Learning to Kill: Stories

Small Homicide

The four cop stories that follow were all published in Manhunt. The first three were published in 1953, the last one in 1954. The first two were by Evan Hunter, the next two by Richard Marsten. Go figure.

When I wrote these stories, Ed McBain hadn’t been born yet, and I knew nothing about cops or police routine except what I had learned from Dragnet on radio and television. I forget what Manhunt used to pay, but it couldn’t have been more than two or three cents a word, and that wasn’t enough to allow research. Whatever verisimilitude exists in these stories is entirely due to sleight of hand — and the fact that I once sold lobsters by telephone. They follow now in chronological order, no further commercial breaks.

Her face was small and chubby, the eyes blue and innocently rounded, but seeing nothing. Her body rested on the seat of the wooden bench, one arm twisted awkwardly beneath her soft little body.

The candles near the altar flickered and cast their dancing shadows on her face. There was a faded pink blanket wrapped around her, and against the whiteness of her throat were the purple bruises that told us she’d been strangled.

Her mouth was open, exposing two small teeth and the beginnings of a third.

She was no more than eight months old.

The church was quiet and immense, with early morning sunlight lighting the stained glass windows. Dust motes filtered down the long, slanting columns of sunlight, and Father Barron stood tall and darkly somber at the end of the pew.

“This is the way you found her, Father?” I asked.

“Yes. Just that way.” The priest’s eyes were a deep brown against the chalky whiteness of his face. “I didn’t touch her.”

Pat Travers scratched his jaw and stood up, reaching for the pad in his back pocket. His mouth was set in a tight, angry line. Pat had three children of his own. “What time was this, Father?”

“At about five thirty. We have a six o’clock mass, and I came out to see that the altar was prepared. Our altar boys go to school, you understand, and they usually arrive at the last minute. I generally attend to the altar myself.”

“No sexton?” Pat asked.

“Yes, we have a sexton, but he doesn’t arrive until about eight every morning. He comes earlier on Sunday mornings.”

I nodded while Pat jotted the information in his pad.

“How did you happen to see her, Father?”

“I was walking to the back of the church to open the doors. I saw something in the pew, and I... well, at first I thought it was just a package someone had forgotten. When I came closer, I saw it was... was a baby.” He sighed deeply and shook his head.

“The doors were locked, Father?”

“No. No, they’re never locked. This is God’s house, you know. They were simply closed. I was walking back to open them. I usually open them before the first mass in the morning.”

“They were unlocked all night?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I see.” I looked down at the baby again. “You wouldn’t know who she is, would you, Father?”

Father Barron shook his head again. “I’m afraid not. She may have been baptized here, but infants all look alike, you know. It would be different if I saw her every Sunday. But...” He spread his hands wide in a helpless gesture.

Pat nodded, and kept looking at the dead child.

“We’ll have to send some of the boys to take pictures and prints, Father. I hope you don’t mind. And we’ll have to chalk up the pew. It shouldn’t take too long, and we’ll have the body out as soon as possible.”

Father Barron looked down at the dead baby. He crossed himself and said, “God have mercy on her soul.”

We filed a report back at headquarters, and then sent out for some coffee. Pat had already detailed the powder and flashbulb boys, and there wasn’t much we could do until they were through and the body had been autopsied.

I was sipping at my hot coffee when the buzzer on my desk sounded. I pushed down the toggle and said, “Levine here.”

“Dave, want to come into my office a minute? This is the lieutenant.”

“Sure thing,” I told him. I put down the cup, said, “Be right back” to Pat, and headed for the Old Man’s office.

He was sitting behind his desk with our report in his hands. He glanced up when I came in and said, “Sit down, Dave. Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m holding it back from the papers, Dave. If this breaks, we’ll have every mother in the city telephoning us. You know what that means.”

“You want it fast.”

“I want it damned fast. I’m pulling six men from other jobs to help you and Pat. I don’t want to go to another precinct for help because the bigger this gets, the better its chances of breaking into print. I want it quiet and small, and I want it fast.” He stopped and shook his head, and then muttered, “Goddamn thing.”

“We’re waiting for the body to come in now,” I said. “As soon as we get some reports, we may be able to learn something.”

“What did it look like to you?”

“Strangulation. It’s there in the report.”

The lieutenant glanced at the typewritten sheet in his hands, mumbled “Uhm,” and then said, “While you’re waiting, you’d better start checking the missing persons calls.”

“Pat’s doing that now, sir.”

“Good, good. You know what to do, Dave. Just get me an answer to it fast.”

“We’ll do our best, sir.”

He leaned back in his leather chair. “A little girl, huh?” He shook his head. “Damn shame. Damn shame.” He kept shaking his head and looking at the report, and then he dropped the report on his desk and said, “Here’re the boys you’ve got to work with.” He handed me a typewritten list of names. “All good, Dave. Get me results.”

“I’ll try, sir,” I said.

Pat had a list of calls on his desk when I went outside again. I picked it up and glanced through it rapidly. A few older kids were lost, and there had been the usual frantic pleas from mothers who should have watched their kids more carefully in the first place.

“What’s this?” I asked. I put my forefinger alongside a call clocked in at eight fifteen. A Mrs. Wilkes had phoned to say she’d left her baby outside in the carriage and the carriage was gone.

“They found the kid,” Pat said. “Her older daughter had taken the kid for a walk. There’s nothing there, Dave.”

“The Old Man wants action, Pat. The photos come in yet?”

“Over there.” He indicated the pile of glossy photographs on his desk. I picked up the stack and thumbed through it. They’d shot the baby from every conceivable angle, and there were two good close-ups of her face. I fanned the pictures out on my desktop and buzzed the lab. I recognized Caputo’s voice at once.

“Any luck, Cappy?”

“That you, Dave?”

“Yep.”

“You mean on the baby?”

“Yeah.”

“The boys brought in a whole slew of stuff. A pew collects a lot of prints, Dave.”

“Anything we can use?”

“I’m running them through now. If we get anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Fine. I want the baby’s footprints taken, and a stat sent to every hospital in the state.”

“Okay. It’s going to be tough if the baby was born outside, though.”

“Maybe we’ll be lucky. Put the stat on the machine, will you? And tell them we want immediate replies.”

“I’ll have it taken care of, Dave.”

“Good. Cappy, we’re going to need all the help we can get. So...”

“I’ll do all I can.”

“Thanks. Let me know if you get anything.”

“I will. So long, Dave, I’ve got work.”

He clicked off, and I leaned back and lit a cigarette. Pat picked up one of the baby’s photos and studied it glumly.

“When they get him, they should cut off his...”

“He’ll get the chair,” I said. “That’s for sure.”

“I’ll pull the switch. Personally. Just ask me. Just ask me and I’ll do it.”

I nodded. “Except one thing, Pat.”

“What’s that?”

“We got to catch him first.”

The baby was stretched out on the big white table when I went down to see Doc Edwards. A sheet covered the corpse, and Doc was busy filling out a report. I looked over his shoulder:

Doc Edwards looked up from the typewriter.

“Not nice, Dave.”

“No, not nice at all.”

I saw that he was ready to type in the “Result of chemical analysis” space.

“Anything else on her?”

“Not much. Dried tears on her face. Urine on her abdomen, buttocks, and genitals. Traces of a zinc oxide ointment, and petroleum jelly there, too. That’s about it.”

“Time of death?”

“I’d put it at about three A.M. last night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You want a guess?”

“Sure.”

“Somebody doesn’t like his sleep to be disturbed by a crying kid. That’s my guess.”

I said, “Nobody likes his sleep disturbed, Doc. What’s the zinc oxide and petroleum jelly for? That normal?”

“Yeah, sure. Lots of mothers use it. Mostly for minor irritations. Urine burn, diaper rash, that sort of thing.”

“I see.”

“This shouldn’t be too tough, Dave. You know who the kid is yet?”

“We’re working on that now.”

“Well, good luck.”

“Thanks.”

I turned to go, and Doc Edwards began pecking at the typewriter again, completing the autopsy report.

There was good news waiting for me back at the precinct. Pat came over with a smile on his face, and a thick sheet of paper in his hands.

“Here’s the ticket,” he said.

I took the paper, and looked at it. It was the photostat of a birth certificate.

This certifies that Louise Ann Dreiser was born to Alice Dreiser in this hospital at 4:15 P.M. on the tenth day of November, 1952. Weight 7 lbs. 6 ozs. In witness whereof, the said hospital has caused this certificate to be issued, properly signed and the seal of the hospital hereunto affixed.

“Here’s how they got it,” Pat said, handing me another stat. I looked at it quickly. It was the reverse side of the birth certificate. There were two tiny footprints on it, a left foot and a right foot. Beneath those:

There were several more good reasons why a birth certificate should be kept in the sugar bowl, and then below that the address where the official registration was filed.

“Alice Dreiser,” I said.

“That’s the mother. Prints and all. I’ve already sent a copy down to Cappy to check against the ones they lifted from the pew.”

“Fine. Pick one of the boys from the list the Old Man gave us, Pat. Tell him to get whatever he can on Alice Dreiser and her husband. They have to be sailors or relations to get admitted to a naval hospital, don’t they?”

“Yeah. You’ve got to prove dependency.”

“Fine. Get the guy’s last address and we’ll try to run down the woman, or him, or both. Get whoever you pick to call right away, will you?”

“Right. Why pick anyone? I’ll make the call myself.”

“No, I want you to check the phone book for Alice Dreisers. In the meantime, I’ll be looking over the baby’s garments.”

“You’ll be in the lab?”

“Yeah. Buzz me, Pat.”

“Right.”

Caputo had the garments separated and tagged when I got there.

“You’re not going to get much out of these,” he told me.

“No luck, huh?”

He held out the pink blanket. “Black River Mills. A big trade name. You can probably buy it in any retail shop in the city.” He picked up the small pink sweater with the pearl buttons. “Toddler’s Inc. Ditto. The socks have no markings at all. The undershirt came from Gilman’s here in the city. It’s the largest department store in the world, so you can imagine how many of these they sell every day. The cotton pajamas were bought there, too.”

“No shoes?”

“No shoes.”

“What about the diaper?”

“What about it? It’s a plain diaper. No label. You got any kids, Dave?”

“One.”

“You ever see a diaper with a label?”

“I don’t recall seeing any.”

“If you did, it wasn’t in it long. Diapers take a hell of a beating, Dave.”

“Maybe this one came from a diaper service.”

“Maybe. You can check that”

“Safety pins?”

“Two. No identifying marks. Look like five-and-dime stuff.”

“Any prints?”

“Yeah. There are smudged prints on the pins, but there’s a good thumbprint on one of the pajama snaps.”

“Whose?”

“It matches the right thumbprint on the stat you sent down. Mrs. Dreiser’s.”

“Uh-huh. Did you check her prints against the ones from the pew?”

“Nothing, Dave. None are hers anyway.”

“Okay, Cappy. Thanks a lot”

Cappy shrugged. “I get paid,” he said. He grinned and waved as I walked out and headed upstairs again. I met Pat in the hallway, coming down to the lab after me.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I called the Naval Hospital. They gave me the last address they had for the guy. His name is Carl Dreiser, lived at 831 East 217th Street, Bronx, when the baby was born.”

“How come?”

“He was a yeoman, working downtown on Church Street. Lived with his wife uptown, got an allotment, you know the story.”

“Yeah. So?”

“I sent Artie to check at that address. He should be calling in soon now.”

“What about the sailor?”

“I called the Church Street office, spoke to the Commanding Officer, Captain...” He consulted a slip of paper. “Captain Thibot. This Dreiser was working there back in November. He got orders in January, reported aboard the USS Hanfield, DD 981 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on January fifth of this year.”

“Where is he now?”

“That’s the problem, Dave.”

“What kind of problem?”

“The Hanfield was sunk off Pyongyang in March.”

“Oh.”

“Dreiser is listed as killed in action.”

I didn’t say anything. I nodded, and waited.

“A telegram was sent to Mrs. Dreiser at the Bronx address. The War Department says the telegram was delivered and signed for by Alice Dreiser.”

“Let’s wait for Artie to call in,” I said.

We ordered more coffee and waited. Pat had checked the phone book and there’d been no listing for either Carl or Alice Dreiser. He’d had a list typed of every Dreiser in the city. It ran longer than my arm.

“Why didn’t you ask the Navy what his parents’ names are?” I said.

“I did. Both parents are dead.”

“Who does he list as next of kin?”

“His wife. Alice Dreiser.”

“Great.”

In a half hour, Artie called in. There was no Alice Dreiser living at the Bronx address. The landlady said she’d lived there until April and had left without giving a forwarding address. Yes, she’d had a baby daughter. I told Artie to keep the place staked out, and then buzzed George Tabin and told him to check the Post Office Department for any forwarding address.

When he buzzed back in twenty minutes, he said, “Nothing, Dave. Nothing at all.”

We split the available force of men, and I managed to wangle four more men from the lieutenant. Half of us began checking on the Dreisers listed in the phone directories, and the rest of us began checking the diaper services.

The first diaper place I called on had a manager who needed only a beard to look like Santa Claus. He greeted me affably and offered all his assistance. Unfortunately, they’d. never had a customer named Alice Dreiser.

At my fourth stop, I got what looked like a lead.

I spoke directly to the vice president, and he listened intently.

“Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps.” He was a big man, with a wide waist, a gold watch chain straddling it. He leaned over and pushed down on his intercom buzzer.

“Yes, sir?”

“Bring in a list of our customers. Starting with November of 1952.”

“Sir?”

“Starting with November of 1952.”

“Yes, sir.”

We talked about the diaper business in general until the list came, and then he handed it to me and I began checking off the names. There were a hell of a lot of names on it. For the month of December, I found a listing for Alice Dreiser. The address given was the one we’d checked in the Bronx.

“Here she is,” I said. “Can you get her records?”

The vice president looked at the name. “Certainly, just a moment.” He buzzed his secretary again, told her what he wanted, and she brought the yellow file cards in a few moments later. The cards told me that Alice Dreiser had continued the diaper service through February. She’d been late on her February payment, and had canceled service in March. She’d had the diapers delivered for the first week in March, but had not paid for them. She did not notify the company that she was moving. She had not returned the diapers they’d sent her that first week in March. The company did not know where she was.

“If you find her,” the vice president told me, “I’d like to know. She owes us money.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

The reports on the Dreisers were waiting for me back at the precinct. George had found a couple who claimed to be Carl’s aunt and uncle. They knew he was married. They gave Alice’s maiden name as Grant. They said she lived somewhere on Walton Avenue in the Bronx, or she had lived there when Carl first met her. No, they hadn’t seen either Alice or Carl for months. Yes, they knew the Dreisers had had a daughter. They’d received an announcement card. They had never seen the baby.

