Poison

CHAPTER 5

April that year came in with a suddenness that took the breath away. There had been in the city a sense of seige, the winds of March blowing like war trumpets, troop-trampled soot-blackened snow underfoot, a gunpowder sky unrelieved by sunshine. The citizenry hurried along the streets, bundled inside bulky garments, faces pinched and tempers short.The cold was something that attacked incessantly, turning even more inward a populace never noted for its generosity of spirit. Willis despised the cold. He felt disembodied in time and space, the victim of a relentless foe attacking without provocation, determined to level the city and devour its dead. Relief seemed only a distant dream. The forecasters kept promising warm fronts from Georgia but the warm fronts never materialized. Day by day, the gloomy greyness of March persisted, the cold a penetrating, remorseless, vengeful adversary bent on abject surrender.

But all at once, it was April.

Balmy breezes wafted in unexpectedly off the Old Seawall downtown. Heads bowed too long by the enemy lifted tentatively toward the clearing sky, numbed noses sniffed suspiciously of the warming air, watery eyes blinked in surprise and disbelief. The coats came off. Strangers in this city of strangers smiled at each other in the streets. Uptown, along the stone walls bordering Grover Park, forsythia bushes and cornelian cherry shrubs burst into shy, tentative yellow and pink bloom against the soiled and melting patches of snow.

It was April at last.

And in April, two days after Easter, a corpse turned up in the Twelfth Precinct.

The dead man's neighbor, perhaps remembering Sweeney Todd, complained to the building superintendant that it smelled like somebody was baking human meat pies in apartment 401. The Emergency-911 cops who responded recognized the stench of decomposing flesh at once. They cursed the suddenly balmy weather and unrolled a body bag before they took two steps inside the apartment.

The dead man was identified as Basil Hollander, who was an accountant with the firm of Kiley, Benson, Marx and Rudolph.

The Twelfth Squad detectives investigating the case were named Sam Kaufman and Jimmy (The Lark) Larkin. Neither of them knew that a pair of detectives uptown were investigating a poisoning case. In fact, neither of them knew Carella or Willis at all. The two Homicide detectives who put in a mandatory appearance at the scene of the crime were named Mastroiano and Manzini. They worked out of Homicide West and knew Monoghan and Monroe—who worked out of Homicide East—only casually.

Monoghan and Monroe had read most of the 87th Squad D.D. reports on the McKennon case, and presumably knew that among the men questioned was an accountant named Basil Hollander. But they had nothing to do with the case down there in the Twelfth; this was a big city. As a matter of fact, they might not have made the connection even if they'd been called in on the case, which they could not have been, the police department guarding its geographic territories as jealously as it guarded its spotless reputation. Anyway, Monoghan and Monroe were very busy cops with a lot of scatological jokes to tell.

It was therefore not until the next day, April 2, that Willis happened to read about the downtown corpse.

He'd been busy until then trying to get a handle on the black Mercedes-Benz that had driven up to Marilyn Hollis's townhouse on the twenty-seventh of March and deposited a great big raccoon on her doorstep. A check with Motor Vehicles had advised Willis that the license plate on the car he'd seen was affixed to a new model Mercedes-Benz registered to the president of a dress firm called Lily Fashions, Inc. with offices on Burke Street downtown. The president's name was Abraham Lilienthal, hence (Motor Vehicles guessed) the Lily Fashions.

A call to Mr. Lilienthal revealed that his car had been stolen on the night of March 23 and to his knowledge had not yet been recovered. Was Willis calling to say it had been found? Willis asked Lilienthal if anyone ever called him Mickey. Lilienthal said, "What? Mickey? You kidding me or something?"

A subsequent call to Auto Theft informed Willis that the car had been snatched outside a homosexual bar in the Quarter, though Lilienthal claimed he had been upstairs in an apartment over the bar, visiting a friend who was as straight as a Methodist minister. At any rate, it was true that the car had not yet been recovered. It was the opinion of the detective at Auto Theft that by now the car had already been inside a chop shop and that its parts were being sold hither and yon across the great length and breadth of these United States.

When Willis informed him that he had spotted the car as recently as last Tuesday night, the Auto Theft detective said, "That was last Tuesday night, pal. This is this Wednesday." Willis nonetheless said the car might have been driven by a man named Mickey who'd been wearing a raccoon coat. The Auto Theft detective said, wryly it seemed to Willis, "Terrific, I'll check our M.O. file for raccoons," and hung up.

So it now appeared that Marilyn's line backer girlfriend was either a car thief or else knew someone who stole cars. Willis was ready to call Marilyn again, not so they could become pals but because it now seemed she had a few more questions to answer. But then he spotted the news item on Basil Hollander, and called the Twelfth Detective Squad instead.

