Эд Макбейн - Learning to Kill - Stories

“Yeah, well, I didn’t have...”

“She’s dead,” I said.

The kid stopped talking, and his jaw hung slack for a minute. He blinked his eyes rapidly two or three times and then said, “Jesus, Jesus.”

“You date her often, Ricky?”

“Huh?” He still seemed shocked, which was just what we wanted.

“Yeah, yeah, pretty often.”

“How often?”

“Two, three times a week. No, less.”

“When’d you see her last?”

“Last night.”

“Before that.”

“Last... Wednesday, I guess it was. Yeah.”

“Why’d you date her?”

“I don’t know. Why do you date girls?”

“We don’t care why you date girls! Why’d you date this girl? Why’d you date Jean Ferroni?”

“I don’t know. You know, she’s... she was a nice kid. That’s all.”

“You serious about her?” Johnny snapped.

“Well...”

“You sleeping with her?”

“What?”

“You heard me!”

“No. No. I mean... well no, I wasn’t.”

“Yes or no, goddamn it!”

“No.”

“Then why’d you date her? You planning on marrying her?”

“No.”

“What time did you pick her up last night?”

“Eight fifteen. I told you...”

“Where’d you drop her off?”

“Gun Hill and White Plains.”

“What time was this?”

“About eight thirty.”

“Why’d you date her so much?”

“I heard she was... hell, I don’t like to say this. I mean, the girl’s dead...”

“You heard what?”

“I heard she was... hot stuff.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Around. You know how the word spreads.”

“Who’d you hear it from?”

“Just around, that’s all.”

“And you believed it?”

“Well, yeah. You see, I...” He stopped short, catching himself and his tongue.

“You what?”

“Nothing.”

“Look, sonny,” Johnny said. “The girl was raped and stabbed. That’s murder. We’ll get the truth if we have to...”

“I’m telling the truth!”

“But not all of it. Come on, sonny, give.”

“All right, all right.” He fell into a surly silence. Johnny and I waited. Finally, he said, “I saw pictures.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“You know. Pictures. Her and a guy. You know.”

“You mean pornographic pictures?”

“Yeah.”

“Then say what you mean. Where’d you see these pictures?”

“A guy had them.”

“Have you got any?”

“No.”

“We can get a search warrant. We can take you with us and slap you in the cooler and...”

“I got one,” the kid admitted. “Just one.”

“Let’s see it.”

He fished into his wallet and said, “I feel awful funny about this. You know, Jean is dead and all”

“Let’s see the picture.”

He handed a worn photograph to Johnny, and Johnny studied it briefly and passed it to me. It was Jean Ferroni, all right, and I couldn’t very much blame the Tocca kid for his assumption about her.

“Know the guy in this picture?” I asked.

“No.”

“Never seen him around?”

“No.”

“All right, kid,” Johnny said. “Go to work. And keep your nose clean because we may be back.”

Richard Tocca looked at the picture in my hand longingly, reluctant to leave it. He glanced up at me hopefully, saw my eyes, and changed his mind about the question he was ready to ask. I got out of the car to let him out, and he walked to his Nash without looking back at us. The questioning had taken exactly seven minutes.

Johnny started the car, threw it into gear.

“Want me to drive?” I asked.

“No, that’s okay.”

“This puts a different light on it, huh?”

Johnny nodded. “I’m sleepy as hell,” he said.

We drove back to the precinct, checked out, and then walked to the subway together.

“This may be a tough one,” he said.

“ May be?”

Johnny yawned.

We staked out every candy store and ice cream parlor in the Gun Hill Road to 219th Street area, figuring we might pick up someone passing the pornos there. We also set up four policewomen in apartments, thinking there was an off chance someone might contact them for lewd posing. The policewomen circulated at the local dances, visited the local bars, bowling alleys, movies. We didn’t get a rumble.

The Skipper kept us on the case, but it seemed to have bogged down temporarily.

We’d already gone over the dead girl’s belongings at her home. She’d had an address book, but we’d checked on everyone in it, and they were all apparently only casual acquaintances with a few high school chums tossed in for flavoring. We’d checked the wallet the girl was carrying on the night of her murder. Aside from the in-case-of card, a Social Security card, and some pictures taken outside the high school with her girlfriends, there was nothing.

Under questioning, most of her high school friends said that Jean Ferroni didn’t hang around with them much anymore. They said she’d gone snooty and was circulating with an older crowd. None of them knew who the people in the older crowd were.

Her teachers at school insisted she was a nice girl, a little subdued and quiet in class, but intelligent enough. Several of them complained that she’d been delinquent in homework assignments. None of them knew anything about her outside life.

We got our first real break when Mrs. Ferroni showed up with the key. She placed it on the desk in front of Johnny and said, “I was cleaning out her things. I found this. It doesn’t fit any of the doors in the house. I don’t know what it’s for.”

“Maybe her gym locker at school,” I said.

“No. She had a combination lock. I remember she had to buy one when she first started high school.”

Johnny took the key, looked at it, and passed it to me. “Post office box?” he asked.

“Maybe.” I turned the key over in my hands. The numerals 894 were stamped into its head.

“Thanks, Mrs. Ferroni,” Johnny said. “We’ll look into it right away.”

We started at the Williamsbridge Post Office right on Gun Hill Road. The mailmen were very cooperative, but the fact remained it wasn’t a key to any of their boxes. In fact, it didn’t look like a post office key at all. We tried the Wakefield Branch, up the line a bit, and got the same answer.

We started on the banks then.

Luckily, we hit it on the first try. The bank was on 220th Street, and the manager was cordial and helpful. He took one look at the key and said, “Yes, that’s one of ours.”

“Who owns the box?” we asked.

He looked at the key again. “Safety deposit 894. Just a moment, and I’ll have that checked.”

We stood on either side of his polished desk while he picked up a phone, asked for a Miss Delaney, and then questioned her about the key. “Yes,” he said. “I see. Yes. Thank you.” He cradled the phone, put the key on the desk and said, “Jo Ann Ferris. Does that help you, gentlemen?”

“Jo Ann Ferris,” Johnny said. “Jean Ferroni. That’s close enough.” He looked directly at the manager. “We’ll be back in a little while with a court order to open that box. We’ll ask for you.”

In a little over two hours, we were back, and we followed the manager past the barred gate at the rear of the bank, stepped into the vault, and walked back to the rows of safe deposit boxes.

“894,” he said. “Yes, here it is.”

He opened the box, pulled out a slab, and rested the box on it. Johnny lifted the lid.

“Anything?” I asked.

He pulled out what looked like several rolled sheets of stiff white paper. They were secured with rubber bands, and Johnny slid the bands off quickly. When he unrolled them, they turned out to be eight-by-ten glossy prints. I took one of the prints and looked at Jean Ferroni’s contorted body. Beside me, the manager’s mouth fell open and he began sputtering wildly.