Pat and I looked up the Grants on Walton Avenue, found a listing for Peter Grant, and went there together.

A bald man in his undershirt, his suspenders hanging over his trousers, opened the door.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Police officers,” I said. “We’d like to ask a few questions.”

“What about? Let me see your badges.”

Pat and I flashed our buzzers and the bald man studied them.

“What kind of questions do you want to ask?”

“Are you Peter Grant?”

“Yeah, that’s right. What’s this all about?”

“May we come in?”

“Sure, come on in.” We followed him into the apartment, and he motioned us to chairs in the small living room. “Now, what is it?” he asked.

“Your daughter is Alice Dreiser?”

“Yes,” he said, his face unchanged.

“Do you know where she lives?”

“No.”

“Come on, mister,” Pat said. “You know where your daughter lives.”

“I don’t,” Grant said, “and I don’t give a damn, either.”

“Why? What’s wrong, mister?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. It’s none of your business, anyway.”

“Her daughter had her neck broken,” I said. “It’s our business.”

“I don’t give a...” he started to say. He stopped then and looked straight ahead of him, his brows pulled together into a tight frown. “I’m sorry. I still don’t know where she lives.”

“Did you know she was married?”

“To that sailor. Yes, I knew.”

“And you knew she had a daughter?”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Grant said.

“What’s funny, mister?” Pat said.

“Did I know she had a daughter? Why the hell do you think she married the sailor? Don’t make me laugh!”

“When was your daughter married, Mr. Grant?”

“Last September.” He saw the look on my face, and added, “Go ahead, you count it. The kid was born in November.”

“Have you seen her since the marriage?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen the baby?”

“No.”

“Do you have a picture of your daughter?”

“I think so. Is she in trouble? Do you think she did it?”

“We don’t know who did it yet.”

“Maybe she did,” Grant said softly. “She just maybe did. I’ll get you the picture.”

He came back in a few minutes with the picture of a plain girl wearing a cap and gown. She had light eyes and straight hair, and her face was intently serious.

“She favors her mother,” Grant said. “God rest her soul.”

“Your wife is dead?”

“Yes. That picture was taken when Alice graduated from high school.”

“May we have it?”

He hesitated and said, “It’s the only one I’ve got. She... she didn’t take many pictures. She wasn’t a very... pretty girl.”

“We’ll return it.”

“All right,” he said. His eyes were troubled. “She... if she’s in trouble, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“We’ll let you know.”

“A girl... makes mistakes sometimes.” He stood up abruptly. “Let me know.”

We had copies of the photo made, and then we staked out every church in the neighborhood where the baby was found. Pat and I covered the Church of the Holy Mother, because we figured the woman was most likely to come back there.

We didn’t talk much. There is something about a church of any denomination that makes a man think rather than talk. Pat and I knocked off at about seven every night, and the night boys took over then. We were back on the job at seven in the morning.

It was a week before she came in.

She stopped at the font in the rear of the church, dipped her hand in the holy water, and crossed herself. Then she walked to the altar, stopping before a statue of the Virgin Mary, lit a candle, and kneeled down before it.

“That’s her,” I said.

“Let’s go,” Pat answered.

“Not here. Outside.”

Pat’s eyes locked with mine for an instant. “Sure,” he said.

She kneeled before the statue for a long time, and then got to her feet slowly, drying her eyes. She walked up the aisle, stopped at the font, crossed herself, and then walked outside.

We followed her out, catching up with her at the corner. I walked over on one side of her, and Pat on the other.

“Mrs. Dreiser?” I asked.

She stopped walking. “Yes?”

I showed my buzzer. “Police officers,” I said. “We’d like to ask some questions.”

She stared at my face for a long time. She drew a trembling breath then, and said, “I killed her. I... Carl was dead, you see. I... I guess that was it. It wasn’t right... his getting killed, I mean. And she was crying.”

“Want to tell it downtown, ma’am?” I asked.

She nodded blankly. “Yes, that was it. She just cried all the time, not knowing that I was crying inside. You don’t know how I cried inside. Carl... he was all I had. I... I couldn’t stand it anymore. I told her to shut up and when she didn’t, I... I...”

“Come on along, ma’am,” I said.

“I brought her to the church.”

She nodded, remembering it all now.

“She was innocent, you know. So I brought her to the church. Did you find her there?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “That’s where we found her.”

She seemed pleased. A small smile covered her mouth and she said, “I’m glad you found her.”

She told the story again to the lieutenant.

Pat and I checked out, and on the way to the subway, I asked him, “Do you still want to pull the switch, Pat?”

He didn’t answer.

Still Life

It was two in the morning, raining to beat all hell outside, and it felt good to be sitting opposite Johnny Knowles sipping hot coffee. Johnny had his jacket off, with his sleeves rolled up and the .38 Police Special hanging in its shoulder clip. He had a deck of cards spread in front of him at the table, and he was looking for a black queen to put on his king of diamonds. I was sitting there looking past Johnny at the rain streaming down the barred window. It had been a dull night, and I was half dozing, the hot steam from the coffee cup haloing my head. When the phone began ringing, Johnny looked up from his solitaire.

“I’ll get it,” I said.

I put down the cup, swung my legs out from under the table, and picked up the receiver.

“Hannigan,” I said.

Johnny watched me as I listened.

“Yep,” I said, “I’ve got it, Barney. Right away.”

I hung up and Johnny looked at me quizzically.

“Young girl,” I said. “Gun Hill Road and Bronxwood Avenue. Looks bad, Johnny.”

Johnny stood up quickly and began shrugging into his jacket.

“Some guy found her lying on the sidewalk, and he called in. Barney took it.”

“Hurt bad?” Johnny asked.

“The guy who called in thinks she’s dead.”

We checked out a car and headed for Gun Hill Road. Johnny was quiet as he drove, and I listened to the swick-swack of the windshield wipers, staring through the rain-streaked glass at the glistening wet asphalt outside. When we turned off White Plains Avenue, Johnny said, “Hell of a night.”

“Yeah.”

He drove past the Catholic church, past the ball field belonging to the high school, and then slowed down as we cruised up to the school itself.

“There he is,” Johnny said.

He motioned with his head, and I saw a thin man standing on the sidewalk, flagging us down. He stood hunched against the rain, his fedora pulled down over his ears. Johnny pulled up alongside him, and I opened the door on my side. A sheet of rain washed into the car and the guy stuck in his head.

“Right around the corner,” he said.

“Get in,” I told him. I moved over to make room, and he squeezed onto the seat, bringing the clinging wetness of the rain with him. Johnny turned the corner, and the old man pointed through the windshield. “There,” he said. “Right there.”

We pulled the car over to the curb, and Johnny got out from behind the wheel before the man next to me had moved. The man shrugged, sighed, and stepped out into the rain. I followed close behind him.

The girl was sprawled against the iron bar fence that surrounded the school. She’d been wearing a raincoat, but it had been forcibly ripped down the front, pulling all the buttons loose. Her blouse had been torn down the center, her bra cruelly ripped from her breasts. Johnny played his flash over her, and we saw the ugly welts covering her wet skin. Her skirt and underclothing had been shredded, too, and she lay grotesque in death, her legs twisted at a curious widespread angle.

“Better get a blanket, Mike,” Johnny said.

I nodded and walked to the car. I took a blanket from the back, and when I walked over to the girl again, Johnny was getting the man’s name and address.

“The ambulance should be along soon,” I said.

“Yeah.” Johnny closed his pad, took the blanket and draped it over the girl. The rain thudded at it, turning it into a sodden, black mass on the pavement.

“How’d you find her?” I asked the man.

“I been workin’ the four to twelve at my plant,” he said, “out on Long Island. I usually get home about this time when I got that shift. I live right off Bronxwood, get off the train at Gun Hill.”

“You were walking home when you found the girl?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’d you do then?”

“I walked clear back to White Plains Avenue, found an open candy store, and called you fellows. Then I came back to wait for you.”

“What’d you tell the man who answered the phone?”

“All about the girl. That I’d found her. That’s all.”

“Did you say she was dead?”

“Well, yes. Yes, I did.” He stared down at the girl. “My guess is she was raped.” He looked at me for confirmation, but I said nothing.

“I think you can go home now, sir,” Johnny said. “Thanks a lot for reporting this. We’ll call you if you’re needed.”

“Glad to help,” the old man said. He nodded at us briefly, and then glanced down at the girl under the blanket again. He shook his head, and started off down Bronxwood Avenue. We watched him go, the rain slicing at the pavement around us. Johnny looked off down the street, watching for the ambulance.

“Might be rape at that,” he said.

I pulled my collar up against the rain.

“Yeah.”

We got the autopsy report at six that morning. We’d already found a wallet in the dead girl’s coat pocket, asking anyone to call a Mrs. Iris Ferroni in case of accident. We called Mrs. Ferroni, assuming her to be the girl’s mother, and she’d identified the body as that of her daughter, Jean Ferroni. She’d almost collapsed after that, and we were holding off questioning her until she pulled herself together.

Johnny brought the report in and put it next to my coffee cup on the table.

I scanned it quickly, my eyes skimming to the cause of death space. In neat typescript, it read: SHARP INSTRUMENT ENTERING HEART FROM BELOW LEFT BREAST.

I flipped the page and looked at the attached detailed report. The girl had been raped, all right, consecutively, brutally.

I turned back to the first page and looked at it once more. My eyes lingered on one item.

Burial Permit No. 63-7501-H

“Now she’s just a number,” I said. “Sixteen-year-old kid with a grave number.”

“She was seventeen,” Johnny said.

“That makes a big difference.”

“I think we can talk to her mother now,” Johnny said.

I rubbed my forehead and said, “Sure. Why don’t you bring her in?”

Johnny nodded and went out, to return in a few minutes with a small, dark woman in a plain black coat. The woman’s eyes were red, and her lips trembled with her grief. She still looked dazed from the shock of having seen her daughter with the life torn from her.

“This is Detective-Sergeant Hannigan,” Johnny said, “and I’m his partner, Detective-Sergeant Knowles. We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

Mrs. Ferroni nodded, but said nothing.

“What time did your daughter leave the house last night, Mrs. Ferroni?” I asked.

The woman sighed and touched her forehead. “Eight o’clock, I think,” she said. There was the faintest trace of an accent in her voice.

“Did she leave with anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“A boy. He takes her out sometimes. Ricky. Ricky Tocca.”

“Do you know the boy well?”

“He’s from the neighborhood. He’s a good boy.”

“Did they say where they were going?”

“To a movie. I think they go up to Mount Vernon a lot. That’s where they were going.”

“Does this Tocca have a car?”

“Yes.”

“Would you know the year and make, Mrs. Ferroni?”

“A Plymouth,” she said. “Or a Chevy, I think. I don’t know. It’s a new car.” She paused and bit her lip. “He wouldn’t hurt my daughter. He’s a nice boy.”

“We’re not saying he would,” Johnny said gently. “We’re just trying to get some sort of a lead, Mrs. Ferroni.”

“I understand.”

“They left the house at eight, you say?”

“About that time.”

“What time does your daughter usually come home?”

“One, two. On weekends. During the week... well, I like her to come home early...”

“But she didn’t, is that it?”

“You know how it is with a young girl. They think they know everything. She stayed out late every night. I told her to be careful... I told her... I told her...”

She bit her lip, and I expected tears again, but there were none. Johnny cleared his throat and asked, “Weren’t you worried when she didn’t show up this morning? I mean, we didn’t call you until about four A.M.”

Mrs. Ferroni shook her head. “She comes in very late sometimes. I worry... but she always comes home. This time...”

There was a strained, painful silence. “I think you can go, Mrs. Ferroni,” I said. “We’ll have one of our men drive you home. Thank you very much.”

“You’ll... you’ll find who did it, won’t you?” she asked.

“We’ll sure as hell try,” I told her.

We picked up Richard Tocca, age twenty, as he was leaving for work. He stepped out of a two-story frame on Burke Avenue, looked up at the overcast sky, and then began walking quickly to a blue Nash parked at the curb. Johnny collared him as he was opening the door on the driver’s side.

“Richard Tocca?” he asked.

The kid looked up suspiciously. “Yeah.” He looked at Johnny’s fist tightened in his coat sleeve and said, “What is this?”

I pulled up and flashed my buzzer. “Police officers, Tocca. Mind answering a few questions?”

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “What did I do?”

“Routine,” Johnny said. “Come on over to our car, won’t you?”

“All right,” Tocca said. He glanced at his watch. “I hope this won’t take long. I got to be at work at nine.”

“It may not take long,” I said.

We walked over to the car and I held the door for him. He climbed in, and Johnny and I sat on either side of him. He was a thin-faced kid with straight blond hair and pale blue eyes. Clear complexioned, clean shaven. Slightly protruding teeth. Dressed neatly and conservatively, for a kid his age.

“Now what’s this all about?” he asked.

“You date Jean Ferroni last night?” Johnny asked.

“Yes. Jesus, don’t tell me she’s in some kind of trouble.”

“What time’d you pick her up?”

“About eight fifteen, I guess. Listen, is she...”

“Where’d you go?”

“Well, that’s just it. We were supposed to have a date, and she told me it was off, just like that. She made me drive her to Gun Hill and then she got out of the car. If she’s in any trouble, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“She’s in big trouble,” Johnny said. “The biggest trouble.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t have...”

“She’s dead,” I said.

The kid stopped talking, and his jaw hung slack for a minute. He blinked his eyes rapidly two or three times and then said, “Jesus, Jesus.”

“You date her often, Ricky?”

“Huh?” He still seemed shocked, which was just what we wanted.

“Yeah, yeah, pretty often.”

“How often?”

“Two, three times a week. No, less.”

“When’d you see her last?”

“Last night.”

“Before that.”

“Last... Wednesday, I guess it was. Yeah.”

“Why’d you date her?”

“I don’t know. Why do you date girls?”

“We don’t care why you date girls! Why’d you date this girl? Why’d you date Jean Ferroni?”

“I don’t know. You know, she’s... she was a nice kid. That’s all.”

“You serious about her?” Johnny snapped.

“Well...”

“You sleeping with her?”

“What?”

“You heard me!”

“No. No. I mean... well no, I wasn’t.”

“Yes or no, goddamn it!”

“No.”

“Then why’d you date her? You planning on marrying her?”

“No.”

“What time did you pick her up last night?”

“Eight fifteen. I told you...”

“Where’d you drop her off?”

“Gun Hill and White Plains.”

“What time was this?”

“About eight thirty.”

“Why’d you date her so much?”

“I heard she was... hell, I don’t like to say this. I mean, the girl’s dead...”

“You heard what?”

“I heard she was... hot stuff.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Around. You know how the word spreads.”

“Who’d you hear it from?”

