Let’s Hear It For The Deaf Man

11

He had been searching for Mary Margaret Ryan without success since Saturday afternoon. He had tried the apartment on Porter Street, where she said she was living, but Henry and Bob told him she hadn’t been around, and they had no idea where she was. He had then tried all the neighborhood places she might have frequented, and had even staked out Elliot’s shop, on the off chance she might go there to see him. But she had not put in an appearance.

Now, at ten o’clock on Monday morning, April 26, four days before the Deaf Man had promised to steal $500,000 from the First Federal Bank (though God knew which one), Carella roamed Rutland Street looking for a silver motorcycle. During their brief conversation last Tuesday, Yank had told Carella that he’d blown in a few weeks back and was living in an apartment on Rutland. He had not given the address, but Carella didn’t think he’d have too much trouble finding the place — it is almost impossible to hide something as large as a motorcycle. He did not honestly expect Yank or his friends to know anything about the whereabouts of Mary Margaret Ryan; she hardly seemed the kind of girl who’d run with a motorcycle gang. But Yank and a bikie named Ox had been in Elliot’s shop the day before, and the argument Carella had witnessed through the plate-glass window seemed something more than casual. When you run out of places to look, you’ll look anywhere. Mary Margaret Ryan had to be someplace; everybody’s got to be someplace, man.

After fifteen minutes on the block, he located three bikes chained to the metal post of a banister in the downstairs hallway of 601 Rutland. He knocked on the door of the sole apartment on the ground floor, and asked the man who answered it where the bikies were living.

“You going to bust them?” the man asked.

“What apartment are they in?”

“Second-floor front,” the man said. “I wish you’d clean them out of here.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re no damn good,” the man said, and closed the door.

Carella went up to the second floor. Several brown bags of garbage were leaning against the wall. He listened outside the door, heard voices inside, and knocked. A blond man, naked to the waist, opened the door. He was powerful and huge, with hard, tight muscles developed by years of weight-lifting. Barefooted, with blue jeans stretched tight over bulging thighs, he looked out at Carella and said nothing.

“Police officer,” Carella said. “I’m looking for some people named Ox and Yank.”

“Why?” the blond said.

“Couple of questions I want to ask them.”

The blond studied him, shrugged, said, “Okay,” and led him into the apartment. Ox and Yank were sitting at a table in the kitchen, drinking beer.

“Well, well,” Yank said.

“Who’s this?” Ox asked.

“A gentleman from the police,” Yank said, and added with mock formality, “I fear I’ve forgotten your name, officer.”

“Detective Carella.”

“Carella, Carella, right. What can we do for you, Detective Carella?”

“Have you seen Mary Margaret around?” Carella asked.

“Who?”

“Mary Margaret Ryan.”

“Don’t know her,” Yank said.

“How about you?” Carella said.

“Nope,” Ox answered.

“Me, neither,” the blond said.

“Girl about this high,” Carella said, “long brown hair, brown eyes.”

“Nope,” Yank said.

“Reason I ask...”

“We don’t know her,” Yank said.

“Reason I ask,” Carella repeated, “is that she poses for Sanford Elliot, and...”

“Don’t know him, either,” Yank said.

“You don’t, huh?”

“Nope.”

“None of you know him, huh?”

“None of us,” Yank said.

“Have you had any second thoughts about that picture I showed you?”

“Nope, no second thoughts,” Yank said. “Sorry.”

“You want to take a look at this picture, Ox?”

“What picture?” Ox asked.

“This one,” Carella said, and took the photograph from his notebook.

He handed it to Ox, looking into his face, looking into his eyes, and becoming suddenly unsettled by what he saw there. Through the plate-glass window of Elliot’s shop, Ox had somehow appeared both intelligent and articulate, perhaps because he had been delivering a finger-waving harangue. But now, after having heard his voice, after having seen his eyes, Carella knew at once that he was dealing with someone only slightly more alert than a beast of the field. The discovery was frightening. Give me the smart ones anytime, Carella thought. I’ll take a thousand like the Deaf Man if you’ll only keep the stupid ones away from me.

“Recognize him?” he asked.

“No,” Ox said, and tossed the photograph onto the table.

“I was talking to Sanford Elliot Saturday,” Carella said. “I thought he might be able to help me with this picture.” He picked it up, put it back into his notebook, and waited. Neither Ox nor Yank said a word. “You say you don’t know him, huh?”

