Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (28 page)

“…on the big case that’s all over television!”

“I just want to make sure the guy who did it…”

“You just want to make sure you get famous.”

“Come on,” Biggs said. “We’re working a homicide here.”

“That’s exactly why we’re in charge here,” Monoghan said.

“Exactly,” Monroe said.

“Because
it’s a homicide,” Monoghan said.

“
Two
homicides, if you count the broad got juked,” Monroe said.

“No, that’s why
I’m
in charge here,” Ollie said. “Because the broad got juked
first.
You still here, Henry?” he asked, making the name sound like a racial slur. “Take your partner and go home. This
is
your partner, ain’t it?” he said, jerking a thumb at Jabeem, who stood glowering at him now. “He sure
looks
like he might be your partner,”

“You want to sort out whose case this is,” Biggs said calmly, shooting Jabeem a glance that clearly said
Cool it
, “then go downtown and talk to the Chief of Detectives. Meanwhile, while you and him’re debatin eight ninety-three seven,
somebody jumped out a window right here in the Two-One, and that gives
us
a clear mandate to investigate the occur…”

“The note in that typewriter…”

“But like you said…”

“…mentions the girl…”

“Yes, but…”

“…who got killed in
my
precinct!”

“But the note don’t mean a shit, remember?”

“We’ll see what the
Chief
has to say about that,” Ollie said.

“Good, go talk to him.”

“That’s just what I’m gonna do. Right this fuckin minute!”

“Good,” Biggs said. “Go.”

“We’ll go with you,” Monoghan said.

“Straighten out this mess,” Monroe said.

“Good, go,” Biggs said. “All three of you.”

All three of them flapped out of the apartment.

“Shouldn’t one of us talk to the super again?” Carella asked.

The superintendent was standing on the sidewalk outside the building, his hands on his hips, watching a pair of moving men
struggling a huge sofa off a truck parked at the curb. He was a trim little man with graying hair, wearing blue polyester
slacks and a long-sleeved blue sports shirt, the sleeves rolled up onto his forearms.

He had previously informed Biggs that his name was Siegfried Seifert, and that he had come to America from his native town
of Stuttgart some twenty years ago. He still spoke with a marked German accent as he told the moving men to use the elevator
on the left, which he advised them had been padded in anticipation of their arrival. Both moving men were black. Kling noticed.
Mr. Seifert was white.

“I am standing here on the sidewalk,” he told the four assembled detectives now, two of them white, two of them black, “when
up from there he comes flying down,” gesturing with his head to the ten stories above them. “He is almost falling on my
head,”
he said, touching it in wonder and awe. His speech began sounding somewhat less accented—a phenomenon perhaps bred of familiarity—as
he explained what a shock it was to see this nice young man splattered all over the sidewalk that way, “Naked, too,” he added,
as if Madden’s state of undress had been more impressive than his plunge from the window above. Sounding more and more like
a professor of English literature at Oxford (but such are the benefits of a second language, dollinks), he went on to say
that he had recognized the man at once the moment he rushed over to the body. “His
face
,” he added, not wishing the detectives to think he had checked out any
other
part of the poor fellow’s anatomy, which he wouldn’t have recognized in any case, never having seen him naked before.

What the detectives wanted to know was whether Madden lived in the apartment full-time.

“Because he don’t seem to have too many clothes up there,” Jabeem said, using the same head gesture Seifert had earlier used
to indicate the ten floors above them. Or eleven if you counted ground level as ground zero. Some buildings in this city numbered
apartments on the ground floor with only the letters A, B, C and so on, no numbers.

“What is it you mean?” Seifert asked.

“Clothes,”
Jabeem explained, beginning to wonder all over again if this fuckin Nazi understood English. “In his closet, in his drawers.”

“Not many
clothes,” Biggs
translated.

“I see him always wearing the same thing,” Seifert said, shrugging. “Workman’s overalls, tall shoes, a blue wool hat. No shirt.”

“How about in the winter?” Carella asked.

“He is only living here since January,” Seifert said.

“That’s winter,” Kling said.

