Ed McBain - Goldilocks

Ehrenberg had tented a handkerchief over his hand before picking up the receiver, and he’d dialed the number with the eraser end of a pencil. I thought this excessively theatrical, but I guessed he knew what he was doing. Into the phone, he said, “Mr. Kramer? This is Detective Ehrenberg of the Calusa Police Department, I’m sorry to be calling you this time of night.”

Two more patrolmen were carrying out the third stretcher. The intern and the ambulance attendant were on their way back to the bedroom. They stopped short when they saw the stretcher coming out. The intern looked annoyed. He shook his head and went out the front door again. The ambulance attendant said, “You need any help?” and the patrolman at the front end of the stretcher said, “No, we’ve got it,” and all three of them went out of the house.

On the phone, Ehrenberg said, “I wanted to ask you, sir, whether a Dr. James Purchase was at your home this evening. Uh-huh. What time did he get there, sir? Uh-huh. And what time did he leave? Uh-huh. Well, thank you very much, sir, I certainly am obliged. Thank you, sir,” he said again, and put the receiver back on the cradle, and his handkerchief back in his pocket. “Well, that’s fine,” he said to Jamie. “You’ve got to forgive me checking up like this, Dr. Purchase, but we’ve got to touch all the bases with a homicide. You didn’t plan on sleeping the night here, did you?”

“I hadn’t given it any thought,” Jamie said.

“’Cause there’ll be men here till morning at least, there’s lots to do. You’d be better off at a friend’s house or a motel, you don’t mind my suggesting it.”

“Thank you,” Jamie said. “I’ll pack some things.”

He started toward the master bedroom, and then stopped. He shook his head then, and turned abruptly, and walked out of the house. I went after him. It was ten minutes past two when we left the scene of the crime.

I offered Jamie our guest room, but he said he wanted to be alone, said he needed some time alone to pull himself together. He had not cried yet. I kept expecting tears, but none came. At the stoplight on the other end of the causeway, he told me he desperately needed a drink. So instead of making a left turn toward the airport and the string of small motels lining either side of the highway north, I turned right, hoping to find an open bar among those scattered along the South Trail. I was frankly dubious — but Jamie’s hands were beginning to tremble in his lap.

The eastern rim of Calusa Bay is jaggedly defined by U.S. 41, more familiarly known as the Tamiami Trail. It’s my partner Frank’s belief that “Tamiami” is redneck for “To Miami.” He may be right. If you follow 41 south, it eventually leads to Alligator Alley, which then crosses the Florida peninsula to the East Coast. I was driving south now, looking for an open bar, wondering if there might be one out on Whisper Key. There are five keys off Calusa’s mainland, but only three of them — Stone Crab, Sabal and Whisper — run north-south, paralleling the opposite shore. Flamingo Key and Lucy’s Key are situated like stepping stones across the water, connecting the mainland to Sabal and Stone Crab. Beyond the keys is the Gulf of Mexico. Sail out due west from Calusa, and eventually you’ll make landfall in Corpus Christi, Texas.

I found an open cocktail lounge just below the Cross River Shopping Center. The neon signs outside were still on, and there were several cars angle-parked against the stucco front wall of the building. But the moment we stepped inside, a waitress in a short black skirt and a low-cut white blouse said, “Sorry, we’re closed.” She seemed altogether too young and too fresh to be serving whiskey in the empty hours of the night. The bartender was pouring a fresh drink for one of the four men seated at the bar. The waitress caught my glance and said, “They’ve been here for a while, you see. Really, we’re just closing.” At the other end of the room, two young men were putting chairs up on tables and a third was beginning to mop the floor.

“Well, why don’t you just serve us till it’s time to lock up, okay?” I said, and smiled.

The waitress’s name was Sandy. It said so in white letters on a little black plastic rectangle pinned to her blouse. She said, “Well...” and looked at the bartender. The bartender shrugged philosophically, and then nodded us over to the bar. We took stools closest to the door, away from the drone of the television set. A late-night movie was showing. Something with Humphrey Bogart. I wondered if the waitress knew who Humphrey Bogart was.

“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked.

“Jamie?”

“Bourbon on the rocks.”

“I’ll have a Dewar’s and soda.”

The bartender nodded. On the television screen, Bogart was telling an actress I didn’t recognize that she was good, she was very good. Jamie kept staring at his hands on the bar-top, almost as if willing them to stop shaking. The bartender brought the drinks and Jamie lifted his glass at once and swallowed half the bourbon in it. He put the glass down on the bar-top, and then the tears came. I put my arm around him.

“Oh, Jesus, Matt,” he said, “I never... I never saw... oh, Jesus.”

“Take it easy,” I said.

“So much... blood, Oh, Jesus. All over the walls, she must’ve grabbed for the walls... like a damn cage... like trying to get out of a damn cage. Trapped in there with...”

“All right,” I said. “All right, Jamie, come on now.”

The drinkers lined up along the bar seemed lulled into a stupor by the television screen, but the bartender had turned to look at Jamie. I kept patting his shoulder comfortingly, and he kept sobbing and trying to choke back the sobs, and finally he took out his handkerchief and dried his eyes and blew his nose. He picked up the bourbon glass, drained it, and signaled to the bartender for a refill. As the bartender poured the fresh drink, he kept watching Jamie curiously. Even when he went back to the other end of the bar, he turned his head for a periodic look at him.

“The thing that froze me in the door... the doorway was the fury of it,” Jamie said. “The way who... whoever did it had had just ripped and slashed... Jesus, Matt, I went in there, I... Jesus...”

“Okay,” I said.

“So much blood,” he said, and began sobbing again.

“Okay, Jamie.”

“She... you know... she was my second-chance girl. I mean, how many chances do you get? Figure it out, how much time have I got left? I’m forty-six, what have I got left, another thirty years? It never works out the way you think it will, does it? Change your whole life, start a new family, never the way you think. This was my second chance, supposed to be my second chance.”

I’d known Jamie for three years. I knew, of course, that Maureen was his second wife. I knew, too, that she was a registered nurse and that she’d worked for him in his Calusa office. I’d reviewed and revised his pension plan only recently and had seen in old records the name Maureen O’Donnell listed as an employee. Moreover, shortly after their marriage, the plan had paid out an accumulated six thousand dollars in benefits to Maureen O’Donnell Purchase upon the termination of her employment. I deduced that theirs had been an office romance, and that it had led to Jamie’s divorce and subsequent remarriage. But I had never known the details of their relationship, and had never asked for them; locker room confidences are a form of male bonding I normally do not encourage.

It embarrassed me now to hear Jamie talk about personal matters he would otherwise have kept to himself. The bartender was facing the television screen, but there was something about the erectness of his head that told me he was alert to every word Jamie uttered. Across the room, one of the young men stacking the chairs said something in Spanish, and the one mopping the floor began laughing. The laughter was soft, it echoed guitars and fans and black lace shawls. The waitress looked at her watch. There was no one left at the tables to serve, I wondered why she simply didn’t go home. It occurred to me that she was waiting for the bartender.