“What was the name?” Ox said.

“Sanford Elliot. His friends call him Sandy.”

“Never heard of him,” Ox said.

“Uh-huh,” Carella said. He looked around the room. “Nice place, is it yours?” he asked the bare-chested, barefooted blond man.

“Yeah.”

“What’s your name?”

“Who says I have to tell you?”

“That garbage stacked in the hallway is a violation,” Carella said flatly. “You want me to get snotty, or you want to tell me your name?”

“Willie Harcourt.”

“How long have you been living here, Willie?”

“About a year.”

“When did your friends arrive?”

“I told you...” Yank started.

“I’m asking your pal. When did they get here, Willie?”

“Few weeks ago.”

Carella turned to Ox and said, “What’s your beef with Sandy Elliot?”

“What?” Ox said.

“Sandy Elliot.”

“We told you we don’t know him,” Yank said.

“You’ve got a habit of answering questions nobody asked you,” Carella said. “I’m talking to your friend here. What’s the beef, Ox? You want to tell me?”

“No beef,” Ox said.

“Then why were you yelling at him?”

“Me? You’re crazy.”

“You were in his shop Saturday, and you were yelling at him. Why?”

“You must have me mixed up with somebody else,” Ox said, and lifted his beer bottle and drank.

“Who else lives in this apartment?” Carella asked.

“Just the three of us,” Willie said.

“Those your bikes downstairs?”

“Yes,” Yank said quickly.

“Pal,” Carella said, “I’m going to tell you one last time...”

“Yeah, what are you going to tell me?” Yank asked, and rose from the table and put his hands on his hips.

“You’re a big boy, I’m impressed,” Carella said, and, without another word, drew his gun. “This is a.38 Detective’s Special,” he said. “It carries six cartridges, and I’m a great shot. I don’t intend tangling with three gorillas. Sit down and be nice, or I’ll shoot you in the foot and say you were attempting to assault a police officer.”

Yank blinked.

“Hurry up,” Carella said.

Yank hesitated only a moment longer, and then sat at the table again.

“Very nice,” Carella said. He did not holster the pistol. He kept it in his hand, with his finger inside the trigger guard. “The silver bike is yours, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Which one is yours, Ox?”

“The black.”

“How about you?” he said, turning to Willie.

“The red one.”

“They all properly registered?”

“Come on,” Yank said, “you’re not going to hang any bullshit violation on us.”

“Unless I decide to lean on you about the garbage outside.”

“Why you doing this?” Ox asked suddenly.

“Doing what, Ox?”

“Hassling us this way? What the hell did we do?”

“You lied about being in Elliot’s shop Saturday, that’s what you did.”

“Big deal. Okay, we were there. So what?”

“What were you arguing about?”

“The price of a statue,” Ox said.

“It didn’t look that way.”

“That’s all it was,” Ox said. “We were arguing about a price.”

“What’d you decide?”

“Huh?”

“What price did you agree on?”

“We didn’t.”

“How well do you know Elliot?”

“Don’t know him at all. We saw his stuff in the window, and we went in to ask about it.”

“What about Mary Margaret Ryan?”

“Never heard of her.”

“Okay,” Carella said. He went to the door, opened it, and said, “If you were planning to leave suddenly for the Coast, I’d advise against it. I’d also advise you to get that garbage out of the hallway.” He opened the door, stepped outside, closed the door behind him, and went down the steps. He did not return the gun to its holster until he was on the ground floor again. He knocked on the door at the end of the hall there, and the same man answered it.

“Did you bust them?” the man asked.

“No. Mind if I come in a minute?”

“You should have busted them,” the man said, but he stepped aside and allowed Carella to enter the apartment. He was a man in his fifties, wearing dark trousers, house slippers, and an undershirt with shoulder straps. “I’m the superintendent here,” he said.

“What’s your name, sir?” Carella asked.

“Andrew Halloran,” the super said. “And yours?”

“Detective Carella.”

“Why didn’t you bust them, Detective Carella? They give me a hell of a lot of trouble, I wish you would have busted them for something.”

“Who’s paying for the apartment, Mr. Halloran?”

“The one with all the muscles. His name’s William Harcourt. They call him Willie. But he’s never there alone. They come and go all the time. Sometimes a dozen of them are living in there at the same time, men and women, makes no difference. They get drunk, they take dope, they yell, they fight with each other and with anybody tries to say a decent word to them. They’re no damn good, is all.”

