Let’s Hear It For The Deaf Man

8

If you are going to go tiptoeing into empty apartments, you had best make certain they are going to stay empty all the while you are illegally on the premises. If they suddenly become anything less than empty, it is best not to try pushing around an elderly lady with a bad back, since she just might possibly grab you to keep from falling on her coccyx, and in the ensuing gavotte might get a very good look at you, particularly if she is a sharp-eyed old bat.

Karin Ungerman was a very sharp-eyed old bat, and mad as a hornet besides. What annoyed her particularly was the kitten. The kitten was a fluffy little tan thing who had wet on the gold brocade chaise in the Ungerman bedroom. Mrs. Ungerman was certain the stain would not come out, despite liberal and repeated sprinklings of a highly touted spot remover. The first thing she asked Kling when he arrived that morning was whether or not her insurance company would pay damages for the kitten’s indiscretion. The kitten had, after all, been brought there by a burglar and she was covered for fire and theft, so why shouldn’t they pay? Kling did not know the answer. Kling — who had arrived at the squadroom at 8 A.M., and been promptly informed of last night’s events — had rushed over to 641 Richardson Drive immediately, and was interested only in getting a description of the man both Ungermans had seen.

The Ungermans informed him that the only thing missing was a gold and pearl pin but that perhaps Karin Ungerman had given that to her sister who lived in Florida, she wasn’t quite sure. The burglar had undoubtedly been in the apartment for only a very short while; only the top drawer of the dresser had been disturbed. Luckily, Mrs. Ungerman hid all her good jewelry in a galosh in the closet whenever she went on a trip. If you lived to be sixty-eight years old, and have been burglarized four times in the past seventeen years, you learn how to deal with the bastards. But bringing in a cat to pee all over your gold brocade chaise! Really!

“What did the man look like, can you tell me that?” Kling asked.

“He was a tall man,” Mrs. Ungerman said.

“How tall?”

“Taller than you,” she said.

“Six feet two inches, around there,” Mr. Ungerman said.

“How was he dressed?”

“In dark clothes. Black, I think.”

“Blue,” Mr. Ungerman said.

“Dark, anyway,” Mrs. Ungerman said. “Trousers, jacket, shirt, all dark.”

“What kind of shirt?”

“A turtleneck,” Mrs. Ungerman said.

“Was he a white man or a black man?”

“White. The part of his face we could see.”

“What do you mean?”

“We only saw his eyes and forehead. He was wearing a mask.”

“What kind of a mask?”

“A handkerchief. Over the bridge of his nose, hanging down over his face.”

“You say you saw his eyes...”

“Yes, and his forehead.”

“And his hair, too,” Mr. Ungerman said. “He wasn’t wearing a hat.”

“What color were his eyes?” Kling asked.

“Brown.”

“And his hair?”

“Black.”

“Was it straight, wavy, curly?”

“Curly.”

“Long or close-cropped?”

“Just average length,” Mrs. Ungerman said.

“Anything else you may have noticed about him?”

“Nothing. Except that he moved very fast.”

“I’d move fast, too,” Mrs. Ungerman said, “if I’d just let a cat make a mess all over somebody’s gold brocade chaise.”

That morning Detective Steve Carella went down to the Criminal Courts Building and, being duly sworn, deposed and said in writing:

Carella realized that the application was weak in that there was no way of connecting Elliot with the murder except through the sneaker, and sneakers were, after all, fairly common wearing apparel. He knew, too, that a warrant issued on his application might possibly be later controverted on a motion to suppress the evidence seized under it. He was somewhat surprised, but nonetheless grateful, when a supreme court judge signed and dated the application, and issued the requested warrant.

Which meant that Carella now had the legal right to arrest an inanimate object, so to speak.

