’Til Death

Chapter 9

The telephone in the squadroom was ringing insistently.

Hal Willis, alone, unbent from his doubled-over position alongside the water cooler and shouted, “All right, all right, for Christ’s sake! It never fails. A guy goes for a drink of water and — all right, I’m coming!” He threw water and paper cup into the trash basket and ran like hell for the phone, snatching it from the receiver.

“Hello!” he shouted. “87th Squad!” he shouted. “Detective Willis speaking!” he shouted.

“I can hear you, Mac,” the voice said. “I can almost hear you without the aid of the instrument, and I’m all the way down on High Street. Shall we try it again? Pizzicato this time?”

“You mean diminuendo, don’t you?” Willis said softly.

“Whatever I mean, I think we all get the idea. This is Avery Atkins at the lab. Somebody up there sent a note down to us. We’ve been working on it.”

“What note?”

“It says ‘For the groom.’ Familiar with it?”

“Vaguely. What about it?”

“What did you say your name was, friend?”

“Willis. Hal Willis. Detective/third grade. Male, white, American.”

“And pretty snotty,” Atkins said.

“Listen, have you got information for me, or have you? I’m all alone here, and I’ve got a million things to do. So how about it?”

“Here it is. Catch it, wise guy. Paper used was five-and-dime stuff, trade name Skyline, sold over the counter all over the city at twenty-five cents for a package of ten cards and ten little envelopes. Go chase that one down. Ink used was Sheaffer’s Skrip, number thirty-two, permanent jet black. Ditto over counters across the face of our fair city. You can chase that one down, too, wise guy. Which brings us to fingerprints. Two sets on the card, both lousy. One set belongs to a guy named Thomas Giordano. No record. Checked it through his service fingerprints, he was in the Army Signal Corps. The second set belongs to a guy named Stephen Louis Carella who, I understand, is a detective working for the magnificent 87th Squad. He ought to be careful where he lays his fat fingers. You had enough, smart guy?”

“I’m still listening.”

“Comes to the handwriting itself, and there’s a lot of crap here you don’t have to know about unless you come up with a sample for comparison. There’s only one thing you do have to know.”

“What’s that?”

“Whoever sent this over asked us to run a handwriting comparison against the signature of one Martin Sokolin on whom we have a record at the IB. We did that. And one thing’s for sure.”

“And what’s that?”

“Martin Sokolin didn’t write that love note.”

The three detectives stood over the body of Joseph Birnbaum. There was no pain, no joy, no sorrow on their faces. Impassively, they stared at death and whatever they felt was rigidly concealed behind the masks they wore for society.

Carella was the first to kneel.

“Shot him in the back,” he said. “Bullet probably passed through to the heart. Killed him instantly.”

“That’s my guess,” Hawes said, nodding.

“How come we didn’t hear the shot?” Kling asked.

“All those champagne bottles going off. This is quite a distance from the house. The shot probably sounded like just another cork going off. Take a look around, will you, Bert? See if you can find the spent cartridge.”

Kling began thrashing through the bushes. Carella turned to Jonesy where he stood with Christine. His face was a pasty white. His hands, though he tried to control them, were trembling at his sides.

“Pull yourself together,” Carella said harshly. “You can help us, but not the way you are now.”

“I... I... I can’t help it,” Jonesy said. “I... I feel like I’m going to collapse. That’s why... why I sent Christine for you.”

“Is that why?” Hawes asked.

“I... I knew I couldn’t make it myself.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing,” Carella said. “If you’d have erupted onto that lawn, you’d have busted up that wedding as sure as—”

“What were you doing back here, anyway?” Hawes said, and he looked at Christine angrily.

“We were taking a walk,” Jonesy said.

“Why here?”

“Why not?”

“Answer my question, damnit!” Hawes shouted. “That man there is dead, and you’re the one who found the body, and I’d like to know just what the hell brought you back here? Coincidence?”

“Yes.”

“Why? What were you doing here?”

“Walking with Christine.”

“Cotton, we just—”

“I’ll get to you, Christine,” Hawes said. “Why’d you choose this path for a walk, Jones? So that you’d have a witness when you discovered the body?”

“What?”

“You heard me!”

“That’s... that’s prep — that’s preposterous!”

“Is it? Then why’d you come back here?”

“So I could kiss Christine,” Jonesy blurted.

“And did you?” Hawes said venomously.

“Cotton—”

“Keep out of this, Christine. Did you kiss her?”

“What’s this got to do with Birnbaum? What business is it of yours whether or not I—”

“When did you see the body?” Carella interrupted, annoyed because Hawes was dragging his interrogation down into the muck of a private and not a police matter.

“We were standing here,” Jonesy said. “And I happened to see it.”

“You were just standing here?” Carella asked.

“I... I was going to kiss Christine.”

“Go on,” Carella said, and he watched Hawes’s fists close into hard balls at his sides.

“I saw the body,” Jonesy said. “And I... I screamed. And then I recognized it was Birnbaum.”

“Where does this path lead?” Hawes snapped.

“To Birnbaum’s house. On the next lot.”

Kling came thrashing through the bushes. “Here it is, Steve,” he said, and he held out the brass casing. Carella looked at it. The side of the casing was stamped “357 MAGNUM.” The back end of the casing had the lettering fixed in a circle:

In any case, there was no doubt about what kind of a gun had fired this particular cartridge. Either a Colt or a Smith & Wesson Magnum revolver.

“A Magnum,” Carella said. “A big gun.”

“Not necessarily,” Hawes said. “Smith and Wesson puts out a Magnum with a short three-and-a-half-inch barrel.”

“In any event, this casing lets out our friend Martino with his Iver Johnson .22.”

