He could remember the summer before and the sweltering routine of working in an inferno with a cop hater loose. It would have been nice, last summer, to have had access to a pool the size of the one on the Mencken estate. He sat watching Lucy Mencken as she sipped her gin and tonic. She held the glass with complete familiarity, a woman at home with her surroundings, a woman at ease with luxury. The luxury made Carella somewhat uncomfortable. He felt like a man who’d come to give an estimate on how much it would cost to prune the trees near the gatehouse.

The fact that she was voluptuous disturbed him, too. She moved with complete ease within the rounded length of her body, but the clothing was a complete contradiction and it emphasized rather than denied the ripeness of her flesh. He wondered what a single man’s reaction to Mrs. Mencken would be. He wondered, for example, how things would have worked out if he’d gone to see Edward Schlesser and sent Cotton Hawes to meet Mrs. Mencken. From what Hawes had told him, Nancy O’Hara had turned out to be a beautiful girl. And now there was Lucy Mencken. Sometimes it went like that, he supposed. A case bursting with beauty. Idly he wondered what it was like to be single. Happily he thanked God he was married.

“What was your relationship with a man named Sy Kramer, Mrs. Mencken?” he asked.

Lucy Mencken sipped at her drink. “I don’t know anyone named Sy Kramer,” she said. In the distance Carella could hear shouting and laughter from the pool.

“Seymour Kramer, then,” he said.

“I don’t know any Seymour Kramer, either.”

“I see,” Carella said. “Did you know that Mr. Kramer is dead?”

“How would I know that?”

“It was in the newspapers.”

“I rarely read the newspapers. Except where it concerns my family.”

“Does your family often make headlines?” Carella asked.

“My husband is in politics,” Mrs. Mencken said. “He will be running for the state senate this fall. His name often appears in the newspapers, yes.”

“How long have you been married, Mrs. Mencken?”

“Twelve years,” she answered.

“And how old are your children?”

“Davey is ten, and Greta is eight.”

“What did you do before you were married?”

“I modeled,” she said.

“Fashion?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar? Like that?”

“Yes.”

“Do you do any modeling now, Mrs. Mencken?”

“No. I stopped modeling when I got married. Being a wife and a mother is enough of a career.”

“What was your maiden name?”

“Lucy Mitchell.”

“Is that the name under which you modeled?”

“I modeled under the name of Lucy Starr Mitchell.”

“About twelve years ago, is that right?”

“Twelve, thirteen years ago, yes.”

“Is that when you met Sy Kramer?” Carella asked.

Mrs. Mencken did not bat an eyelid. “I don’t know anyone named Sy Kramer,” she said.

“Mrs. Mencken,” Carella said gently, “you sent him a check, dated June twenty-fourth, for five hundred dollars.”

“You must be mistaken.”

“Your signature is on that check.”

“There are other Lucy Menckens in the world, I’m sure,” she said.

“You do have a checking account with the Federal Savings and Loan of Peabody, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“There is only one Lucy Mencken who has an account with that bank, Mrs. Mencken.”

“If that’s the case, the check was forged. I’ll have it stopped at once.”

“The bank has verified your signature, Mrs. Mencken.”

“It still could have been forged. That’s the only explanation I have for it. I don’t know anybody named Sy Kramer or Seymour Kramer or any Kramer at all. The check was obviously forged. I’ll call the bank and have it stopped.”

“Mrs. Mencken…”

“In fact, I’m grateful to you for calling it to my attention.”

“Mrs. Mencken, Sy Kramer is dead. You no longer have anything to fear.”

“Why should I have anything to fear? My husband is a very powerful man.”

“I don’t know what you had to fear, Mrs. Mencken, but Kramer is dead. You can tell me…”

“Then he won’t miss the check if I put a stop-payment on it.”

“Why was he blackmailing you, Mrs. Mencken?”

“Who?”

“Sy Kramer. Blackmail or extortion. Why?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“His checking account shows a monthly deposit of five hundred dollars, along with other deposits, of course. Your check was made out for five hundred dollars. Why did you send Sy Kramer a check for five hundred dollars each month?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“May I see your checkbook stubs, Mrs. Mencken?”

“Certainly not.”

“May I see your canceled checks?”

“No.”

“I can get a search warrant.”

“That’s just what you’ll have to do, then, Mr. Carella. My checkbook and my canceled checks are private. Not even my husband questions me on what I spend or how I spend it.”

“I’ll come back with a warrant,” Carella said, rising.

“Do you really expect to find anything when you return, Mr. Carella?” she asked.

“I suppose not,” he said wearily. He looked at her searchingly. “You don’t dress like an ex-fashion model, Mrs. Mencken.”

“Don’t I?”

“No.”

“This suit cost three hundred and fifty dollars, Mr. Carella.”

“That’s a lot of money to hide behind.”

“Hide?”

“Mrs. Mencken, a man was murdered. He was not what you might consider an ideal citizen, but he was nonetheless murdered. We are trying to find his murderer. I wish you had helped me. We’ll find out what we want to know, anyway. You can hide your checks and your stubs, and you can hide yourself behind that expensive suit, but we’ll find out.”

“Mr. Carella, you are being impertinent.”

“Forgive me.”

Lucy Mencken rose, moving with easy grace within the shapeless suit.

“The children are in the pool alone,” she said. “Were you leaving, Detective Carella?”

“I was leaving,” Carella said tiredly, “but I’ll be back.”

THE CHECK LAY on the desk between them.

The legend on the frosted-glass door read, SCHLESSER’S SOFT DRINKS. The man behind the desk was Edward Schlesser, a balding man in his early fifties. He wore a dark-blue suit and a yellow weskit. He wore black-rimmed bop glasses. The glasses covered blue eyes, and the eyes studied the check on the desk.

“Is that your check, Mr. Schlesser?” Cotton Hawes asked.

Schlesser sighed. “Yes,” he said.

“Did you send it to a man named Seymour Kramer?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“What difference does it make? He’s dead.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Hawes said.

“It’s over now,” Schlesser said. “Are you like a priest? Or a doctor? Does what I tell you remain confidential?”

“Certainly. In any case, it won’t get outside the department.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t. Did you trust Sy Kramer?”

“No,” Schlesser said. “If I’d trusted him, I wouldn’t have been sending him checks.”

“This wasn’t the first check?”

“No, I—” Schlesser stopped. “Who will you tell this to?”

“Two people. My partner on the case, and my immediate superior.”

Schlesser sighed again. “I’ll tell you,” he said.

“I’m listening, sir.”

“I run this business,” Schlesser said. “It’s not a big one, but it’s growing. There’s competition, you know. It’s hard to buck the big companies. But my business is growing, all the time. I’ve got money in the bank, and I’ve got a nice house in Connecticut. My business is here, but I live in Connecticut. I make good soft drinks. Our orange is particularly good. Do you like orange?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll give you a case when you leave. If you like it, tell your friends.”

“Thank you,” Hawes said. “What about Kramer?”

“We had an accident a little while ago. In the bottling plant. Not too serious, but a thing like that, if it gets around…This is a small business. We’re just beginning to make a mark, people are just beginning to recognize our bottle and the name Schlesser. A thing like this…”

“What happened?”

“Somehow, don’t ask me how, a freak accident—a mouse got bottled into one of the drinks.”

“A mouse?” Hawes asked incredulously.

“A tiny little thing,” Schlesser said, nodding. “A field mouse. The bottling plant is in a field, naturally. Somehow the mouse got in, and somehow he got into one of the bottles, and somehow it went through the plant and was shipped to our distributors. A bottle of sarsaparilla as I recall.”

Hawes wanted to smile, but apparently this was a matter of extreme seriousness to Schlesser.

“Somebody bought the bottle of soda. It was the large family size, the economy size. This person claimed he drank some of the soda and got very sick. He threatened to sue the company.”

“For how much?”

“A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Hawes whistled. “Did he win the case?”

“It never got to court. The last thing we wanted was a trial. We settled for twenty-five thousand dollars out of court. I was glad to have it over with. There wasn’t a peep in the papers about it. It could have ruined me. People remember things like that. A mouse in a bottle of soda? Jesus, you can be ruined!”

“Go on,” Hawes said.

“About a month after we’d settled, I got a telephone call from a man who said he knew all about it.”

“Kramer?”

“Yes. He threatened to turn a certain document over to the newspapers unless I paid him money to withhold it.”

“Which document?”

“The original letter that had come from the claimant’s attorney, the letter telling all about the mouse.”

“How’d he get it?”

“I don’t know. I checked the files, and sure enough it was gone. He wanted three thousand dollars for the letter.”

“Did you pay him?”

“I had to. I’d already paid twenty-five thousand dollars to keep it quiet. Another three wouldn’t hurt me. I thought it would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. He’d had photostated copies of the letter made. He asked for an additional three hundred dollars a month. Each time I sent him my check, he’d send back another photostated copy. I figured he’d run out sooner or later. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. He’s dead.”

“He may have friends,” Hawes said.

“What do you mean?”

“A partner, a cohort, someone who’ll pick up right where he left off.”

“In that case, I’ll keep paying the three hundred dollars a month. It comes to thirty-six hundred dollars a year. That’s not so much. I spend sixty thousand dollars a year advertising my soft drinks. All that would go down the drain if that letter got to the newspapers. So another thirty-six hundred a year isn’t going to kill me. If Kramer has a partner, I’ll keep paying.”

“Where were you on the night of June twenty-sixth, Mr. Schlesser?” Hawes asked.

“What do you mean? You mean the night Kramer was killed?”

“Yes.”

Schlesser began laughing. “That’s ridiculous. Do you think I’d kill a man for three hundred dollars a month? A lousy three hundred dollars a month?”

“Suppose, Mr. Schlesser,” Hawes said, “that Kramer had decided to release that letter to the newspapers no matter how much you paid him? Suppose he just decided to be a mean son of a bitch?”

Schlesser did not answer.

“Now, Mr. Schlesser. Where were you on the night of June twenty-sixth?”

5.

THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S NAME was Ted Boone.

His office was on swank Hall Avenue, and he knew the men of the 87th because a month ago they had investigated the murder of his ex-wife. The call to Boone was made by Bert Kling, who knew him best. And Kling was asking for a favor.

“I hate to bother you,” he said, “because I know how busy you are.”

“Has this got something to do with the case?” Boone asked.

“No, no,” Kling said, “that’s closed—until the trial, at any rate.”

“When will that be?”

“I think it’s set for August.”

“Will I be called?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Boone. That’s up to the district attorney.” He paused, remembering Boone’s young daughter. “How’s Monica?”

“She’s fine, thanks. She’ll be coming to live with me this month.”

“Give her my love, will you?”

“I’ll certainly do that, Mr. Kling.”

There was a long pause.

“The reason I’m calling…” Kling said.

