Ten Plus One

11

A sure sign that nothing was happening on this case—oh, yeah, maybe a cheap hood was being beaten up and made to realize you can’t go home again—was the fact that time was passing. It was true that there had been no murders since Andrew Mulligan drank his last drink, but time was nonetheless flitting by, and there was no greater proof of this than the reappearance of Bert Kling at the squadroom, looking tanned and healthy and very blond from the sun after his vacation. Lieutenant Byrnes, who didn’t like to see anyone looking so well-rested, immediately assigned him to the Sniper Case.

On the afternoon of May 7, while Meyer and Carella were uptown requestioning Mrs. O’Grady, the nice little woman who had been present when Salvatore Palumbo called it quits, Bert Kling was in the office looking over the Sniper file and trying to acquaint himself with what had gone before. When the blonde young lady walked into the squadroom, he barely looked up.

Meyer and Carella were sitting in the living room of a two-story clapboard dwelling in Riverhead while Mrs. O’Grady poured them coffee and tried to recall the incidents preceding the death of Salvatore Palumbo.

“I think he was weighing out some fruit. Do you take cream and sugar?”

“Black for me,” Meyer said.

“Detective Carella?”

“A little of each.”

“Should I call you Detective Carella, or Mr. Carella, or just what?”

“Whichever is most comfortable to you.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll call you Mr. Carella. Because calling you Detective Carella sounds as if you should be calling me Housewife O’Grady. Is that all right?”

“That’s fine, Mrs. O’Grady. He was weighing out some fruit, you said.”

“Yes.”

“And then what? I know we’ve been over all this, but…”

“Then he just fell onto the stand and slid down to the sidewalk. I guess I began screaming.”

“Did you hear the shot, Mrs. O’Grady?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Just before the train pulled in.”

“What train?”

“The train. Upstairs.”

“The elevated?”

“Yes.”

“It was coming into the platform when Mr. Palumbo got shot?”

“Well, to tell you the truth,” Mrs. O’Grady said, “I’m not too clear about the sequence. I mean, I heard the shot, but at the time I didn’t think it was a shot, I figured it was a backfire or a blow-out—who expects to hear a gun go off while you’re buying fruit from a man? So, although I heard the shot, I didn’t realize Sal…Mr. Palumbo…had been shot. I thought he was suffering a heart attack or something, him falling like that, and the fruit all tumbling off the stand. But then, of course, I saw the blood at the back of his head, and I guess my mind made the connection between the explosion I had heard and the fact that Sal was…well, I didn’t know he was dead…but certainly hurt.”

“And the train?”

“Well, what I’m trying to say is that everything happened so fast. The train coming in…I think it was coming in, though it may have been leaving…and the shot, and Sal falling down hurt. It all happened so fast that I’m not sure of the time sequence, the poor man.”

“You’re not sure, then, whether the train was pulling into the station or leaving it.”

“That’s right. But it was moving, that’s for sure. It wasn’t just standing still in the station.”

“Did you see anyone on the station platform, Mrs. O’Grady?”

“No, I didn’t even look up there. I thought it was a backfire at first, you see, or something like that. It never crossed my mind that somebody was shooting a gun. So I had no reason to look around to see who or what it was. Besides, I was buying fruit, and to tell you the truth, the shot didn’t register on my mind at all, either as a backfire or anything, it just didn’t register until I began thinking about it afterward, after Sal was dead, do you know what I mean? It’s hard to explain, but there are so many noises in the city, and you just don’t listen to them anymore, you just go about your business.”

“Then, in effect, you really didn’t hear the shot at the time. Or at least, you didn’t react to it.”

“That’s right. But there was a shot.” Mrs. O’Grady paused. “Why are you asking? Do they make silencers for rifles?”

“They’re not manufactured, Mrs. O’Grady, no. There are both state and federal regulations against the use of silencers. But any fairly competent machinist could turn one out in his own garage, especially if he had something like murder on his mind.”

