Эд Макбейн - Snow White and Rose Red

Albert Cleaners was in Calusa, Florida.

Before he did anything else, Delamorte picked up the phone and called Morris Bloom in the Detective Division.

At ten minutes to four that same afternoon, Bloom and his partner, Cooper Rawles, visited the dry-cleaning place. Coop wasn’t described in the report I later read — he was identified only as Detective Rawles — but I had met him previously, and I knew what he looked like. A black man with wide shoulders, a barrel chest, and massive hands, he must have stood at least six-foot-four and weighed possibly 240 pounds. I would not have liked to run into Cooper Rawles in a dark alley if I happened to be on the wrong side of the law.

The owner of the dry-cleaning store was identified in the report as Albert Barish, a resident of Calusa and described as sixty-four years old, five feet seven inches tall, weighing approximately 150 pounds, and possessing brown hair and brown eyes. The detectives were there to question him about the dry-cleaning mark Delamorte had found in the dress Jane Doe had been wearing when she floated to the surface of the Sawgrass River on April 15.

The mark read:

According to the Identification Section, the “AC” stood for Albert Cleaners. Now the cops wanted to know about the “KLBN.”

Bloom’s report detailed only the outcome of the police visit, perforce only sketching in the conversation between Mr. Barish and the two detectives. In later recall, however, Bloom filled me in on what the place had looked like and what was actually said, and it was simple to reconstruct the actual event — especially since my interest at the time was intense and since the encounter with Albert Barish proved to be the first step in the positive identification of Jane Doe.

Downtown Calusa — like the main business areas of so many other American cities — is presently in a state of renewal and renovation. New banks spring up seemingly overnight, perhaps because there are a great many rich people in this city, all of them with money to invest. Like totems of some futuristic civilization, the banks rise in tinted-glass splendor, none of them taller than twelve stories high, in accordance with Calusa’s building codes. My partner Frank says they are all half-assed imitations of skyscrapers. He keeps comparing them unfairly to the World Trade Center in New York. But in addition to what would appear an overabundance of banks, with more on the way each month — all of them offering as inducements to new depositors more toasters and television sets than can be found in Calusa’s largest department store — there is also a constant influx of new restaurants, all of them vying for the big tourist buck. The restaurants come and go as steadily as Bedouin tribesmen. What was today a Japanese restaurant with low tables and shoji screens will tomorrow be an Italian restaurant with checked tablecloths and Chianti bottles holding candles. If a restaurant down here lasts more than a season, it has a fair chance of survival — provided its prices aren’t too steep. The population of Calusa, you see, is roughly divided (as perhaps is the population of the entire world) into the haves and the have-nots. Those richer folk clipping coupons at the new bank are only part of the story; the other part is constituted of redneck dirt farmers struggling for survival against unexpected but all-too-frequent freezes, blacks earning their meager daily bread by servicing the multitude of condominiums that blight the barrier islands, and retired older people who can afford to live only in trailer parks and to eat in restaurants offering discount prices if they care to dine before five-thirty. There are not any trailer parks in downtown Calusa; zoning ordinances have seen to that. But there are a great many two- and three-story apartment buildings, most of them constructed of cinder block and painted either pink or white, all of them catering to those among the population who cannot afford a $950,000 condominium (the asking price for a three-bedroom, gulf-front apartment that has just gone up on Sabal Key) or a meal in one of the new restaurants serving “Continental” cuisine. Albert Barish’s dry-cleaning store was situated in a side street near one of those low-rent apartment complexes.

The white cinder-block building occupied a corner lot opposite a hardware store and a place selling cowboy-styled apparel — big Stetson hats, shirts with pearl snaps on the cuffs and down the front, and wide leather belts with ornate brass buckles. The parking lot outside the dry-cleaning store was potholed and cracked, and it was often used by customers of the hardware and clothing stores, much to Mr. Barish’s annoyance. Bloom later told me Barish had complained about this the moment the detectives entered the store. They were driving an unmarked sedan and he didn’t know they were cops at first, and since he didn’t recognize them as customers coming to claim an article of clothing, and since they weren’t carrying over their arms either jackets, skirts, or slacks, he automatically assumed they wanted to buy a pair of jeans or a screwdriver, and he bawled them out at once for ignoring the signs outside. The signs, Bloom told me, warned that the parking lot was for the exclusive use of customers of Albert Cleaners.

Barish, from what Bloom reported, was a feisty little guy who resembled and sounded like a delicatessen owner Bloom had known in Brooklyn. He was wearing a Hawaiian print sports shirt and green slacks, and he was carrying a bundle of clothing to the back of the shop when Rawles and Bloom entered. Barish turned immediately when he heard the bell tinkling over the front door, and then said at once, “If you’re for the hardware or the cowboys, you can’t park here. Read the signs, for Chrissake!”

Bloom showed Barish his shield and ID card, and Barish looked at both carefully and then turned his attention to Rawles, wanting to know if he was a cop, too. Rawles, who hadn’t expected to be put through the trouble of identifying himself after Bloom already had, reluctantly dug out the leather case to which his shield was pinned, and flipped it open to the Lucite-enclosed ID card. Barish nodded. Bloom later learned that Barish was , in fact, originally from New York, and in New York it doesn’t hurt to be too careful — even my partner Frank would agree to that.

“So what is it?” Barish said. “I got my girl out sick today, I’m all alone here, I’m busy. What do you want?”

Rawles put a large manila folder on the countertop. The folder was printed with the word EVIDENCE. He unwrapped the white string that was fastened to one little brown cardboard button and wound around another. He lifted the flap on the evidence envelope, reached into it, and pulled out the red dress Jane Doe had been wearing.

“Recognize this?” he said to Barish.

“It’s a dress,” Barish said. “You know how many dresses I get in here every day of the week?”

“Red dresses like this one?” Bloom said.

“Red dresses, green dresses, yellow dresses, dresses all colors of the rainbow I get. What’s so special about this dress?”

“A dead girl was wearing it,” Rawles said.

“Hoo-boy,” Barish said.

“Your dry-cleaning mark is in it,” Bloom said.

“I get it,” Barish said at once. “You want to know who was wearing this dress, right?”

“Right,” Rawles said.

“Let me see this dress,” Barish said. “Is it okay if I look at this dress?”

“Sure,” Bloom said.

“Okay to pick it up, to handle it? I won’t be accused of murder?”

Bloom smiled.

Barish picked up the dress, looked at the label, said, ‘That’s my mark, all right,” and then began turning the dress this way and that. “Badly faded, this dress,” he said, examining the hem and the armholes and the stitching across the bodice. “A cheap dress, this dress, you could get it for fifteen dollars on sale. You see how cheap it’s made? Look how it’s falling apart.” He looked across the counter at the detectives. “How am I supposed to tell you who was wearing this cheap dress? You think I’m a mind reader?”