“Just around, that’s all.”

“And you believed it?”

“Well, yeah. You see, I...” He stopped short, catching himself and his tongue.

“You what?”

“Nothing.”

“Look, sonny,” Johnny said. “The girl was raped and stabbed. That’s murder. We’ll get the truth if we have to...”

“I’m telling the truth!”

“But not all of it. Come on, sonny, give.”

“All right, all right.” He fell into a surly silence. Johnny and I waited. Finally, he said, “I saw pictures.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“You know. Pictures. Her and a guy. You know.”

“You mean pornographic pictures?”

“Yeah.”

“Then say what you mean. Where’d you see these pictures?”

“A guy had them.”

“Have you got any?”

“No.”

“We can get a search warrant. We can take you with us and slap you in the cooler and...”

“I got one,” the kid admitted. “Just one.”

“Let’s see it.”

He fished into his wallet and said, “I feel awful funny about this. You know, Jean is dead and all”

“Let’s see the picture.”

He handed a worn photograph to Johnny, and Johnny studied it briefly and passed it to me. It was Jean Ferroni, all right, and I couldn’t very much blame the Tocca kid for his assumption about her.

“Know the guy in this picture?” I asked.

“No.”

“Never seen him around?”

“No.”

“All right, kid,” Johnny said. “Go to work. And keep your nose clean because we may be back.”

Richard Tocca looked at the picture in my hand longingly, reluctant to leave it. He glanced up at me hopefully, saw my eyes, and changed his mind about the question he was ready to ask. I got out of the car to let him out, and he walked to his Nash without looking back at us. The questioning had taken exactly seven minutes.

Johnny started the car, threw it into gear.

“Want me to drive?” I asked.

“No, that’s okay.”

“This puts a different light on it, huh?”

Johnny nodded. “I’m sleepy as hell,” he said.

We drove back to the precinct, checked out, and then walked to the subway together.

“This may be a tough one,” he said.

“May be?”

Johnny yawned.

We staked out every candy store and ice cream parlor in the Gun Hill Road to 219th Street area, figuring we might pick up someone passing the pornos there. We also set up four policewomen in apartments, thinking there was an off chance someone might contact them for lewd posing. The policewomen circulated at the local dances, visited the local bars, bowling alleys, movies. We didn’t get a rumble.

The Skipper kept us on the case, but it seemed to have bogged down temporarily.

We’d already gone over the dead girl’s belongings at her home. She’d had an address book, but we’d checked on everyone in it, and they were all apparently only casual acquaintances with a few high school chums tossed in for flavoring. We’d checked the wallet the girl was carrying on the night of her murder. Aside from the in-case-of card, a Social Security card, and some pictures taken outside the high school with her girlfriends, there was nothing.

Under questioning, most of her high school friends said that Jean Ferroni didn’t hang around with them much anymore. They said she’d gone snooty and was circulating with an older crowd. None of them knew who the people in the older crowd were.

Her teachers at school insisted she was a nice girl, a little subdued and quiet in class, but intelligent enough. Several of them complained that she’d been delinquent in homework assignments. None of them knew anything about her outside life.

We got our first real break when Mrs. Ferroni showed up with the key. She placed it on the desk in front of Johnny and said, “I was cleaning out her things. I found this. It doesn’t fit any of the doors in the house. I don’t know what it’s for.”

“Maybe her gym locker at school,” I said.

“No. She had a combination lock. I remember she had to buy one when she first started high school.”

Johnny took the key, looked at it, and passed it to me. “Post office box?” he asked.

“Maybe.” I turned the key over in my hands. The numerals 894 were stamped into its head.

“Thanks, Mrs. Ferroni,” Johnny said. “We’ll look into it right away.”

We started at the Williamsbridge Post Office right on Gun Hill Road. The mailmen were very cooperative, but the fact remained it wasn’t a key to any of their boxes. In fact, it didn’t look like a post office key at all. We tried the Wakefield Branch, up the line a bit, and got the same answer.

We started on the banks then.

Luckily, we hit it on the first try. The bank was on 220th Street, and the manager was cordial and helpful. He took one look at the key and said, “Yes, that’s one of ours.”

“Who owns the box?” we asked.

He looked at the key again. “Safety deposit 894. Just a moment, and I’ll have that checked.”

We stood on either side of his polished desk while he picked up a phone, asked for a Miss Delaney, and then questioned her about the key. “Yes,” he said. “I see. Yes. Thank you.” He cradled the phone, put the key on the desk and said, “Jo Ann Ferris. Does that help you, gentlemen?”

“Jo Ann Ferris,” Johnny said. “Jean Ferroni. That’s close enough.” He looked directly at the manager. “We’ll be back in a little while with a court order to open that box. We’ll ask for you.”

In a little over two hours, we were back, and we followed the manager past the barred gate at the rear of the bank, stepped into the vault, and walked back to the rows of safe deposit boxes.

“894,” he said. “Yes, here it is.”

He opened the box, pulled out a slab, and rested the box on it. Johnny lifted the lid.

“Anything?” I asked.

He pulled out what looked like several rolled sheets of stiff white paper. They were secured with rubber bands, and Johnny slid the bands off quickly. When he unrolled them, they turned out to be eight-by-ten glossy prints. I took one of the prints and looked at Jean Ferroni’s contorted body. Beside me, the manager’s mouth fell open and he began sputtering wildly.

“Well,” I said, “this gives us something.”

“We’ll just take the contents of this box,” Johnny said to the manager. “Make out a receipt for it, will you, Mike?”

I made out the receipt and we took the bundle of pornographic photos back to the lab with us. Whatever else Jean Ferroni had done, she had certainly posed in a variety of compromising positions. She’d owned a ripe young body, and the pictures left nothing whatever to the imagination. But we weren’t looking for kicks. We were looking for clues.

Dave Alger, one of the lab men, didn’t hold out much hope.

“Nothing,” he said. “What did you expect? Ordinary print paper. You can get the same stuff in any home developing kit.”

“What about fingerprints?”

“The girl’s mostly. A few others, but all smeared. You want me to track down the rubber bands?”

“Comedian,” Johnny said.

“You guys expect miracles, that’s all. You forget this is science and not witchcraft.”

I was looking at the pictures spread out on the lab counter. They were all apparently taken in the same room, on the same bed. The bed had brass posts and railings at the head and foot. Behind the bed was an open window, with a murky city display of buildings outside. The pictures had evidently been taken at night, and probably recently because the window was wide open. Alongside the window on the wall was a picture of an Indian sitting on a black horse. A wide strip of wallpaper had been torn almost from ceiling to floor, leaving a white path on the wall. The room did not have the feel of a private apartment. It looked like any third-rate hotel. I kept looking at the pictures and at the open window with the buildings beyond.

“Hey!” I said.

“...you think all we do is wave a rattle and shake some feathers and wham, we got your goddamned murderer. Well, it ain’t that simple. We put in a lot of time on...”

“Shut the hell up, Dave!”

Dave sank into a frowning silence. I lifted one of the pictures and said, “Blow this one up, will you?”

“Why? You looking for tattoo marks?”

“No. I want to look through that window.”

Dave suddenly brightened. “How big you want it, Mike?”

“Big enough to read those neon signs across the street.”

“Can do,” he said. He scooped up all the pictures and ran off, his heels clicking against the asphalt tile floor.

“Think we got something?” Johnny asked.

“Maybe. We sure as hell can’t lose anything.”

“Besides, you’ll have something to hang over your couch,” Johnny cracked.

“Another comedian,” I said, but I was beginning to feel better already. I smoked three cigarettes down to butts, and then Dave came back.

“One Rheingold beer ad,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“And one Hotel Mason. That help?”

I didn’t answer. I was busy racing Johnny to the door.

The Hotel Mason was. a dingy, gray-faced building on West Forty-seventh. We weren’t interested in it. We were interested in the building directly across the way, an equally dingy, gray-faced edifice that claimed the fancy title of Allistair Arms.

We walked directly to the desk and flashed our buzzers, and the desk clerk looked hastily to the elevator bank.

“Relax, buster,” Johnny said.

He pulled one of the pictures from under his jacket. The lab had whitened out the figures of Jean Ferroni and her male companion, leaving only the bed, the picture on the wall, and the open window. Johnny showed the picture to the desk clerk.

“What room is this?”

“I... I don’t know.”

“Look hard.”

“I tell you I don’t know. Maybe one of the bellhops.”

He pounded a bell on the desk, and an old man in a bellhop’s rig hobbled over. Johnny showed him the picture and repeated his question.

“Damned if I know,” the old man said. “All these rooms look alike.” He stared at the picture again, shaking his head. Then his eyes narrowed and he bent closer and looked harder. “Oh,” he said, “that’s 305. That picture of the Injun and the ripped wallpaper there. Yep, that’s 305.” He paused. “Why?”

I turned. “Who’s in 305?”

The desk clerk made a show of looking at the register. “Mr. Adams. Harley Adams.”

“Let’s go, Johnny,” I said.

We started up the steps, and I saw Johnny’s hand flick to his shoulder holster. When it came out from under his coat, it was holding a cocked .38. I took out my own gun and we padded up noiselessly.

We stopped outside room 305, flattening ourselves against the walls on either side of the door. Johnny reached out and rapped the butt of his gun against the door.

“Who is it?” a voice asked.

“Open up!”

“Who is it?”

“Police officers. Open up!”

“Wha...”

There was a short silence inside, and then we heard the frantic slap of leather on the floor. “Hit it, Johnny!” I shouted.

Johnny backed off against the opposite wall, put the sole of his shoe against it, and shoved off toward the door. His shoulder hit the wood, and the door splintered inward.

Adams was in his undershirt and trousers and he had one leg over the windowsill, heading for the fire escape, when we came in. I swung my .38 in his direction and yelled, “You better hold it, Adams.”

He looked at the gun, and then slowly lowered his leg to the floor.

“Sure,” he said. “I wasn’t going anyplace.”

We found piles of pictures in the room, all bundled neatly. Some of them were of Jean Ferroni. But there were other girls and other men. We found an expensive camera in the closet, and a darkroom setup in the bathroom. We also found a switch knife with a six-inch blade in the top drawer of his dresser.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Adams insisted.

He kept insisting that for a long time, even after we showed him the pictures we’d taken from Jean Ferroni’s safe-deposit box. He kept insisting until we told him his knife would go down to the lab and they’d sure as hell find some trace of the dead girl on it, no matter how careful he’d been. We were stretching the truth a little, because a knife can be washed as clean as anything else. But Adams took the hook and told us everything.

He’d given the kid a come-on, getting her to pose alone at first, in the nude. From there, it had been simple to get her to pose for the big stuff, the stuff that paid off.

“She was getting classy,” Adams said. “A cheap tramp like that getting classy. Wanted a percentage of the net. I gave her a percentage, all right. I arranged a nice little party right in my hotel room. Six guys. They fixed her good, one after the other. Then I drove her up to her own neighborhood and left her the way you found her — so it would look like a rape kill.”

He paused and shifted in his chair, making himself comfortable.

“Imagine that broad,” he continued. “Wanting to share. Wanting to share with me. I showed her.”

“You showed her, all right,” Johnny said tightly.

That was when I swung out with my closed fist, catching Adams on the side of his jaw. He fell backward, knocking the chair over, sprawling onto the floor.

He scrambled to his feet, crouched low, and said, “Hey, what the hell? Are you crazy?”

I didn’t answer him. I left the interrogation room, walking past the patrolman at the door. Johnny caught up with me in the corridor, clamped his hand onto my shoulder.

“Why’d you hit him, Mike?” he asked.

“I wanted to. I just wanted to.”

Johnny’s eyes met mine for a moment, held them. His hand tightened on my shoulder, and his head nodded almost imperceptibly.

We walked down the corridor together, our heels clicking noisily on the hard floor.

Accident Report

There was a blanket thrown over the patrolman by the time we got there. The ambulance was waiting, and a white-clad intern was standing near the step of the ambulance, puffing on a cigarette. He looked up as I walked over to him, and then flicked his cigarette away.

“Detective-Sergeant Jonas,” I said.

“How do you do?” the intern answered. “Dr. Mallaby.”

“What’s the story?”

“Broken neck. It must have been a big car. His chest is caved in where he was first hit. I figure he was knocked down, and then run over. The bumper probably broke his neck. That’s the cause of death, anyway.”

Andy Larson walked over to where we were standing. He shook his head and said, “A real bloody one, Mike.”

“Yeah.” I turned to the intern. “When was he hit?”

“Hard to say. No more than a half hour ago, I’d guess offhand. An autopsy will tell.”

“That checks, Mike,” Andy said. “Patrolman on the beat called it in about twenty-five minutes ago.”

“A big car, huh?”

“I’d say so,” the intern answered.

“I wonder how many big cars there are in this city?”

Andy nodded. “You can cart him away, Doc,” he said. “The boys are through with their pictures.”

The intern fired another cigarette, and we watched while he and an attendant put the dead patrolman on a stretcher and then into the ambulance. The intern and the attendant climbed aboard, and the ambulance pulled off down the street. They didn’t use the siren. There was no rush now.

A cop gets it, and you say, “Well, gee, that’s tough. But that was his trade.” Sure. Except that being a cop doesn’t mean you don’t have a wife, and maybe a few kids. It doesn’t hurt any less, being a cop. You’re just as dead.

I went over the accident report with Andy.

My eyes skipped down the length of the card, noting the date, time, place of occurrence. Then

I kept reading, down to the circled items on the card that told me the body had been taken to the morgue and claimed already. The rest would have been routine in any other case, but it was slightly ironic here:

I read the rest of the technical information about the direction of the traffic moving on the lights, the police action taken, the city involved, and then flipped the card over.

Under NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF WITNESSES (IF NONE, SO STATE) the single word “None” was scribbled. The officer who’d reported the hit and run was Patrolman P. Margolis. He’d been making the rounds, stopped for his usual afternoon chat with Benson, and had found the traffic cop dead in the gutter. There were skid marks on the asphalt street, but there hadn’t been a soul in sight.

“How do you figure it, Andy?” I asked.

“A few ideas.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“The guy may have done something wrong. Benson may have hailed him for something entirely different. The guy panicked and cut him down.”

“Something wrong like what?”

“Who knows? Hot furs in the trunk. Dead man in the backseat. You know.”

“And you figure Benson hailed him because he was speeding, or his windshield wiper was crooked? Something like that?”

“Yeah, you know.”

“I don’t buy it, Andy.”

“Well, I got another idea.”

“What’s that? Drunk?”

Andy nodded.

“That’s what I was thinking. Where do we start?”

“I’ve already had a check put in on stolen cars, and the lab boys are going over the skid marks. Why don’t we go back and see if we can scare up any witnesses?”