“I always thought silencers were very complicated things. They always look so complicated in the movies.”

“Well, they’re really very simple in principle. When you put a silencer on a gun or a rifle, you’re closing a series of doors, in effect. You’re muffling the sound.”

“Doors?” Mrs. O’Grady asked.

“Try to visualize a piece of tubing, Mrs. O’Grady, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter, and about eight inches long. Inside this tube is a series of separated eight-inch baffling plates, the closed ‘doors’ that absorb the sound. That’s a silencer. A man can fashion one on a home lathe.”

“Well, I heard a shot,” Mrs. O’Grady said.

“And yet you didn’t turn, you didn’t look up, you didn’t comment upon it to Mr. Palumbo.”

“No.”

“The rifle that fired a .308 caliber bullet would have been a high-powered rifle, Mrs. O’Grady. Powerful enough to have felled a charging lion.”

“So?”

“It would have made a pretty loud noise.”

“So?”

“I’m only suggesting, Mrs. O’Grady, that your reconstruction of what happened may only be a result of your later thoughts about the incident.”

“I heard a shot,” Mrs. O’Grady insisted.

“Did you? Or is it only now, now that you know Mr. Palumbo was shot and killed, that you think you remember hearing a shot? In other words, Mrs. O’Grady, is logic interfering with your memory?”

“Logic?”

“Yes. If a bullet was fired, and if a man was killed, there must have been a shot. And if there was shot, you must have heard it. And if you heard it, you must have dismissed it as a backfire or a blowout.”

“I’m sure that’s what happened.”

“Have you ever heard a blowout, Mrs. O’Grady?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And what happened? Did you ignore it, or were you momentarily startled?”

“I suppose I was startled.”

“Yet when Mr. Palumbo was killed with a high-powered rifle, which would have made a very loud noise, you only later remembered hearing a shot. Does that sound valid?”

“Well, I think I heard a shot,” Mrs. O’Grady said.

Carella smiled. “Maybe you did,” he answered. “We’ll check with the man in the change booth on the platform. In any case, Mrs. O’Grady, you’ve been extremely cooperative and most helpful.”

“He was a nice man,” Mrs. O’Grady said. “Sal. He was really a very nice man.”

The man in the change booth at the station platform above Palumbo’s store was not a very nice man at all. He was a crotchety old grouch who began giving the detectives trouble the moment they approached the booth.

“How many?” he asked immediately.

“How many what?” Meyer asked.

“Can’t you read the sign? State how many tokens you want.”

“We don’t want any tokens,” Meyer said.

“Map of the system is on the wall right there,” the attendant said. “I’m not paid to give out travel information.”

“Are you paid to cooperate with the police?” Carella asked amiably.

“The what?”

“Police,” Meyer said, and he flashed the tin.

“What’s that say? I’m a little nearsighted.”

“It says ‘Detective,’ “ Meyer answered.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“We want to know the best way to get to Carruthers Street in Calm’s Point,” Carella said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I never heard of Carruthers Street.”

“That’s because I just made it up,” Carella said.

“Listen, what are you, a bunch of wise guys?” the attendant asked.

“We’re two college kids on a scavenger hunt,” Meyer said. “We’re supposed to bring back a hibernating bear, and you’re the first one we’ve seen all day.”

“Haha,” the attendant said mirthlessly. “That’s very funny.”

“What’s your name?” Carella asked.

“Quentin. You going to give me trouble? I’m a civil-service employee, too, you know. It ain’t nice to give your own kind trouble.”

“What’s your first name, Mr. Quentin?”

“Stan.”

“Stan Quentin?” Meyer asked incredulously.

“Yeah, what’s the matter with that?” The old man peered into Meyer’s face. “What’s your name?”

Meyer, whose full name was Meyer Meyer, the legacy of a practical-joking father, hastily said, “Let’s never mind the names, okay, Mr. Quentin? We only want to ask you some questions about what happened downstairs last week, okay?”

“The wop who was killed, you mean?” Quentin asked.