If Carella was getting a little help from the courts, Kling was simultaneously getting a little help from the Identification Section. As a matter of routine, he had asked them to run checks on both Fred Lipton and Nat Sulzbacher, the Calm’s Point real estate agents whose give-away pen had been found in Augusta Blair’s apartment. Much to his surprise, the I.S. had come back with a positive identification that immediately catapulted old Fred Lipton into the role of prime suspect in the burglary case. Kling had not yet eliminated Stanislaw Janik as a contender for best supporting player and possible supplier of kittens and keys, but the physical description given by Mrs. Ungerman ruled him out as the man actually entering the apartments. The burglar was tall, with black curly hair and brown eyes. Janik was short, almost totally bald, and his blue eyes were magnified by thick eyeglasses.

So Kling was pleased to learn that whereas Nat Sulzbacher had no criminal record (he could have obtained a license to sell real estate after having been convicted of a misdemeanor), his salesman, Frederick Horace Lipton, had been in trouble with the law on two previous occasions, having been arrested for Disorderly Conduct back in 1954 and for First-Degree Forgery in 1957. The disturbance in 1954 was only a misdemeanor, defined as any crime other than a felony, but it still might have netted Lipton as much as six months’ imprisonment in a county jail or workhouse. Instead, all he’d got was a $50 fine. The 1957 paper-hanging rap was a felony, of course, defined as a crime punishable by death or imprisonment in a state prison. Considering the offense, the court was equally charitable in sentencing Lipton this second time; he could have got twenty years, but he drew only ten.

He had served three and a half of those at Castleview State Prison, and had been released on parole in 1961. As far as society was concerned, he had paid his debt and was now a hard-working real estate salesman in Calm’s Point. But one of his employer’s give-away pens had been found at the scene of a burglary. Nat Sulzbacher did not have a criminal record; he was therefore an ordinary respectable everyday citizen. But Fred Lipton was an ex-con. So Kling naturally asked Lieutenant Byrnes for permission to begin surveillance of him as a suspect, and Byrnes naturally granted permission, and the tailing began that afternoon.

Never let it be said that policemen look with prejudice upon citizens who have previously been convicted of a crime.

Of the four guests in the Deaf Man’s room at the Devon Hotel, three had previously been convicted of crimes. The fourth was a plain-looking woman in her late thirties, and she had never so much as received a parking ticket. The hotel was one of the city’s lesser-known dumps, furnished economically and without imagination. There was only one easy chair in the room, and the men had graciously allowed the lady to claim it. They themselves sat on straight-backed wooden chairs facing a small end table that had been pulled up and placed within the semicircle they formed. A child’s slate was propped up on the end table. The Deaf Man had served drinks (the lady had politely declined), and they sat sipping them thoughtfully as they examined the chalked diagram on the slate.

“Any questions?” the Deaf Man said.

“I’ve got one.”

“Let’s hear it, John.”

John Preiss was a tall slender man with a pock-marked face. He was the only man in the room who had not dressed for the occasion. The others, as though attending a church social, were all wearing jackets and ties. John was wearing a cardigan sweater over an open-throated sports shirt. “Where’s the alarm box?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” the Deaf Man answered. “It’s not important. As I’ve told you before, I expect the alarm to be sounded.”

“I don’t like it,” John said.

“Then this is the time to get out. None of you yet know where the bank is, or when we’re going to hit. If anything about the job doesn’t appeal to you, you’re free to pass.”

“I mean,” John said, “if the damn alarm goes off...”

“It will go off, it has to go off. That’s the least of our worries.”

“Maybe you’d better explain it again, Mr. Taubman,” the woman said.

“I’d be happy to, Angela,” the Deaf Man replied. “Where shall I begin?”

“The beginning might be a good place,” one of the other men said. He was portly, partially balding, chewing on a dead cigar. His name was Kerry Donovan.

“Very well,” the Deaf Man said, and picked up a pointer from the end table. “This is the vault. Forget about getting into it any other way than through the door. The door is opened at eight-thirty every morning, and is not closed until the employees leave at close to five in the evening.”