Detective/First Grade James Larkin was a burly man in his mid-fifties, red hair going grey, blue eyes on the thin edge of burn-out. He wore a shoulder harness, baggy blue trousers with brown shoes, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His jacket was on the back of his chair. He seemed relieved that Willis had called him.

"If he's yours, take him," he said into the telephone.

"Well, I don't know if they're related yet," Willis said.

"Even if they ain't related you can have him," Larkin said.

"Was he poisoned?" Willis asked.

"Stabbed," Larkin said.

"When?"

"M.E. estimates sometime Sunday night."

"That would make it…"

"Easter Sunday. We didn't catch it till yesterday. April Fool's Day. Guy next door notified the superintendant about a stink, the super called 911. The front door was unlocked, they walked right in. Found the body in the living room, fully clothed, throat slit."

"What kind of lock on the front door?"

"Spring latch. Mickey Mouse."

"Any security in the building?"

"Nope. What makes you think he's yours?"

"My guy knew a lady your guy also knew."

"This lady carries a knife?"

"I don't know."

"So what do you want to do, Willis? You're welcome to him, believe me. But if this is gonna go ping-ponging back and forth between precincts, we'll be asking for more headaches than we already got."

"How far along on this are you?"

"I told you, we only caught it yesterday. We done the building and neighborhood canvass, and we got a verbal report from the M.E.s office, but no paperwork from them yet. Cause was severance of the carotid artery with a very sharp instrument. Post-mortem interval I already gave you."

"Any latents in the apartment?"

"Just the victim's. No wild prints."

"Any sign of forced entry?"

"Like I told you, it's a Mickey Mouse lock. Could've been loided, but who knows? Maybe he knew the killer, just opened the door for him."

"Any signs of socializing?"

"Like what?"

"Glasses on the coffee table… peanuts in a bowl… whatever."

"You looking for a lady's lipstick stains?"

"I'm looking for a place to hang my hat."

"Ain't we all?" Larkin said. "Looks to me like the guy was reading a book and drinking a cup of coffee when the killer came in. We found the coffee cup on an endtable alongside the couch, the book on the floor."

"Looked like it was dropped, or what?"

"Looked like it was on the floor," Larkin said.

"So you think he was surprised while he was reading?"

"I don't think nothin' yet."

"Where was the body? On the couch or…?"

"On the floor in front of the couch. Decomposing. It was still cold Easter Sunday, the super still had the heat on. Then we got the tropics all of a sudden, so it started going bad fast."

"Anybody in the building see or hear anything?"

"Deaf, dumb and blind," Larkin said wearily. "Like always."

"Have you talked to anyone at his office yet?"

"We were gonna do that today. So where do we go from here, Willis? You want it or not? If so, I gotta talk to the Loot."

"I guess it may be ours," Willis said, and sighed.

"Good," Larkin said.

"Can you send the paperwork up here?"

"I'll have it copied and stick it in the pouch. We get a pickup around eleven."

At ten minutes past eleven that Wednesday morning, April 2, Steve Carella rang the doorbell to apartment 12A in a building on Front Street in midtown Isola. He was expected and the door opened almost at once. The man standing in the doorframe was perhaps five ten, and weighed something like a hundred and sixty pounds. He had pleasant blue eyes behind dark-rimmed eyeglasses, sandy brown hair, a mustache of the same color, and a welcoming smile on his face. He was wearing a plaid sports jacket and grey slacks, blue shirt open at the throat. Carella guessed he was in his early forties.

"Dr. Ellsworth?" he said.

"Detective Carella? Come in, please."

Carella followed him into a living room eclectically furnished in an improbable but successful blend of modern with antique. An ornately carved Brittany sideboard was on the wall opposite an arrangement of leather modular sofas. A riotously red abstract impressionist painting hung over the sofas. Something that looked like a Rembrandt—but surely wasn't—hung on another wall. There were two black leather Saarinen chairs. There was a straightbacked sidechair that looked Victorian, upholstered in a rich green brocade.

"Sorry you had to track me all over town," Ellsworth said. "Wednesday's my day off."

Carella was thinking that Wednesday was a bad day to get a toothache. Most dentists in this city took Wednesdays off.

"No trouble at all," he said. "Your home number was listed right under your office number."

"Still," Ellsworth said, and smiled apologetically. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"Thanks, no," Carella said.

"So," Ellsworth said. "You're here about Jerry McKennon."

"Yes."

"What would you like to know?"

"According to his appointment calendar, he saw you on March eighth…"

"Yes?"