“Well, a jacket sometimes. He sometimes wears a brown leather jacket.”

“See anything like that up there?” Jabeem asked Kling.

Kling shook his head.

“What else have you seen him wearing?” Carella asked.

“I don’t watch so much what he wears.”

“Past four months, huh?” Biggs said.

“Three and a half,” Seifert said.

“Some very cold weather during those months,” Carella said. “Ever see him wearing an overcoat?”

“He was a healthy young fellow,” Seifert said, shaking his head.

“Even healthy young fellas can catch pneumonia,” Jabeem said.

The moving men kept going past with furniture. A woman living in the building came out to where they were standing in the
sunshine and complained to Seifert that she’d had to wait ten minutes for the elevator. She told him that either people were
always moving in or out or else one or another of the damn elevators was always out of order. She told him she was going to
complain to the maintenance company. Seifert listened patiently, sympathetically clucking his tongue, explaining that this
was an old building, and the elevators didn’t always work proper how they should.

“Ever see him moving any of his stuff out?” Biggs asked. Carella was about to ask the same thing, all this activity.

“Well, even when he first moves in, there is not much furniture,” Seifert said.

“I mean
clothes
,” Biggs said. “Ever see him leaving with a suitcase? Or a trunk? Putting a trunk in a taxi? Anything like that?”

Carella was thinking along the same lines. Man comes through a bitter winter with nothing but the clothes on his back and
a few things in his closet?

“I have never seen him moving things,” Seifert asked.

“Been any burglaries in the building recently?” Kling asked.

He was thinking maybe somebody had
stolen
Madden’s clothes.

“Not since before last September,” Seifert said. “This is remarkable,” he added, “a building without a doorman.”

The detectives were inclined to agree with him.

“What kind of hours did he keep?” Jabeem asked.

“He is always coming and going,” Seifert said. “He worked in the theater, you know, this is not like an honest job.”

Carella smiled.

None of the other detectives did. Perhaps they agreed with Seifert’s observation.

“Ever see any of the people he worked with?”

“Any of them ever come here?”

“The men or women he worked with? Ever see any of them?”

“I don’t know who he worked with,” Seifert said.

“If we showed you pictures, could you tell us whether any of them were here last night?”

“I wasn’t here myself last night,” Seifert said.

The detectives looked at him.

“I thought you said…”

“I was at a movie,” Seifert said.

“You said you were standin here on the sidewalk…”

“Yes,
after
.”

“After what?”

“The movie.”

“Let me get this…”

“I came home from the movie, and I was on the sidewalk taking the air, when Mr. Madden comes down.”

“What time was this?”

“Twenty-five minutes past eleven.”

“How do you…?”

“I looked at my watch.”

“He came flying out the window…”

“Naked.”

“Almost hit you…”

“Almost. But not.”

“At twenty-five past eleven.”

“Exact.”

“You looked at your watch.”

“Yes.”

“What time did you leave for the movie?”

“It started at nine.”

“So from nine till…”

“No, we left before nine. To get there. The movie house is just around the corner. We left here at about a quarter till nine.
Me and my wife.”

“What time did you get back here?”

“About a quarter past eleven.”

“Just in time for him to almost hit you on the head.”

“Well, a little before. Klara went inside, I stayed out to take some air.”

“So from a quarter to nine till a quarter past eleven, you couldn’t have seen anyone going in or coming out of the building.”

“That’s right.”

So what the fuck good are you? Jabeem wondered.

“How about afterward?” Carella asked. “Did you see anyone coming out of the building
after
Mr. Madden’s fall?”

“There was a lot of confusion. Police, ambulances…”

“
Before
the confusion,” Carella said. “What’d you do right after the body came down?”

“I went inside to phone the police.”

“Nine-one-one clocked the call at eleven-thirty,” Biggs told Carella.

“Then what?”

“I came out again to wait for them.”

“Blues responded at eleven thirty-seven,” Biggs told Carella. “We got here ten minutes after that.”

“So you weren’t out here for a good seven, eight minutes,” Carella said.