“What time do we hit?” Rudy Manello asked. He was younger than any of the others, a narrow-faced man, with brown hair combed straight back without a part. He was smoking a cigarette, the ash dangerously close to spilling all over the floor.

“I’ll let you know the time and place as soon as we’re all committed, Rudy.”

“Why all the secrecy?” Rudy asked.

“I do not intend spending any amount of time in prison,” the Deaf Man said, and smiled. “Whereas I trust you all implicitly, I must take certain precautions at this stage of the planning.”

“So let’s hear the plan again,” Angela said, and crossed her legs, a move that had no visible effect on any of the men in the room. Angela Gould was perhaps the least attractive woman the Deaf Man had ever met. Long-nosed, thin-lipped, bespectacled, blessed with curly hair in an age that demanded sleekness, dumpy, with an irritating, whiny voice — impossible, utterly impossible. And yet perfect for the part she would play on the last day of April.

“Here is the plan again,” the Deaf Man said, and smiled graciously. He did not much like any of the people he was forced to deal with, but even the best football coach needs a team to execute the plays. “On the day of the robbery, Kerry will enter the bank, carrying a rather large case in which there will be architectural plans and a scale model of a housing development for which he needs financing. He will previously have made an appointment with the manager, and he will be there ostensibly to show him the plans and the model.”

“Where do we get this stuff?” Kerry asked.

“It is being prepared for us now. By a legitimate architectural firm that believes it to be a bona-fide land-development project.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

“Once inside the manager’s office, you will explain your project and then put your plans and your model on his desk, asking him to come around to your side of the desk so that he can read the plans better. You will do this in order to get him away from the alarm button, which is on the floor under his desk, and which he will be unable to reach from your side.”

“I thought you expected the alarm to go off,” John said.

“Yes, but not until we have the money.”

“The money that’s in the vault.”

“Yes. As I’ve already told you, there will be five hundred thousand dollars in payroll money in the bank’s vault. It will be necessary for Kerry to get into the vault...”

“That’s the part I don’t like,” Kerry said.

“There will be no problem about getting into the vault, Kerry. The moment the manager comes around to your side of the desk, you will put a gun in his back and inform him that a holdup is in progress. You will also tell him that, unless he escorts you to the vault immediately, you will blow his brains out.”

“That’s exactly what bothers me,” Kerry said. “Suppose he says, ‘Go ahead, blow my brains out.’ What do I do then?”

“The bank is insured. You will rarely find heroic bank employees nowadays. They all have instructions to press the alarm button and sit tight until the police arrive. In this case, we are depriving Mr. Alton — that’s the manager’s name — of the opportunity to sound the alarm. I can assure you he will not avail himself of the alternate opportunity — that of having his brains blown out. He will escort you to the vault, quietly and without fuss.”

“I hope so,” Kerry said. “But what if he doesn’t? Since I’m the only guy inside the bank, I’m automatically the fall guy.”

“I will also be inside the bank,” the Deaf Man said.

“Yeah, but you won’t be holding a gun on any manager.”

“I chose you for the job because you’d had previous experience,” the Deaf Man said. “I assumed you would have the nerve to...”

“Yeah, I got caught on my previous experience,” Kerry said.

“Do you want the job or don’t you?” the Deaf Man asked. “You can still get out. No hard feelings either way.”

“Let me hear the rest of it again.”

“You go into the vault with Mr. Alton, carrying your leather case, the architectural contents of which are now in Mr. Alton’s office.”

“In other words,” Angela said, “the case is empty now.”

“Precisely,” the Deaf Man said, and thought, Impossible. “As soon as you are inside the vault, Kerry, you will transfer the payroll to your case, and then allow Mr. Alton to escort you back to his office...”

“Suppose there’s somebody else in the vault when we get in there?”

“You will already have informed Mr. Alton that should anyone question your presence, he is to say you’re there to test the alarm system. Presumably, that is why you are carrying a big black leather case.”