“Yes?”

“We’re working on something now, and I thought you might be able to help. You do a lot of fashion photography, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever use a model named Lucy Starr Mitchell?”

“Lucy Starr Mitchell.” Boone thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. Do you know which agency she’s with?”

“No.”

“Is she hot now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, models have their ups and downs. They’re hot for a while, and then they cool off. Their faces get too well known. People begin to say, ‘Oh, there’s that exquisite redhead!’ instead of ‘Oh, there’s an exquisite dress.’ Do you understand me? The model begins selling herself instead of the product.”

“I see.”

“But the name doesn’t register with me. If she were active now, I’d recognize it. I use most of the topflight girls.”

“I think she was modeling about twelve or thirteen years ago,” Kling said.

“Oh. Then I wouldn’t know her. I haven’t been in the business that long.”

“How would I find out about her, Mr. Boone?”

“You can call the registries. They’ve got back records. They can pinpoint her in a minute. Meanwhile, if you like, I’ll ask around. I have friends who’ve been at this much longer than I. If they used her, they’ll probably remember.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“What was the number there again?”

“Frederick 7-8024.”

“Okay, I’ll check into it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Boone.”

“Not at all,” he said, and he hung up.

The telephone would occupy Bert Kling for the rest of the afternoon. He would learn nothing from it. Or at any rate, he would learn a negative something.

He would learn that none of the model registries had ever carried a girl named Lucy Starr Mitchell.

MEYER MEYER did not mind being a tail, especially when the tail was tacked to the behind of Lucy Mencken. Lucy Mencken had a very nice behind.

On July second, Meyer was parked up the street from the Mencken house in a plain pale blue sedan. At 8:05 A.M., a man answering the description of Charles Mencken left the house. At 9:37, Lucy Mencken went to the garage, backed out a red MG, and headed for the town of Peabody. Meyer followed her.

Lucy Mencken went to the hairdresser, and Meyer waited outside.

Lucy Mencken went to the post office, and Meyer waited outside.

Lucy Mencken had lunch at a quaint exurban teashop, and Meyer waited outside.

She went into a dress shop at 1:04.

By 2:15, Meyer began to suspect the awful truth. He got out of the sedan, walked into the shop, and then through it to the other side. As he’d suspected, there was another doorway at the far end of the shop. Lucy Mencken, by accident or design, had shaken her tail. Meyer drove back to the Mencken house. He could see the garage at the far end of the curving driveway. The red MG was not in it. Sighing heavily, he sat back to await her return.

She did not check in until 6:15.

Meyer went to dinner and then phoned Lieutenant Byrnes. Shamefacedly, he admitted that an exurban housewife had shaken him for five hours and eleven minutes.

The lieutenant listened patiently. Then he said, “Stick with it. She’s probably home for the night. In any case, Willis’ll be out to relieve you soon. What do you suppose she did during those five hours?”

“She could have done anything,” Meyer said.

“Don’t take it so big,” Byrnes said. “Peabody hasn’t reported any homicides yet.”

Meyer grinned. “I’ll be expecting Willis.”

“He’ll be there,” Byrnes said, and he hung up.

Meyer went back to his vigil in the sedan. At 9:30 P.M., Willis relieved him. Meyer went home to bed. His wife, Sarah, wanted to know why he looked so down in the mouth.

“I’m a failure,” Meyer said. “Thirty-seven years old and a failure.”

“Go to sleep,” Sarah said. Meyer rolled over. He did not once suspect that he himself had been tailed that afternoon, or that he’d led his follower directly to the home of Lucy Mencken.

IT WAS WEDNESDAY MORNING, July third.

A week had gone by since Sy Kramer had been shot from an automobile. The police had not learned very much during that week. They now knew where the monthly $500 and $300 deposits had originated. There was also a monthly $1,100 deposit in Kramer’s working account, but they had not yet learned from whom that had come—and possibly they would never learn.

Nor did they know where the huge sums deposited in the other account had come from.

A check of Kramer’s living habits had disclosed to the police that his taste was expensive, indeed. His suits were all hand-tailored, as were those of his shirts that had not been imported. His apartment had been furnished by a high-priced decorator. His whisky was the best money could buy. He owned two automobiles, a Cadillac convertible and a heavy-duty station wagon. The acquisitions were all apparently new ones, and this presented a puzzling aspect to the case.

The monthly deposits in Kramer’s working account totaled $1,900. The withdrawals kept steady pace with the deposits. Kramer liked to live big, and he had been spending close to $500 a week. But the sum of $45,187.50 in the other account had not been touched. How, then, had he managed to buy the two automobiles, to pay for the furniture and the decorator, to afford the closetful of suits and coats?

How do you buy things without money?

You don’t.

The Cadillac agency from which Kramer had purchased the automobile reported that it had been purchased during the latter part of the preceding September, and that Kramer had paid for it in cold, hard cash. The Buick station wagon had been purchased on the same day from an agency across the street in Isola’s Automobile Row. Again, the purchase had been made in cash.

Kramer had rented his apartment in September. He had paid for the furniture and the decorator in cash. The total bill had come to $23,800. His suits had been ordered in September, delivered in October. They had cost him $2,000—and he had paid for them with green United States currency.

Kramer, in short, had barefootedly run through $36,000 in cash in less than a month—and had managed to acquire a lovely mistress named Nancy O’Hara during that same wild spending spree. And then, on October twenty-third, he had deposited the staggering amount of $21,000 in his bank account!

From where had that original $36,000 come?

And from where had the subsequent deposits of $21,000 in October, $9,000 in January, and $15,000 in April come?

And had that $15,000 deposit been intended as the last one? Or had more payments been scheduled to come? Who had been making the payments? Who had already paid a total of $81,000, and had this person been let off the hook only because Kramer was now dead?

And had not the extortion of $81,000 been sufficient reason for murder?

The body of Sy Kramer lying in the morgue seemed to indicate that it had indeed been reason enough.

THE GRAND AND GLORIOUS Fourth came in with a bang.

Some of the bulls of the 87th had the holiday off; the rest had to work. There was plenty to keep them occupied. In cooperation with the uniformed cops of the precinct, they tried to keep the day a safe and sane one. It was not.

Despite the city’s law against fireworks, the importers had been busy, and everyone from six to sixty stood ready and anxious to apply a match to a fuse and then to stand back with his fingers in his ears. A kid on South Thirtieth lost an eye when another kid hurled a cherry bomb at his face. On Culver Avenue, two boys were shooting skyrockets from the roof. One fell over the edge and died the instant he hit the pavement.

It was not a very hot Fourth—there had been hotter Fourths—but it was a very noisy one. The noise was an excellent cover for those citizens who wanted to fire revolvers. You couldn’t tell an exploding firecracker from an exploding .32 without a program, and nobody was selling programs that day. The police were busy chasing kids with fireworks, and turning off fire hydrants, and trying to stop burglaries that were being committed under cover of all the confusion and all the noise. The police were busy watching sailors who came uptown for a piece of exotica and very often went back downtown with a piece of their skulls missing. The police were busy watching the teen-age kids, who, now that school was over, now that time lay heavily on their hands, now that the asphalt streets and the concrete towers cradled them with boredom, now that there was nothing to do and plenty of time to do it in, were anxious for excitement, anxious for kicks, anxious for a little clean-living adolescent sport. They roamed the streets, and they roamed Grover Park, spoiling for action, and so the cops were kept busy.

Everyone was celebrating but the cops.

The cops were cursing because they had to work on a goddamn holiday.

Each of them wished he’d become a fireman.

AT THE FIREHOUSE in the 87th Precinct territory, the gongs were ringing and the men were sliding down poles and grabbing for helmets, because there’d be more damn fires today than on any other day of the year.

And each of the firemen wished he’d become a cop.

6.

HAL WILLIS was a detective 3rd/grade.

He earned $5,230 a year.

He earned this whether he was being shot at by a thief, or whether he was typing up a report in triplicate back at the squad. He earned it even when he was tailing a woman who tried to hide the swell of her curves by wearing potato-sack suits. The potato-sack suits, he supposed, made it interesting—like watching a stripper who never took off her clothes.

I am getting sick, he thought. There are no strippers who never take off their clothes.

In any case, and in any sense of the word, he did not mind the tail on Lucy Mencken. It had been agreeable work thus far, and he could not imagine how this charming housewife with a peekaboo body could possibly have shaken Meyer. Meyer is getting old, he thought. We’ll have to put him out to pasture. We’ll have to make him a stud bull. He will become the sire of a proud line of law-enforcement officers. They will erect a statue to him in Grover Park. The chiseled lettering at the base of the statue will read, MEYER MEYER, SIRE.

Sick, Willis thought. Sick, for sure.

He was a small man, Willis, barely clearing the five-foot-eight minimum-height requirement for policemen. Among the other detectives of the squad, he looked like a midget. But his deceptive height and his deceptively small bone structure did not fool any of the bulls who worked with him. There were not many men on the squad who wanted to fool with Willis. He was, you see, expert in the ways of judo. Hal Willis could, if you will allow your imagination to soar for a moment, seize the trunk of a charging elephant and—within a matter of seconds—cause that beast to sail through the air and land on his back with possible injury to his spinal column. Such was the might and the power of Hal Willis. Along more prosaic lines, and during the mundane pursuit of his chosen profession, Willis had disarmed thieves, dislocated bones, dispensed severe punishment, dispelled foolish notions about small men, disturbed virile giants who suddenly found themselves flat on their asses, dismayed crooks who did not realize bones could break so easily, and discovered that judo—good, clean fun that it was—could also become a way of life.

Weight and balance, that was the secret. Fulcrum and lever. Wait for your opportunity, seize it, and you had the world on its back.

Lucy Mencken was not, at the moment, on her back—although the thought, in all honesty, had often crossed Willis’s mind since he’d begun tailing her. He had been warned by Carella, and later by Meyer, that Mrs. Mencken bore all the characteristics of a camouflaged munitions dump. Both Carella and Meyer were respectable married men who rarely, if ever, thought lewd, lascivious, or obscene thoughts. If they had seen fit to warn Willis about the necessity for keeping his mind on his work, then Mrs. Mencken was indeed highly explosive.

He had, at first, been disappointed. The woman who emerged from the house in Peabody looked more like a dowdy librarian than a bawdy libertine. It was after he’d been tailing her for a while that he began to appreciate the warnings of his colleagues. It was the most annoying damned thing, not that it wasn’t also pleasant. The woman wore a suit that had surely been manufactured by Omar the tent maker. And yet, beneath that suit, there was the suggestion of vibrant flesh. The suggestion became more than that when the material tightened over her thigh as she stepped from her automobile, or molded the persistent flesh when she stooped to pick up her dropped purse. Lucy Mencken, no matter how she dressed, was voluptuous. And Willis did not at all mind tailing her, except that it was difficult to concentrate.