“That’s right,” Seifert said.

“So during that time, you couldn’t have seen anyone leaving the building.”

“That’s right.”

So what the fuck good are you? Jabeem wondered again.

“But there were
other
persons here,” Seifert said. “When I came out again, there was already a big crowd.”

All of them staring at the mess on the sidewalk here, Jabeem figured, none of them noticing anybody coming out of the building.
All four detectives were silent for a moment.

Carella was wondering why Madden had taken off all his clothes before jumping out the window.

Biggs was wondering the same thing

Kling was wondering if Madden had been
dragged
into the living room, and hoisted up onto the windowsill, and then shoved out the window.

Jabeem was wondering—just
supposing
now—if somebody
had
shoved Madden out that window, would who—ever’d done it come marching out the front door of the building?

“Any other way out of the building?” he asked.

“Yes,” Seifert said.

“Where?”

“There’s a door in the basement. Near the laundry room.”

“Where does it go?”

“To the backyard.”

And clear into the big bad city, Jabeem thought.

Two technicians from the mobile crime unit were working the apartment when they got back upstairs. They had found dried stains
on the sheets and one of them was taking sample cuttings which would be sent to the lab for analysis. Biggs asked if they
might be semen stains.

“That’s a possibility, who knows?” the tech said.

The other tech was on his hands and knees, going over every inch of the floor.

“You get lots of guys knock off a quickie before they do the Dutch,” he said.

“Why’s that?” his partner asked.

“Cause it’s always nice to knock off a quickie.”

“Those two glasses look like there
might’ve
been a girl in here with him,” Biggs said.

“We’ll be takin them with us, too,” the first tech said.

The other tech was approaching the bed now, still on his hands and knees.

“Could be his
hand
was the girl,” Jabeem said.

“They’ll be testing those stains for her, too, won’t they?” Biggs asked.

“If there
was
a her,” Jabeem insisted.

“Yeah, the usual vaginal shit,” the second tech said, and poked his head under the bed.

“Maybe that’s why all his clothes were off,” Kling suggested. “A girl.”

“Sure would account for those glasses either side the bed,” Biggs said.

“Could be a party happened last
week
,” Jabeem said pessimistically.

“Hello, hello, hello,” the second tech said from under the bed.

They all turned to him as he backed himself out.

He was holding in his gloved right hand a ruby-red earring that glowed like a werewolf’s eye.

The assistant stage manager, a young black man who introduced himself as Kirby Rawlings, told them the only people here right
now were him and the understudies, who he was running through the second act. In show business, apparently, everything was
business as usual—even if your stage manager had thrown himself out a window the night before.

“We’re all on a lunch break right now, though,” Rawlings said.

“When’s Josie Beales coming in?” Carella asked.

“Not till two o’clock.”

“Know where we can find Mr. Greenbaum?”

“I think he went next door for a sandwich.”

“Have I got time to make a call?” Kling asked.

“Sure, go ahead,” Carella said.

He phoned Sharyn from the pay phone near the stage door entrance. The former boxer, Torey Andrews, sitting on his high stool,
watched him as he dialed. This was one of Sharyn’s days in the Diamondback office. The woman who answered the phone said she
was in with a patient.

“This is Detective Kling,” he told her, turning his back to Torey.

“Is this police business?” she asked.

“No, it’s personal,” he said.

He liked that. Saying it was personal.

“Just a minute, please.”

Sharyn came on the line a moment later.

“Hi,” she said.

“We’ve got to talk to a guy here,” he said, “and then I can come uptown if you’re free for lunch.”

“It’ll have to be a quick one,” she said, “I’m really jammed today.”

“I have to be back down here by two, anyway.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she said.

They found Jerry Greenbaum sitting against the whitewashed brick wall in the alley where Michelle had first been stabbed.
He was eating a sandwich he’d bought at the deli opposite the theater, washing it down with Pepsi-Cola he sipped through a
straw. He looked up when they approached, brown eyes alert in a narrow face, curly black hair giving him the look of a dark
cherub. They told him they’d found a manuscript for a play titled…