“Yeah, the wop who was killed,” Carella said.

“So what about him? I didn’t even know him.”

“Then how do you know he was a wop?”

“I read his name in the papers.” He turned to Meyer again. “What’s wrong with Stan Quentin, would you mind telling me?”

“Nothing. They almost named a prison after you.”

“Yeah? Which one?”

“Alcatraz,” Meyer said.

The old man stared at him blankly. “I don’t get it,” he said.

“Tell us about the day of the murder.”

“There’s nothing to tell. The guy downstairs got shot, that’s all.”

“He got shot from this platform, Mr. Quentin,” Meyer said. “For all we know, you could have done it.”

“Haha,” Quentin said.

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because I can’t even read what your shield says from a distance of three feet. How the hell could I shoot a man who’s all the way down in the street?”

“You could have used a telescopic sight, Mr. Quentin.”

“Sure. I could also be governor of the state.”

“Did you see anyone come onto the platform carrying a rifle?”

“Look,” Quentin said, “maybe you don’t understand me. I don’t see too good, you get that? I am the most cockeyed guy you’ll ever meet in your life.”

“Then why aren’t you wearing glasses?” Carella asked.

“What, and spoil my looks?” Quentin said seriously.

“How do you know how much money a person is giving you?” Meyer asked.

“I hold the bill up to my face.”

“So, let’s get this straight, all right? Even if somebody had come up here with a rifle, you wouldn’t have seen what he was carrying. Is that what you’re saying?”

“I thought I said it pretty plain,” Quentin said. “What do you mean, Alcatraz? How’s that named after me?”

“You work on it, Mr. Quentin,” Meyer said. “Have you got a train schedule here?”

“The company don’t issue schedules. You know that.”

“I know the company doesn’t, but isn’t there one issued to employees? Don’t you know when the trains come in and out of this platform?”

“Sure I know.”

“Do you think you might be willing to tell us?”

“Sure.”

“When, Mr. Quentin? We’re sort of anxious to get back to the party.”

“What party?”

“The one we’re out on the scavenger hunt from.”

“Haha,” Quentin said.

“So how about it?”

“You want to know every train that comes in and out of here?”

“No. We only want to know the trains that come in and out on the uptown side at about twelve noon. That’s what we’d like to know. Do you think you can supply us with the information?”

“I think so,” Quentin said. “Alcatraz, huh? Where’s that?”

“In the water off San Francisco.”

“They made a picture of that once, didn’t they?”

“That’s right.”

“What’d they do? Use my name in the picture?”

“Why don’t you write to the movie company?” Carella suggested.

“I will. Who made the picture?”

“It was an M-G-M musical,” Meyer said.

“Haha,” Quentin said. “Come on, who made the picture?”

“A couple of convicts,” Carella said. “It was part of the prison therapy program.”

“Can I sue a convict?”

“Nope.”

“Then what’s the use?”

“There’s no use. Just be grateful they named the joint after you, that’s all. And as a gesture of your gratefulness, tell us about the trains, okay?”

“You’re just a bunch of wise guys,” Quentin said sourly. “I knew that the minute you came up to the booth.”

“The trains,” Meyer prompted.

“Okay, okay. Weekdays?”

“Weekdays.”

“Around noon?”

“Around noon.”

“There’s one gets in at eleven-fifty-seven, pulls out about thirty seconds later.”

“And the next one?”

“Gets in at twelve-oh-three.”

“And leaves?”

“Same thing. Thirty seconds or so. They only open the doors, let the people off and on, and shove right off. What do you think this is? A first-class coach to Istanbul? This is the elevated system.”

“How are your ears, Mr. Quentin?”

“My what?”

“Your ears. Did you hear a shot at about twelve noon on the day Mr. Palumbo was killed?”

“What day was that?”

“It was May first.”

“That’s only a date. What was the day? I only remember days by days.”

“It was a Tuesday.”

“A week ago?”

“A week ago tomorrow.”

