Ed McBain_87th Precinct 22 (8 page)

“Who’s that?” Hawes asked.

“Who’s who?” the landlady said.

“Down the hall there. The door that just opened and closed.”

“Musta been Polly,” the landlady said, and unlocked the door to 31.

The room was small and cheerless. A three-quarter bed was against the wall opposite the door, covered with a white chenile bedspread. A framed print was over the bed. It showed a logging mill and a river and a sheepdog looking up at something in the sky A standing floor lamp was on the right of the bed The shade was yellow and soiled. A stains either whiskey or vomit, was on the corner of the bedspread where it was pulled up over the pillows. Opposite the bed, there was a single dresser with a mirror over it. The dresser had cigarette burns all the way around its top. The mirror was spotted and peeling. The sink alongside the dresser had a big rust ring near the drain.

“How long was he living here?” Hawes asked.

“Took the room three days ago.”

“Did he pay by check or cash?”

“Cash. In advance. Paid for a full week. I only rent by the week, I don’t like none of these one-night stands.”

“Naturally not.” Hawes said.

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it ain’t such a fancy place, I shouldn’t be so fussy. Well, it may not be fancy,” the landlady said, “but it’s clean.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“I mean it ain’t got no
bugs
, mister.”

Hawes nodded and went to the window. The shade was torn and missing its pull cord. He grabbed the lower edge in his gloved hand, raised the shade and looked across the street.

“You hear any shots last night?”

“No.”

He looked down at the floor. There were no spent cartridge cases anywhere in sight.

“Who else lives on this floor?”

“Polly down the hall, that’s all.”

“Polly who?”

“Malloy.”

“Mind if I look through the dresser and the closet?”

“Go right ahead. I got all the time in the world. The way I spend my day is I conduct guided tours through the building.”

Hawes went to the dresser and opened each of the drawers. They were all empty, except for a cockroach nestling in the corner of the bottom drawer.

“You missed one” Hawes said, and closed the drawer.

“Huh?” the landlady said.

Hawes went to the closet and opened it. There were seven wire hangers on the clothes bar. The closet was empty. He was about to close the door when something on the floor caught his eye. He stooped for a closer look, took a pen light from his pocket, and turned it on. The object on the floor was a dime.

“If that’s money,” the landlady said, “it belongs to me.”

“Here,” Hawes said, and handed her the dime. He did so knowing full well that even if the coin
had
belonged to the occupant of the room, it was as impossible to get latent prints from money as it was to get reimbursed by the city for gasoline used in one’s private car on police business.

“Is there a john in here?” he asked.

“Down the hall. Lock the door behind you.”

“I only wanted to know if there was another room, that’s all.”

“It’s clean, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

“I’m sure it’s spotless,” Hawes said. He took another look around. “So this is it, huh?”

“This is it.”

“I’ll be sending a man over to dust that sill,” Hawes said.

“Why?” the landlady said. “It’s clean.”

“I mean for fingerprints.”

“Oh.” The landlady stared at him. “You think that big mucky-muck was shot from this room?”

“It’s possible,” Hawes said.

“Will that mean trouble for me?”

“Not unless you shot him,” Hawes said, and smiled.

“You got some sense of humor,” the landlady said.

They went out of the apartment. The landlady locked the door behind her. “Will that be all,” she asked, “or did you want to see anything else?”

“I want to talk to the woman down the hall,” Hawes said, “but I won’t need you for that. Thank you very much, you were very helpful.”

“It breaks the monotony,” the landlady said, and he believed her.

“Thank you again,” he said, and watched her as she went down the steps. He walked to the door marked 32 and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again and said, “Miss Malloy?”

The door opened a crack.

“Who is it?” a voice said.

“Police officer. May I talk to you?”

“What about?”

“About Mr. Orecchio.”

“I don’t know any Mr. Orecchio,” the voice said. “Miss Malloy …”

“It’s
Mrs
. Malloy, and I don’t know any Mr. Orecchio.”

“Could you open the door, ma’am?”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“I won’t …”

“I know a man got shot last night, I don’t want any trouble.”