"… at eleven o'clock…"

"Uh-huh."

"… and again on the fifteenth at the same time…"

"Uh-huh."

"… and he was scheduled to see you again last Saturday, the twenty-ninth… but, of course, he never kept that appointment."

Ellsworth sighed heavily. "No," he said, and shook his head sadly.

"He did keep those other appointments, didn't he?"

"I assume so. I don't have my appointment calendar here, but…"

"Did he usually keep appointments he'd made?"

"Oh, yes."

"Had he been a patient of yours for a long time?"

"Since January," Ellsworth said.

"What sort of person was he?"

"I knew him only professionally, of course…"

"Of course."

"But he always seemed extremely outgoing and friendly. Many people who come to a dentist's office aren't anticipating a pleasant experience, you know. I'm afraid dentists haven't enjoyed a very good press over the years. When Marathon Man was playing—did you see that movie?"

"No, I didn't," Carella said.

"Well, Laurence Olivier plays an ex-Nazi who does these awful things to Dustin Hoffman's teeth while he's strapped in a dentist's chair. I thought I'd never see a patient again. And more recently… did you see Compromising Positions? Or read the book?"

"No, I'm sorry."

"It's about a philandering dentist who gets murdered. You have no idea how many jokes I've suffered since! Even from my own wife! Rushing off to the office again, darling? The implication being that once a dentist has a woman's mouth open… well…" He shook his head ruefully. "In any event, not many people think of dentists as… friendly types, shall we say? Do you like your dentist?"

"Well…"

"Of course not. We're the bad guys," Ellsworth said, shaking his head again. "When all we're trying to do… well, never mind. I didn't mean to deliver a sermon on The Dentist as Knight in Shining Armor. I was merely trying to explain that Jerry McKennon never felt he was in my office to be tortured. In fact, Jerry told me some of the best jokes I've ever heard. None of them dentist jokes, by the way."

"Are there a lot of dentist jokes?" Carella asked.

"Oh, please," Ellsworth said.

Carella couldn't think of a single dentist joke.

"The point is… until recently, anyway… he was always pleasant and jocular and totally at ease in my office."

"When you say 'until recently'…"

"Yes, well, he…"

Ellsworth shook his head.

"It may have been the nature of the work, I don't know. Some people hear the words 'root canal,' and they visualize the dentist digging clear across Suez or Panama. Actually, it's a commonplace procedure. We remove the dead nerve, clean and seal the canal, and then cap the tooth."

"Is that what these last several appointments were about? Root canal work?"

"Yes. What were those dates you gave me? I know I saw him several times in February…"

"I only have the dates for March," Carella said.

"Sometime early in the month, wasn't it?"

"Yes, one of them was on the eighth."

"It must've been around then, yes. During the February visits, I removed the nerve, reamed the canal, obtunded it, and so on. In March…"

"Obtunded?"

"Sealed it. It must have been on that March eighth visit that I fitted him with a temporary cap. And a week or so later…"

"Yes, the fifteenth…"

"Is that what you have? Then that's when it was. What I did then was take an impression of the tooth… a mold, you know, for the permanent cap… and then cemented the temporary cap back on. I expected to have the permanent cap a few weeks later…"

"That would have been the twenty-ninth…"

"Yes, I would guess so."

"The appointment he never kept."

"Yes."

Ellsworth shook his head again.

"I'll tell you… I should have suspected something like this coming."

"How do you mean?"

"People never think of dentists as medical men, you know, but we do study the same biological sciences a physician does. Human anatomy, biochemistry, bacteriology, histology, pharmacology, pathology… our training includes all that. And when an essentially cheerful man suddenly comes in looking so… hangdog… well, I should have suspected a psychological problem."

"He seemed depressed to you, did he?"

"Enormously so."

"Despondent?"

"That's another definition of depressed, isn't it?"

"Did he mention why?"

"No."

"Never hinted…"

"No."

"… not even obliquely…"

"No."

"… at what might have been troubling him?"

"No."

"I gather you weren't surprised then," Carella said.

"By what?"

"His death. By poisoning."

"Do you mean did I think he was suicidal?"

"Did you?"

"No, I never once suspected he would take his own life. Never. In that respect, I was enormously surprised. When I heard about it… God, what a shock! A patient poisoning himself? And… I'll tell you the truth, Detective Carella… I felt guilty."

"Guilty?"

"Yes. For not having been more alert, for not suspecting that his depression was quite so serious, for not anticipating… yes, his suicide." He shook his head. "We take things so much for granted, you know. We miss the important signs."

"Yes," Carella said, and nodded and looked at his notebook again.

"Did he ever mention any of these names to you?" he asked. "Marilyn Hollis?"