“Nope, I didn’t hear no shot on a week ago tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Mr. Quentin,” Meyer said. “You have been extremely helpful.”

“You know those guys at Alcatraz?”

“We know a lot of guys at Alcatraz,” Carella said.

“Tell them to take my name off it, you hear?”

“We will,” Carella said.

“Damn right,” Quentin said.

In the street downstairs, Meyer said, “So?”

“I think our man used a silencer.”

“Me, too.”

“That’s a lot of help, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes. Oh, my, yes, that’s a great deal of help.”

“This case is making me giddy, you know that?”

“You want some coffee?”

“No, spoil my appetite. I want to go see the elevator operator at Norden’s apartment building again, and then I want to talk to the woman who witnessed Forrest’s death again, and then…”

“Let’s send some of our little helpers.”

“I want to talk to them myself.”

“Why?”

“I don’t trust cops,” Carella said, grinning.

The young blonde who walked into the squadroom while Bert Kling was poring over the files was Cindy Forrest. She was carrying a black tote bag in one hand and a manila folder under her arm, and she was looking for Detective Steve Carella, ostensibly to give him the material in the folder. Cindy—by her own admission—was a nineteen-year-old girl who would be twenty in June and who had seen it all and heard it all, and also done a little. She thought Steve Carella was an attractive man in a glamour profession—listen, some girls have a thing for cops—and whereas she knew he was married and suspected he had four dozen kids, she nonetheless thought it might be sort of interesting to see him again, the marriage contract being a remote and barely understood cultural curiosity to most nineteen-year-olds going on twenty. She didn’t know what would happen with Carella when she saw him again, though she had constructed a rather elaborate fantasy in her own mind and knew exactly what she wished would happen. The fact that he was married didn’t disturb her at all, nor was she very troubled by the fact that he was almost twice her age. She saw in him a man with an appealing animal vitality, not too dumb for a cop, who had just possibly seen and heard even more than she had, and who had most certainly done more than she had, her own experience being limited to once in the back seat of an automobile and another time on a bed at a party in New Ashton. She could remember the names of both boys, but they were only boys, that was the thing, and Steve Carella seemed to her to be a man, which was another thing again and something she felt she ought to experience now, before she got married herself one day and tied down with kids.

She hadn’t consulted Carella on the possibility as yet, but she felt this was only a minor detail. She was extremely secure in her own good looks and in an undeniable asset called youth. She was certain that once Carella understood her intentions, he would be happy to oblige, and they would then enter into a madly delirious and delicious love affair that would end some months from now because, naturally, it could never be; but Carella would remember her forever, the nineteen-year-old going on twenty who had shared those tender moments of passion, who had enriched his life, who had rewarded him with her inquiring young mind and her youthful, responsive body.

Feeling like Héloise about to keep an assignation with Abelard, she walked into the squadroom expecting to find Carella—and instead found Bert Kling.

Kling was sitting at his own desk in a shaft of sunlight that came through the grilled window and settled on his blond head like a halo. He was suntanned and muscular, and he was wearing a white shirt open at the throat, and he was bent over the papers spread on his desk, the sun touching his hair, looking very healthy and handsome and young.

She hated him on sight.

“I beg your pardon,” she said.

Kling looked up. “Yes, miss?”

“I’d like to see Detective Carella, please.”

“Not here right now,” Kling answered. “Can I help you?”

“Who are you?” Cindy asked.

“Detective Kling.”

“How do you do?” She paused. “You did say Detective Kling?”

“That’s right.”

“You seem so”—she hesitated on the word, as if it were loathsome to her—”young. To be a detective, I mean.”

Kling sensed her hostility immediately, and immediately reacted in a hostile manner. “Well, you see,” he said, “I’m the boss’s son. That’s how I got to be a detective so fast.”

“Oh, I see.” She looked around the squadroom, obviously annoyed by Kling, and the room, and Carella’s absence, and the world. “When will he be back? Carella?”