“But suppose somebody’s actually in the vault?” Kerry said. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“Mr. Alton will ask that person to leave. The testing of an alarm system is not something normally open to casual scrutiny by insignificant bank personnel.”

“Okay. So I’m in the vault transferring all that money into my case...”

“Correct. The moment I see you leaving the vault to head back for Mr. Alton’s office, I will step outside the bank and set the second phase of the plan in motion.”

“This is where we come in,” Angela said, and smiled. Utterly impossible, the Deaf Man thought, and returned her smile.

“Yes,” he said pleasantly enough, “this is where you come in. If you’ll all look at the diagram again, you’ll see that a driveway comes in off the street on the right of the bank, runs around the rear of the bank, and then emerges into the street again on the left. The driveway was put in to accommodate the car teller’s window. It is only wide enough to permit passage of a single automobile. Two things will happen the moment I step out of the bank. First, John and Rudy, in Car Number One, will drive up to the teller’s window. Second, Angela, in Car Number Two, will park across the mouth of the driveway, get out of the car, and open the hood as though searching for starter trouble.”

“That’s so no other cars can get in the driveway after Rudy and John pull up to the teller’s window,” Angela said.

“Yes,” the Deaf Man answered blankly.

“Meanwhile,” Kerry said, and the Deaf Man was pleased to see that he had managed to generate some sort of enthusiasm for the project, “I’ll be in the manager’s office, tying him up and sticking a gag in his mouth.”

“Correct,” the Deaf Man said. “John?”

“I’ll get out of the car at the teller’s window and smash the glass there with a sledge hammer.”

“Which is precisely when the alarm will go off. You won’t hear it. It’s a silent alarm that sounds at the 86th Precinct and also at the Security Office.”

“But I’ll hear the glass smashing,” Kerry said, and grinned. “Which is when I open the door leading from the manager’s office to the tellers’ cages, go through the gate in the counter, and jump through the busted window into the driveway.”

“Yes,” the Deaf Man said. “You get into the car, and Rudy, at the wheel, will drive around the rear of the bank and out into the street again. I will meanwhile have entered the car Angela is driving, and we will all go off together into a lucrative sunset.”

“How long does it take the police to answer that alarm?” Rudy asked.

“Four minutes.”

“How long does it take to drive around the bank?”

“A minute and a half.”

The group was silent.

“What do you think?” the Deaf Man asked. He had deliberately chosen nonthinkers, and he fully realized that his task today was one of selling an idea. He looked at them hopefully. If he had not completely sold them, he would replace them. It was as simple as that.

“I think it’ll work,” John said.

“So do I,” Rudy said.

“Oh, how can it miss?” Angela said in her whiny voice, and the Deaf Man winced.

“Kerry?” he asked.

Kerry, of course, was the key man. As he had rightfully pointed out, he was the only one of the group who would actually be inside the bank, holding a gun, committing a robbery. The question Kerry asked now was the only question he should have asked; the Deaf Man was beginning to think he had chosen someone altogether too smart.

“How come you don’t go into the manager’s office and stick the gun in his back?” Kerry asked.

“I’m known at the bank,” the Deaf Man said.

“How?”

“As a depositor.”

“Why can’t a depositor also be somebody who’s asking for financing on a housing development?”

“There’s no reason why he couldn’t be. But my face has been recorded by the bank’s cameras many times already, and I don’t wish to spend the rest of my life dodging the police.”

“What about my face?” Kerry asked. “They’ll know what I look like, won’t they? What’s to stop them from hounding me after the job?”

“You’ll be in disguise.”

“You didn’t mention that.”

“I know I didn’t,” the Deaf Man said. He hadn’t mentioned it because he hadn’t thought of it until just this moment. “You will grow a mustache and shave your head before the job. As far as they’ll ever know, the bank was robbed by a Yul Brynner with a hairy lip.” Everyone laughed, including Kerry. The Deaf Man waited. They were almost in his pocket. It all depended on Kerry.