I picked my jacket off the back of the chair, buttoned it on, and then adjusted my shoulder clip.

“Come on,” I said.

The scene of the accident was at the intersection of two narrow streets. There was a two-family stucco house on one corner, and empty lots on the other three corners. It was a quiet intersection, and the only reason it warranted a light was the high school two blocks away. A traffic cop was used to supplement the light in the morning and afternoon when the kids were going to and coming from school. Benson had been hit about ten minutes before classes broke. It was a shame, because a bunch of homebound kids might have saved his life — or at least provided some witnesses.

“There’s not much choice,” Andy said.

I looked at the stucco house. “No, I guess not. Let’s go.”

We climbed the flat, brick steps at the front of the house, and Andy pushed the bell button. We waited for a few moments, and then the door opened a crack, and a voice asked, “Yes?”

I flashed my buzzer. “Police officers,” I said. “We’d like to ask a few questions.”

The door stayed closed, with the voice coming from behind the small crack. “What about?”

“Accident here yesterday. Won’t you open the door?”

The door swung wide, and a thin young kid in his undershirt peered out at us. His brows pulled together in a hostile frown.

“You got a search warrant?” he asked.

“What have you got to hide, kid?” Andy asked.

“Nothing. I just don’t like cops barging in like storm troopers.”

“Nobody’s barging in on you,” Andy said. “We want to ask a few questions, that’s all. You want to get snotty about it, we’ll go get a goddamn search warrant, and then you’d better hold on to your head.”

“All right, what do you want?”

“You changed your song, huh, kid?”

“Leave it be, Andy,” I said.

“Were you home this afternoon?”

“Yeah.”

“All afternoon?”

“Yeah.”

“You hear any noise out here on the street?”

“What kind of noise?”

“You tell me.”

“I didn’t hear any noise.”

“A car skidding, maybe? Something like that?”

“No.”

“Did you see anything unusual?”

“I didn’t see anything. You’re here about the cop who was run over, ain’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I didn’t see anything.”

“You live here alone?”

“No. With my mother.”

“Where is she?”

“She ain’t feeling too good. That’s why I’ve been staying home from school. She’s been sick in bed. She didn’t hear anything, either. She’s in a fog.”

“Have you had the doctor?”

“Yeah, she’ll be all right.”

“Where’s your mother’s room?”

“In the back of the house. She couldn’t have seen anything out here even if she was able to. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“How long you been out of school, kid?”

“Why?”

“How long?”

“A month.”

“Your mother been sick that long?”

“Yeah.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“You better get back to school,” Andy said. “Damn fast. Tell the city about your mother, and they’ll do something for her. You hear that?”

“I hear it.”

“We’ll send someone around to check tomorrow. Remember that, kid.”

“I’ll remember it,” the kid said, a surly look on his face.

“Anybody else live here with you?”

“Yeah. My dog. You want to ask him some questions, maybe?”

I saw Andy clench his fists, so I said, “That’ll be all, son. Thanks.”

“For what?” the kid asked, and then he slammed the door.

“That lousy snot nose,” Andy said. “That little son of a...”

“Come on,” I said.

We started down, and I looked at the empty lots on the other corners. Then I turned back to take a last look at the house. “There’s nothing more here,” I said. “We better get back.”

There were thirty-nine cars stolen in New York City that day. Of the bigger cars, two were Buicks, four Chryslers, and one Cadillac. One of the Chryslers was stolen from a neighborhood about two miles from the scene of the accident.

“How about that?” Andy asked.

“How about it?”

“The guy stole the buggy and when Benson hailed him he knew he was in hot water. He cut him down.”

“If Benson hailed him.”

“Maybe Benson only stuck up his hand to stop traffic. The guy misunderstood, and crashed through.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

We checked with the owner of the Chrysler. She was a fluttery woman who was obviously impressed with the fact that two policemen were calling on her personally about her missing car.

“Well, I never expected such quick action,” she said. “I mean, really.”

“The car was a Chrysler, ma’am?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said, nodding her head emphatically. “We’ve never owned anything but a Chrysler.”

“What was the year, ma’am?”

“I gave all this information on the phone,” she said.

“I know, ma’am. We’re just checking it again.”

“A new car. 1953.”

“The color?”

“Blue. A sort of robin’s egg blue, do you know? I told that to the man who answered the phone.”

“License number?”

“Oh, again? Well, just a moment.” She stood up and walked to the kitchen, returning with her purse. She fished into the purse, came up with a wallet, and then rummaged through that for her registration. “Here it is,” she said.

“What, ma’am?”

“7T8458.”

Andy looked up. “That’s a Nassau County plate, ma’am.”

“Yes, yes, I know.”

“In the Bronx? How come?”

“Well... oh, you’ll think this is silly.”

“Let’s hear it, ma’am.”

“Well, a Long Island plate is so much more impressive. I mean, well, we plan on moving there soon anyway.”

“And you went all the way to Nassau to get a plate?”

“Yes.”

Andy coughed politely. “Well, maybe that’ll make it easier.”

“Do you think you’ll find the car?”

“We certainly hope so, ma’am.”

We found the car that afternoon. It was parked on a side street in Brooklyn. It was in perfect condition, no damage to the front end, no blood anywhere on the grille or bumper. The lab checked the tires against the skid marks. Negative. This, coupled with the fact that the murder car would undoubtedly have sustained injuries after such a violent smash, told us we’d drawn a blank. We returned the car to the owner.

She was very happy.

By the end of the week, we’d recovered all but one of the stolen cars. None of them checked with what we had. The only missing car was the Cadillac. It had been swiped from a parking lot in Queens, with the thief presenting the attendant with a claim ticket for the car. The m.o. sounded professional, whereas the kill looked like a fool stunt. When another Caddy was stolen from a lot in Jamaica, with the thief using the same modus operandi, we figured it for a ring, and left it to the Automobile Squad.

In the meantime, we’d begun checking all auto body and fender repair shops in the city. We had just about ruled out a stolen car by this time, and if the car was privately owned, the person who’d run down Benson would undoubtedly try to have the damage to his car repaired.

The lab had reported finding glass slivers from a sealbeam imbedded in Benson’s shirt, together with chips of black paint. From the position of the skid marks, they estimated that he’d been hit by the right side of the car, and they figured the broken light would be on that side, together with the heaviest damage to the grille.

Because Andy still clung to the theory that the driver had been involved in something fishy just before he hit Benson, we checked with the local precinct squads for any possibly related robberies or burglaries, and we also checked with the Safe, Loft, and Truck Squad. There’d been a grocery store holdup in the neighboring vicinity on the day of the hit and run but the thief had already been apprehended, and he was driving a ’37 Ford. Both headlights were intact, and any damage to the grille had been sustained years ago.

We continued to check on repair shops.

When the Complaint Report came in, we leaped on it at once. We glossed over the usual garbage in the heading and skipped down to the DETAILS:

“You can damn well bet it’s still active,” Andy said. “This may be it, Mike.”

“Maybe,” I said.

It wasn’t.

The tire was a very popular seller, and the mail order house sold thousands of them every year, both through the mails and over the counter. It was impossible to check over-the-counter sales, and a check of mail order receipts revealed that no purchases had been made within a two-mile radius of the hit and run. We extended the radius, checked on all the purchasers, and found no suspicious-looking automobiles, although all of the cars were big ones. There was one black car in the batch — and there wasn’t a scratch on it.

But Mrs. Dalley’s house was about ten blocks from the scene of the killing, and that was too close for coincidence. We checked out a car and drove over.

She was a woman in her late thirties, and she greeted us at the door in a loose housecoat, her hair up in curlers.

“Police officers,” I said.

Her hand went to her hair, and she said, “Oh, my goodness.” She fretted a little more about her appearance, belted the housecoat tighter around her waist, and then said, “Come in, come in.”

We questioned her a little about the fence and the iris bed, got substantially what was in the Complaint Report, and then went out to look at the damage. She stayed in the house, and when she joined us later, she was wearing tight black slacks and a chartreuse sweater. She’d also tied a scarf around her hair, hiding the curlers.

The house was situated on a corner with a side street intersecting Barnes Avenue, and then a gravel road cutting into another intersection. The tire marks seemed to indicate the car had come down the gravel road, and then backed up the side street, knocking over the picket fence when it did. It all pointed to a drunken driver.

“How does it look?” she asked.

“We’re working on it,” Andy said. “Any of your neighbors witness this?”

“No. I asked around. No one saw the car. They heard the crash, came out and saw the damaged fence, but the car had gone already.”

“Was anything missing from your house or yard?”

“No. It was locked up tight. We were on vacation, you know.”

“What kind of a car does your husband drive, ma’am?”

“A ’48 Olds. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Let’s amble up the street, Mike,” Andy said. “Thank you very much, ma’am.”

We got into the car, and Mrs. Dalley watched us go, striking a pretty pose in the doorway of her house. I looked back and saw her wave at one of her neighbors, and then she went inside.

“Where to?” I asked Andy.

“There’s a service station at the end of that gravel road, on the intersection. If the car came up that road, maybe he stopped at the station for gas. We’ve got nothing to lose.”

We had nothing to gain, either. They’d gassed up a hundred big black cars every day. They didn’t remember anything that looked out of line. We thanked them, and stopped at the nearest diner for some coffee. The coffee was hot, but the case sure as hell wasn’t.

It really griped us. It really griped us.

Some son of a bitch had a black car stashed away in his garage. The car had a damaged front end, and it may still have had bloodstains on it. If he’d been a drunken driver, he’d sure as hell sobered up fast enough — and long enough — to realize he had to keep that car out of sight. We mulled it over, and we squatted on it, and we were going over all the angles again when the phone rang.

I picked it up. “Jonas here.”

“Mike, this is Charlie on the desk. I was going to turn this over to Complaint, but I thought you might like to sit in on it”

“Tie in with the Benson kill?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll be right down.” I hung up quickly. “Come on, Andy.”

We went downstairs to the desk, and Charlie introduced us to a Mr. George Sullivan and his daughter Grace, a young kid of about sixteen. We took them into an empty office, leaving Charlie at the desk.

“What is it, Mr. Sullivan?” I asked.

“I want better protection,” he said.

“Of what, sir?”

“My child. Grace here. All the kids at the high school, in fact.”

“What happened, sir?”

“You tell him, Grace.”

The kid was a pretty blonde, fresh and clean-looking in a sweater and skirt. She wet her lips and said, “Daddy, can’t...”

“Go on, Grace, it’s for your own good.”

“What is it, miss?” Andy asked gently.

“Well...”

“Go on, Grace. Just the way you told it to me. Go on.”

“Well, it was last week. I...”

“Where was this, miss?”

“Outside the high school. I cut my last period, a study hour. I wanted to do some shopping downtown, and anyway a study hour is nowhere. You know, they’re not so strict if you cut one.”

“Yes, miss.”

“I got out early, about a half hour before most of the kids start home. I was crossing the street when this car came around the corner. I got onto the sidewalk, and the car slowed down and started following me.”

“What kind of a car, miss?”

“A big black one.”

“Did you notice the year and make?”

“No. I’m not so good at cars.”

“All right, what happened?”

“Well, the man driving kept following me, and I started walking faster, and he kept the car even with me all the time. He leaned over toward the window near the curb and said, ‘Come on, sweetheart, let’s go for a ride.’ ” She paused. “Daddy, do I have to...”

“Tell them all of it, Grace.”

She swallowed hard, and then stared down at her saddle shoes.

“I didn’t answer him. I kept walking, and he pulled up about ten feet ahead of me, and sat waiting there. When I came up alongside the car, he opened the door and got out. He... he... made a grab for me and... and I screamed.”

“What happened then?”

“He got scared. He jumped into the car and pulled away from the curb. He was going very fast. I stopped screaming after he’d gone because... because I didn’t want to attract any attention.”

“When was this, miss?”

“Last week.”

“What day?”

“It was Wednesday,” Mr. Sullivan put in. “She came home looking like hell, and I asked her what was wrong, and she said, ‘Nothing.’ I didn’t get the story out of her until today.”

“You should have reported this earlier, miss,” Andy said.

“I... I was too embarrassed.”

“Did you notice the license plate on the car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get the number?”

“No, it was a funny plate.”

“What do you mean, funny?”

“Well, it was a New York plate, but it had a lot of lettering on it.”

“A lot of lettering? Was it a suburban plate? Was the car a station wagon?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“A delivery truck?”

“No, it was a regular car. A new one.”

“A new car,” I repeated.

“Are you going to do something about this?” Mr. Sullivan asked.

“We’re going to try, sir. Did you get a good look at the man, miss?”

“Yes. He was old, and fat. He wore a brown suit.”

“How old would you say, miss?”

“At least forty.”

Mr. Sullivan smiled, and then the smile dropped from his face. “There should be a cop around there. There definitely should be.”

“Would you be able to identify the man if we showed him to you?”

“Yes, but... do I have to? I mean, I don’t want any trouble. I don’t want the other kids to find out.”

“No one will find out, miss.”

“This wouldn’t have happened if there was a cop around,” Mr. Sullivan said.

“There was a cop,” I told him. “He’s dead.”

When they left, we got some coffee and mulled it over a bit more.

“A new car,” Andy said.

“With a funny plate. What the hell did she mean by a funny plate?”

“On a new car.”

I stood up suddenly. “I’ll be dipped!” I said.

“What?”

“A new car, Andy. A funny plate. A New York plate with lettering on it. For Christ’s sake, it was a dealer’s plate!”

Andy snapped his fingers. “Sure. That explains how the bastard kept the car hidden so well. It’s probably on some goddamn garage floor, hidden behind the other cars in the showroom.”

“Let’s go, Andy,” I said.

It wasn’t difficult. It’s tough to get a dealer’s franchise, and there aren’t very many dealers in any specific neighborhood. We tried two, and then we hit the jackpot on the third try.

We spotted the car in one corner of the big garage. We walked over to it, and there was a mechanic in grease-stained coveralls working on the right headlight.

“Police,” I told him. “What’s wrong there?”

He continued working, apparently used to periodic checks from the Automobile Squad. “Sealbeam is broken. Just replacing it.”

“What happened to the grille?”

“Oh, a small accident. Damn shame, too. A new car.”

Andy walked around to the back and saw the paint scratches on the trunk. He nodded when he came around to me again.

“Back’s all scratched, too,” he said to the mechanic.

“Yeah, this goddamn car’s been a jinx ever since we got it in.”

“How so?”

“Got a headache with this one. The day we took it out for a test, the fool driver ran it into a ditch. Sliced hell out of both rear tires, and we had to replace them. All this in the first week we had this pig.”

“Did you replace with Allstate?” I asked.

The mechanic looked up in surprise. “Why, yeah. Say, how did you know?”

