Lawrence Block - A Stab in the Dark

I tried, not for the first time, to summon up a memory of Ettinger. It seemed to me that I must have met him. We were on the scene before Midtown North came to take the case away from us, and he'd have had to be somewhere around while I was standing in that kitchen eyeing the body sprawled on the linoleum. I might have tried to offer a word of comfort, might have formed some impression, but I couldn't remember him at all.

Perhaps he'd been in the bedroom when I was there, talking with another detective or with one of the patrolmen who'd been first on the scene. Maybe I'd never laid eyes on him, or maybe we'd spoken and I'd forgotten him altogether. I had by that time spent quite a few years seeing any number of recently bereaved. They couldn't all stand out in sharp relief in the cluttered warehouse of memory.

Well, I'd see him soon enough. My client hadn't said whom he suspected, and I hadn't asked, but it stood to reason that Barbara's husband headed the list. London wouldn't be all that upset by the possibility that she'd died at the hands of someone he didn't even know, some friend or lover who meant nothing to him. But for her to have been killed by her own husband, a man London knew, a man who had been present years later at London's wife's funeral—

There's a phone in my room but the calls go through the switchboard, and it's a nuisance placing them that way even when I don't care if the operator listens in. I went down to the lobby and dialed my client's number in Hastings. He answered on the third ring.

"Scudder," I said. "I could use a picture of your daughter. Anything as long as it's a good likeness."

"I took albums full of pictures. But most of them were of Barbara as a child. You would want a late photograph, I suppose?"

"As late as possible. How about a wedding picture?"

"Oh," he said. "Of course. There's a very good picture of the two of them, it's in a silver frame on a table in the living room. I suppose I could have it copied. Do you want me to do that?"

"If it's not too much trouble."

He asked if he should mail it and I suggested he bring it to his office Monday. I said I'd call and arrange to pick it up. He asked if I'd had a chance to begin the investigation yet and I told him I'd spent the day in Brooklyn. I tried him on a couple of names — Donald Gilman, Janice Corwin. Neither meant anything to him. He asked, tentatively, if I had any leads.

"It's a pretty cold trail," I said.

I rang off without asking him who he suspected. I felt restless and went around the corner to Armstrong's. On the way I wished I'd taken the time to go back to my room for my coat. It was colder, and the wind had an edge to it.

I sat at the bar with a couple of nurses from Roosevelt. One of them, Terry, was just finishing up her third week in Pediatrics. "I thought I'd like the duty," she said, "but I can't stand it. Little kids, it's so much worse when you lose one. Some of them are so brave it breaks your heart. I can't handle it, I really can't."

Estrellita Rivera's image flashed in my mind and was gone. I didn't try to hold onto it. The other nurse, glass in hand, was saying that all in all she thought she preferred Sambucca to Amaretto. Or maybe it was the other way around.

I made it an early night.

Even if I couldn't recall meeting Douglas Ettinger, I had a picture of him in my mind. Tall and raw-boned, dark hair, pallid skin, knobby wrists, Lincolnesque features. A prominent Adam's apple.

I woke up Saturday morning with his image firmly in mind, as if it had been imprinted there during an unremembered dream. After a quick breakfast I went down to Penn Station and caught a Long Island Railroad local to Hicksville. A phone call to his house in Mineola had established that Ettinger was working at the Hicksville store, and it turned out to be a $2.25 cab ride from the station.

In an aisle lined with squash and racquet-ball equipment I asked a clerk if Mr. Ettinger was in. "I'm Doug Ettinger," he said. "What can I do for you?"

He was about five-eight, a chunky one-seventy. Tightly curled light brown hair with red highlights. The plump cheeks and alert brown eyes of a squirrel. Large white teeth, with the upper incisors slightly bucked, consistent with the squirrel image. He didn't look remotely familiar, nor did he bear any resemblance whatsoever to the rail-splitter caricature I'd dreamed up to play his part.

"My name's Scudder," I said. "I'd like to talk to you privately, if you don't mind. It's about your wife."

His open face turned guarded. "Karen?" he said. "What about her?"

Christ. "Your first wife."

"Oh, Barbara," he said. "You had me going for a second there. The serious tone and all, and wanting to talk to me about my wife. I don't know what I thought. You're from the NYPD? Right this way, we can talk in the office."

His was the smaller of the two desks in the office. Invoices and correspondence were arranged in neat piles on it. A Lucite photo cube held pictures of a woman and several young children. He saw me looking at it and said, "That's Karen there. And the kids."

I picked up the cube, looked at a young woman with short blonde hair and a sunny smile. She was posed next to a car, with an expanse of lawn behind her. The whole effect was very suburban.

I replaced the photo cube and took the chair Ettinger indicated. He sat behind the desk, lit a cigarette with a disposable butane lighter. He knew the Icepick Prowler had been apprehended, knew too that the suspect denied any involvement in his first wife's murder. He assumed Pinell was lying, either out of memory failure or for some insane reason. When I explained that Pinell's alibi had been confirmed, he seemed unimpressed.

"It's been years," he said. "People can get mixed up on dates and you never know how accurate records are. He probably did it. I wouldn't take his word that he didn't."

"The alibi looks sound."

Ettinger shrugged. "You'd be a better judge of that than I would. Still, I'm surprised that you guys are reopening the case. What can you expect to accomplish after all this time?"

"I'm not with the police, Mr. Ettinger."

"I thought you said—"

"I didn't bother to correct your impression. I used to be in the department. I'm private now."

"You're working for somebody?"

"For your former father-in-law."

"Charlie London hired you?" He frowned, taking it all in. "Well, I guess it's his privilege. It's not going to bring Barbie back but I guess it's his right to feel like he's doing something. I remember he was talking about posting a reward after she was murdered. I don't know if he ever got around to it or not."

"I don't believe he did."

"So now he wants to spend a few dollars finding the real killer. Well, why not? He doesn't have much going for him since Helen died. His wife, Barbara's mother."

"I know."

"Maybe it'll do him good to have something he can take an interest in. Not that work doesn't keep him busy, but, well—" He flicked ashes from his cigarette. "I don't know what help I can give you, Mr. Scudder, but ask all the questions you want."

I asked about Barbara's social contacts, her relationships with people in the building. I asked about her job at the day-care center. He remembered Janice Corwin but couldn't supply her husband's name. "The job wasn't that important," he said. "Basically it was something to get her out of the house, give her a focus for her energy. Oh, the money helped. I was dragging a briefcase around for the Welfare Department, which wasn't exactly the road to riches. But Barbie's job was temporary. She was going to give it up and stay home with the baby."

The door opened. A teenage clerk started to enter the office, then stopped and stood there looking awkward. "I'll be a few minutes, Sandy," Ettinger told him. "I'm busy right now."