“Yeah. What do we do now, Steve?”

“Call Homicide, I guess. With three detectives on the scene, I don’t think we ought to ring the local squad. Or should we?”

“I think we’d better.”

“Jesus, I’d hate like hell to break up the wedding.” He paused. “I don’t think Birnbaum would have wanted that, either.”

“Maybe we won’t have to.”

“How do you figure?”

“This spot is pretty well protected from your father’s lot. Maybe we can bring the photographers and the ME in through the next street, across Birnbaum’s back yard and through the bushes. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Carella said.

“What precinct is this, anyway?”

“The 112th, I think.”

“Know anybody on the squad?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

“So what makes you think they’ll do us a favor?”

“Professional courtesy. What the hell, it won’t hurt asking. You only get married once.”

Carella nodded and looked down at the lifeless body of Joseph Birnbaum, the neighbor. “You only die once, too,” he said. “Come on, Jonesy, back to the house. You, too, Miss Maxwell. Few questions I’d like to ask both of you. Bert, you come back and call the 112th. Cotton, will you stay with the body?” He suspected that Hawes might be better equipped for the diplomacy necessary with the 112th Squad than Kling was. But at the same time, he didn’t want a jealous male bellowing at an obviously frightened suspect while he questioned Jonesy and Christine further.

If Hawes appreciated Carella’s tactic, he showed no sign of it. He simply nodded and went to stand alongside the prostrate Birnbaum as the rest started back for the house.

In the distance, Hawes could hear the sound of the band, the sound of voices raised in laughter, the tiny faraway pops of the champagne corks. Closer, the insects filled the woods with their myriad noises. He swatted at a fly that had settled on his nose, and then lighted a cigarette. The path, he noticed, took a sharp turn several feet beyond where Birnbaum was lying. Idly, Hawes walked to the bend in the path, surprised when the woods around him suddenly ended to become the open lawn of the Birnbaum back yard. He glanced up at the Birnbaum house.

Something glinted in the attic window.

He looked again.

There was a sudden movement, and then the window presented nothing more than a blank open rectangle.

But Hawes was certain he’d seen a man with a rifle in that window a second ago.

A blonde in a red silk dress was sitting at the dressing table in the downstairs bedroom when Christine Maxwell entered the room. Carella had told her he wanted to question Jonesy alone and that he would get back to her shortly. She’d gone downstairs immediately in search of the ladies’ room. She wasn’t feeling at all well, and she wanted to wash her face and put on some fresh lipstick.

If anything, the blonde in the red silk dress made her feel worse.

As Christine put her small blue purse down on the dressing table, the blonde was adjusting her stocking, the red dress pulled back over her nylon, her magnificently turned leg rivaling that in any Hollywood boudoir scene. Standing beside the blonde in the tight, low-cut, over-flowing-in-abundance red silk, standing beside the splendidly outstretched leg, Christine Maxwell felt suddenly skinny and awkward. She knew this was absurd. She’d always thought of herself as rather well-proportioned, capable of provoking a whistle or two on any street corner in the city. But the blonde who smoothed the nylon over her extended leg was so munificently endowed, so regally statuesque, that Christine suddenly imagined she’d been fooling herself all these years. The blonde tightened her garter, her shoulders and breasts bobbing with the movement. Fascinated, Christine watched the rippling flesh.

“You look kind of pale, honey,” the blonde said.

“What? Oh, yes. I guess I do.”

“Go out and have some of that whiskey. Put the color back into your cheeks.” She rose suddenly, looked at herself in the mirror, tucked a stray strand of hair back into place, and then said, “There, it’s all yours. I’ve got to see John.” She walked into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind her.

Christine opened her purse, took out a comb, and began combing her hair. She did look pale. She’d better wash her face. God, that poor man lying in the path.

The bathroom door opened. “Well, so long, dear,” the blonde said. She walked to the dressing table, snatched a purse from its top, and breezed out of the bedroom.

Apparently, she had not noticed that the purse she’d taken was Christine’s.

Nor did Christine, in her agitated state, notice the error either.

Peering over the window sill, the man in the attic room of Birnbaum’s empty house saw Hawes glance up at the window and then glance up at it again. Quickly, he ducked below the sill.

He saw me, he thought.

He saw the rifle.

Now what?

Goddamnit, she knows she’s supposed to keep anyone away from this house! Where the hell is she? Why isn’t she doing what she’s supposed to be doing?

He waited, listening.

He could hear the steady crunch of heavy feet across the lawn behind the house. Cautiously, he crawled on his hands and knees to the left of the window, and then stood up. He backed away from the window. From where he stood, he could not be seen from outside, but he had a clear view of the lawn and — yes, that man was heading for the house, walking across the lawn at a brisk clip.

What do I do? he wondered.

He listened.

The man was coming around the side of the house. He heard footsteps on the slate walk there, and then on the steps leading to the front porch, and then clomping across the porch to stop at the front door. There was no knock. Stealthily, the front door eased open, creaking on its hinges.

Silence.

In the attic room, the sniper waited. He could hear the footsteps again, carefully, quietly advancing through the silent house, toward the steps, hesitating on each tread, each creaking step bringing the intruder closer and closer to the attic room. Quickly, the sniper went to the door and stood just inside it. Quickly, he grasped the rifle by its barrel.

There were cautious footsteps in the corridor outside now.

He held his breath and waited.

The doorknob twisted almost imperceptibly.

The sniper swung the rifle back over his shoulder like a ball bat.

Gun in hand, Cotton Hawes kicked open the door to the attic, and the rifle moved in a sudden blurring arc, the butt catching him on the side of his face and knocking him senseless to the floor.