“Where’s your boss?” Andy asked.

“In the front office.” The mechanic got up. “Hey, what’s this all about?”

“Nothing that concerns you, Mac. Fix your car.”

We went to the front office, a small cubicle that held two desks and two leather customer chairs. A stout man was sitting at one desk, a telephone to his ear. I estimated his age at about forty-two, forty-three. He looked up and smiled when we came in, nodded at us, and then continued talking.

“Yes... well, okay, if you say so. Well look, Sam, I can’t sell cars if I haven’t got them... You just do your best, that’s all. Okay, fine.” He hUng up without saying good-bye, got out of his chair, and walked over to us.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?”

“Yes,” Andy said. “We’re interested in a car. Are you the owner of this place?”

“I am.”

“With whom are we doing business?”

“Fred Whitaker,” he said. “Did you have any particular car in mind?”

“Yes. The black Buick on the floor.”

“A beautiful car,” Whitaker said, smiling.

“The one with the smashed grille and headlight,” I added.

The smile froze on his face, and he went white. “Wh... what?”

“Did you smash that car up?”

Whitaker swallowed hard. “No... no. One of my mechanics did.”

“Who?”

“I’ve... I’ve fired him. He...”

“We can check this, Whitaker.”

“Are... are you policemen?”

“We are. Come on, let’s have it all. We’ve got a girl to identify you.”

Whitaker’s face crumbled. “I... I guess that’s best, isn’t it?”

“It’s best,” Andy said.

“I didn’t mean to run him down. But the girl screamed, you know, and I thought he’d heard it. He stuck up his hand, and I... I got scared, I suppose, and there was no one around, so I... I knocked him... I knocked him down. Is he all right? I mean...”

“He’s dead,” I said.

“Dead?” Whitaker’s eyes went wide. “Dead...”

“Was it you who smashed that picket fence?” Andy asked.

Whitaker was still dazed.

“Wh... what?” he said.

“The picket fence. On Barnes.”

“Oh. Yes, yes. That was afterwards. I was still scared. I... I made a wrong turn, and I saw a police car, and I wanted to get away fast. I... I backed into the fence.”

“Why’d you bother that little girl, Whitaker?”

He collapsed into a chair. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“You’re in a jam,” Andy said. “You’d better come along with us.”

“Yes, yes.” He stood up, took his hat from a rack in the corner, and then started for the door. At the door, he stopped and said, “I’d better tell my mechanics. I’d better tell them I’ll be gone for the day.”

I looked at Whitaker, and I thought of Benson. My eyes met Andy’s, and I put it into words for both of us.

“You’ll be gone a lot longer than that,” I said.

Chinese Puzzle

The girl slumped at the desk just inside the entrance doorway of the small office. The phone lay uncradled, just the way she’d dropped it. An open pad of telephone numbers rested just beyond reach of her lifeless left hand.

The legend on the frosted glass door read GOTHAM LOBSTER COMPANY. The same legend was repeated on the long row of windows facing Columbus Avenue, and the sun glared hotly through those windows, casting the name of the company onto the wooden floor in shadowed black.

Mr. Godrow, President of Gotham Lobster, stood before those windows now. He was a big man with rounded shoulders and a heavy paunch. He wore a gray linen jacket over his suit pants, and the pocket of the jacket was stitched with the word Gotham. He tried to keep his meaty hands from fluttering, but he wasn’t good at pretending. The hands wandered restlessly, and then exploded in a gesture of impatience.

“Well, aren’t you going to do something?” he demanded.

“We just got here, Mr. Godrow,” I said. “Give us a little...”

“The police are supposed to be so good,” he said petulantly. “This girl drops dead in my office and all you do is stand around and look. Is this supposed to be a sightseeing tour?”

I didn’t answer him. I looked at Donny, and Donny looked back at me, and then we turned our attention to the dead girl. Her left arm was stretched out across the top of the small desk, and her body was arched crookedly, with her head resting on the arm. Long black hair spilled over her face, but it could not hide the contorted, hideously locked grin on her mouth. She wore a tight silk dress, slit on either side in the Oriental fashion, buttoned to the throat. The dress had pulled back over a portion of her right thigh, revealing a roll-gartered stocking. The tight line of her panties was clearly visible through the thin silk of her dress. The dead girl was Chinese, but her lips and face were blue.

“Suppose you tell us what happened, Mr. Godrow,” I said.

“Freddie can tell you,” Godrow answered. “Freddie was sitting closer to her.”

“Who’s Freddie?”

“My boy,” Godrow said.

“Your son?”

“No, I haven’t any children. My boy. He works for me.”

“Where is he now, sir?”

“I sent him down for some coffee. After I called you.” Godrow paused, and then reluctantly said, “I didn’t think you’d get here so quickly.”

“Score one for the Police Department,” Donny murmured.

“Well, you fill us in until he gets back, will you?” I said.

“All right,” Godrow answered. He said everything grudgingly, as if he resented our presence in his office, as if this whole business of dead bodies lying around should never have been allowed to happen in his office. “What do you want to know?”

“What did the girl do here?” Donny asked.

“She made telephone calls.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. Freddie does that, too, but he also runs the addressing machine. Freddie...”

“Maybe you’d better explain your operation a little,” I said.

“I sell lobsters,” Godrow said.

“From this office?” Donny asked skeptically.

“We take the orders from this office,” Godrow explained, warming up a little. It was amazing the way they always warmed up when they began discussing their work. “My plant is in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.”

“I see.”

“We take the orders here, and then the lobsters are shipped down from Maine, alive of course.”

“I like lobsters,” Donny said. “Especially lobster tails.”

“Those are not lobsters,” Godrow said indignantly. “Those are crawfish. African rock lobster. There’s a big difference.”

“Who do you sell to, Mr. Godrow?” I asked.

“Restaurants. That’s why Mary worked for me.”

“Is that the girl’s name? Mary?”

“Yes, Mary Chang. You see, we do a lot of business with Chinese restaurants. Lobster Cantonese, you know, like that. They buy small lobsters usually, and in half-barrel quantities for the most part, but they’re good steady customers.”

“And Miss Chang called these Chinese restaurants, is that right?”

“Yes. I found it more effective that way. She spoke several Chinese dialects, and she inspired confidence, I suppose. At any rate, she got me more orders than any Occidental who ever held the job.”

“And Freddie? What does he do?”

“He calls the American restaurants. We call them every morning. Not all of them each morning, of course, but those we feel are ready to reorder. We give them quotations, and we hope they’ll place orders. We try to keep our quotes low. For example, our jumbos today were going for...”

“How much did Miss Chang receive for her duties, Mr. Godrow?”

“She got a good salary.”

“How much?”

“Why? What difference does it make?”

“It might be important, Mr. Godrow. How much?”

“Forty-five a week, plus a dollar-fifty commission on each barrel order from a new customer.” Godrow paused. “Those are good wages, Mr....”

“Parker. Detective-Sergeant Ralph Parker.”

“Those are good wages, Sergeant Parker.” He paused again. “Much more than my competitors are paying.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, Mr. Godrow, but I’ll take your word for it. Now...”

A shadow fell across the floor, and Godrow looked up and said, “Ah, Freddie, it’s about time.”

I turned to the door, expecting to find a sixteen-year-old kid maybe. Freddie was not sixteen, nor was he twenty-six. He was closer to thirty-six, and he was a thin man with sparse hair and a narrow mouth. He wore a rumpled tweed suit and a stained knitted tie.

“This is my boy,” Godrow said. “Freddie, this is Detective-Sergeant Parker and...”

“Katz,” Donny said. “Donald Katz.”

“How do you do?” Freddie said.

“Now that you’re here,” I said, “suppose you tell us what happened this morning, Freddie.”

“Mr. Godrow’s coffee...” Freddie started apologetically.

“Yes, yes, my coffee,” Godrow said. Freddie brought it to his desk, put it down, and then fished into his pocket for some silver, which he deposited alongside the paper container. Godrow counted the change meticulously, and then took the lid from the container and dropped one lump of sugar into it. He opened his top drawer and put the remaining lump of sugar into a small jar there.

“What happened this morning, Freddie?” I asked.

“Well, I got in at about nine, or a little before,” he said.

“Were you here then, Mr. Godrow?”

“No. I didn’t come in until nine thirty or so.”

“I see. Go on, Freddie.”

“Mary... Miss Chang was here. I said good morning to her, and then we got down to work.”

“I like my people to start work right away,” Godrow said. “No nonsense.”

“Was Miss Chang all right when you came in, Freddie?”

“Yes. Well, that is... she was complaining of a stiff neck, and she seemed to be very jumpy, but she started making her phone calls, so I guess she was all right.”

“Was she drinking anything?”

“Sir?”

“Was she drinking anything?”

“No, sir.”

“Did she drink anything all the while you were here?”

“No, sir. I didn’t see her, at least.”

“I see.” I looked around the office and said, “Three phones here, is that right?”

“Yes,” Godrow answered. “One extension for each of us. You know how they work. You push a button on the face of the instrument, and that’s the line you’re on. We can all talk simultaneously that way, on different lines.”

“I know how it works,” I said. “What happened then, Freddie?”

“We kept calling, that’s all. Mr. Godrow came in about nine thirty, like he said, and we kept on calling while he changed to his office jacket.”

“I like to wear this jacket in the office,” Godrow explained. “Makes me feel as if I’m ready for the day’s work, you know.”

“Also saves wear and tear on your suit jacket,” Donny said.

Godrow seemed about to say something, but I beat him to the punch. “Did you notice anything unusual about Miss Chang’s behavior, Mr. Godrow?”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact. As Freddie told you, she was quite jumpy. I dropped a book at one point, and she almost leaped out of her chair.”

“Did you see her drink anything?”

“No.”

“All right, Freddie, what happened after Mr. Godrow came in?”

“Well, Mary started making another phone call. This was at about nine thirty-five. She was behaving very peculiar by this time. She was twitching and well... she was having... well, like spasms. I asked her if she was all right, and she flinched when I spoke, and then she went right on with her call. I remember the time because I started a call at about the same time. You see, we have to get our orders in the morning if Boothbay is to deliver the next morning. That means we’re racing against the clock, sort of, so you learn to keep your eye on it. Well, I picked up my phone and started dialing, and then Mary started talking Chinese to someone on her phone. She sits at the desk right next to mine, you see, and I can hear everything she says.”

“Do you know who she was calling?”

“No. She always dials... dialed... the numbers and then started talking right off in Chinese. She called all the Chinese restau...”

“Yes, I know. Go on.”

“Well, she was talking on her phone, and I was talking on mine, and all of a sudden she said in English, ‘No, why?’ ”

“She said this in English?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear this, Mr. Godrow?”

“No. My desk is rather far away, over here near the windows. But I heard what she said next. I couldn’t miss hearing that. She yelled it out loud.”

“What was that, sir?”

“She said, ‘Kill me? No! No!’ ”

“What happened then?”

“Well,” Freddie said, “I was still on the phone. I looked up, and I didn’t know what was going on. Mary started to shove her chair back, and then she began... shaking all over... like... like...”

“The girl had a convulsion,” Godrow put in. “If I’d known she was predisposed toward...”

“Did she pass out?”

“Yes,” Freddie said.

“What did you do then?”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

“Why didn’t you call a doctor?”

“Well, we did, after the second convulsion.”

“When was that?”

“About... oh, I don’t know... ten, fifteen minutes later. I really don’t know.”

“And when the doctor came, what did he say?”

“Well, he didn’t come,” Freddie said apologetically.

“Why not? I thought you called him.”

“The girl died after the second convulsion,” Godrow said. “Good Lord, man, she turned blue, you saw her. Why should I pay a doctor for a visit when the girl was dead? I canceled the call.”

“I see.”

“It’s obvious she was predisposed toward convulsions, and whoever spoke to her on the phone frightened her, bringing one on,” Godrow said. “He obviously told her he was going to kill her or something.”

“This is all very obvious, is it, Mr. Godrow?” I asked.

“Well, of course. You can see the girl is blue. What else...”

“Lots of things,” I said. “Lots of things could have caused her coloration. But only one thing would put that grin on her face.”

“What’s that?” Godrow asked.

“Strychnine poisoning,” I said.

When we got back to Homicide I put a call through to Mike Reilly. The coroner had already confirmed my suspicions, but I wanted the official autopsy report on it. Mike picked up the phone on the third ring and said, “Reilly here.”

“This is Ralph,” I said. “What’ve you got on the Chinese girl?”

“Oh. Like you figured, Ralph. It’s strychnine, all right.”

“No question?”

“None at all. She sure took enough of the stuff. Any witnesses around when she went under?”

“Yes, two.”

“She complain of a stiff neck, twitching, spasms?”

“Yes.”

“Convulsions?”

“Yes.”

“Sure, that’s all strychnine. Yeah, Ralph. And her jaws locked the way they are, that grin. And the cyanotic coloring of lips and face. Oh, no question. Hell, I could have diagnosed this without taking a test.”

“What else did you find, Mike?”

“She didn’t have a very big breakfast, Ralph. Coffee and an English muffin.”

“Have any idea when she got the strychnine?”

“Hard to say. Around breakfast, I suppose. You’re gonna have a tough nut with strychnine, Ralph.”

“How so?”

“Tracing it, I mean. Hell, Ralph, they sell it by the can. For getting rid of animal pests.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks, Mike.”

“No trouble at all. Drop in anytime.”

He hung up, and I turned to Donny who had already started on a cup of coffee.

“Strychnine, all right.”

“What’d you expect?” he said. “Malted milk?”

“So where now?”

“Got a check on the contents of the girl’s purse from the lab. Nothing important. Lipstick. Some change. Five-dollar bill, and three singles. Theater stubs.”

“For where?”

“Chinese theater in Chinatown.”

“Anything else?”

“Letter to a sister in Hong Kong.”

“In Chinese?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“That’s it. Oh yes, a program card. She was a transfer student at Columbia. Went there nights.”

“So what do you figure, Donny?”

“I figure some bastard slipped the strychnine to her this morning before she came to work. Maybe a lover, how do I know? She called him later to say hello. She talks Chinese on the phone, so who can tell whether she’s calling a restaurant or her uncle in Singapore? The guy all at once says, ‘You know why you’re feeling so punk, honey?’ So she is feeling punk. She’s got a stiff neck, and her reflexes are hypersensitive, and she’s beginning to shake a little. She forgets she’s supposed to be talking to a Chinese restaurant owner. She drops the pose for a minute and says ‘No, why?’ in English. The boyfriend on the other end says, ‘Here’s why, honey. I gave you a dose of strychnine when I saw you this morning. It’s going to kill you in about zero minutes flat.’ The kid jumps up and screams ‘Kill me? No! No!’ Curtain. The poison’s already hit her.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Except for one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Would the poisoner take a chance like that? Tipping her off on the phone?”