“Would you know the full names of the other two?”

“Which two is that?” Halloran asked.

“Ox and Yank.”

“I get mixed up,” Halloran said. “Three of them came in from California a few weeks back, and I sometimes have trouble telling them apart. I think the two up there with Willie...”

“Three of them, did you say?” Carella asked, and suddenly remembered that Yank had given him this same information last Tuesday, when he’d been sitting outside the candy store with his chair tilted back against the brick wall. “Three of us blew in from the Coast a few weeks back.”

“Yeah, three of them, all right. Raising all kinds of hell, too.”

“Can you describe them to me?”

“Sure. One of them’s short and squat, built like an ape with the mind of one besides.”

“That’d be Ox.”

“Second one’s got frizzy hair and a thick black beard, scar over his right eye.”

“Yank. And the third one?”

“Tall fellow with dark hair and a handlebar mustache. Nicest of the lot, matter of fact. I haven’t seen him around for a while. Not since last week sometime. I don’t think he’s left for good, though, because his bike’s still here in the hall.”

“Which bike?”

“The red one.”

“I thought that belonged to Willie.”

“Willie? Hell, he’s lucky if he can afford roller skates.”

Carella took the notebook from his jacket pocket, removed the photograph from it, and asked, “Is this the third bikie?”

“That’s Adam, all right,” Halloran said.

“Adam what?” Carella said.

“Adam Villers.”

He called the squadroom from a pay phone in the corner drugstore, told Meyer he’d had a positive identification of the dead boy in the Jesus Case, and asked him to run a routine I.S. check on Adam Villers, V–I-L–L-E-R-S. He then asked if there had been any calls for him.

“Yeah,” Meyer said. “Your sister called and said not to forget Wednesday is your father’s birthday and to mail him a card.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“Kling wants to know if you feel like taking your wife to a strip joint in Calm’s Point.”

“What?”

“He’s tailing a guy on those burglaries, and the guy knows what he looks like, and Cotton was spotted for a cop first crack out of the box.”

“Tell Kling I’ve got nothing better to do right now than take Teddy to a strip joint in Calm’s Point. Jesus!”

“Don’t get sore at me, Steve.”

“Any other calls?”

“Did you have a mugging on Ainsley back in March? Woman named Charity Miles?”

“Yes.”

“The Eight-eight just cracked it. Guy’s admitted to every crime of the past century, including the Brink’s Robbery.”

“Good, that’s one less to worry about. Anything else?”

“Nothing.”

“Any mail?”

“Another picture from our Secret Pen Pal.”

“Who’d he send this time?”

“Who do you think?” Meyer said.

He did not find Mary Margaret Ryan until close to midnight. It had begun drizzling lightly at 11:45 P.M., by which time he had tried the apartment on Porter again, as well as all the neighborhood hangouts, and was ready to give up and go home. He recognized her coming out of a doorway on Hager. She was wearing an army poncho, World War II salvage stuff, camouflaged for jungle warfare. She walked swiftly and purposefully, and he figured she was heading back for the apartment, not two blocks away. He caught up with her on the corner of Hager and McKay.

“Mary Margaret,” he said, and she turned abruptly, her eyes as wide and frightened as they had been that first day he’d talked to her.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home,” she said. “Excuse me, I...”

“Few things I’d like to ask you.”

“No,” she said, and began walking up McKay.

He caught her elbow and turned her to face him, and looked down into her eyes and said, “What are you afraid of, Mary Margaret?”

“Nothing, leave me alone. I have to get home.”

“Why?”

“Because... I’m packing. I’m getting out of here. Look,” she said, plaintively, “I finally got the money I need, and I’m splitting, so leave me alone, okay? Let me just get the fuck out of here.”

“Why?”

“I’ve had this city.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Denver. I hear the scene’s good there. Anything’s better than here.”

“Who gave you the money?”

“A girlfriend. She’s a waitress at the Yellow Bagel. She makes good money. It’s only a loan, I’ll pay her back. Look, I got to catch a plane, okay? I got to go now. I don’t like it here. I don’t like anything about this city. I don’t like the look of it, I don’t like the people, I don’t like...”

“Where’ve you been hiding?”

“I haven’t been hiding. I was busy trying to raise some bread, that’s all. I had to talk to a lot of people.”