“Didn’t say. He’s out making some calls.”

With a ghoulishly sweet grin, Cindy said, “And they left you to mind the store. How nice.”

“Yeah,” Kling answered, “they left me to mind the store.” He was not smiling, because he was not enjoying this little snotnose who came up here with her Saturday Evening Post face and her college-girl talk. “So since I’m minding the store, what is it you want, miss? I’m busy.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Nothing. I’ll wait for Carella, if you don’t mind.” She was opening the gate in the slatted rail divider when Kling came out of his chair swiftly and abruptly.

“Hold it right there!” he snapped.

“Wh-what?” Cindy asked, her eyes opening wide.

“Just hold it, miss!” Kling shouted, and to Cindy’s shocked surprise, he pulled a pistol from a holster clipped to his belt and pointed it right at her heart.

“Get in here,” he said. “Don’t reach into that bag!”

“What? Are you…?”

“In!” Kling shouted.

She obeyed him instantly, because she was certain he was going to shoot her dead in the next moment. She had heard stories about cops who lost their minds and went around shooting anything that moved. She was also beginning to wonder whether he really was a cop, and not simply a stray hoodlum who had wandered up here.

“Empty your bag on the desk,” Kling said.

“Listen, what the hell do you think you’re…?”

“Empty it, miss,” he said menacingly.

“I’m going to sue you, you know,” she said coldly, and turned over her bag, spilling the contents onto the desk.

Kling went through the pile of junk rapidly. “What’s in that folder?” he asked.

“Some stuff for Detective Carella.”

“On the desk.”

She put the folder down. Kling loosened the ties on it, and stuck his hand into it. He kept the gun trained at Cindy’s middle, and she watched him with growing exasperation.

“All right?” she asked at last.

“Put your hands up over your head as high as you can get them.”

“Listen, I don’t have to…”

“Miss,” he said warningly, and she raised her hands.

“Higher. Stretch.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d really like to frisk you, but this’ll have to do.”

“Oh, boy, are you getting in trouble,” she said, and she reached up for the ceiling. He studied her body minutely, looking for the bulge of a gun anywhere under her clothes. He saw only a trim, youthful figure in a white sweater and a straight black skirt. No unexplainable bulges.

“All right, put your hands down. What do you want with Carella?”

“I want to give him what’s in that folder. Now, suppose you explain…”

“Miss, a couple of years back we had a girl come in here asking for Steve Carella, who happened to be out making a call. None of us could help her. She said she wanted to wait for Steve. So she marched through that gate, just the way you were about to do, and then she pulled out a .38, and the next thing we knew, she told us she was here to kill Carella.”

“What’s that got to do with…?”

“So, miss, I’m only the boss’s son and a very dumb cop, but that dame put us through hell for more hours than I care to remember. And I know enough to come in out of the rain. Especially when there’s lightning around.”

“I see. And is this what you do with every girl who comes into the squadroom? You frisk them?”

“I didn’t frisk you, miss.”

“Are you finished with me?”

“Yes.”

“Then go frisk yourself,” Cindy said, and she turned away from him coldly and began putting the junk back into her bag.

“Let me help you with that,” Kling said.

“Mister, you’d better just stay as far away from me as possible. I don’t have a .38, but if you take one step closer to me, I’ll clonk you right on the head with my shoe.”

“Look, you weren’t exactly radiating…”

“I’ve never in my entire life dealt with anyone as…”

“…sunshine when you came in here. You looked sore, and I automatically…”

“…suspicious, or as rude, or as overbearing in his manner…”

“…assumed you—”

“Shut up when I’m talking!” Cindy shouted.

“Look, miss,” Kling said angrily. “This happens to be a police station, and I happen to be a policeman, and I—”

“Some policeman!” Cindy snapped.

“You want me to kick you out of here?” Kling said menacingly.

“I want you to apologize to me!” Cindy yelled.

“Yeah, you’ve got a fat chance.”