“Why not? He probably knew how long it would take for the poison to kill her.”

“But why would she call him?”

“Assuming it was a him. How do I know? Maybe she didn’t call anybody special. Maybe the joker works at one of the Chinese restaurants she always called. Maybe she met him every morning for chop suey, and then he went his way and she went hers. Or maybe she called... Ralph, she could have called anyone.”

“No. Someone who spoke Chinese. She spoke Chinese to the party in the beginning.”

“Lots of Chinese in this city, Ralph.”

“Why don’t we start with the restaurants? This book was open on her desk. Two pages showing. She could have been talking to someone at any one of the restaurants listed on those pages, assuming she opened the book to refer to a number. If she called a sweetheart, we’re up the creek.”

“Not necessarily,” Donny said. “It’ll just take longer, that’s all.”

There were a lot of Chinese restaurants listed on those two pages. They were not listed in any geographical order. Apparently, Mary Chang knew the best times to call each of the owners, and she’d listed the restaurant numbers in a system all her own. So where the first number on the list was in Chinatown, the second was up on Fordham Road in the Bronx. We had a typist rearrange the list according to location, and then we asked the Skipper for two extra men to help with the legwork. He gave us Belloni and Hicks, yanking them off a case that was ready for the DA anyway. Since they were our guests, so to speak, we gave them the easy half of the list, the portion in Chinatown where all the restaurants were clustered together and there wouldn’t be as much hoofing to do. Donny and I took the half that covered Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

A Chinese restaurant in the early afternoon is something like a bar at that time. There are few diners. Everyone looks bleary-eyed. The dim lights somehow clash with the bright sunshine outside. It’s like stepping out of reality into something unreal and vague. Besides, a lot of the doors were locked solid, and when a man can’t speak English it’s a little difficult to make him understand what a police shield means.

It took a lot of time. We pounded on the doors first, and then we talked to whoever’s face appeared behind the plate glass. We showed shields, we gestured, we waited for someone who spoke English. When the doors opened, we told them who we were and what we wanted. There was distrust, a natural distrust of cops, and another natural distrust of Westerners.

“Did Gotham Lobster call you this morning?”

“No.”

“When did Gotham call you?”

“Yes’day. We take one ba’l. One ba’l small.”

“Who did you speak to at Gotham?”

“Ma’y Chang.”

And on to the next place, and the same round of questions, and always no luck, always no call from Gotham or Mary Chang. And then we hit a place on the Grand Concourse where the waiter opened the door promptly. We told him what we wanted, and he hurried off to the back of the restaurant while we waited by the cash register. A young Chinese in an impeccable blue suit came out to us in about five minutes. He smiled and shook hands and then said, “I’m David Loo. My father owns the restaurant. May I help you?”

He was a good-looking boy of about twenty, I would say. He spoke English without a trace of singsong. He was wearing a white button-down shirt with a blue and silver striped silk tie. A small Drama Masks tie clasp held the tie to the shirt.

“I’m Detective-Sergeant Parker, and this is my partner, Detective-Sergeant Katz. Do you know Mary Chang?”

“Chang? Mary Chang? Why, no, I... oh, do you mean the girl who calls from Gotham Lobster?”

“Yes, that’s her. Do you know her?”

“Oh yes, certainly.”

“When did you see her last?”

“See her?” David Loo smiled. “I’m afraid I’ve never seen her. I spoke to her on the phone occasionally, but that was the extent of our relationship.”

“I see. When did you speak to her last?”

“This morning.”

“What time was this?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Early this morning.”

“Can you try to pinpoint the time?”

David Loo shrugged. “Nine, nine fifteen, nine thirty. I really don’t know.” He paused. “Has Miss Chang done something?”

“Can you give us a closer time than that, Mr. Loo? Mary Chang was poisoned this morning, and it might be...”

“Poisoned? My God!”

“Yes. So you see, any help you can give us would be appreciated.”

“Yes, yes, I can understand that. Well, let me see. I came to the restaurant at about... nine ten it was, I suppose. So she couldn’t have called at nine, could she?” David Loo smiled graciously, as if he were immensely enjoying this game of murder. “I had some coffee, and I listened to the radio back in the kitchen, and...” Loo snapped his fingers. “Of course,” he said. “She called right after that.”

“Right after what?”

“Well, I listen to swing a lot. WNEW is a good station for music, you know. Do you follow bop?”

“No. Go on.”

“Well, WNEW has a newsbreak every hour on the half hour. I remember the news coming on at nine thirty, and then as the newscaster signed off, the phone rang. That must have been at nine thirty-five. The news takes five minutes, you see. As a matter of fact, I always resent that intrusion on the music. If a person likes music, it seems unfair...”

“And the phone rang at nine thirty-five, is that right?”

“Yes, sir, I’m positive.”

“Who answered the phone?”

“I did. I’d finished my coffee.”

“Was it Mary Chang calling?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Gotham Lobster, good morning.’ I said good morning back to her — she’s always very pleasant on the phone — and...”

“Wasn’t she pleasant off the phone?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know. I only spoke to her on the phone.”

“Go on.”

“She gave me a quotation then and asked if I’d like some nice lobster.”

“Was this in Chinese?”

“Yes. I don’t know why she spoke Chinese. Perhaps she thought I was the chef.”

“What did you do then?”

“I asked her to hold on, and then I went to find the chef, I asked the chef if he needed any lobster, and he said we should take a half barrel. So I went back to the phone. But Miss Chang was gone by that time.” Loo shrugged. “We had to order our lobsters from another outfit. Shame, too, because Gotham has some good stuff.”

“Did you speak to her in English at all?”

“No. All Chinese.”

“I see. Is that customary? I mean, do you usually check with the chef after she gives her quotation?”

“Yes, of course. The chef is the only one who’d know. Sometimes, of course, the chef himself answers the phone. But if he doesn’t, we always leave the phone to check with him.”

“And you didn’t speak to her in English at all?”

“No, sir.”

“And you didn’t know her, other than through these phone conversations?”

“No, sir.”

“Ever have breakfast with her?” Donny asked.

“Sir?”

“Did you ever...”

“No, of course not. I told you, I didn’t know her personally.”

“All right, Mr. Loo, thank you very much. We may be back.”

“Please feel free to return,” he said a little coldly.

We left the restaurant, and outside Donny said, “So?”

“So now we know who she was speaking to. What do you think of him?”

“Educated guy. Could conceivably run in the same circles as a Columbia student. And if he did poison her this morning and then tell her about it on the phone, it’s a cinch he’d lie his goddamned head off.”

“Sure. Let’s check Miss Chang’s residence. Someone there might know whether or not Loo knew her better than he says he did.”

Mary Chang, when she was alive, lived at International House near the Columbia campus, on Riverside Drive. Her roommate was a girl named Frieda who was a transfer student from Vienna. The girl was shocked to learn of Miss Chang’s death. She actually wept for several moments, and then she pulled herself together when we started questioning her.

“Did she have any boyfriends?”

“Yes. A few.”

“Do you know any of their names?”

“I know all of their names. She always talked about them.”

“Would you let us have them, please.”

Frieda reeled off a list of names, and Donny and I listened. Then Donny asked, “A David Loo? Did he ever come around?”

“No, I don’t think so. She never mentioned a David Loo.”

“Never talked about him at all?”

“No.”

“That list you gave us — all Chinese names. Did. she ever date any American boys?”

“No. Mary was funny that way. She didn’t like to go out with Americans. I mean, she liked the country and all, but I guess she figured there was no future in dating Occidentals.” Frieda paused. “She was a pretty girl, Mary, and a very happy one, always laughing, always full of life. A lot of American boys figured her for... an easy mark, I suppose. She... sensed this. She wouldn’t date any of them.”

“Did they ask her?”

“Oh, yes, all the time. She was always very angry when an American asked her for a date. It was sort of an insult to her. She... knew what they wanted.”

“Where’d she eat breakfast?”

“Breakfast?”

“Yes. Where’d she eat? Who’d she eat with?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember ever seeing her eat breakfast.”

“She didn’t eat breakfast?”

“I don’t think so. We always left here together in the morning. I have a job, too, you see. I work at Lord and Taylor’s. I’m...”

“Yes, you left here together?”

“To take the subway. She never stopped to eat.”

“Coffee?” I asked. “An English muffin? Something?”

“No, not when I was with her.”

“I see. What subway did you take?”

“The Broadway line.”

“Where did she get off?”

“At Seventy-second Street.”

“What time did she get off the subway usually?”

“At about nine, or maybe a few minutes before. Yes, just about nine.”

“But she didn’t stop for breakfast.”

“No. Mary was very slim, very well-built. I don’t think she ate breakfast in the morning.”

“She ate breakfast this morning,” I said. “Thank you, miss. Come on, Donny.”

There was an Automat on West 72nd Street, a few doors from Broadway. Mary Chang wouldn’t have gone to the Automat because Mary Chang had to be at work at nine, and she got off the train at nine. We walked down the street, all the way up to the building that housed the offices of Gotham Lobster, close to Columbus Avenue. There was a luncheonette on the ground floor of that building. Donny and I went inside and took seats at the counter, and then we ordered coffee. When our coffee came, we showed the counterman our buzzers. He got scared all at once, the way some people will get scared when a cop shows his shield.

“Just a few questions,” we told him.

“Sure. Sure,” he said. He gulped. “I don’t know why...”

“You know any of the people who work in this building?”

“Sure, most of ’em. But...”

“Did you know Mary Chang?”

He seemed immensely relieved. “Oh, her. There’s some trouble with her, ain’t there? She got shot, or stabbed, or something, didn’t she?”

“Did you know her?”

“I seen her around, yeah. Quite a piece, you know? With them tight silk dresses, slit up there on the side.” He smiled. “You ever seen her? Man, I go for them Chinese broads.”

“Did she ever eat here?”

“No.”

“Breakfast?”

“No.”

“She never stopped here in the morning for coffee?”

“No, why should she do that?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Well, what I mean, he always come down for the coffee, you know.”

I felt Donny tense beside me:

“Who?” I asked. “Who came down for the coffee?”

“Why, Freddie. From the lobster joint. Every morning like clockwork, before he went upstairs. Two coffees, one heavy on the sugar. That Chinese broad liked it sweet. Also a jelly doughnut and a toasted English. Sure, every morning.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Oh yes, sure. The boss didn’t know nothing about it, you know. Mr. Godrow. He don’t go for that junk. They always had their coffee before he come in in the morning.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Did Freddie come down for the coffee this morning?”

“Sure, every morning.”

We left the luncheonette and went upstairs. Freddie was working the addressing machine when we came in. The machine made a hell of a clatter as the metal address plates fed through it. We said hello to Mr. Godrow and then walked right to the machine. Freddie fed postcards and stepped on the foot lever and the address plates banged onto the cards and then dropped into the tray below.

“We’ve got an idea, Freddie,” I said.

He didn’t look up. He kept feeding postcards into the machine. The cards read MAINE LIVE LOBSTERS AT FANTASTIC PRICES!

“We figure a guy who kept asking Mary Chang out, Freddie. A guy who constantly got refused.”

Freddie said nothing.

“You ever ask her out, Freddie?”

“Yes,” he said under the roar of the machine.

“We figure she drove the guy nuts, sitting there in her tight dresses, drinking coffee with him, being friendly, but never anything more, never what he wanted. We figured he got sore at all the Chinese boys who could date her just because they were Chinese. We figure he decided to do something about it. Want to hear more, Freddie?”

“What is this?” Godrow asked. “This is a place of business, you know. Those cards have to...”

“You went down for your customary coffee this morning, Freddie.”

“Coffee?” Godrow asked. “What coffee? Have you been...”

“Only this time you dumped strychnine into Mary Chang’s. She took her coffee very sweet, and that probably helped to hide the bitter taste. Or maybe you made some comment about the coffee being very bitter this morning, anything to hide the fact that you were poisoning her.”

“No...” Freddie said.

“She drank her coffee and ate her English muffin, and then — the way you did every morning — you gathered up the cups and the napkins and the crumbs and whatever, and you rushed out with them before Mr. Godrow arrived. Only this time, you were disposing of evidence. Where’d you take them? The garbage cans on Columbus Avenue? Do they collect the garbage early, Freddie?”

“I... I...”

“You knew the symptoms. You watched, and when you thought the time was ripe, you couldn’t resist boasting about what you’d done. Mary was making a call. You also knew how these calls worked because you made them yourself. There was usually a pause in the conversation while someone checked with the chef. You waited for that pause, and then you asked Mary if she knew why she was feeling so ill. You asked her because you weren’t making a call, Freddie, you were plugged in on her extension, listening to her conversation. She recognized your voice, and so she answered you in English. You told her then, and she jumped up, but it was too late, the convulsion came. Am I right, Freddie?”

Freddie nodded.

“You’d better come with us,” I said.

“I... I still have to stamp the quotations on these,” Freddie said.

“Mr. Godrow will get along without you, Freddie,” I said. “He’ll get himself a new boy.”

“I... I’m sorry,” Freddie said.

“This is terrible,” Godrow said.

“Think how Mary Chang must have felt,” I told him, and we left.

The Big Day

A continuing character in the 87th Precinct novels is a villain known as the Deaf Man, Carella’s nemesis, even as Moriarty was Sherlock Holmes’s. Whenever the Deaf Man is on the scene, the cops of the 87th behave like Keystone Kops. He made his first appearance in 1960, in a novel titled The Heckler. Since then, there have been five other novels in which the Deaf Man has wreaked havoc in the old Eight-Seven, the most recent of which was Hark! Traditionally, the Deaf Man will concoct a brilliant caper that is foiled not by any clever deduction on the part of the Eight-Seven’s stalwarts, but instead by pure chance or misfortune.

But think about this:

Five years before the Deaf Man made his first appearance, I wrote the following story about some guys planning to rob a bank. It appeared under the Richard Marsten byline, in the September 1955 issue of Manhunt.

“Friday is our big day,” the girl said.

She drained the remains of her Manhattan, and then fished for the cherry at the bottom of the glass. Anson Grubb watched her, no sign of interest on his face.

The girl popped the cherry into her mouth and then touched her fingers lightly to the napkin in her lap. The gesture was a completely feminine one, turned gross and somehow ugly by the girl herself. She was a big girl, her hair inexpertly tinted blonde, her lipstick badly applied. Anson had never liked cheap merchandise, and he winced inwardly as the girl munched on the cherry, her mouth working like a garbage disposal unit.

“The first and the fifteenth,” the girl said around the shredded remnants of the cherry, “and Friday is the fifteenth.”

“Payday, huh?” Anson asked, sipping at his scotch, apparently bored with all this shoptalk, but with his ears keyed to every syllable that came from her mouth.