"No."

"Nelson Riley?"

"No, I'm sorry."

"Charles Endicott. Or Chip? Either one?"

"No."

"Basil Hollander?"

"No."

Carella closed his notebook.

"Dr. Ellsworth," he said, "thank you very much for your time, I'm sorry to have bothered you on your day off." He rose, fished out his wallet, and handed Ellsworth a card. "Here's where you can reach me," he said. "If you happen to remember anything Mr. McKennon said to you, anything that might have some bearing on his death, I'd appreciate your giving me a call."

"I will indeed," Ellsworth said.

"Again, thank you," Carella said. "If I ever need a good dentist…"

"Don't go to Laurence Olivier," Ellsworth said, and smiled.

The paperwork from the Twelfth Precinct arrived in the messenger pouch at a little after one o'clock. It told Willis essentially what Larkin had told him on the phone, but it also pinpointed the exact time Hollander had got home on Easter Sunday. A neighbor had seen him going up in the building's elevator at approximately seven-thirty p.m. Hollander had got off on the fourth floor. The M.E.—faced with uncertainties like the changing temperature in the apartment and the fact that the body had been lying on a heat-absorbing carpet—had vaguely estimated the time of his death as sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning. At any rate, he'd still been alive at seven-thirty, presumably heading for apartment 401 down the hall. Willis wondered what Marilyn Hollis had been doing after seven-thirty last Sunday night.

He had not seen Carella since they'd both checked in this morning. Carella did not yet know they'd inherited a corpse from the Twelfth Squad. Neither did Lieutenant Byrnes. Willis went into his office and told him now.

"Are you crazy?" Byrnes said.

His corner windows were wide open to April's balmy breezes. He was sitting in his shirtsleeves behind a pile of paperwork on his desk—close-cropped iron-grey hair, flinty blue eyes opened wide in astonishment. Willis had the feeling he was going to leap over the pile of papers and lunge for his throat.

"Why the hell did you…?"

"They've got to be related," Willis said calmly.

"I'm related to a third cousin in Pennsylvania…"

"This isn't a third cousin, Pete," Willis said. "This is the second victim with close ties to a woman named Marilyn Hollis."

"Are you saying she killed them?"

"Come on, Pete, how can I say that?"

"Then what are you saying? We've got a caseload here'll take us till next Easter to…"

"So what do you want me to do?" Willis said, somewhat testily considering he was talking to the boss. "Give Larkin our case?"

"Who the hell is Larkin?" Byrnes asked.

"The Twelfth," Willis said. "Is that what you want me to do?"

"I want you to check with me next time, before you go taking on half the goddamn homicide cases in this city!"

"I should've checked, you're right."

"You damn well should've. Who's handling the transfer papers?"

"Larkin."

"Thank God for that. We dump this on Miscolo's desk—"

"No, the Twelfth is handling it."

"Can you trust Larkin not to screw it up? If I get departmental flak on this, I'll…"

"He's an experienced cop, Pete. He'll take care of it, don't worry. He's happy to get rid of it."

"I'll bet he is," Byrnes said.

Over coffee and sandwiches in a greasy spoon around the corner from the station house, Willis broke the news to Carella.

"A knife, huh?" Carella said.

"Well, some kind of sharp instrument," Willis said.

"But not poison."

"Definitely not poison."

"I don't get it, do you? Guy goes to all the trouble of setting up a complicated murder…"

"It had to be murder, don't you think?" Willis said. "I mean, if there was any doubt earlier, we've got a second victim now, and he's another one of Marilyn Hollis's pals. They've got to be linked."

"Well, sure," Carella said. "But that's the point. Somebody used nicotine, however the hell he got it, a deadly poison that acts within minutes. Okay, I have to ask myself why. Because he wants us to think suicide, right? Wants us to chalk it off as suicide. But then he turns around and stabs somebody. Primitive stuff, Hal, a one-on-one act. No attempt to hide the fact that it's murder. So why a class act the first time around, and then something out of the gutter the next time? That's what I don't get."

"Yeah, that's the bitch of it," Willis said.

Both men were silent for several moments.

"You think the Hollis woman is behind this?" Carella asked.

"Well, maybe. But if she's knocking off her pals one by one…"

"Or getting someone else to do it…"

"Then why give us a list? That's asking for trouble, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Carella said.

Both men were silent again.

"Does she know Hollander bought it?" Carella said.

"I haven't talked to her yet."

"We'd better. Right away."

"Let me do it," Willis said.

Carella looked at him.

"Alone," Willis said.

Carella was still looking at him.

"She wants to be my friend," Willis said, and smiled.