The tail, that morning of July fifth, led him directly to the Peabody railroad station. Willis had not anticipated this. He hastily parked the police sedan alongside the red MG and followed Lucy into the waiting room. He hoped to get to the ticket window in time to overhear her destination, but she was just turning away from the counter as he entered the waiting room. He didn’t know whether she’d be heading north or south. South led to the city. North led to the next state and then beyond and beyond and beyond. For all he knew, Lucy Mencken could be heading for Canada, or the North Pole, where she planned to sell bootleg whisky to the Eskimos. Willis shrugged and went to the magazine stand, where he bought a copy of Manhunt. Under guise of reading the magazine, he watched Lucy Mencken.

He was amazed by the number of men she fooled. Surely it did not take a detective to know what the baggy linen suit concealed. Surely John Doe could look at her face and detect sensuality despite the severe hairdo and the absence of makeup. And yet, hardly a man in the waiting room turned for a second look at her. Even when she sat and crossed her legs—and there was, for a moment, the flash of thigh, the exalted glimpse of well-turned knee and calf, before her hand lowered the skirt like a linen curtain—none of the men in the waiting room seemed to care very much. Willis shook his head sadly. We are raising a generation of unobservant, impotent robots, he thought. Thank God for Meyer Meyer, Sire.

He could hear a train in the distance. Lucy Mencken looked at her watch, and then rose from the bench. Willis followed her onto the platform. She was, then, taking the southbound train. The last stop would be the city. Was that her destination, or would she get off at one of the stations along the line?

The train roared into the station, hissing steam, sounding its horn. A rush of air caught at Lucy’s skirt. She backed away slightly, holding the skirt about her legs in a completely feminine gesture. She boarded the train and went directly to a smoking car. Willis followed her, and sat across the aisle and several seats behind her. When the conductor came around, he bought a round-trip ticket to the city. Then he sat back and read his detective magazine, glancing up every now and then to make sure Lucy had not moved.

She did not move until the train reached the city. Then she rose and disembarked.

This is great, Willis thought. We send a tail out to Peabody, and she leads the tail back to the city. Women, women.

He did not enjoy being back in the city. The city was a hell of a lot hotter than the exurbs had been. He cursed his bad luck, and stuck with Lucy Mencken. She caught a cab just outside the station. Willis got into the cab behind hers. He flashed his shield and told the cabbie not to lose her. The cabbie did not. Lucy Mencken’s cab cut through the crosstown traffic heading toward the River Harb. It pulled up in front of an office building on Independence Avenue in midtown Isola. Willis paid his hackie and went into the building after her. He had to run across the lobby in order to get into the same elevator with her.

She wore no perfume. He was standing close enough to her to detect that. He was standing close enough to see that her eyes were a clear blue flecked with tiny chips of white. He was standing close enough to see that her nose was spattered with freckles, and he suddenly wondered if she had originally been a farm girl.

“Eight,” the elevator operator said.

Lucy stepped forward. Willis stepped forward with her. The doors slid open. Lucy stepped into the corridor. Willis waited until she was out of the car, and then followed. He made a great show of studying the numbers on each door he approached, as if he were looking for a specific office. Lucy walked directly to the end of the hall, opened a frosted-glass door, and entered. Willis waited a decent interval, and then went to the end of the hall. The lettering on the door said:

806 PATRICK BLIER Photographers’ Representative

Willis moved away from the door. He walked back to the elevator banks, and then flipped open his pocket pad and jotted down the number and name that had been on the door. He rang for the elevator and went down to the lobby. He checked the building to make sure there was only one entrance, and then went to the phone booths from which he could watch the elevators. Rapidly he dialed Frederick 7-8024.

“Eighty-seventh Precinct, Sergeant Murchison,” the voice answered.

“Dave, this is Willis. Is Hawes upstairs?”

“Hold on a second, Hal. I’ll check.”

Willis waited.

“Eighty-seventh Squad, Detective Hawes,” Hawes said.

“Cotton, this is Hal.”

“Hi. How’s the tail?”

“Fine. You should see it.”

“Pretty?”

“A diamond, once you chip away the coal.”

“Where are you?”

“In the city.”

“Where’s she?”

“1612 Independence Avenue. That’s below the Square, midtown. She’s in Room 806 with a quote photographers’ representative unquote named Patrick Blier. Shall I hit him or maintain the tail?”

“Stay with her, Hal. Buzz me when she leaves, and I’ll go down to see him.”

“I’ll leave the message with the desk,” Willis said. “I won’t have time to exchange cordialities or I’ll lose her. She travels like a bunny.”

“Okay. I’ll ask Dave to let me know as soon as he gets your call. Stay with her, Hal.”

“I’d love to,” Willis said.

“You horny bastard.”

“Horny? I’m red-blooded.”

“I’m tired-blooded,” Hawes said. “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

Patrick Blier, Photographers’ Representative, was a bald man with a hooked nose. The first impression he gave was of a giant bald eagle. He sat behind his desk in a cubbyhole office the walls of which were covered with photographs of girls in various stages of dress and undress. A metal plaque on his desk announced the fact that he was Mr. P. Blier, in case anyone should accidentally think he was Miss or Mrs. P. Blier. To further eliminate doubt, Patrick Blier wore a transparent sports shirt, short-sleeved, and his chest was matted with thick black hair. His arms curled with the same black hair. A lesser man might have cracked under the pressure of all that hair everywhere but on the head. Patrick Blier didn’t seem to care. He was bald, so he was bald. So what?

“So what do you want?” he asked Hawes when he stepped into the office.

“Didn’t your receptionist tell you?”

“She said a detective was here. You a city cop or a private eye?”

“City.”

“I get a lot of private eyes. They want my clients to take pictures for divorce cases. I explain to them that I ain’t in the habit of breaking down bedroom doors. Private eyes are disgusting. Ain’t nothing sacred? What do you want?”

“Some answers.”

“You got the questions?”

“Loads of them.”

“Speak. I’m busy. I got requests up to here. I’m gonna have to get a bigger office, so help me God. Phones ringing all day long. Editors coming up day and night. Models pestering me. Jesus, what a rat race. What do you want? Speak. I’m busy.”

“Why was Lucy Mencken here?”

“Who the hell is Lucy Mencken?”

“She was here a little while ago.”

“You’re nuts. Lucy Men—you mean Mitchell? You mean Lucy Mitchell? Is that who you mean?”

“Yes.”

“So where the hell did you get this Mencken from? Say what you mean, will you? I’m busy.”

“Why was she here?”

“Why, what’d she do?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why should I tell you?”

“Why not?”

“First tell me what she done.”

“Blier, I don’t have to bargain with you. I asked a question. I’ll ask it one more time. Why was she here, and what did she want?”

Blier studied Hawes for a long moment.

“You think you scare me?” he said at last.

“Yes,” Hawes answered.

“You’re right, you know that? You scare the hell out of me. Where the hell did you get that white hair? You look like the wrath of God, I swear to God. Jesus, I’d hate to meet you in a dark alley. Boy!”

“Why was she here?”

“She wanted some pictures.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“Cheesecake.”

“What was she going to do with them?”

“Paste them in her scrapbook, I guess. How the hell do I know? Do I care what a dame does with her own pictures? What do I care?”

“These were pictures of her?”

“Sure. Who’d you think? Marilyn Monroe, maybe?”

“What kind of pictures?”

“I told you. Cheesecake.”

“Nude?”

“Some were nude. The rest were almost nude.”

“How nude is almost nude?”

“Pretty nude. As nude as you can get without getting nude. As a matter of fact, nuder than if she was entirely nude, if you know what I mean.”

“Who took these pictures?”

“One of my clients.”

“Why?”

“To try to sell, what do you think? I sell to all the men’s magazines. I handle other stuff, too, not only cheesecake. I don’t want you to get the idea I only handle cheesecake. I do photographic essays. That is, I handle them. My clients shoot the actual stories.”

“Which client took these pictures of Lucy Mitchell?”

“A guy named Jason Poole. He’s a good man. Top-notch. Even these pictures were good, and he took them a long time ago.”

“How long ago?”

“Ten, twelve years ago.”

“Which?”

“How do I know? Who remembers that far back? She walked into the office today, I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you, Blier. Suppose we start from the beginning.”

“Oh my God, I’m busy. How can I go way back to the beginning?”

“By going there,” Hawes said. “I’m busy, too, Blier. I’m busy investigating a homicide.”

“That’s murder?”

“That’s murder.”

“She done it?”

“Start from the beginning, Blier.”

“The beginning was about ten, twelve years ago. Maybe longer. Let me think a minute.” He thought a moment. “The war was just over. When was that?”

“1945.”

“Yeah. No, wait a minute, the war wasn’t over yet. The first war, the one with the bastard. That was over.”

“You mean Hitler?”

“Who else? That one was over. We still had to clean up the Pacific. Anyway, it was around then—1944,1945. Around then. I was sitting in the office alone. I didn’t even have a receptionist at the time. Just me. I had an office, I wanted to change my mind I had to go outside to do it. That’s how big it was.” Blier laughed at his own devastating humor. “I was eating a sandwich. Pastrami on rye, from Cohen’s. Delicious pastrami. In walks this doll. An absolute doll. A doll you could die with. With this doll, you could put me on a desert island for the rest of my natural life without food and water, so help me. Just her alone, and I’m a happy man. That’s the kind of a doll she was.”

“Lucy Mitchell?” Hawes asked.

“Who else? With straw sticking out of her ears. Straight from the farm, and milk-fed. Oh mister please, I get weak. These big blue eyes, and this body, this body sings, it plays sonatas, it’s an orchestra with strings, Jesus I get weak. She wants to model. She says she wants to model. I say did you ever model? She says no she never modeled but she wants her picture in magazines. I visualize a fortune in pinups. I can see this doll decorating barracks from here to Tokyo. I can even see her decorating Japanese barracks! Her I wouldn’t even deny the enemy, the bastards. But her I wouldn’t deny them. I send her up to see Jason Poole. He takes a string of pictures. He can’t stop the shutter from clicking. Click, click, he shoots away all night long.”

“Go on,” Hawes said.

“He gets these marvelous pictures of this marvelous doll with this body that makes concrete limp. I can visualize a fortune. So what happens?”

“What happens?” Hawes asked.

“Next week I’m out of business. Some snotty underage dame sues me for selling cheesecake for which she gave me permission to sell. How was I supposed to know she’s underage? I’ve got these lovely pictures of Lucy Mitchell, but I ain’t got no office any more because this other snotty dame sued me out of existence.”

“What happened to the pictures?”

“I don’t know. Things got shuffled around. When I opened the new office, the pictures were gone. I never seen them in a magazine, either, so I know they ain’t been published.”

“How many pictures were there?”

“About three dozen.”