“Yeah, I’m going to tell you something, Mister Big Shot Boss’s Son. If you think a citizen…”

“I’m not the boss’s son,” Kling yelled.

“You said you were!” Cindy yelled back.

“Only because you were so snotty!”

“I was snotty? I was—”

“I’m not used to seventeen-year-old brats…”

“I’m nineteen! Damn you, I’m twenty!”

“Make up your mind!” Kling shouted, and Cindy picked up her bag by the straps and swung it at him. Kling instinctively put up one of his hands, and the black leather collided with the flat palm, and all the junk Cindy had painstakingly put back into the bag came spilling out again, all over the floor.

They both stood stock-still, as if the spilling contents of the bag were an avalanche. Cigarettes, matches, lipstick, eye shadow, sunglasses, a comb, an address and appointment book, a bottle of APC tablets, a book of twenty-five gummed parcel-post labels, a checkbook, a compact, more matches, a package of Chiclets, an empty cigarette package, a scrap of yellow paper with the handwritten words “Laundry, Quiz Philosophy,” a hairbrush, an eyelash curler, two more combs, a package of Kleenex, several soiled Kleenex tissues, more matches, a pillbox without any pills in it, a box of Sucrets, two pencils, a wallet, more matches, a ballpoint pen, three pennies, several empty cellophane wrappers, and a peach pit all came tumbling out of the bag and fell onto the floor to settle in a disorderly heap between them.

Kling looked down at the mess.

Cindy looked down at the mess.

Silently, she knelt and began filling the bag again. She worked without looking up at him, without saying a word. Then she rose, picked up the manila folder from the desk, put it into Kling’s hands, and frostily said, “Will you please see that Detective Carella gets this?”

Kling accepted the folder. “Who shall I say left it?”

“Cynthia Forrest.”

“Listen, I’m sorry about…”

“Detective Kling,” Cindy said, enunciating every word sharply and distinctly, “I think you are the biggest bastard I’ve ever met in my life.”

Then she turned and walked out of the squadroom.

Kling stared after her a moment, and then shrugged. He carried the manila folder to Carella’s desk, remembered abruptly that the name Cynthia Forrest had been in at least two of the DD reports he’d read, realized immediately that she was the daughter of the dead Anthony Forrest, almost started out of the squadroom in an attempt to catch up with her, said “The hell with it” aloud, and plunked the folder down on Carella’s desktop.

The folder did not contain as much junk as Cindy’s bag had contained, but it did hold a great deal of material on the man who had been her father. Most of the stuff dealt with his days as a student at Ramsey University—some of his old term papers, pictures of him with the football squad, several report cards, a notebook he had kept, and, oh, stuff like that. Carella would not see the contents of the folder until the next morning, because he would be occupied uptown all that day, and would go directly home to dinner with his wife and two kids afterward.

Actually, there wasn’t much in the folder that would have helped him or the case. Except perhaps one thing.

The one thing was a frayed and yellowing theater program.

The front of the program read:

The program sat on top of Carella’s desk, inside the manila folder. The inside of the program listed the past activities of the drama group on the left-hand page, together with a well-wishing half-page ad from the graduating class of June 1940. The back of the program carried a full-page ad for Harry’s Luncheonette, Ice Cream Treats Our Specialty, near the school.

The inside right-hand page of the program contained the following printed information:

CAST IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

FAT JOE Thomas Di Pasquale NICK Andrew Mulligan MAG Margaret Buff OLSON Randolph Norden DRISCOLL Anthony Forrest COCKY David Arthur Cohen IVAN Peter Kelby KATE Helen Struthers FREDA Blanche Ruth Lettiger FIRST ROUGH Salvatore Palumbo SECOND ROUGH Rudy Fenstermacher

That night, while Detective Steve Carella was sitting down to dinner with his wife, Teddy, and the twins, Mark and April, a man named Rudy Fenstermacher was walking from the subway to his home in Majesta.

He never made it, because a .308-caliber bullet hit him right in the head and killed him instantly.