Kerry, still laughing, shook his head in admiration. “I got to hand it to you,” he said. “You think of everything.” He took a long swallow of the drink, and said, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but it sounds good to me.” He raised his glass to the Deaf Man and said, “Count me in.”

The Deaf Man did not mention to Kerry that his next logical question should have been, “Mr. Taubman, why don’t you shave your head and grow a mustache?” or that he was extremely grateful to him for not having asked it. But then again, had the question come up, the Deaf Man would have thought of an answer. As Kerry had noted, the Deaf Man thought of everything, even when he didn’t think of everything. Grinning now, he said to the others, “May I count all of you in?” and turned away not three seconds later to mix a fresh round of drinks in celebration.

The second photostat of the Japanese Zero came in the afternoon mail, just as Carella was leaving the squadroom. Carella studied it solemnly as Meyer tacked it to the bulletin board alongside the five other stats. Then he picked up the manila envelope in which it had been delivered and looked again at the typewritten address.

“He’s still addressing them to me,” he said.

“I see that.”

“And still spelling my name wrong. It’s Stephen with a p-h, not Steven with a v.”

“I didn’t even know that,” Meyer said.

“Yeah,” Carella said, and then turned to look at the row of stats again. “Do you suppose he knows I have twins?”

“Why?”

“Because that’s all I can figure. He’s addressing the stuff to me, he’s putting it on an entirely personal level. So maybe he’s also duplicating it because I have twins.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah.” Carella paused. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re getting slightly paranoid,” Meyer said.

Sanford Elliot was working when Carella went over with his search warrant. The long wooden table at which he sat was spattered with daubs of wax. A round biscuit tin was near his right elbow, half full of molten wax, a naked electric light bulb shining into its open top to keep it soft. Elliot dipped into the can with fingers or wire-end tool, adding, spreading, molding wax onto the small figure of the nude on the table before him. He was thoroughly engrossed in what he was doing, and did not look up when Carella walked into the studio from the front of the shop. Carella did not wish to startle him. The man may have figured in a murder, and a startled murderer is a dangerous one. He hesitated just inside the curtain that divided the studio from the front, and then coughed. Elliot looked up immediately.

“You,” he said.

“Me,” Carella answered.

“What is it this time?”

“Do you always work in wax, Mr. Elliot?”

“Only when I’m going to cast something in bronze.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t give art lessons,” Elliot said abruptly. “What do you want?”

“This is what I want,” Carella said, and walked to him and handed him the search warrant:

Elliot read the warrant, checked the date and the signature of the supreme court justice, and then said, “What sneaker? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Carella looked down at his right foot. Elliot was no longer wearing the sneaker; instead, there was a leather sandal on his foot.

“You were wearing a sneaker the last time I saw you. That search warrant gives me the right to look for it.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Elliot said.

“Am I?”

“I’ve never worn sneakers in my life.”

“I’ll just look around, if you don’t mind.”

“How can I stop you?” Elliot said sarcastically, and went back to work.

“Want to tell me about the wax?” Carella said. He was roaming the studio now, looking for a closet or a cupboard, the logical places one might put a sneaker. There was a second curtain hanging opposite the door leading to the shop, and Carella figured it might be covering the opening to a closet. He was mistaken. There was a small sink-refrigerator-stove unit behind the curtain. He stepped on the foot lever to open the refrigerator door and discovered that it was full of arms, legs, breasts, and heads. They had all been rendered in wax, to be sure, but the discovery was startling nonetheless, somewhat like stumbling upon the remains of a mass Lilliputian dismemberment. “What are these?” Carella said.

“Parts,” Elliot answered. He had obviously decided not to be cooperative, responsive, or even polite. His attitude was not exactly surprising; his visitor had come into the studio with a piece of paper empowering him to go through the place from top to bottom.