“You were hiding, Mary Margaret. Who from?”

“Nobody.”

“Who the hell are you running from?”

“Nobody, nobody.”

“What was Sandy doing in that abandoned building on the eighteenth?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Were you there, too?”

“No.”

“Where were you?”

“I told you. In Boston. We were both in Boston.”

“Where in Boston?”

“I don’t know.”

“How’d Sandy burn his foot?”

“Burn? It’s not burned, it’s...”

“It’s burned. How’d it happen?”

“I don’t know. Please, I have to...”

“Who killed Adam Villers?”

“Adam? How... how do you...?”

“I know his name, and I know when he got here, and I know his friends have been to see Sandy. Now how about it, Mary Margaret?”

“Please, please...”

“Are you going to tell me what happened, or...?”

“Oh my God, oh my God,” she said, and suddenly covered her face with her hands and began sobbing. They stood in the rain, Mary Margaret weeping into her hands, Carella watching her for only a moment before he said, “You’d better come with me.”

He was not foolish enough to go after them alone.

The three bikes were still chained to the metal hall banister, silver, red, and black. He and Meyer went past them swiftly and silently, guns drawn, and climbed to the second floor. They fanned out on both sides of the door to Apartment 2A and then, facing each other, put their ears to the door and listened.

“How many?” Carella whispered.

“I can make out at least four,” Meyer whispered back.

“You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

The worst part about kicking in a door is that you never know what might be on the other side of it. You can listen for an hour, you can distinguish two different voices, or five, or eight, and then break in to find an army with sawed-off shotguns, determined to blow you down the stairs and out into the gutter. Meyer had heard four distinctly different voices, which was exactly what Carella thought he had heard. They were all men’s voices, and he thought he recognized two of them as belonging to Ox and Yank. He did not think the bikies would be armed, but he had no way of knowing whether his supposition was true or not. There was nothing to do but go in after them. There was nothing to do but take them.

Carella nodded at Meyer, and Meyer returned the nod.

Backing across the hall, gun clutched in his right hand, Carella braced himself against the opposite wall, and then shoved himself off it, right knee coming up, and hit the door with a hard flat-footed kick just below the lock. The door sprang inwards, followed by Carella at a run, Meyer behind him and to the left. Ox and Willie were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking wine. Yank was standing near the refrigerator, talking to a muscular black man.

Ox threw back his chair, and a switchblade knife snapped open in his hand. He was coming at Carella with the knife clutched tight in his fist when Carella fired. The first slug had no effect on him. Like a rampaging elephant, he continued his charge, and Carella fired again, and then once more, and still Ox came, finally hurling himself onto Carella, the knife blade grazing his face and neck as he pulled off another shot, the muzzle of the gun pushed hard into Ox’s belly. There was a muffled explosion. The slug knocked Ox backward onto the kitchen table. He twisted over onto his side, bubbling blood, and then rolled to the floor.

Nobody was moving.

Yank, at the refrigerator with the muscular black man, seemed ready to make a break. The look was in his eyes, the trapped look of a man who knows it’s all over, there’s nothing to lose, stay or run, there’s nothing to lose. Meyer recognized the look because he had seen it a hundred times before. He did not know who any of these men were, but he knew that Yank was the one about to break, and was therefore extremely dangerous.

He swung the gun on him.

“Don’t,” he said.

That’s all he said.

The gun was steady in his hand, leveled at Yank’s heart. A new look came into Yank’s eyes, replacing the trapped and desperate glitter that had been in them not a moment before. Meyer had seen this look, too; there was nothing new under the sun. It was a look composed of guilt, surrender, and relief. He knew now that Yank would stay right where he was until the cuffs were closed on his wrists. There would be no further trouble.

Willie Harcourt sat at the kitchen table with his eyes wide in terror. Ox was at his feet, dead and bleeding, and Willie had urinated in his pants when the shooting began. He was afraid to move now because he thought they might shoot him, too; he was also ashamed to move because if he did they would see he had wet himself.

“Is there a phone in here?” Carella asked.

“N-n-no,” Willie stammered.

“What’s your name, mister?” Carella asked the black man.

“Frankie Childs. I don’t know these guys from a hole in the wall. I came up for a little wine, that’s all.”

“You’re bleeding, Steve,” Meyer said.

Carella touched his handkerchief to his face.

“Yeah,” he said, and tried to catch his breath.