“Sexy?”

“Mister,” Blier said softly.

“And Lucy Mitchell came to you today to get those pictures?”

“You could’ve knocked me over with a ten-ton truck. Man, has she changed. She looked like she just got out of a monastery for women. I told her I ain’t got the pictures. She told me I was working in cahoots with a guy named Sy Kramer. I told her she was nuts. I don’t know any Kramers except a guy named Dean Kramer who runs one of the girlie books. She wanted to know if this Dean Kramer was related to her Sy Kramer. I told her for all I know he could be related to Martha Kramer for all I know, does she think I’m the Library of Congress?”

“What did she say?”

“She wanted Kramer’s name and address. I gave it to her. What I don’t understand is this: why, after all these years, she suddenly wants the pictures back? This I don’t understand.”

“And you don’t know anyone named Sy Kramer, is that right?”

“What? Are you starting on me, too?”

“Do you or don’t you?”

“I don’t. I don’t even know Dean Kramer so hot. I sold him maybe half a dozen shots since the magazine started. He’s a very literary-type guy. He likes literary cheesecake.”

“What kind of cheesecake is that?”

“It’s got to have a story with it. A beautiful doll ain’t enough for Kramer. He needs a story, too. He thinks this way he fools his readers into thinking they ain’t looking at a beautiful doll, they’re reading maybe War and Peace, instead. Man, what a comedown this Lucy Mitchell was today. Why’s she wearing that old circus tent? Is she afraid somebody’s gonna whistle at her?”

“Maybe she is,” Hawes said thoughtfully.

“In the old days…” Blier paused, lost in his reminiscence. Then, very softly, almost reverently, he said, “Mister.”

7.

THE MAGAZINE HAD A very virile name.

It occurred to Hawes as he stepped into the office that there was not a single virile word in the dictionary that had not been affixed to the front cover of some men’s magazine. He wondered when they would begin choosing titles like:

COWARD, the magazine for you and me.

SLOB, for men who don’t care.

HE-HE, the magazine of togetherness.

He smiled and entered the reception room. The room was lined with oil paintings of bare-chested men doing various dangerous things, paintings that had undoubtedly been used for magazine covers and then framed and hung. There was a painting of a bare-chested man fighting a shark with a homemade dirk; another of a bare-chested man loading the breech of a cannon; another of a bare-chested man scalping an Indian; another of a bare-chested man in a whip duel with another bare-chested man.

A girl who was almost bare-chested sat behind a desk tucked into one corner of the reception room. Hawes almost fell in love with her, but he controlled himself admirably. The girl looked up from her typing as he approached the desk.

“I’d like to see Dean Kramer,” he said. “Police business.” He flashed the tin. The girl looked at the shield uninterestedly, and then lazily buzzed Kramer. Hawes was glad he had not fallen in love with her.

“You can go right in, sir. Room Ten in the middle of the hall.”

“Thank you,” Hawes said. He opened the door leading to the inner offices and started down the hall. The corridor was lined with photographs of old guns, sports cars, and girls in bathing suits—staple items without which any men’s magazine would fold instantly. Every men’s magazine editor instinctively knew that every man in America was interested in old guns, sports cars, and girls in bathing suits. Hardly an afternoon went by on patios across the nation when men did not discuss old guns, or sports cars, or girls in bathing suits. Hawes could understand the girls. But the only gun in which he was interested was the one tucked into his shoulder holster. And his concern for the automotive industry centered in the old Ford that took him to work every day.

There was no door on Room Ten. Neither were there true walls to the office. There were, instead, shoulder-high partitions that divided one office from the next. A wide opening in the partition which served as the front wall formed the entrance to the office. Hawes knocked gently on the partition, to the right of the opening. A man inside turned in a swivel chair to face Hawes.

“Mr. Kramer?”

“Yes?”

“Detective Hawes.”

“Come in, please,” Kramer said. He was an intense little man with bright brown eyes and a sweeping nose. His hair was black and unruly, and he sported a thick black mustache under his nose. The mustache, Hawes figured, had been grown in an attempt to add years to the face. It succeeded only partially; Kramer looked no older than twenty-five. “Sit down, sit down,” he said.

Hawes sat in a chair next to his desk. The desk was covered with illustrations for stories, pin-up photos, literary agents’ submissions in the variously colored folders that identified their agencies.

Kramer caught Hawes’s glance. “A magazine office,” he said. “They’re all the same. Only the product is different.”

Hawes speculated for a moment on the differences between the various products. He remained silent.

“At least,” Kramer said, “we try to make our book a little different. It has to be different, or it’ll get nosed right off the stands.”

“I see,” Hawes said.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Hawes? You’re not from the postal authorities, are you?”

“No.”

“We had a little trouble with one issue we sent through the mails. We thought our permission to mail the book would be lifted. Thank God, it wasn’t. And thank God, you’re not from the Post Office.”

“I’m from the city police,” Hawes said.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Hawes?”

“Did a woman named Lucy Mitchell come to see you today?”

Kramer looked surprised. “Why, yes. Yes, she did. How did—?”

“What did she want?”

“She thought I might have some pictures belonging to her. I assured her I did not. She also thought I was related to someone she knew.”

“Sy Kramer?”

“Yes, that was the name.”

“Are you related?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen these pictures of Lucy Mitchell?”

“I see cheesecake all day long, Mr. Hawes. I couldn’t know Lucy Mitchell from Margaret Mitchell.” He paused, frowned momentarily, and then said, “‘Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.’”

“What?” Hawes asked.

“The first line of Gone with the Wind. It’s a hobby of mine. I memorize the opening lines of important novels. The opening line of a book is perhaps the most important line in the book. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Sure,” Kramer said. “That’s a theory of mine. You’d be surprised how much authors pack into that first line. It’s a very important line.”

“About those pictures…” Hawes said.

“ ‘Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stair-head, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed,’” Kramer said. “Do you know what that is?”

“No, what is it?”

“Ulysses,” Kramer said. “James Joyce. It’s an example of the naming-the-character school of opening lines. Here’s one for you.” He paused and got it straight in his mind. “‘It was Wang Lung’s wedding day.’”

“The Good Earth,” Hawes said.

“Yes,” Kramer answered, surprised. “How about this one?” Again he thought for a moment. Then he quoted, “ ‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.’”

Hawes was silent.

“It’s an old one,” Kramer said.

Hawes was still silent.

“David Copperfield,” Kramer said.

“Oh, sure,” Hawes answered.

“I know thousands of them,” Kramer said enthusiastically. “I can reel them—”

“What about those pictures of Lucy Mitchell?”

“What about them?”

“Did she say why she wanted them?”

“She said only that she was sure someone had them. She thought that person might be me. I told her I was not the least bit interested in her or her pictures. In short, Mr. Hawes, I played Taps for her.” Kramer’s face grew brighter. “Here’s a dozy,” he said. “Listen.”

“I’d rather—”

“ ldquo‘When he finished packing, he walked out on to the third-floor porch of the barracks brushing the dust from his hands, a very neat and deceptively slim young man in the summer khakis that were still early morning fresh.’” Kramer beamed. “Know it?”

“No.”

“From Here to Eternity. Jones packs a hell of a lot into that first line. He tells you it’s summer, he tells you it’s morning, he tells you you’re on an Army post with a soldier who is obviously leaving for someplace, and he gives you a thumbnail description of his hero. That’s a good opening line.”

“Can we get back to Lucy Mitchell?” Hawes said impatiently.

“Certainly,” Kramer said, his enthusiasm unabated.

“What did she say about Sy Kramer?”

“She said he had once had the pictures, but she was now certain someone else had them.”

“Did she say why she was certain?”

“No.”

“And you’ve never seen these pictures?”

“Mr. Hawes, I veritably cut my way through a cheesecake jungle every day of th—” Kramer stopped, and his eyes lighted with inner fire. “Here’s one!” he said. “Here’s one I really enjoy.”

“Mr. Kramer…” Hawes tried, but Kramer was already gathering steam.

“The building presented a not unpleasant architectural scheme, the banks of wide windows reflecting golden sunlight, the browned weathered brick façade, the ivy clinging to the brick and framing the windows.”

“Mr. Kramer…”

“That’s from The Bl—”

“Mr. Kramer!”

“Sir?” Kramer said.

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Lucy Mitchell?”

“No,” Kramer said, seemingly a little miffed.

“Or Sy Kramer?”

“No.”

“But she did seem certain that someone else now had those pictures?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Had you ever met her before today?”

“Never.”

“Okay,” Hawes said. “Thank you very much, Mr. Kramer.”

“Not at all,” Kramer said. He shook hands with Hawes, and Hawes rose. “Come again,” Kramer said.

And then, as Hawes went through the opening in the partition, Kramer began quoting, “‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate…’”

IT SEEMED TO HAWES that several things were obvious at this stage of the investigation.

To begin with, there was no doubt—and there had never been any—that Sy Kramer had been extorting five hundred dollars a month from Lucy Mencken. It was obvious, too, that Kramer extorted the money on the threat of releasing the cheesecake photos that had somehow come into his possession. Lucy Mencken had stated that her husband was a politician who would be running for the state senate in November. In the hands of the opposing party, or even in the hands of a newspaper campaigning against Charles Mencken, the photos could be used with deadly results. It was understandable why Lucy Mencken wanted to suppress them. She had come a long way from the farm girl who’d taken off her clothes for Jason Poole the photographer. Somewhere along the line, she’d married Charles Mencken, acquired an exurban estate, and become the mother of two children. Those pictures could threaten her husband’s senatorial chances and—if he, too, did not know about them—could even threaten the smooth fabric of her everyday existence.

There were thirty-six pictures, Patrick Blier had said.

The $500 payment came every month, as did the $300 payment from Edward Schlesser, and the $1,100 payment from a person or persons unknown. Whenever Schlesser had delivered his check, Kramer had in turn sent back another photostated copy of the letter. Schlesser had hoped the photostated copies would eventually run out. Perhaps he had not realized that it was possible to make a photostat of a photostat and that Kramer could conceivably have milked him for the rest of his life. Or perhaps he did realize it, and simply didn’t give a damn. According to what he’d said, he considered the extortion a bona fide business expense, like advertising.

But assuming that Kramer had followed a similar modus operandi with Lucy Mencken, could he not have mailed her a photo and negative each time he received her $500 check? Thirty-six negatives and prints at $500 a throw amounted to $18,000. It was conceivable that Kramer had hit upon this easy payment plan simply because $18,000 in one bite was pretty huge for the average person to swallow. Especially if that person is trying to keep something secret. You don’t just draw $18,000 from the bank and say you bought a few new dresses last week.