“Did you mold them?”

“Yes,” Elliot said.

“I suppose you keep them in here so they won’t melt.”

“Brilliant.”

“Why do you keep them at all?”

“I made up a batch from rubber molds,” Elliot said. “I use them as prototypes, changing them to fit a specific pose.”

Carella nodded, closed the refrigerator, and began wandering the studio again. He found what he thought was a packing crate, but when he lifted the lid he discovered that Elliot stored his clothes in it. He kneeled and began going through the crate, being careful not to disturb the order in which blue jeans and sweaters, shirts and socks, underwear and jackets were arranged. A single sandal was in the crate, the mate to the one Elliot was now wearing. There were also two pairs of loafers. But no sneaker. Carella put the lid onto the crate again.

“Why do you model in wax if it’s so perishable?” he asked.

“I told you, I only do it when I’m going to be casting in bronze.” Elliot put down the wire-end tool in his hand, turned to Carella, and patiently said, “It’s called cire perdue, the lost-wax method. A mold is made of the piece when it gets to the foundry, and then the wax is melted out, and molten bronze is poured into the mold.”

“Then the original wax piece is lost, is that right?”

“Brilliant,” Elliot said again, and picked up a fettling knife.

“What do you do when you get the bronze piece back?”

“Chisel or file off the fins, plug any holes, color it, polish it, and mount it on a marble base.”

“What’s in here?” Carella asked, indicating a closed door.

“Storage.”

“Of what?”

“Larger pieces. Most of them in plaster.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

“You’re hot stuff, you know that?” Elliot said. “You come around with a search warrant, and then you go through the charade of asking me whether or not you can...”

“No sense being uncivilized about it, is there?”

“Why not? I thought you were investigating a murder.”

“I didn’t think you realized that, Mr. Elliot.”

“I realize it fine. And I’ve already told you I don’t know who the dead man...”

“Yes, you’ve already told me. The trouble is, I don’t happen to believe you.”

“Then don’t be so fucking polite,” Elliot said. “If I’m a murder suspect, I don’t need your good manners.”

Carella went into the storage room without answering. As Elliot had promised, the room contained several larger pieces, all done in plaster, all unmistakably of Mary Margaret Ryan. A locked door was at the far end of the room. “Where’s that door go?” Carella asked.

“What?” Elliot said.

“The other door here.”

“Outside. The alley.”

“You want to unlock it for me, please?”

“I don’t have a key. I never open that door. It’s locked all the time.”

“I’ll have to kick it open then,” Carella said.

“Why?”

“Because I want to see what’s out in that alley.”

“There’s nothing out in that alley.”

There were prints in the plaster dust on the floor. Easily identifiable prints left by someone’s right foot; on either side of them, there were circular marks that might have been left by the rubber tips of crutches. The prints led directly to the alley door.

“What do you say, Elliot? Are you going to open it for me?”

“I told you I don’t have a key.”

“Fine,” Carella said, and kicked the door in without another word.

“Are you allowed to do that?” Elliot said.

“Sue me,” Carella said, and went out into the alley. A garbage can and two cardboard boxes full of trash were stacked against the brick wall. In one of the cardboard cartons Carella found the sneaker Elliot had been wearing yesterday. He came back into the studio, showed the sneaker to Elliot and said, “Ever see this before?”

“Never.”

“I figured you wouldn’t have,” Carella said. “Mr. Elliot, at the risk of sounding like a television cop, I’d like to warn you not to leave the city.”

“Where would I go?” Elliot asked.

“Who knows? You seem to have a penchant for Boston. Take my advice and stay put till I get back to you.”

“What do you hope to get from a fucking moldy sneaker?” Elliot said.

“Maybe some wax that didn’t get lost,” Carella answered.

