Lawrence Block - Masters of Noir - Volume 1

Louis perched on Sam’s desk and leaned toward me. “Add that in, Shell, if you want to know what kind of guy. We get the dregs, chum. And the hell of it is you can’t tell it by looking at them. Take a number from one to two million, and that’s our boy. Could be you, me, even Harrington Harrington the Fourth. And it always gets worse, like a bug multiplying in the blood. First maybe a pin to stick a woman with, then a rape, then you find a leg.” He shrugged. “They run amuck, but they look O.K.; they run amuck in their minds.”

The conversation drifted to the Black Dahlia; to Albert Fish, who killed a little girl, cut her up, and ate her flesh — cooked with carrots and onions and bacon; to some of the things that never hit print and that are difficult to believe even though you know they’ve happened. When the morning watch came on at midnight I left, and drove home on brightly-lit Sunset.

In the morning, I couldn’t get the murder out of my thoughts. I’d dreamed a crawly cold-sweat dream, and awakened with the picture of that severed limb in my mind. Ex-Marine, long-time detective, I’d seen worse things, especially in the war; but even the mass insanity of war didn’t seem quite so personal or frightening as a guy who would kill a kid, freeze her, and cut her up.

Just before nine A.M., when I was getting ready to leave for my office, Samson phoned. Some more of the girl had been found. “Thought you’d want to know, Shell,” he said. “Rolled prints off the hand and made identification. Judith Geer.”

“Oh, no, Sam. Not one of those sweet little gals.”

“Yeah. Sister listed this Judith with Missing Persons two days ago. Thought maybe she’d been hurt, hit by a car or something.”

I told him to hang on a minute while I lit a cigarette. The identification had rocked me. I know both of the gals he was talking about. Judith Geer — the dead one — and Norma Geer, her sister, worked at a Carpenter’s Drive-In where I’d had innumerable hamburgers and beers, and kidded with both girls a lot; they had shared an apartment on Melrose.

I thought about Judy, little and cute and blonde as sunshine, trotting out to my car and laughing with me over nonsense, and I thought of that ugly unreal thing I’d found last night. I said, “Sam, are you sure? It doesn’t seem possible—”

“Hell, yes, we’re sure. Look, you knew them pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Just to yak with. I know their names, and they know mine, and we had a lot of laughs. That’s about all. Jesus, Sam, what kind of a sonofabitch would...” I let it die.

He said, “If you know the sister well enough to drop in later you might pick up something we haven’t got. You know, you’re unofficial, no uniform.”

“Yeah. I’m hamburger with onions and two beers. Sure, Sam.”

“We want this one, Shell, the worst way. The guy must be clear off now, gone, nuts; Christ knows what he’ll do next.”

“Uh-huh. You get anything, give me a buzz. I’ll see you later.”

Nothing happened at the office except the phone rang once. It was a gal with a thready voice asking that I please hurry to her address because tiny saucer-shaped men were on her roof, screeching down the chimney at her. I told her to call 2680 at City Hall: the police psycho detail; they got calls like that every day.

It wasn’t funny. When I hung up a shiver ran over my spine again, and I swore, phoned Norma’s place on Melrose. Norma said she was glad I’d called and, sure, come on over; she could use some company. She could use a few laughs, she said. She was trying to sound adult, brittle, not frightened. But she was seventeen, and she couldn’t quite pull it off.

There weren’t any laughs. Norma was scared, shocked; all through with crying for now, and white-faced scared. Tall and slim and blue-eyed, she sat with her legs curled under her in an easy chair. I could tell she was thinking that it might have been her instead of her sister, that maybe it might still be.

I tried to convince Norma that whoever had killed Judy would certainly stay clear of her, and I really opened my mouth and put my foot in it. I’d been thinking about the talk at Homicide last night, and for a moment I must have forgotten who I was talking to.

I said, “Hell, doll, we were talking about The Butcher last night, and it’s not...”

Norma straightened up in her chair, rigid. I could have yanked out my tongue; she might not even know how Judy had been mutilated.

I started to apologize for my choice of words, but Norma interrupted, “It’s all right, Shell. It just shocked me when you said butcher, because it made me think of Mr. Hecker.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Hecker. He’s our... butcher, where we get our meat.”

“This Hecker,” I said slowly, “you know him very well?”

“Just from the market. Oh, he tried to date... both of us, but naturally we wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”

“Why ‘naturally,’ honey?”

“He’s an old guy — and he’s married. Oh, he’s sort of an ugly geek, and kind of funny, but we still wouldn’t have had anything to do with a chaser like him. He’s tried to date other girls around here, too.”

“He go out with any that you know about?”

Norma shook her head, frowning. She described Hecker for me and told me his wife worked in the market with him. Finally I told Norma I’d keep in touch and left. Hecker’s was only a block and a half down Melrose, so I walked. On the way I picked up a newspaper, just out, at a small store; the Judith Geer murder was on the front page.

Hecker’s Market was kind of run down and needed a coat of paint. Inside, the meat case was on my left; shelves along the right wall held hams and canned goods; a couple frozen-food lockers stood before them. There weren’t any other customers, and Hecker was behind the glass-fronted meat case. He turned to look at me as I came in.

Hecker was built like an ape. An inch or two shorter than my six-two, he must have weighed 300 pounds, almost 100 pounds more than I, and his enormous wrists were nearly as big as my forearms. He was heavy-featured, with eyes that looked too round, too big, in a pasty-white and red-veined face. When I stopped before the meat display he said, “What you want?” in a deep voice that rumbled in his thick chest.

“Top sirloin,” I said.

He slid open the rear glass of the case and grabbed a steak, flopped it onto a paper on the scales. Behind him was an oversized meat block, pitted and stained; a lot of sawdust was on the floor, and dark stains were around the chopping block. Above the block a green-shaded light hung on a cord from the ceiling.

He slid the wrapped meat to me and I tossed the newspaper on the counter while I got out my wallet. Paying him I said, nodding at the paper, “Hell of a note, huh? That kid?”

I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “What kid?” I pointed to the story. He picked up the paper and glanced at it. “Yeah.” His fingers left blood-marks on the newsprint.

I heard a noise behind me and looked over my shoulder as a woman walked toward us from the rear of the store. From Norma’s description, I recognized her as Hecker’s wife. She walked behind the meat counter and stood beside her husband.

Mrs. Hecker was a frail, plain-looking woman, bony and angular, wearing no makeup and with short dark hair matted on her head. She looked almost like a small wizened boy, standing there next to her huge, thickly-muscled husband.

I said to Hecker, “This Judy and her sister shopped here?”

He turned his head slowly to stare at me from the large too-white eyes. “Who’d you say you were?”

“Shell Scott.” I hadn’t said.

“What you so gabby for, mister?”

I could feel a warm flush on my face and neck, but I pulled my wallet out again and flipped it open so he could see the photostat of my license.