“The steel mill and the airplane factory both,” she said, nodding. “Can’t we have another round, Anse?”

“Sure,” Anson said. He signaled the waiter and then added, “Well, it’s only twice a month, so that isn’t too bad.”

“That twice a month is enough to break our backs, Anse,” the girl said, impatiently looking over her shoulder for the waiter. “On those paydays, we must handle close to $500,000, cashing checks for the plants.”

“That right?” Anson said.

“Sure. You’d never think our little bank handled so much money, would you?” The girl gave a pleased little wiggle. “We don’t, usually, except on the first and the fifteenth.”

“That’s when the plants send over their payrolls, huh?” Anson asked. The waiter appeared at his elbow. “Two of the same, please,” he said. The waiter nodded and silently vanished.

“This is a nice place,” the girl said.

“I figured you needed a little relaxation,” Anson said. “Enjoy yourself before the mad rush on Friday, you know...”

“God, when I think of it,” the girl said. “It’s enough to drive you nuts.”

“I can imagine,” Anson said. “First those payrolls arriving early in the morning, and then the employees coming to cash their checks later in the day. That must be very trying.”

“Well, the payrolls don’t come on Friday,” the girl said. The waiter reappeared, depositing their drinks on the table. The girl lifted her Manhattan, said, “Here’s how,” and drank.

“Oh, they don’t come on Friday?” Anson said.

“No, they’ll reach us Thursday afternoon.”

“Well, that’s sensible, at least,” Anson said. He paused and lifted his drink. “Probably after you close those big bronze doors to the public, huh?”

“No, we don’t close until three. The payrolls get there at about two.”

“Oh, that’s good. Then the payrolls are safe in the vault before three.”

“Oh, sure. We’ve got a good vault.”

“I’ll bet you do. Do you want to dance, honey?”

“I’d love to,” the girl said. She shoved her chair back with all the grace of a bus laboring uphill. She went into Anson’s arms, and he maneuvered her onto the floor skillfully, feeling the roll of fat under his fingers, his mouth curled into a distasteful smile over her shoulder.

“Yep,” the girl said, “Friday is our big day.”

No, Anson thought. Thursday is our big day.

Jeremy Thorpe stood at the far end of the counter, the ballpoint pen in his hand. He took out his passbook, opened it before him, and then drew a deposit slip from one of the cubbyholes beneath the counter. He flipped the deposit slip over so that he could write on the blank yellow surface, and then he knotted his brow as if he were trying to work out a tricky problem in arithmetic.

He drew a large rectangle on the back of the deposit slip. On the north side of the rectangle, he drew two lines which intersected the side, and between the lines he scribbled the word “doors.” In the right-hand corner of the rectangle, he drew a small square resembling a desk, and he labeled it “mgr.” Across the entire south side of the rectangle, opposite his “doors,” he drew a line representing the half wall dividing the tellers’ cages from the remainder of the bank. He jotted four lines onto this to show the approximate position of the cages, and another line to indicate the locked doorway that led to the back of the bank and the vault. In the left-hand corner of his plan, the east and north sides intersected in a right angle which he labeled “counter.”

He folded the deposit slip in half, slipped it into his coat pocket, took a new deposit slip from the cubbyhole, and filled it in for a deposit of five dollars. In the space that asked for his name, he did not write Jeremy Thorpe. He carefully lettered in the words “Arthur Samuels.” He brought the deposit slip and a five-dollar bill to one of the cages, waiting behind a small man in a dark suit.

This was the third time he’d been inside the bank. He’d opened an account close to a month ago with fifty dollars. He’d added twenty dollars to it last week. He was adding five dollars to it now. He’d used different tellers for each deposit. The teller who took his passbook and money now had never seen Jeremy Thorpe before, and he certainly didn’t know his name wasn’t really Arthur Samuels. The teller stamped the book, put the money and deposit slip into his drawer, and handed the book back to Jeremy. Jeremy put the passbook into its protective case, and then walked directly to the doors, glancing once at the manager’s desk which was on his left behind a short wooden railing. The big bronze doors were folded back against the wall, and the uniformed bank guard was chatting with a white-haired woman. Jeremy pushed open one of the glass doors and walked down the stairs into the sunshine. This was Tuesday.

From the soda fountain across the way from the bank, Carl Semmer could see the bank very clearly. There was a driveway to the right of the bank, and a door was at the end of that driveway, and the payroll trucks would roll up that driveway on Thursday. The guards would step out and enter through the door at the end of the driveway, and the payrolls for American Steel and Tartogue Aircraft would be carried back to the vault, awaiting the demands of the employees’ checks next day. He had sat at the soda fountain counter on two payroll delivery days thus far. On both those days, the American Steel payroll had arrived in an armored car bearing the shield of International Armored Car Corp. On the fourteenth of last month, it had arrived at 2:01 P.M. On the thirty-first of last month, it had arrived at 2:07 P.M. On both occasions it had taken the guards approximately six minutes to deliver the payroll and back the truck out into the street. They had then turned left around the corner and been out of sight before an additional minute had expired.

On the fourteenth, the Safeguard Company’s truck bearing the second payroll had arrived at 2:10, several minutes after the first truck departed. On the thirty-first, the Safeguard Company’s truck arrived while the first truck was still in the driveway. It waited in front of the A&P alongside the bank’s driveway, and when the first truck swung out into the street and around the corner, it pulled up to the rear door at 2:15. On both occasions, each truck was gone and out of sight by 2:22 P.M.

Carl had watched these operations with careful scrutiny. He was now watching an equally important operation.

The big clock on the outside wall of the bank read 2:59. He glanced at his own wristwatch to check the time, and then his eyes moved to the front steps where he saw Anson Grubb starting for the doors. Anson entered the glass doors and moved into the bank. Carl’s eyes fled to the clock again. The big hand was moving slowly, almost imperceptibly.

Three o’clock.

Jeremy Thorpe started up the front steps of the bank. From behind the glass doors, the uniformed guard shook his head, smiled a sad smile at Jeremy, and then began closing the big bronze doors. Jeremy snapped his fingers, turned, and walked down the steps again and turned left toward the A&P. Carl studied his watch. It took thirty seconds to close the big bronze doors.

He kept watching the front of the bank. At 3:05, one of the bronze doors opened, and an old lady started down the steps. The door closed behind her. At 3:07, the door opened again, and two more people left the bank. At 3:10, four people left. At 3:17, two people left. At 3:21, Anson Grubb left the bank. Carl knew he would be the last person to leave. He paid for his coffee and went back to the furnished room at the other end of town.

This was Wednesday.

“The payroll trucks should be gone by 2:25,” Anson said that night. “We’ll give ourselves leeway and say they’ll be gone by 2:30. Add another five minutes to that in case there are any foul-ups inside the bank, and we can figure the money’ll be safe in the vault by 2:35.”

He scratched his chin thoughtfully. He was a tall man with wild black hair. His eyes were blue, and his nose was long and thin. He wore an immaculate blue suit, and a black homburg rested on the chair beside him. One knee was raised as he leaned onto the chair, the trouser leg pulled back in a crease-preserving manner.

“Where’s the plan, Jerry?” he said.

Jeremy Thorpe rose and walked to the dresser. He opened the top drawer and removed an eight-by-eleven enlargement of the plan he’d sketched onto the deposit slip. He brought this to the table, put it in the center under the hanging lightbulb and said, “I’m no Michelangelo.”

The other men studied the plan once more. They had seen it often enough since Jeremy had drawn it up, but they studied it again, coupling it with their own memories of what they’d seen inside the bank, giving the two-dimensional drawing a three-dimensional reality.

“What do you think?” Anson said.

“Looks good,” Carl answered. He was a short man with a pug nose and bad teeth. He was smoking now, and the gray smoke of his cigarette drifted up past the cooler gray of his eyes. He wore his brown hair in a crew cut.

“Jerry?”

“I like it,” Jeremy said. He blinked his eyes. Now that the time was close, he was getting a little nervous. The nervousness showed in his pale features. He tweaked his feminine nose, and his lids blinked again, like short flesh curtains spasmodically closing and opening over his brown eyes.

“Only two of us are going in, you understand that, don’t you?” Anson said.

Carl nodded.

“Jerry?”

“I understand.”

“You think we can knock it over with just two inside?” Carl asked. “Maybe we all ought to go in.”

“We can do it,” Anson said.

“There’s just one weak spot in the plan,” Jeremy said, blinking.

“What’s that?”

“The last guy to leave.”

“How do you figure that to be a weak spot?”

“Suppose the timing is off? What happens then?”

“The timing won’t be off,” Anson said. “Look, you want me to run through this again?”

“Yeah, I’d feel better if you did,” Jeremy said.

“Okay. The trucks are gone by 2:30, we’re figuring. The money is in the vault by 2:35. Carl is across the street in the soda fountain, watching all the time. If anything happens to delay the trucks, he gives us a buzz before we leave here, and we postpone the thing to the first of next month. So there’s no chance of a slipup there, right?”

“Right,” Jeremy said.

“Okay. At 2:45, assuming we get no call from Carl, you and I leave here. It takes us five minutes to drive from here to the parking lot on Main and West Davis. That’s a public parking lot, so we don’t have to worry about attendants or anything. We just pull the car in, and leave it. Time: 2:50. We walk to the bank. It takes only four minutes to walk to the bank, we’ve timed that a dozen times already. That would put us in the bank at 2:54, but that’s a little too early, so we dally a bit, getting to the bank at 2:58. We’ve entered as late as 2:59 with no trouble from the guard at the door, so there shouldn’t be any trouble at 2:58. I go straight to the manager’s desk. At three o’clock, four things are going to happen.”

“Go ahead,” Jeremy said.

“One: the bank guard is going to close those big bronze doors so nobody else can come into the bank.”

“Yeah.”

“Two: you’re going over to the bank guard, Jerry. You’re telling him a holdup is in progress, and that he is to behave normally, letting no one into the bank and letting anyone out who wants to go out. You got that?”

“Yes.”

“Three: I’m going to sit down at the manager’s desk and tell him I have a gun in my pocket and I want him to take me back to the vault. Four: Carl leaves the soda fountain and heads for the parking lot the second he sees the bronze doors closing.”

“Well, it’s okay so far,” Jeremy said. “It’s what comes later that bothers me.”

“This is perfect,” Anson said. “There’s nothing to worry about. The time is now 3:00 P.M. The doors are closed, you and I are inside the bank, Carl is on his way to the car. There are only two people inside that bank who know there’s a holdup going on. And they’re the only two people who’ll know about it until it’s all over and we’re gone. It takes Carl four minutes to walk to the car. Time: 3:04. By 3:04, the bank manager and I will have left his desk, gone through the locked door to the right of the tellers’ cages, and be at the door to the vault. You’re still at the entrance with the bank guard, Jerry. Some people will be leaving, but that’s all right. We let them go. By 3:05, the vault door is open, and the manager and I are inside.”

“The light on the corner of Main and West Davis turns red at 3:06,” Carl said. “It’s a one-minute light, turning green again at 3:07. It takes two minutes to drive from that corner to the bank driveway. Time: 3:09.”

“I’ve been in the vault for four minutes already,” Anson said. “I figure I can clean it out in six minutes. We’ve practiced stuffing that suitcase already, and I’ve always done it in less than five. But we’ll figure six minutes to play it safe. In other words, at 3:11 I’m ready to leave the vault with the money, and Carl is parked in the driveway at the rear door.”

“And I’m still with the bank guard,” Jeremy said.

“Correct,” Anson replied. “At 3:11, I leave the vault and close the door. The manager is still inside. If he starts yelling, no one’s going to hear him through that thick steel. So we don’t have to worry about the manager after 3:11. I walk to my left and to the rear door. It’s approximately ten feet to that door. I open it, step into the rear of the car, and Carl pulls out of the driveway. It shouldn’t take us longer than a minute to clear the driveway and turn toward the front of the bank. We’ll play it safe. Give us two minutes from the time I leave the vault to the time the car will be waiting for you at the front of the bank, Jerry. In other words: 3:13.”

“That’s the part that bothers me,” Jeremy said. “I don’t like leaving last.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Anson said. “At 3:13 by the bank’s clock, you tell the guard to open the door. You walk out and down to the car. It’ll take you twenty seconds to cross the sidewalk to the car. It’ll take the guard at least thirty seconds to get over his shock and open those doors again. That gives us a ten-second start. By that time, we’re around the corner and away. We’ll be on the highway before the cops even know about this. The guard’ll probably rush out and start yelling and then remember he ought to pull the alarm. That’s all the lead we’ll need.”

“I don’t like leaving last,” Jeremy said.

“Why not? I’m the only one who’ll be carrying any money,” Anson said. “When you leave, you’ll look just like any other depositor who got caught inside when the doors closed. You’re not allowed to park in front of the bank, which means there’ll be a space for our car guaranteed. We’ll be in it just as you come out of the bank. Believe me, we can’t miss.”

“I hope so,” Jeremy said, blinking.

On Thursday, the fourteenth, the sun rose over the town and splashed the streets with gold. There was a pale blue sky behind the sun, and the natives of the town talked about spring coming early this year. It was a warm sun, and it dispelled harsh thoughts of winter, and the people of the town responded to the sun and quickened their steps, and walked with the collars of their coats open, walked with their heads high. It was good to be alive on a day like this. The people in the bank, the tellers, the clerks, the manager, the guard looked through the glass entrance doors and up at the high windows on the walls, seeing the golden splash of the sun and wishing for their lunch hours so they could get outside and soak up some fresh air.

The three men ate lunch in a diner. They did not sit together. They did not talk to each other. They ate their lunches quietly and then separately went back to their furnished room to prepare for the business that lay ahead of them.

Anson was in a holiday mood. He took the theatrical makeup kit from the bottom drawer of the dresser, and then he went to the closet for the suitcase bearing the wigs, and there was a perky spring in his step, and a smile on his face.

“It isn’t enough to be merely unrecognizable,” Anson said, like a professor delivering a lecture to his students. “To begin with, we can’t wear masks because we’re allegedly just customers entering the bank. We have to look like normal, everyday people.” He tapped the makeup kit. “That’s the beauty of this.”

“I’ll feel strange,” Jeremy said.

“Of course you will,” Anson replied. “But when the time comes for descriptions, you’ll feel a whole lot better. Come on, let’s get started.”

They began with the spirit gum. Carl had a pug nose, but he sat before the mirror and diligently wadded spirit gum onto it until the nose took a definite downward curve. Jeremy used a heavy hand with the gum, adding to his own slender, feminine nose until the nose was gross and wide. Anson built a hook into the center of his nose, so that the nose appeared to have been broken at one time. They tinted the spirit gum to match the color of their complexions, and then they started with the theatrical hair. Carefully, painstakingly, they snipped patches of hair from the long strands they held in their hands. Carl built up his eyebrows so that they were shaggy and unkempt. Anson, bit by careful bit, built a red mustache under his false broken nose. Jeremy put a hairline mustache under his.