The cop who picked up the surveillance of Frederick Lipton at five o’clock that evening was Cotton Hawes. From his parked sedan across the street from the real estate office, he watched Lipton as he locked up the place and walked down the block to where his Ford convertible was parked. He followed him at a safe distance to a garden apartment a mile and a half from the real estate office, and waited outside for the next four hours, at which time Lipton emerged, got into his Ford again, and drove to a bar imaginatively named the Gee-Gee-Go-Go. Since Lipton had never met Hawes and did not know what he looked like, and also since the place advertised topless dancers, Hawes figured he might as well step inside and continue the surveillance there. The place was no more disappointing than he expected it to be. Topless dancing, in this city, was something more than topless — the something more being pasties or filmy brassieres. Hookers freely roamed the streets and plied their trade, but God forbid a mammary gland should be exposed to some unsuspecting visitor from Sioux City. The dancers, nonetheless, were usually young and attractive, gyrating wildly to canned rock music while the equivalent of front-row center in a burlesque house ogled them from stools lining the bar. Not so at the Gee-Gee-Go-Go. The dancers here were thirtyish or better, considerably over the hill for the kind of acrobatics they performed or the kind of erotic response they attempted to provoke. Hawes sat in bored silence while the elaborate electronics system buffeted him with waves of amplified sound and the dancers, four in all, came out in succession to grind away in tempo along the length of the bar. Keeping one eye on Lipton, who sat at the other end of the bar, Hawes speculated that the sound system had cost more than the dancing girls, but this was Calm’s Point and not Isola; one settled for whatever he could get in the city’s hinterlands.

Lipton seemed to know one of the dancers, a woman of about thirty-five, with bleached blond hair and siliconed breasts tipped with star-shaped pasties, ample buttocks, rather resembling in build one of the sturdy Clydesdale horses in the Rheingold commercials. When she finished her number, she kneeled down beside him on the bar top, chatted with him briefly, and then went to join him at a table in the rear of the place. Lipton ordered a drink for the girl, and they talked together for perhaps a half hour, at the end of which time she clambered onto the bar top again to hurl some more beef at her audience, all of whom watched her every move in pop-eyed fascination, as though privileged to be witnessing Markova at a command performance of Swan Lake. Lipton settled his bill and left the bar. Without much regret, Hawes followed him back to the garden apartment, where he put his car into one of a row of single garages on the ground level of the building, and then went upstairs. Figuring he was home for the night, Hawes drove back to the Gee-Gee-Go-Go, ordered a scotch and soda, and waited for an opportunity to engage the beefy blonde in conversation.

He caught her after she finished her number, a tiresome repetition of the last three, or five, or fifty numbers she had performed on the bar top. She was heading either for the ladies’ room or a dressing room behind the bar when he stepped into her path, smiled politely, and said, “I like the way you dance. May I buy you a drink?”

The girl said, “Sure,” without hesitation, confirming his surmise that part of the job was getting the customers to buy watered-down booze or ginger ale masquerading as champagne. She led him to the same table Lipton had shared with her, where a waiter appeared with something like lightning speed, pencil poised. The girl ordered a double bourbon and soda; apparently the champagne dodge was a mite too sophisticated for the Calm’s Point sticks. Hawes ordered a scotch and soda and then smiled at the girl and said, “I really do like the way you dance. Have you been working here long?”

“Are you a cop?” the girl asked.

“No,” Hawes said, startled.

“Then what are you? A crook?”

“No.”

“Then why are you carrying a gun?” the girl said.

Hawes cleared his throat. “Who says I am?”

“I say you are. On your right hip. I saw the bulge when we were talking in the hallway there, and I brushed against it when we were coming over to the table. It’s a gun, all right.”

“It’s a gun, yes.”

“So, are you a cop?”

“No. Close to it, though,” Hawes said.

“Yeah? What does that mean? Private eye?”

“I’m a night watchman. Factory over on Klein and Sixth.”

“If you’re a night watchman, what are you doing here? This is the nighttime.”

“I don’t start till midnight.”

“You always drink like this before you go to work?”