Then, too—in keeping with Kramer’s M.O.—could he not have been planning on a lifetime income? In the same way that he could have had a limitless number of copies of the letter to Schlesser, could he not also have had a limitless number of glossy prints—all capable of being reproduced in a newspaper—of the Mencken photos? And could he not, when the last negative was delivered, then say he had prints to sell at such and such a price per print?

Had Lucy Mencken realized this?

Had she killed Sy Kramer?

Perhaps.

And now there was a new aspect to the case. Lucy Mencken was certain that someone else had come into possession of the photos. She had undoubtedly learned this during the past few days, and the first thing she’d done was to visit Blier and then Kramer, the magazine editor. Did someone now hold those photos, and had this someone contacted Lucy in an attempt to pick up the extortion where it had ended with Sy Kramer’s death? And who was this someone?

And—if Lucy had caused the death of Sy Kramer—could not this new extortionist provoke a second murder?

Hawes nodded reflectively.

It seemed like the time to put a tap on Lucy Mencken’s phone.

THE MAN FROM THE telephone company was colored. He showed telephone-company credentials to Lucy Mencken when she opened the door for him. He told her they’d been having some trouble with her line and he might have to make minor repairs.

The man’s name was Arthur Brown, and he was a detective attached to the 87th Squad.

He put bugs on the three telephones in the house, carrying his lines across the back of the Mencken property, where they crossed the road and fed into a recorder in a supposed telephone-company shack on the other side of the road. The machine would begin recording automatically whenever any of the phones was lifted from its cradle. The machine would record incoming calls and outgoing calls indiscriminately. Calls to the butcher, calls from relatives and friends, angry calls, personal calls—all would be recorded faithfully and later listened to in the squadroom. None of the recorded information would be admissible as court evidence.

But some of it might lead to the person or persons who were threatening Lucy Mencken anew.

8.

WHEN MARIO TORR stopped by at the squadroom, Bert Kling was on the phone talking to his fiancée. Torr waited outside the railing until Kling was finished talking. He looked at Kling expectantly, and Kling motioned him to enter. As before, Torr was dressed in immaculate mediocrity. He went to the chair beside Kling’s desk and sat in it, carefully preserving the crease in his trousers.

“I just thought I’d stop by to see how things were going along,” he said.

“Things are going along fine,” Kling said.

“Any leads?”

“A few.”

“Good,” Torr said. “Sy was my friend. I’d like to see justice done. Do you still think this was a gang rumble?”

“We’re working on a few possibilities,” Kling said.

“Good,” Torr answered.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d taken a fall, Torr?”

“Huh?”

“One-to-two at Castleview for extortion. You did a year’s time and were paroled. How about it, Torr?”

“Oh, yeah,” Torr said. “It must’ve slipped my mind.”

“Sure.”

“I’m straight now,” Torr said. “I got a good job, been at it since I got out.”

“Sand’s Spit, right?”

“Right. I’m a laborer. I make about ninety bucks a week. That’s pretty good money.”

“I’m glad,” Kling said.

“Sure. There’s no percentage in crime.”

“Or in bad associates,” Kling said.

“Huh?”

“A man going straight shouldn’t have had a friend like Sy Kramer.”

“That was strictly social. Look, I believe a guy’s business is his own business. I don’t like to mess. He never talked about his business, and I never talked about mine.”

“But you figured he was working something, right?”

“Well, he always dressed nice and drove a fancy car. Sure, I figured he was working something.”

“Did you ever meet his floozy?”

“Nancy O’Hara? Mr. Kling, that ain’t a floozy. If you ever met her, you wouldn’t call her no floozy. Far from it.”

“Then you did meet her?”

“Once. Sy was drivin’ by with her in the Caddy. I waved to him, and he stopped to say hello. He introduced her.”

“She claims she knew nothing about his business. Do you buy that, Torr?”

“I buy it. Who says a woman needs brains? All the brains she needs is right between—”

“That makes two of you who didn’t know anything about Sy’s business.”

“I figured he had something big going for him,” Torr said. “He had to. A guy don’t come into a couple of cars and a new pad and clothes to knock your eyes out unless he’s got something big going for him. I don’t mean penny-ante stuff, either. I mean big.”

“What do you consider penny-ante?”

“Pin money. You know.”

“No, I don’t. What’s pin money?”

“A couple of bills a month, you know. Hell, you can tell me better than I can tell you. How much was he getting from his marks?”

“Enough,” Kling said.

“I don’t mean the big marks, I mean the small ones,” Torr said.

“How do you know there are big ones and small ones?”

“I’m just guessing,” Torr said. “I figure the big ones set him up with the cars and the pad. The small ones buy his bread. Ain’t I right?”

“You could be.”

“Sure. So what can you expect from a small mark? Two, three bills? Five grand in a lump? It’s the big ones that count.”

“I guess so,” Kling said.

“Do you know who the ones are yet?”

“No.”

“The small ones?”

“Maybe.”

“How many small ones are there?”

“You should have been a cop, Torr.”

“I’m only interested in seeing justice done. Sy was my friend.”

“Justice will triumph,” Kling said. “I’m busy. If you’re finished, I’d like to get back to work.”

“Sure,” Torr said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

And he left.

THE CALL FROM Danny Gimp had told Carella that the informer had something for him, could they meet someplace away from the precinct? It had been Carella’s policy—up to the day of his idiocy—to give his home-phone number to no one but relatives, close friends, and of course the desk sergeant. He did not encourage business calls at home. It was annoying enough to be called there by the squad; he did not want crime detection or law enforcement to intrude on his off-duty hours. He had broken this rule with Danny Gimp.

The working arrangement between a cop and a stool pigeon is—even with men who bear no particular fondness for each other—a highly personal one. Crime detection is a great big horse race, and you choose your jockeys carefully. And a jockey working for your stable does not report your horse’s morning running-time to the owner of a rival stable. The bulls of the 87th worked with various stoolies, and these stoolies reported to them faithfully. The transaction was a business one, pure and simple—information for money. But a certain amount of trust and faith was involved. The policeman trusted the stoolie’s information and was willing to pay for it. The stoolie trusted the policeman to pay him once the information had been divulged. Cops were averse to working with pigeons they did not know and trust. And likewise, pigeons—whose sole source of income was the information they garnered here and there—were not overly fond of displaying their wares before a strange cop.

A call from the stoolie to the squad was generally a call directed at one cop and one cop alone. If that cop was off-duty or otherwise out of the office, the stoolie would not speak to anyone else, thanks. He would wait. Waiting could sometimes result in a lost collar. Waiting, in a homicide case, could sometimes result in another homicide. And so Danny Gimp had Carella’s home-phone number, and it was there that he called him when the desk sergeant informed him Carella was off that day.

The men arranged to meet at Plum Beach in River-head. Carella told Danny to bring along his swimming trunks.

They lay side by side on the sand like two old cronies who were discussing the bathing beauties. The sun was very strong that day.

“I hope you don’t mind my not wanting to come to the precinct,” Danny said. “I don’t like to be seen there too often. It hurts my business.”

“I understand,” Carella said. “What have you got for me?”

“The background on Sy Kramer.”

“Go ahead.”

“He’s been living big for a few years, Steve, but not as big as just before he got it. You know, he had a nice pad and a good car—a Dodge—but nothing like the new joint, and nothing like the Caddy, you dig?”

“I dig.”

A boy ran by, kicking sand in Carella’s face.

“I used to be a ninety-seven-pound weakling,” Carella said, and Danny grinned.

“Okay,” Danny said. “In September, he goes berserk. Spends like a drunken sailor. Two new cars, clothes, the new pad. This is when he picks up the O’Hara bitch. She’s impressed by loot, what dame isn’t? She moves in with him.”

“How’d he meet her?”

“How’d she say?”

“She said she’s a dancer, met him in a drugstore.”

“For the birds,” Danny said. “She did a crumby strip in a joint on The Stem. Half her salary came from conning guys into buying her colored water.”

“Prostitution?”

“Not from what I could gather, but I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s quite a looker, Steve. They billed her as Red Garters.”

“That’s a name for a stripper, all right.”

“Well, she’s got this flaming-red hair. Anyway, her act stunk. All she had was a body. The less dancing she did, the quicker she got her clothes off, the better it was for everybody concerned.”

“So she met Kramer and latched onto him,” Carella said.

“Right. I think she read the writing on the wall. She was getting pawed by a hundred strangers a night for peanuts. She figured she might as well get pawed by only one guy, and live in luxury.”

“You’re a cynic, Danny,” Carella said.

“I read the cards,” Danny said, shrugging. “Anyway, Kramer hit it big in September.”

“How?”

“That’s the one thing I don’t know.”

“Mmm,” Carella said.

“I take it you know all this already? I ain’t giving you nothing new.”

“Most of it,” Carella said. “I didn’t know about the girl. What else have you got?”

“A hunting trip.”

“Kramer?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Beginning of September. It was after he come back that he started throwing the green around. Think there’s a tie-in?”

“I don’t know. Has he got a rep as a hunter?”

“Rabbits, birds, stuff like that. He’s never shot a tiger, if that’s what you mean.”

“Where’d he go on this trip?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he go alone?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure it was a hunting trip?”

“Nope. It could have been anything. For all I know, he could have gone to Chicago and rubbed somebody. Maybe that’s where he got the lump of dough.”

“Did he come back with the money?”

“No. Unless he was real cool with it and didn’t start flashing it around. The trip was in the beginning of the month. He didn’t start spending until the end of the month.”

“Was the money hot, do you suppose?”

“Not the way he spent it, Steve. If it was hot, he’d have used a money changer and taken a loss.”

“How do you know he didn’t?”

“I checked the guys buying hot bills. Kramer didn’t go to see any of them. Besides, we’re forgetting something.”

“What?”

“His racket. He’s an extortionist. True, he may have decided to do a quick rub job for somebody, but you don’t hire a shakedown artist for a torpedo job. Besides, like I told you, this torpedo crap went out in the—”

“Mmm, maybe you’re right,” Carella said. “But he could have carried hot ice or furs—”

“He ain’t a fence, Steve. He’s a shakedown artist.”

“Still.”

“I don’t buy it. Maybe this hunting trip was a cover. Maybe he went to see a mark.” Danny shrugged. “Wherever he went, it netted him a big pile of bills.”

“Maybe he really did go on a hunting trip,” Carella said. “Maybe the trip and the dough have no connection.”

“Maybe,” Danny said.

“But you don’t know where he went, is that right?”

“Not a glimmer.”

“And he went alone?”

“Right.”

“Was this before he met the O’Hara girl?”

“Yes.”

“Think she might know something about it?”

“Maybe.” Danny smiled. “Guys have been known to talk in their sleep.”

“We’ll check her again. You’ve helped, Danny. How much?”

“I don’t like to hit you too hard, Steve. Especially when I didn’t give you so much. But I’m slightly from Brokesville. Can you spare a quarter of a century?”

Carella reached for his wallet and gave Danny two tens and a five.