They powdered their noses to take the shine of the makeup off them, and then they took the wigs out of the suitcase. Anson put the red wig over his own wild black hair. Jeremy, in character with the thin mustache, donned a black wig and then plastered the hair down with petroleum jelly. Carl put on a shaggy wig which matched his eyebrows. They glued the wigs tight at their temples, combing the hair so that it fell naturally. The time was 1:30.

At 1:32, the International Armored Car Corp. truck pulled up at the offices of American Steel and two armed guards transported the payroll into the steel-plated truck. At 1:35, the The Big Day truck from the Safeguard Company arrived at Tartogue Aircraft to pick up its payroll load.

At 1:37, Anson Grubb said, “You’d better hurry, Carl.”

“I’m hurrying,” Carl answered. He was wearing a pale yellow sports shirt, and he stood before the mirror now, knotting a tie. He did not put either a sports jacket or a suit jacket over the shirt He wore, instead, a red plaid lumber jacket. The other men would follow the same sartorial plan. Over the lumber jackets would go overcoats. Once they were in the car and away from the bank after the holdup, the overcoats, the wigs, the false hair and the built-up noses, the neckties, all would be dumped into a suitcase in the backseat of the car. Anyone who’d seen them in the bank would remember men in overcoats, wearing neckties. Once they left that bank, their physical appearances would be completely changed. The three men in the car would be wearing lumber jackets and sports shirts. They would be of different hair coloring than the men who’d robbed the bank. Their faces would look different. They would all be clean shaven, whereas the two men who’d robbed the bank had worn mustaches. Only the driver of the car — if anyone happened to see him — had sported a hairless face.

But the escape precautions did not end at this point. Three men traveling alone, no matter what their description, would certainly be suspect after a bank had been looted by three strangers. Two drop-off points had been marked along the escape route. Jeremy would be dropped off first, carrying the suitcase with the overcoats and the rest of the junk. He would run around to the back of the car and — in the event anyone had caught the license number as they’d driven from the bank — he would take off the phony plate that was taped onto the car’s original plate.

Anson would be dropped off two miles later, carrying the suitcase with the money, and also carrying Carl’s gun as well as his own. If Carl were stopped after the two men had been dropped off, he’d be clean as a whistle. He was unarmed. There was no loot in the car. There was nothing in the car which could tie him to the holdup. There was no reason to assume he would be stopped, but if he were, he would be a workman in a lumber jacket, returning to the city after a hard day. A rendezvous point, some thousand miles and two weeks away, had been arranged. It looked perfect.

“I’m going to enjoy this money,” Carl said.

“Mmmm,” Anson said, grinning.

“What will you do with it, Carl?” Jeremy asked, stepping close to the mirror and admiring his masquerade handiwork.

“Spend it,” Carl said.

“On what?”

“Women.”

“He’s a ladies’ man,” Jeremy said to Anson.

“Damn right, I’m a ladies’ man. There isn’t anybody in the world who couldn’t be a ladies’ man with one-third of $500,000.”

“That’s a mean hunk of cabbage,” Anson said.

“I’m getting out of the country with my share,” Jeremy said. “Down to Mexico.”

“What the hell’re you gonna do there?” Anson wanted to know.

“He’ll open up a chain of houses.”

“The hell I am. I’ll just sit around in the sun and have myself a ball, that’s all. Nothing to do but soak up sun for the rest of my life.”

“I can’t go to Mexico,” Carl said.

“Why not?”

“I once cooled a Mexican cop. We were running some weed out of Tijuana, and he stepped in and began making noise.”

“There are other places besides Tijuana,” Anson said.

“Sure, but my face is in every police station in Mexico,” Carl said.

“I’ve got no worries there,” Jeremy said.

“Just so you stay out of Kansas City,” Anson said.

“I’m not wanted in Kansas City.”

“Not by the cops, no,” Anson said.

“You talking about Harry Kale?”

“Harry Kale is who I’m talking about.”

“Kale doesn’t bother me,” Jeremy said.

“No, huh?”

“No. He made up all that business. He invented all that statutory rape junk so he could get me out of K.C.”

“He did, huh? That sounds screwy, considering it brought the bulls down around his ears.”

“He made it all up.”

“Well, just stay clear of Kansas City, and you’re all right.”

“I’m not going anywhere near K.C.,” Jeremy said, “but not because Harry Kale scares me. He doesn’t scare me at all.”

“I once did a job for Harry,” Anson said. “In the old days, when we were still running booze. He pays well.”

“He doesn’t pay the way this job is going to pay,” Carl said.

“Nobody pays the way this job is going to pay.”

“You think we should run through it again?” Jeremy asked.

“Sure,” Anson said. “Once more before Carl leaves. We’ve still got a few minutes, haven’t we?”

They ran through the job again, committing it to their separate memories, and then they synchronized their watches with Anson’s, which had been set with the bank’s clock that morning.

At 1:50, Carl left the room.

The man behind the soda fountain did not recognize him, and he considered that a good omen. He had been secretly afraid that his disguise could be penetrated, but the man behind the counter hadn’t given him a second look. To complete the transition of character, and to completely disassociate himself from the Carl Semmer who’d sat at this same counter yesterday and ordered coffee, Carl ordered a cherry Coke. He paid for the Coke when he was served, eliminating any possible delay later when it would be time to leave for the car. He sat sipping his Coke and watching the driveway across the street.

At 2:02, the International Armored Car Corp. truck arrived. He watched the guards as they entered the rear door with the American Steel payroll. At 2:08, they entered the truck, backed it out of the driveway, and drove off. At 2:10, the second armored car appeared. They finished their delivery, and drove off at 2:16. Carl glanced at his watch, checking it against the time on the bank clock, and then relaxed.

“Let me have a newspaper,” he said to the man behind the counter.

The man gave him a paper, and Carl paid for it, and then began reading it, glancing across the street every few minutes. Not many people were going into the bank. That was good. Everything was running very smoothly. He was tempted to call Anson and Jeremy, tell them the loot was there, just waiting to be picked up, but he didn’t want to throw them into a panic. He bided his time instead, aware of the crawling hands of the clock. At 2:45, he knew Anson and Jeremy were leaving the room. Carl waited, folding his newspaper, sipping at his Coke.

At 2:57, he saw them coming down the street. He rose and walked to the plate-glass door, looking out.

“Hey, mister,” the man behind the counter said. Carl whirled.

“What?”

“You forgot your newspaper.”

“Thanks, you can keep it.”

He watched Anson and Jeremy as they walked past the A&P, past the bank driveway, up the flat steps leading to the entrance doors. The bank guard smiled as they entered the bank. The clock above the doors read 2:58. Everything was moving according to schedule. At 3:00 P.M., the guard closed the big bronze doors. Carl walked out of the shop, turned right, and headed for the parking lot and the waiting automobile.

“A holdup is in progress,” Jeremy said to the bank guard.

“What?” the guard said as he turned away from the doors. “What are you...?”

“This is a gun in my pocket. Keep quiet and no one will get hurt. Open your mouth, and the whole place gets shot up.”

The guard blinked his eyes and then looked down to the menacing bulge in Jeremy’s pocket. He was tempted for a moment to begin yelling, and then his eyes took in the slicked-down hair and the pencil-thin mustache, and something warned him to keep his silence. This man was a killer.

“Don’t let anyone else in,” Jeremy said. “If anyone wants to go out, let them out. Act the way you always do. No funny business. We’ll just stand here and chat as if nothing’s happening. Have you got that?”

The bank guard nodded.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the bank manager said to Anson. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m carrying a gun,” Anson whispered, “and I know how to use it. Get up from that desk and walk back to the vault with me. If anyone looks at you curiously, smile back at them. When we get to the vault, you’ll open the door, and we’ll go in together. If you so much as look crooked at anybody, you’re a dead man. You understand?”

“I... understand,” the manager said. He estimated the distance between his foot and the alarm buzzer set in the floor under his desk, and then he estimated the distance between his heart and the gun the redheaded, mustached man held in his pocket. “I... I’ll do what you say,” he murmured, and he rose from the desk. Anson walked with him to the locked door. The manager signaled to the teller nearest the door, and the teller pushed a button and the door clicked open. The manager and Anson walked back to the vault door. One of the tellers turned to look at the manager, but he smiled and nodded, and the teller went back to his work.

“Open it,” Anson whispered.

The manager nodded weakly and began twisting the dials in the face of the huge steel door.

At 3:05, he swung back the door, and he and Anson stepped into the vault. The bank guard, the only other member of the bank’s staff who knew that the bank was being held up, watched the manager and the redheaded man enter the vault, and he sighed deeply, and then smiled as he let a customer out of the bank.

Carl sat at the wheel of the car and glanced at his watch.

3:06.

He looked up at the light on the corner of Main and West Davis, and then he watched the sweep hand of his watch as it swung through sixty seconds. At 3:07, the light changed to green and Carl turned the corner and headed for the bank driveway at the end of the street. In four minutes, Anson would be coming out of that door with $500,000 worth of cabbage. In six minutes, Jeremy would be leaving the front of the bank. They’d be gone before anybody inside had sense enough to know what had hit them.

He drove leisurely down the street. There was a line of traffic on the other side of the two-lane street, but there was only one car behind him. He could see the A&P ahead, the driveway on its left. He threw the directional signal shaft up, saw the little light on the dashboard begin blinking intermittently as he prepared for his right turn. He saw the A&P truck then.

The truck had just pulled into the area in front of the driveway, ready to back into a space in front of the supermarket. Anson cursed silently and jammed on the brakes. The truck driver was taking all his damn sweet time, maneuvering the big lumbering machine into position against the curb, its nose jutting out so that it blocked the entrance to the driveway. Carl looked at his watch. 3:09. He had two minutes to get that damned car into the driveway. The man in the car behind him began honking his horn.

“Shut up, you damn fool,” Carl said angrily.

It suddenly occurred to him that the man honking his horn behind him was attracting attention. And if anyone looked at Carl’s car, they’d automatically figure he was getting ready to turn into the driveway. Where else could he be going? Why else was he waiting for the truck to back up in front of the supermarket?

He stepped on the gas at once, driving to the corner and making a U-turn against the stream of oncoming traffic. He drove down the street again, signaled for a left turn, and headed for the driveway as the truck backed into position in front of the supermarket. It was almost 3:11. Anson would be coming out of that rear door in a few seconds.

“Well, for Christ’s sake, move it up a little,” he heard the voice at the end of the driveway say.

“Move it where, you damn fool!” a second voice answered.

“Can’t you see the driveway?”

“The hell with the driveway. You’re backed up too close to this car. I can’t get your doors open.”

“Oh, hell!” Carl heard the second voice reply, and then his heart lurched into his throat when he heard the truck’s motor whine into action again.

Anson stuffed the suitcase rapidly. Bills, more bills than he’d seen in his life. Crisp and green, and smelling of big cars and women and liquor and anything a man wanted.

“Get over there in the corner,” he said to the manager.

The manager moved swiftly. Anson kept piling the stacked and bound bills into the suitcase. His hands moved rapidly, the gun dangling on his forefinger from its trigger guard. He slammed the suitcase shut and glanced at his watch. 3:10.

“Don’t start yelling,” he said to the manager. “Now that I’ve got the money, I’m more likely to kill for it.”

He stepped quickly to the vault door, put the gun into his coat pocket, slammed the door and whirled the dials, and then walked rapidly to the rear door of the bank, not turning to look behind him.

Jeremy, at the entrance doors, saw Anson come out of the vault and head out of the building. He looked up at the clock on the wall over the tellers’ cages. 3:11. Two minutes to go. Two minutes and he would be out of here.

Anson stepped into the driveway, closed the door behind him, and reached for the rear door handle of the car. He opened the door, tossed the suitcase onto the backseat, climbed in after it, and said, “Go, Carl.”

“Go where? There’s a truck at the other end of the drivel”

Anson whirled on the seat. He spotted the truck. Sweat broke out on his forehead. “Back up,” he said. “As far as you can go. I’ll get rid of the truck.”

“How? What can you...?”

“I don’t know! Move! Jerry’s comin’ out that front door in a minute and a half!”

Carl threw the car into reverse and backed down the driveway.

“More,” Anson said.

“I can’t go no more. We don’t want to block the sidewalk.”

“Okay.” Anson was already opening the door. “I’ll move the truck. As soon as you’re clear, back into the street and over to the front of the bank. I’ll catch you.”

“How will you...?”

“Go!” Anson snapped, and left the car. He ran directly to the truck, around the front end, and then he climbed into the cab and threw the gears into reverse. He rammed his foot down onto the accelerator, felt the truck lurch backward, heard screams behind him, and then heard the sullen crunch of metal as the truck’s doors struck the car parked behind. As he leaped out of the cab, he saw one of the bronze bank doors open, saw Jeremy starting down the steps, heading for the curb. Jeremy’s face went pale and his eyes popped wide when he saw the empty space at the curb. He looked back at the bronze doors, and then he wet his lips, his eyes blinking furiously. The car! Where the hell was the goddamn car!

Anson’s feet struck the pavement. He heard the car in the driveway grind into gear an instant before Carl stepped on the gas. Jeremy was about to panic, he could see that.

“Jerry!” he yelled. “This way! Quick!”

Jeremy’s eyes darted to the street. He saw Anson, and he began to run instantly, and at the same moment the bronze doors swung open and the bank guard shouted, “Stop, thief!”

Jeremy turned blindly, his gun leaping into his hand. He fired at the guard, his head turned, his body moving forward on churning legs.

Anson’s eyes widened.

“Jerry! For Christ’s sake, watch...”

The car lunged out of the driveway, catching Jeremy on the run. Jeremy screamed, the gun in his hand bucking as his finger closed around the trigger again. He screamed again when the car knocked him to the pavement, and the wheels crushed his body flat.

The bank guard was down the steps now, his gun in his hand. Anson reached the car and pulled open the rear door. The guard sighted carefully, and then he squeezed the trigger as Anson climbed into the car. The shots erupted into the quiet of the small street. Two spurts of dust rose on Anson’s back, and then the dust gave way before two rivers of blood. He fell backward, clinging to the center post as the car wheeled into the street and backed for its turn. He lost his grip then, toppling out of the car to fall facedown on the pavement, his back running blood.

The money, Carl thought. The money’s still here in the car. Then the windshield was shattering and he had only a second to realize those were bullet holes before his face crumbled and he lurched forward onto the wheel.

The big day was over.

Tomorrow was payday.