“Not always.”

“Where’d you go when you left here before?” the girl asked.

“You noticed me, huh?” Hawes answered, and grinned, figuring he’d get the conversation onto a socio-sexual level and move it away from more dangerous ground.

“I noticed,” the girl said, and shrugged. “You’re a big guy. Also you’ve got red hair, which is unusual. Do they call you ‘Red’?”

“They call me Hamp.”

“Hamp? What kind of name is that?”

“Short for Hampton.”

“Is that your first name or your last?”

“My last. It’s Oliver Hampton.”

“I can see why you settled for Hamp.”

“What’s your name?”

“It’s on the card outside. Didn’t you see it?”

“I guess I missed it.”

“Rhonda Spear.”

“Is that your real name?”

“It’s my show business name.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Why do you want to know? So you can call me up in the middle of the night and breathe on the phone?”

“I might call you, but I wouldn’t breathe.”

“If a person doesn’t breathe, he drops dead,” Rhonda said. She smiled, consumed her drink in a single swallow, and said, “I’d like another double bourbon, please.”

“Sure,” Hawes said, and signaled for the waiter to bring another round. “How many of those do you drink in a night?”

“Ten or twelve,” she said. “It’s only Coca-Cola,” she said. “You’re a cop, you know damn well it’s Coca-Cola.”

“I’m not a cop, and I didn’t know it was Coca-Cola,” Hawes said.

“I know cops,” Rhonda said. “And you know Coca-Cola.” She hesitated, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “What do you want from me, officer?”

“Little conversation, that’s all,” Hawes said.

“About what?”

“About why you would tell a cop, if that’s what you think I am, that he’s paying for bourbon and getting Coca-Cola.”

Rhonda shrugged. “Why not? If this joint was gonna be busted, they’d have done it ages ago. Everybody in this precinct, from the lieutenant on down, is on the take. We even dance without the pasties every now and then. Nobody ever bothers us. Is that why you’re here, officer,” she asked sweetly, “to get your share of the pie?”

“I’m not a cop,” Hawes said, “and I wouldn’t care if you danced bare-assed while drinking a whole crate of Coca-Cola.”

Rhonda laughed, suddenly and girlishly. Her mirth transformed her face, revealing a fleeting glimpse of what she must have looked like when she was a lot younger, and a lot softer. The laughter trailed, the image died. “Thanks, honey,” she said to the waiter, and lifted her glass and said to Hawes, “Maybe you’re not a cop, after all. Who gives a damn?”

“Cheers,” Hawes said.

“Cheers,” she answered, and they both drank. “So if you’re not a cop, what do you want from me?”

“You’re a pretty woman,” Hawes said.

“Um-huh.”

“I’m sure you know that,” he said, and lowered his eyes in a swift covetous sweep of the swelling star-tipped breasts.

“Um-huh.”

“Saw you talking to a guy earlier. I’m sure he...”

“You did, huh?”

“Sure.”

“You’ve been watching me, huh?”

“Sure. And I’ll bet he didn’t want to talk about the price of Coca-Cola, either.”

“How do you know what he wanted to talk about?”

“I don’t. I’m just saying that a pretty woman like you...”

“Um-huh.”

“Must get a lot of attention from men. So you shouldn’t be so surprised by my attention. That’s all,” he said, and shrugged.

“You’re kind of cute,” Rhonda said. “It’s a shame.”

“What is?”

“That you’re a cop.”

“Look, how many times...”

“You’re a cop,” she said flatly. “I don’t know what you’re after, but something tells me to say good night. Whatever you are, you’re trouble.”

“I’m a night watchman,” Hawes said.

“Yeah,” Rhonda replied. “And I’m Lillian Gish.” She swallowed the remainder of her drink, said, “You’ll settle with the waiter, huh?” and swiveled away from the table, ample buttocks threatening the purple satin shorts she wore.

Hawes paid for the drinks, and left.