“Thanks,” Danny said. “I’ll make it up to you. The next one’s on the house.”

They lay on the sand for a little while longer. Carella went into the water for a quick dip, and then they went back to the locker rooms. They shook hands, and left each other at three in the afternoon.

LOVE, FLEETING CHIMERA that it is, was hardly present at all the second time Cotton Hawes called upon Nancy O’Hara. In fact, aside from their use of first names in addressing each other, one hardly could have guessed they’d shared the most intimate of intimacies. Ah, love. Easy come, easy go.

“Hello, Nancy,” he said when she opened the door. “I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”

“No,” she said. “Come in, Cotton.”

He followed her into the living room.

“Drink?”

“No. Thanks.”

“What is it, Cotton? Have you found the murderer?”

“Not yet A few more questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

“Were you a stripper?”

Nancy hesitated. “Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks. I’m glad I have your seal of approval.”

“Why’d you lie?”

“A dancer sounds better than a stripper. I’m a lousy dancer, and a worse stripper. Sy wanted me to live with him. So I lived with him. Is there something so terrible about that?”

“I guess not.”

“Don’t get moral, Cotton,” she told him. “You weren’t very goddamn moral in bed.”

“True.” He grinned. “End of sermon. End of shocked Daughter of American Revolution routine. Beginning of important questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like Kramer. Did he ever mention a hunting trip to you?”

“Yes.” She paused. “I told you. Hunting was one of his hobbies.”

“A hunting trip in September?”

“Yes.” Again, she paused. “Before we met. Yes, he mentioned it.”

“Did he really go hunting?”

“I think so. He talked about the stuff he’d shot. A deer, I think. Yes, he really went hunting.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he go hunting again while you were living with him?”

“Yes. I already told you this. He went several times.”

“But you don’t know where he went that time in September?”

“No.”

Hawes thought for a moment. Then he said, “Would you happen to know if Kramer had a gasoline credit card?”

“A what?”

“A credit card. To show at service stations. So that he could charge his gas.”

“Oh. I don’t know. Would he carry that with him?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the police still have his wallet. Why not look through it?”

“We will,” Hawes said. “Did Kramer save bills?”

“You mean grocery bills and things like that?”

“No. I mean telephone bills, electric-light bills, gasoline bills. Things like that.”

“Yes. Why, yes, he did.”

“Where did he keep them?”

“In the desk in the foyer.”

“Would they still be there?”

“I haven’t touched anything,” Nancy said.

“Good. Mind if I look through the desk?”

“Not at all. What are you looking for, Cotton?”

“Something that might be just as good as a road map,” he answered, and he went out to the foyer and the desk.

9.

SY KRAMER had a card with the Meridian Mobilube Company that enabled him to charge his automobile expenses at any of their gasoline stations. Most of the bills in his desk for gasoline charges had been signed at a place called George’s Service Center in Isola. George’s, the police discovered after a check of the phone book, was a station three blocks from Kramer’s apartment. He had undoubtedly been a regular customer there and most of his gas purchases had originated there. The bills he had signed looked like this:

On September first, Kramer had started a trip. The first bill for that date came from George’s, in Isola. Kramer had put thirteen gallons of gasoline and a quart of oil into the car. A check with the manufacturer of Kramer’s 1952-model automobile revealed that the tank capacity of the car was seventeen gallons, and that the car could be expected to travel between fifteen and sixteen miles on a gallon of gasoline. The bills Sy Kramer signed that day seemed to back up the manufacturer’s word. Kramer had apparently kept a careful eye on his tank gauge. Approximately every hundred miles, when the gauge registered half-empty, he had stopped and brought it up to full again, signing a credit slip for the gas. Each bill was stamped with the name of the gas station and the town.

Sy Kramer had unmistakably gone to the Adirondack Mountains in New York State.

Using a road map, Hawes traced Kramer’s progression across that state, marking each town for which he had a bill. The last place in which Kramer had stopped for gas on September first was called Gloversville. From that town, the mountain territory spread north. From that town, he could have gone anywhere in the Adirondacks; he had not signed another bill for gasoline that day. Hawes marked Gloversville with a big circle, and then he consulted the bills once more.

On September eighth, a week later, Kramer had put five gallons of gasoline and a quart of oil into the car. He had made the purchase in a town called Griffins. The rest of the bills for September eighth recorded a southbound trip that eventually led back to the city. The stop in Griffins had apparently been the first stop for gas on the leg home. The town north of Griffins was Bakers Mills. It seemed possible to Hawes that Kramer had gone into the mountains somewhere between Griffins and Bakers Mills. He circled both towns. It seemed likely, too, that Griffins had been the first town he’d hit after coming out of the mountains, gassing up there for the first lap of the trip home.

His calculations could, he admitted, be wrong. But the distance from Gloversville to Griffins was an approximate thirty-five miles. Kramer had filled his tank in Gloversville. Figuring fifteen miles to the gallon, Kramer would have used a little more than two gallons to make the trip from Gloversville to Griffins. Could Hawes safely assume Kramer had then traveled another approximate fifteen miles into the mountains, and an additional fifteen miles for the return trip to Griffins, where he had added five gallons of gas to the tank?

It was possible that Griffins had been his springboard into the mountains. It was a long shot, but it was possible.

One thing was certain. Kramer was either a liar or a habitual lawbreaker. He had told Nancy O’Hara he’d shot a deer.

A check with one of the state’s game protectors revealed that the Adirondack deer season did not start until October twenty-fifth.

“HELLO, JEAN?”

“Yes?”

“This is Lucy Mencken.”

“Oh, hello, Lucy, how are you? I was just thinking about you.”

“Really?”

“I was going to call you for that stuffed-pepper recipe. The one you used for the last buffet.”

“Oh, that. Did you really like them that much?”

“Lucy, they were magnificent!”

“I’m glad. I’ll bring you the recipe…or perhaps…well, the reason I’m calling, Jean, I thought you and the children might like to come over for a swim this afternoon. The water’s just grand, and it looks as if it’s going to be a terribly hot day.”

“Yes, it does. I don’t know, Lucy. Frank said he might be home early…”

“Well, bring him along. Charles is here.”

“He is?”

“Yes. Jean, you know you have a standing invitation to swim here whenever you like. I feel awfully silly having to call to invite you each time.”

“Well…”

“Say you’ll come.”

“What time, Lucy?”

“Whenever you like. Come for lunch, if you can.”

“All right, I’ll be there.”

“Good. I’ll be waiting for you.”

The recorder in the mock telephone-company shack across the highway wound its tapes relentlessly. Arthur Brown, monitoring the calls, was bored to tears. He had brought along a dozen back issues of National Geographic, and he read those now while Lucy and her various contacts talked and talked and talked. Thus far, there had been no threatening calls.

But the telephone of Lucy Mencken was damned busy.

THE TELEPHONE OF Teddy Carella was not busy at all. To Teddy Carella, the telephone was a worthless instrument designed for people who, in one respect alone, were more fortunate than she.

Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute.

Her handicap had been an unfortunate accident of birth, but she was more fortunate than other women in many other respects, and so she never gave much thought to it. Her greatest fortune was her husband, Steve Carella. She would never tire of looking at him, never tire of “listening” to him, never tire of loving him.

On the evening of July eighth, after dinner, she and Carella were sitting in the living room of their River-head apartment watching television. Reading the lips of the performers, Teddy glanced at Carella and realized that she was watching television alone. Her husband was up somewhere on cloud thirteen. She smiled. Her entire face seemed to open when she smiled. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, she embodied the physical attributes of a Venus, which were somehow combined with the impishness of a Puck. Wearing a skirt and halter, she came up out of her chair, went to sit at Carella’s feet, and then gestured with her head toward the television screen, her black eyebrows raised questioningly.

“Huh?” Carella said. “Oh, it’s a good show. Wonderful, wonderful.”

Teddy nodded, burlesquing the expression on his face.

“Really,” Carella said sincerely. “I love summer-replacement shows. They’ve got a lot of spark, a lot of imagination. Wonderful, wonderful.”

She gazed at him steadily.

“Okay,” he admitted, “I was thinking about the case.”

Teddy moved her mouth slightly and then pointed to herself.

“I’ll tell you about it, if you really want to hear it,” he said.

She nodded.

“Well, Hawes is working on it with me.”

Teddy pulled a sour face.

“No, no,” Carella said, “he’s going to be all right. He’s going to be a good man.” He grinned. “Remember. You heard it here first.”

Teddy grinned back.

“I told you about the kill, and the bank accounts, and about Kramer’s victims. We still haven’t located the eleven-hundred-dollar mark, and Lucy Mencken still seems like our best bet for the grand award. But a couple of things keep bothering me.”

Teddy nodded, listening intently.

“Well, for one thing, where did Kramer keep these extortion documents? The photostated copies of the letter, the pictures of Lucy, and whatever he had on this eleven-hundred-dollar mark. Not to mention the big babies in the bank book. We went over his apartment with a fine comb, but there wasn’t anything there. Hey, honey, you should see this redhead he was shacking with. Now, that’s my idea of a woman.”

Teddy frowned menacingly.

“Very pretty,” Carella said. “Very pretty. I think I’ll go back there and make another search for important documents. I think he might have kept them in the bedroom, don’t you?”

Teddy nodded her head in an exaggerated, “Sure he did!”

“Seriously, honey, it bothers me. You’d figure a safety deposit box, wouldn’t you?”

Again, Teddy nodded.

“Well, I put a check on all the banks in the city. No safety deposit boxes for Sy or Seymour Kramer. I got a list of eighty-five S. K. box holders—people with the initials S. K., you understand. Just in case Kramer used a phony name for the box. When a guy picks a phony, he’ll sometimes use his own initials. We called each and every one of those names. They’re all legitimate. So where the hell did Kramer hide the documents?”

Teddy licked an imaginary letter with her tongue.

“A post office box?” Carella asked. “Possibly. We checked his local post office, and he didn’t have one there. But it could be anyplace in the city. I’ll have a check started in the morning. But I don’t think we’ll turn up anything. We didn’t find any unexplained keys in his effects.”

Teddy turned an imaginary knob.

“That’s right,” he said, “some post offices have those little combination knobs on their boxes. It’s a possibility, all right.” He kissed her rapidly. “You’re a helpmeet indeed.”

She was in the process of getting set to kiss him more soundly, when he began shaking his head morosely.

What is it? her eyes asked.

“The other thing that bothers me is that bankbook,” he said. “Now, what the hell kind of extortion money is that? The only sensible entry is the fifteen thousand dollars. But if you were extorting money from me, would you come and ask for six thousand three hundred and twenty dollars and fourteen cents?”

Teddy looked puzzled.