“Did you hear the shots, Miss Malloy?”
“Mrs
. Malloy.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Would you happen to know if Mr. Orecchio was in last night?”

“I don’t know who Mr. Orecchio is.”

“The man in 31.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Ma’am, could you please open the door?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Ma’am, I can come back with a warrant, but it’d be
a
lot easier …”

“Don’t get me in trouble,” she said. “I’ll open the door, but please don’t get me in trouble.”

Polly Malloy was wearing a pale green cotton wrapper. The wrapper had short sleeves. Hawes saw the hit marks on her arms the moment she opened the door, and the hit marks explained a great deal about the woman who was Polly Malloy. She was perhaps twenty-six years old, with a slender youthful body and a face that would have been pretty if it were not so clearly stamped with knowledge. The green eyes were intelligent and alert, the mouth vulnerable. She worried her lip and held the wrapper closed about her naked body, and her fingers were long and slender, and the hit marks on her arms shouted all there was to shout.

“I’m not holding,” she said.

“I didn’t ask.”

“You can look around if you like.”

“I’m not interested,” Hawes said.

“Come in,” she said.

He went into the apartment. She closed and locked the door behind him.

“I don’t want trouble,” she said. “I’ve had enough trouble.”

“I won’t give you any. I only want to know about the man down the hall.”

“I know somebody got shot. Please don’t get me involved in it.”

They sat opposite each other, she on the bed, he on a straight-backed chair facing her. Something shimmered on the air between them, something as palpable as the tenement stink of garbage and piss surrounding them. They sat in easy informality, comfortably aware of each other’s trade, Cotton Hawes detective, Polly Malloy addict. And perhaps they knew each other better than a great many people ever get to know each other. Perhaps Hawes had been inside too many shooting galleries not to understand what it was like to be this girl, perhaps he had arrested too
many hookers who were screwing for the couple of bucks they needed for a bag of shit, perhaps he had watched the agonized writhings of too many cold turkey kickers, perhaps his knowledge of this junkie or any junkie was as intimate as a pusher’s, perhaps he had seen too much and knew too much. And perhaps the girl had been collared too many times, had protested too many times that she was clean, had thrown too many decks of heroin under bar stools or down sewers at the approach of a cop, had been in too many different squadrooms and handled by too many different bulls, been offered the Lexington choice by too many different magistrates, perhaps her knowledge of the law as it applied to narcotics addicts was as intimate as any assistant district attorney’s, perhaps she too had seen too much and knew too much. Their mutual knowledge was electric, it generated a heat lightning of its own, ascertaining the curious symbiosis of lawbreaker and enforcer, affirming the interlocking subtlety of crime and punishment. There was a secret bond in that room, an affinity—almost an empathy. They could talk to each other without any bullshit. They were like spent lovers whispering on the same pillow.

“Did you know Orecchio?” Hawes asked.

“Will you keep me clean?”

“Unless you had something to do with it.”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve got my word.”

“A cop?” she asked, and smiled wanly.

“You’ve got my word, if you want it.”

“I need it, it looks like.”

“You need it, honey.”

“I knew him.”

“How?”

“I met him the night he moved in.”

“When was that?”

“Two, three nights ago.”

“Where’d you meet?”

“I was hung up real bad, I needed a fix. I just got out of Caramoor,
that
sweet hole, a week ago. I haven’t had time to get really connected yet.”

“What were you in for?”

“Oh, hooking.”

“How old are you, Polly?”

“Nineteen. I look older, huh?”

“Yes, you look older.”

“I got married when I was sixteen. To another junkie like myself. Some prize.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“Time at Castleview.”

“For what?”

Polly shrugged. “He started pushing.”

“Okay, what about Orecchio next door?”

“I asked him for a loan.”

“When was this?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“Did he give it to you?”

“I didn’t actually ask him for a loan. I offered to turn a trick for him. He was right next door, you see, and I was pretty sick, I swear to God I don’t think I coulda made it to the street.”

“Did he accept?”

“He gave me ten bucks. He didn’t take nothing from me for it.”

“Sounds like a nice fellow.” Polly shrugged.

“Not a nice fellow?” Hawes asked.

“Let’s say not my type,” Polly said.

