Эд Макбейн - Learning to Kill - Stories

“Well,” I said, “this gives us something.”

“We’ll just take the contents of this box,” Johnny said to the manager. “Make out a receipt for it, will you, Mike?”

I made out the receipt and we took the bundle of pornographic photos back to the lab with us. Whatever else Jean Ferroni had done, she had certainly posed in a variety of compromising positions. She’d owned a ripe young body, and the pictures left nothing whatever to the imagination. But we weren’t looking for kicks. We were looking for clues.

Dave Alger, one of the lab men, didn’t hold out much hope.

“Nothing,” he said. “What did you expect? Ordinary print paper. You can get the same stuff in any home developing kit.”

“What about fingerprints?”

“The girl’s mostly. A few others, but all smeared. You want me to track down the rubber bands?”

“Comedian,” Johnny said.

“You guys expect miracles, that’s all. You forget this is science and not witchcraft.”

I was looking at the pictures spread out on the lab counter. They were all apparently taken in the same room, on the same bed. The bed had brass posts and railings at the head and foot. Behind the bed was an open window, with a murky city display of buildings outside. The pictures had evidently been taken at night, and probably recently because the window was wide open. Alongside the window on the wall was a picture of an Indian sitting on a black horse. A wide strip of wallpaper had been torn almost from ceiling to floor, leaving a white path on the wall. The room did not have the feel of a private apartment. It looked like any third-rate hotel. I kept looking at the pictures and at the open window with the buildings beyond.

“Hey!” I said.

“...you think all we do is wave a rattle and shake some feathers and wham, we got your goddamned murderer. Well, it ain’t that simple. We put in a lot of time on...”

“Shut the hell up, Dave!”

Dave sank into a frowning silence. I lifted one of the pictures and said, “Blow this one up, will you?”

“Why? You looking for tattoo marks?”

“No. I want to look through that window.”

Dave suddenly brightened. “How big you want it, Mike?”

“Big enough to read those neon signs across the street.”

“Can do,” he said. He scooped up all the pictures and ran off, his heels clicking against the asphalt tile floor.

“Think we got something?” Johnny asked.

“Maybe. We sure as hell can’t lose anything.”

“Besides, you’ll have something to hang over your couch,” Johnny cracked.

“Another comedian,” I said, but I was beginning to feel better already. I smoked three cigarettes down to butts, and then Dave came back.

“One Rheingold beer ad,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“And one Hotel Mason. That help?”

I didn’t answer. I was busy racing Johnny to the door.

The Hotel Mason was. a dingy, gray-faced building on West Forty-seventh. We weren’t interested in it. We were interested in the building directly across the way, an equally dingy, gray-faced edifice that claimed the fancy title of Allistair Arms.

We walked directly to the desk and flashed our buzzers, and the desk clerk looked hastily to the elevator bank.

“Relax, buster,” Johnny said.

He pulled one of the pictures from under his jacket. The lab had whitened out the figures of Jean Ferroni and her male companion, leaving only the bed, the picture on the wall, and the open window. Johnny showed the picture to the desk clerk.

“What room is this?”

“I... I don’t know.”

“Look hard.”

“I tell you I don’t know. Maybe one of the bellhops.”

He pounded a bell on the desk, and an old man in a bellhop’s rig hobbled over. Johnny showed him the picture and repeated his question.

“Damned if I know,” the old man said. “All these rooms look alike.” He stared at the picture again, shaking his head. Then his eyes narrowed and he bent closer and looked harder. “Oh,” he said, “that’s 305. That picture of the Injun and the ripped wallpaper there. Yep, that’s 305.” He paused. “Why?”

I turned. “Who’s in 305?”

The desk clerk made a show of looking at the register. “Mr. Adams. Harley Adams.”

“Let’s go, Johnny,” I said.

We started up the steps, and I saw Johnny’s hand flick to his shoulder holster. When it came out from under his coat, it was holding a cocked .38. I took out my own gun and we padded up noiselessly.

We stopped outside room 305, flattening ourselves against the walls on either side of the door. Johnny reached out and rapped the butt of his gun against the door.

“Who is it?” a voice asked.

“Open up!”

“Who is it?”

“Police officers. Open up!”

“Wha...”

There was a short silence inside, and then we heard the frantic slap of leather on the floor. “Hit it, Johnny!” I shouted.

Johnny backed off against the opposite wall, put the sole of his shoe against it, and shoved off toward the door. His shoulder hit the wood, and the door splintered inward.

Adams was in his undershirt and trousers and he had one leg over the windowsill, heading for the fire escape, when we came in. I swung my .38 in his direction and yelled, “You better hold it, Adams.”

He looked at the gun, and then slowly lowered his leg to the floor.

“Sure,” he said. “I wasn’t going anyplace.”

We found piles of pictures in the room, all bundled neatly. Some of them were of Jean Ferroni. But there were other girls and other men. We found an expensive camera in the closet, and a darkroom setup in the bathroom. We also found a switch knife with a six-inch blade in the top drawer of his dresser.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Adams insisted.

He kept insisting that for a long time, even after we showed him the pictures we’d taken from Jean Ferroni’s safe-deposit box. He kept insisting until we told him his knife would go down to the lab and they’d sure as hell find some trace of the dead girl on it, no matter how careful he’d been. We were stretching the truth a little, because a knife can be washed as clean as anything else. But Adams took the hook and told us everything.

He’d given the kid a come-on, getting her to pose alone at first, in the nude. From there, it had been simple to get her to pose for the big stuff, the stuff that paid off.

“She was getting classy,” Adams said. “A cheap tramp like that getting classy. Wanted a percentage of the net. I gave her a percentage, all right. I arranged a nice little party right in my hotel room. Six guys. They fixed her good, one after the other. Then I drove her up to her own neighborhood and left her the way you found her — so it would look like a rape kill.”

He paused and shifted in his chair, making himself comfortable.

“Imagine that broad,” he continued. “Wanting to share. Wanting to share with me. I showed her.”

“You showed her, all right,” Johnny said tightly.

That was when I swung out with my closed fist, catching Adams on the side of his jaw. He fell backward, knocking the chair over, sprawling onto the floor.

He scrambled to his feet, crouched low, and said, “Hey, what the hell? Are you crazy?”

I didn’t answer him. I left the interrogation room, walking past the patrolman at the door. Johnny caught up with me in the corridor, clamped his hand onto my shoulder.

“Why’d you hit him, Mike?” he asked.

“I wanted to. I just wanted to.”

Johnny’s eyes met mine for a moment, held them. His hand tightened on my shoulder, and his head nodded almost imperceptibly.

We walked down the corridor together, our heels clicking noisily on the hard floor.