“No, honey, that wasn’t an actual entry,” he explained. “I’m just trying to make a point. Why should Kramer have asked for twenty-one thousand dollars? Isn’t that a crazy figure? Wouldn’t twenty thousand be a more likely figure, assuming you were just picking figures out of the hat? And why nine thousand? Wouldn’t ten be more likely? I don’t get it. I always thought people preferred nice fat round figures.”

Teddy began writing on the air. It took Carella a moment to realize she was doing imaginary addition.

“Sure, sure,” he said. “Twenty-one thousand and nine thousand equal thirty thousand—and that’s a nice round figure. You think maybe he asked his victim for it in two lumps?”

Teddy nodded.

“Then what about the third lump? And why weren’t the first and second lumps in even figures? There’s something funny about it, Teddy. And I keep thinking if we can find Kramer’s bunk, find his goddamn hiding place, we’ll learn a lot about those figures. Those are the biggest deposits he made, honey. We’re chasing around after the small potatoes, and we haven’t even an inkling to the identity of the big one—the one who could have committed murder. Oh, what the hell, I guess Lucy Mencken could have done it, too. She’s been chasing around like a wild woman looking for those pictures of hers. I’d like to get a look at them. I’d like to see her without her space suit.”

Again Teddy frowned.

“You know I love you dearly,” Carella said, grinning. “You’re a wonderful kid.” He paused. “I love you, kid—but, oh, that Mencken’s wife.”

Teddy tried a frown and then burst out laughing. She flung herself into his arms, and he said, “Hey, hey, how’m I ever gonna solve this case if you carry on like that?”

But he had already stopped thinking about the case.

OH, THAT COTTON HAWES.

On Tuesday morning, July ninth, he left the city.

It was truly a beautiful day, not too hot for July, but with the sun shining brightly overhead and a fresh breeze blowing in over the River Harb. He crossed the Hamilton Bridge, at the foot of which a dead blond girl had been found long before Hawes had been transferred to the 87th. The River Harb looked quiet and still that day. He went into the next state, following the Greentree Highway, which bounded the river, heading north. He drove with the top of his Ford down. His jacket rested on the seat beside him. He wore a sports shirt with wide alternating black and red stripes. He wore old Navy gray trousers. Hawes had once been a chief petty officer, and he still had most of his Navy clothes. He wore them often, not because of sentiment but simply because his cop’s salary didn’t allow the range to buy all the clothes he’d have liked to own.

The wind caught at his red hair as he drove along. The sun beat down on his head and shoulders. It was a good day, and he was beginning to feel in a slightly holiday mood, almost forgetting why he was driving to upstate New York. He remembered again when he passed Castleview Prison. He could look across the River Harb into his own state, and there he could see the gray walls of the prison merging with the sheer face of the cliff that dropped to the river’s edge below. Directly opposite, almost on the road he drove, was the castle from which the prison derived its name. The castle had allegedly been built by a Dutch patroom in the days of early settlement. It stared across the river and into the next state, providing an excellent view of the prison walls. And from the prison, the castle could be seen, and so it was called Castleview. He looked at the prison now with only passing interest. It would one day, in the not too distant future, become an integral part of his life, but he did not know that now, and he would not know it until long after the Kramer case had been solved.

On that July morning it only reminded him of crime and punishment, and it brought his thoughts back to the reason for his trip to the Adirondacks. When he stopped for lunch that afternoon, his mind began to wander because, alas, he fell in love.

The girl with whom he fell in love was a waitress.

She wore a white dress and a white cap on her clipped blond hair. She came to his table, and she smiled, and the smile knocked him clear back against the wall.

“Good afternoon, sir,” she said. When he heard her voice, he was hopelessly gone. “Would you care to see a menu?”

“I have a better idea,” Hawes said.

“What’s that?”

“Go back and change into your street clothes. Show me the best restaurant in town, and I’ll buy you lunch there.”

The girl looked at him with a half-amused, half-shocked expression on her face. “I’ve heard of speed demons,” she said, “but you just broke the sound barrier.”

“Life is sweet and short,” Hawes said.

“And you’re getting old,” the girl replied. “Even your hair’s turning white.”

“What do you say?”

“I say I don’t even know your name. I say I couldn’t possibly have lunch with you because I don’t get off until I’m relieved at four. I also say you’re from the city.”

“I am.” Hawes paused. “How’d you know?”

“I’m from the city myself. Majesta.”

“That’s a nice section.”

“It’s fine. Especially when you compare it to this hick village.”

“You here for the summer?”

“Yes. I’m going back to college in the fall. I’m a senior.”

“Have lunch with me,” Hawes said.

“What’s your name?”

“Cotton.”

“Your first name, I mean.”

“That’s it.”

The girl grinned. “Like Cotton Mather?”

“Exactly. Only it’s Cotton Hawes.”

“I’ve never had lunch with a man named Cotton,” the girl said.

“Go tell your boss you have a terrible headache. I’m the only customer in the place, anyway. He won’t miss either of us.”

The girl considered this a moment. “Then what’ll I do the rest of the afternoon?” she asked. “Working helps me kill the time. You can go crazy in this miserable village.”

Hawes smiled. “We’ll figure something out,” he said.

The girl’s name was Polly. She was an anthropology major, and she hoped to go on for her master’s after graduation and then for her doctorate. She wanted to go to Yucatán, she said, to study the Mayan Indians and learn all about the feathered serpent. Hawes learned all this during lunch. She had taken him to a restaurant in the next town, a restaurant that jutted out over a pine-shrouded lake, cantilevering over the waters below. When he told Polly he was a cop, she didn’t believe him, and so he showed her his gun. Polly’s blue eyes opened wide. Her wonderful mouth curved into a long O. She was a deceptively slender girl with a well-rounded bosom and wide hips. She walked with the angular sveltness of a model.

When they finished lunch, there wasn’t much to do in town, and so they had a couple of drinks. The couple of drinks weren’t sufficient on a day that was turning hot, and so they had several more. There was a juke box in the lounge off the restaurant, and so they danced. The afternoon was still very young and a good movie was playing in the local theater, and so they went to see it. And then, because it was time for dinner when they once more came into the daylight, they ate again.

There was a long evening ahead.

Polly lived in a two-room cottage near the restaurant for which she worked. The cottage had a record player and whisky, and so they went there after dinner.

Polly lived alone in the cottage. Polly was a very pretty blond girl with blue eyes, deceptively slender with a well-rounded bosom and wide hips. Polly was an anthropology major who wanted to go to Yucatán. Polly was a city girl who was bored to tears with the village and tickled to death she had met this entertaining stranger with a white streak in his hair and a name like Cotton.

She fell in love with him a little bit, too.

She lived alone in the cottage.

And so to bed.

10.

FROM THE SHORES of the lake and the entrance to Kukabonga Lodge, you could see the green-backed humps of the mountains and the clear blue of the sky beyond. The lodge was small, built of logs that seemed a part of the surrounding greenery. A double flight of wooden steps rose from the flat rock almost at the lake’s edge, rose in tentlike ascent to the front door of the lodge. The front door was a Dutch door, the top half open now as Hawes mounted the stairs. He mounted the stairs wearily and almost dejectedly. He had already checked half a dozen of the lodges scattered through the mountains, doggedly working his way north with Griffins as his starting point. None of the lodge owners remembered a man named Sy Kramer. Most of them admitted that the real hunters didn’t come up until the end of October, when the deer season started. September wasn’t such a good time. One lodge owner admitted his place was full of what he called “cheater hunters” during the early part of September. These, he said, were men who came up with girls after telling their wives they were off to the wilds to hunt.

Hawes was disappointed. The country was lovely, but he had not come up here to admire the scenery. Besides, he was no longer in love and he was becoming rather bored with the continuous slope of the land, the brazen cloudless blue of the sky, the constant chatter of birds and insects. He almost wished he were back in the 87th, where a man couldn’t see the sky for the tenements.

It grows on you, he thought. It’s a hairy bastard, but you get to love it.

“Hello, there,” a voice at the top of the steps said.

Hawes looked up. “Hello,” he said.

The man was standing just behind the lower half of the Dutch door. The visible half of his body was lean and tight, the body of an Indian scout, the body of a man who labored in the sun. The man wore a white tee shirt, which covered the hardness of his muscles like a thin layer of oil. His face was square and angular; it could have been chiseled from the rock that formed a backdrop for the lodge. His eyes were blue and piercing. He smoked a pipe leisurely, and the ease with which he smoked softened the first impression of hard muscularity. His voice, too, in contrast to the wiriness of his body, was soft and gentle, with a mild twang.

“Welcome to Kukabonga,” the man said. “I’m Jerry Fielding.”

“I’m Cotton Hawes. How do you do?”

Fielding opened the lower half of the door and stepped onto the landing, extending a browned hand.

“Glad to know you,” he said, and they shook. Fielding’s eyes darted to the white streak in Hawes’s otherwise red hair. “That a lightning burn?” he asked.

“No,” Hawes said. “I was knifed. The hair grew in white.”

Fielding nodded. “Fellow up here got hit by lightning. Like Ahab. He’s got a streak something like that. How’d you get knifed?”

“I’m a cop,” Hawes said. He was reaching into his back pocket for identification when Fielding stopped him.

“You don’t need it,” he said. “I spotted the shoulder holster when you were bending as you came up the steps.”

Hawes smiled. “We can use a man like you,” he said. “Come on down to the city.”

“I like it up here,” Fielding said graciously. “Who you chasing, Mr. Hawes?”

“A ghost,” Hawes said.

“Not likely to find many of those around here. Come on inside. I’ve been hankering for a drink, and I hate like hell to drink alone. Or aren’t you a drinking man?”

“I can use one,” Hawes said.

“Of course,” Fielding said, as they went into the cabin together, “I know cops aren’t allowed to drink on duty—but I’m not likely to write a letter to the commissioner. Are you?”

“I hardly ever write letters to the commissioner,” Hawes said.

“Didn’t think you did,” Fielding answered.

They were inside the lodge now. A huge stone fireplace dominated the room. Flanking the fireplace, in the same pattern as the steps outside, was another double set of stairs leading, apparently, to rooms just below the peak of the roof. There were four doorways off the main room. One of them was open, and Hawes could see through it into a kitchen.

“What’ll it be?” Fielding asked.

“Scotch neat.”

“I like a man who drinks his whisky neat,” Fielding said, grinning. “It tells me he likes his coffee strong and his women soft. Am I right?”

“You’re right,” Hawes said.

“Tell you something else about yourself, Mr. Hawes,” Fielding said. “I’ll bet you’ve never put a bullet in an animal or a hook in a fish unless you were hungry.”

“That’s true,” Hawes said.

“Ever shot a man?”

“No.”

“Not even in the line of duty?”

“No.”

“Were you in the service?”

“Yes.”

“See action?”

“Yes.”

“And you never shot anyone?”

“I was in the Navy,” Hawes said.