“Mm-huh.”

“Let’s say a son of a bitch,” Polly said.

“What happened?”

“He came in here last night.”

“When? What time?”

“Musta been about nine, nine-thirty.”

“After the symphony started,” Hawes said.

“Huh?”

“Nothing, I was just thinking out loud. Go on.”

“He said he had something nice for me. He said if I came into his room, he would give me something nice.”

“Did you go?”

“First I asked him what it was. He said it was something I wanted more than anything else in the world.”

“But did you go into his room?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

“Like what?”

“Like
a
high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight.”

“No, nothing like that.”

“All right, what was this ‘something nice’ he promised you?”

“Hoss.”

“He had heroin for you?”

“And that’s why he asked you to come into his room? For the heroin?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what he said.”

“He didn’t attempt to sell it to you, did he?”

“No. But …”

“Yes?”

“He made me beg for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“He showed it to me, and he let me taste it to prove that it was real stuff, and then he refused to give it to me unless I … begged for it.”

“I see.”

“He … teased me for … I guess for … for almost two hours. He kept looking at his watch and making me … do things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Stupid things. He asked me to sing for him. He made me sing ‘White Christmas,’ that was supposed to be a big joke, you see, because the shit is white and he knew how bad I needed a fix, so he made me sing ‘White Christmas’ over and over again, I musta sung it for him six or seven times. And all the while he kept looking at his watch.”

“Go ahead.”

“Then he … he asked me to strip, but … I mean, not just take off my clothes, but … you know, do a strip for him. And I did it. And he began … he began making fun of me, of the way I looked, of my body. I … he made me stand naked in front of him, and he just went on and on about how stupid and pathetic I looked, and he kept asking me if I really wanted the heroin, and then looked at his watch again, it was about eleven o’clock by then, I kept saying Yes, I want it, please let me have it, so he asked me to dance for him, he asked me to do the waltz, and then he asked me to do the shag, I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, I never even heard of the shag, have you ever heard of the shag?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of it,” Hawes said.

“So I did all that for him, I would have done anything for him, and finally he told me to get on my knees and explain to him why I felt I really needed the bag of heroin. He said he expected me to talk for five minutes on the subject of the addict’s need for narcotics, and he looked at his watch and began timing me,
and
I talked. I was shaking by this time, I had the chills, I
needed
a shot more than …” Polly closed her eyes. “I began crying. I
talked and I cried, and at last he looked at his watch and said, ‘Your five minutes are up. Here’s your poison, now get the hell out of here.’ And he threw the bag to me.” “What time was this?”

“It musta been about ten minutes after eleven. I don’t have a watch, I hocked it long ago, but you can see the big electric numbers on top of the Mutual Building from my room, and when I was shooting up later it was 11:15, so this musta been about ten after or thereabouts.”

“And he kept looking at his watch all through this, huh?”

“Yes. As if he had a date or something.”

“He did,” Hawes said.

“Huh?”

“He had a date to shoot a man from his window. He was just amusing himself until the concert broke. A nice fellow, Mr. Orecchio.”

“I got to say one thing for him,” Polly said.

“What’s that?”

“It was good stuff.” A wistful look came onto her face and into her eyes. “It was some of the best stuff I’ve had in years. I wouldn’t have heard a
cannon
if it went off next door.”

Hawes made a routine check of all the city’s telephone directories, found no listing for an Orecchio—Mort, Morton, or Mortimer—and then called the Bureau of Criminal Identification at four o’clock that afternoon. The B.C.I., fully automated, called back within ten minutes to report that they had nothing on the suspect. Hawes then sent a teletype to the F.B.I. in Washington, asking them to check their voluminous files for any known criminal named Orecchio, Mort or Mortimer or Morton He was sitting at his desk in the paint-smelling squadroom when Patrolman Richard Genero came up to ask whether he had to go to court with Kling on the collar they had made jointly and together the week before. Genero had been walking his beat all afternoon, and he was very cold, so he hung around long after Hawes had answered his question, hoping he would be offered a cup of coffee. His eye happened to fall on the name Hawes had scribbled onto his desk pad when calling the B.C.I., so Genero decided to make a quip.