“What rank?”

“Chief petty officer.”

“Doing what?”

“Torpedoes,” Hawes said.

“On what?”

“A P.T. boat.”

“Chief petty officer on a P.T. boat?” Fielding asked. “You were practically second in command, weren’t you?”

“Practically,” Hawes said. “The skipper was a j.g. Were you in the Navy?”

“No, but my dad was. He talked about it a lot. He was a regular Navy man, you know. A commander when he died. He’s the one built this lodge. He used to come up here whenever he had leave. He loved the place. I guess I do, too.” Fielding paused reflectively. “Dad died in Norfolk, behind a desk. I guess he’d have liked to die one of two places. Either on a ship, or here at the lodge. But he died in Norfolk, behind a desk.” Fielding shook his head.

“You own the lodge now, Mr. Fielding?” Hawes asked.

“Yes.”

“I guess I came to the wrong place,” Hawes said.

Fielding looked up. He had poured the whisky, and he brought it to Hawes and then said, “How do you mean?”

“I didn’t realize it was a private lodge. I thought you took guests.”

“I do. Five at a time. It’s my living. I guess I’m what you’d call a bum.”

“But you don’t have any guests now?”

“Nope. All alone this week. I’m mighty glad to see you.”

“Are you open all year round?”

“All year round,” Fielding said. “Cheers.”

“Drink hearty.”

They drank.

“Were you open around September first of last year?” Hawes asked.

“Yep. Had a full house.”

Hawes put down the shot glass. “Was one of your guests a man named Sy Kramer?”

“Did he do any hunting?”

“He sure did. Out every day. Brought back all kinds of stuff.”

“Deer?”

“No, the deer season doesn’t start until October. But he got crows and vermin—and I think he got a red fox.”

“Did he spend a lot of money while he was here, Mr. Fielding?”

“On what?” Fielding asked. “Nothing to spend money on in the mountains.”

“Was he carrying a lot of cash?”

“If he was, he didn’t say anything about it to me.”

“Did he come up alone?”

“Yep. I sometimes get them in pairs or in threes, or sometimes a party of five rents the whole lodge. This isn’t a whorehouse, Mr. Hawes. I only take men who want to hunt…or fish. I’ve got my own cabin back of the lodge. I entertain girls there frequently…but that’s private enterprise. I’m intruding on nobody’s morals but my own. Any man is free to do whatever the hell he wants to, I figure, but if he comes to my lodge, he comes to hunt or fish. He can screw around on his own time.”

“Kramer came up alone, then?”

“They all did that trip. Isn’t very often that happens, but this time it did. Not one of the five knew each other before they got here.”

“You had five guests the week Kramer was here?”

“Yep, and all from the city. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. One of them checked in on a Wednesday, and he left before the others. He was a good hunter, that one. Fellow named Phil Kettering. Hated to leave. I remember on the Wednesday he checked out, he got up real early in the morning, went off into the woods to hunt a little before he started the trip home. Paid me, took all his bags with him, said he wouldn’t be back for lunch, but he just had to get in a little more hunting before driving back. A good hunter, that one.”

“How about the others?”

“Kramer was so-so. The other three…” Fielding rolled his eyes skyward.

“No good?”

“Bunglers. You know. Tripped over their own feet. I guess they were all amateurs.”

“Young then?”

“Two of them were. Let me see if I can remember their names. One of them had a real queer name, foreign sounding. Just give me a minute…Do you want another drink?”

“Thanks, no,” Hawes said.

“Will you be staying for dinner?”

“I don’t think so. Thanks a lot.”

“Be a pleasure to have you.”

“I really have to get back to the city. I’m overdue now.”

“Well, if you want to stay, speak up. Won’t be any trouble at all. Gets lonely as hell here when the house is empty. Now, let me see. This fellow’s name. José? Was that it? Something Spanish like that…but not his second name. That was hundred-per-cent pure white American Protestant. Joaquim! That was it. Joaquim. That’s the way it’s pronounced, even though you spell it with a J. Ho-ah-keem. Joaquim Miller, that was it. Some combination, huh?”

“He was one of the young ones, is that right?”

“In his thirties. Married fellow. An electrical engineer, I think. Or an electronics engineer, one of the two. His wife had gone to California to visit her mother, who he didn’t get along with. So he came up here to hunt. God, he should have stayed in the city. I don’t think he liked the hunting at all. Didn’t get a damn thing but a cold in his head.”

“How about the others?”

“The other young fellow was about forty, forty-two, pretty well-fixed. Partner in an advertising firm, I think. I got the feeling his wife and him were headed for the divorce courts. I think his getting away from her for a week was a sort of a trial separation. That was the feeling I got, anyway.”

“What was his name?”

“Frank…something. Just a minute. Frank…Reuther, Ruther, that was it Without an E. Just Ruther. That was his name.”

“And the old man? What about him?”

“Sixtyish. Tired businessman. Got the feeling he’d tried everything from skiing to water polo. This was his week to try hunting. It was quite a week, I’m telling you.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing, except that Kettering got a little bored with the beginners’ talk, that’s all. He and Kramer hit it off pretty well because he had some inkling of what it was all about. These other fellows, well. Not that they couldn’t shoot. They could shoot, all right. Any damn fool can hit a tin can on a back fence. But shooting and hunting are two different things. These men just weren’t hunters.”

“Was there any trouble that week?”

“How do you mean, trouble?”

“Any fights? Arguments?”

“Yes. One. Kramer got into a little tiff with one of the fellows.”

“Which one?” Hawes asked, moving quickly to the edge of his seat.

“Frank Ruther. The advertising man.”

“What was the argument about?”

“Clams.”

“What?”

“Clams. Kramer was talking about how good steamed clams were. Ruther told him to please change the subject because it made him ill just to think about clams. We were all at the dinner table, you see. Well, Kramer wouldn’t change the subject. He began telling about how to prepare them, and how to serve them, and I guess Ruther got a little sick.”

“What happened?”

“He got up and yelled, ‘Will you shut your goddamn mouth?’ He was a little touchy to begin with, you understand. Either that divorce theory of mine, or something else. Whatever it was, he was real touchy.”

“Any blows exchanged?”

“No. Kramer told Ruther he could go straight to hell. Ruther just left the table.”

“Who’d the other men side with?”

“Funny thing there. I told you Kettering and Kramer had hit it off pretty well, mainly because Kramer knew a little bit about hunting. Well, this was the day before Kettering was supposed to leave. He got pretty p.o.’d at Kramer. Told him he should have had the decency to shut up when he saw the talk was making another man sick. Kramer told him to go to hell, too.”

“Sounds like a lovely fellow, Kramer does.”

“Well, I think he knew he was on the wrong end of the argument. Lots of fellows, when they know they’re wrong, they just plunge ahead and try to make it right by making it wronger.”

“What happened when he told Kettering to go to hell?”

“Kettering got up from the table and said, ‘Would you care to repeat that outside, Sy?’ The other fellows—Miller and the old man—finally cooled off Kettering.”

“Was Kramer ready to fight?”

“Sure. He was committed. The only way he could stop making an ass of himself was to make a bigger ass of himself. But I think he was glad Miller and the old man stepped in.”

“What’s the old man’s name?”

“Murphy. John Murphy.”

“He from the city, too?”

“Sure.” Fielding paused. “A suburb, but that’s the city, ain’t it?”

“This thing between Kramer and Kettering? Did Kettering seem very angry?”

“Very. It lasted through the next day. He didn’t even say good-by to Kramer when he went off into the woods.”

“He did say good-by to the other men, though?”

“Yes.”

“Then what happened?”

“He loaded his bags into the trunk of his car, and took off. Drove his car around the lake a ways. Said he’d head for the highway as soon as he’d bagged a few that morning. He’d come down for breakfast very early. The other men went off hunting about an hour later.”

“Kramer go with them?”

“No. He went into the woods, but alone. He was pretty surly that morning. He resented Kettering’s interference, and I guess he felt the other men had sided with Ruther, too. In any case, Miller and Murphy went with Ruther. Kramer went alone.”

“Can we get back to Kettering for a moment?”

“Sure. I’ve got all the time in the world. Sure you won’t stay for dinner?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. Did Kettering threaten Kramer in any way?”

“You mean…threaten his life?”

“Yes.”

“No, he didn’t. Why?”

“Do you think…do you think his anger was large enough to last from September to now?”

“I don’t know. He was pretty damn sore at Kramer. He’d have beat him up sure if Kramer had stepped outside with him.”

“Was he angry enough to kill Kramer?”

Fielding reflected upon this for a moment “Kettering,” he said slowly, “was a good hunter because he liked to kill. I don’t hold with that kind of thinking, but that didn’t make him any less a good hunter.” Fielding paused. “Has Sy Kramer been killed?”

“Yes,” Hawes said.

“When?”

“June twenty-sixth.”

“And you think possibly Kettering waited all this time to get even for an argument that happened in September?”

“I don’t know. You said Kettering was a hunter. Hunters are patient people, aren’t they?”

“Kettering was patient, yes. How was Kramer killed?”

“He was shot from an automobile.”

“Mmm. Kettering was a damn good shot. I don’t know.”

“I don’t, either.” Hawes rose. “Thank you for the drink, Mr. Fielding. And thank you for the talk. You’ve been very helpful.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” Fielding said. “Where are you off to now?”

“Back to the city,” Hawes said.

“And then?”

“And then we’ll talk to the four men who were here with Kramer. It’d save us a little time if you had their addresses.”

“I’ve got registry cards on all of them,” Fielding said. “It doesn’t take a cop to know which one you’ll look up first.”

“No?” Hawes said, grinning.

“No, sir. If I were Phil Kettering, I’d start getting a damn good alibi ready.”

11.

SAND’S SPIT WAS A suburb of the city.

There was a time when the long finger of land served only two interests: that of the potato farmers and that of the East Shore estate owners. The farms covered most of the peninsula, rushing east and west almost to the water’s edge. The estates crowded the choice waterfront sites. The farmers sowed their crops and the estate owners sowed their oats. The farmers were interested in reaping, and the estate owners were interested in sleeping. Day and night, the estates reverberated with the sound of revelry. The current Stem musical star, the tight-lipped star of silent films, producers, directors, artists, tennis players, all were entertained daily on the estates. The stars enjoyed the good clean fun on the estates. The farmers toiled in the potato fields.

And sometimes, after the sun had dropped its molten fire into the black waters of the ocean, when the potato fields rested black and silent under a pale moon, the farmers would walk down to the beach with blankets. And there they would lie on the sand and look up at the stars.

And sometimes, after the sun had dropped behind the Australian pines lining the farthermost hundred acres of an estate, after the guests had drunk their cognac and smoked their cigars, the estate owners would walk down to the beach with their guests. And there they would lie on the stars and look down at the sand.