Ed McBain - Doll

‘The worst you can do is kill me,’ Carella said. ‘And since I’m already dead, what difference will it make?’

‘I like a man with a sense of humor,’ the girl said, but she did not smile. ‘I can do worse than kill you.’

‘What can you do?’

‘I can corrupt you.’

‘I’m incorruptible,’ Carella said, and smiled.

‘Nobody’s incorruptible,’ she said. ‘I’m going to make you beg to tell us what you know. Really. I’m warning you.’

‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

‘Uh-uh,’ the girl said, shaking her head. ‘Are you finished there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shove the tray away from you.’

Carella slid the tray across the floor. The girl went to it, stooped again, and picked it up. She walked back to the chair and sat. She crossed her legs. She began jiggling her foot.

‘What’s your wife’s name?’ she asked.

‘Teddy.’

‘That’s a nice name. But you’ll soon forget it soon enough.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Carella said evenly.

‘You’ll forget her name, and you’ll forget her, too.’

He shook his head.

‘I promise,’ the girl said. ‘In a week’s time, you won’t even remember your own name.’

The room was silent. The girl sat quiet still except for the jiggling of her foot. The green neon splashed the floor, and then blinked out. There were seconds of darkness, and then the light came on again. She was standing now. She had left the gun on the seat of the chair and moved to the center of the room. The neon went out. When it flashed on again, she had moved closer to where he was manacled to the radiator.

‘What would you like me to do to you?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘What would you like to do to me?’

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘No?’ she smiled. ‘Look, doll.’

She loosened the sash at her waist. The robe parted over her breasts and naked belly. Neon washed the length of her body with green, and then blinked off. In the intermittent flashes, he saw the girl moving — as though in a silent movie — toward the light switch near the door, the open robe flapping loose around her. She snapped on the overhead light, and then walked slowly back to the center of the room and stood under the bulb She held the front of her robe open, the long pale white sheath of her body exposed, the red silk covering her back and her arms, her fingernails tipped with red as glowing as the silk.

‘What do you think?’ she asked. Carella did not answer. ‘You want some of it?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘You’re lying.’

‘I’m telling you the absolute truth,’ he said.

‘I could make you forget her in a minute,’ the girl said. ‘I know things you never dreamed of. You want it?’

‘No.’

‘Just try and get it,’ she said, and closed the robe and tightened the sash around her waist. ‘I don’t like it when you lie to me.’

‘I’m not lying.’

‘You’re naked, mister, don’t tell me you’re not lying.’ She burst out laughing and walked to the door, opening it, and then turned to face him again. Her voice was very low, her face serious. ‘Listen to me, doll,’ she said. You are mine, do you understand that? I can do whatever I want with you, don’t you forget it. I’m promising you right here and now that in a week’s time you’ll be crawling on your hands and knees to me, you’ll be licking my feet, you’ll be begging for the opportunity to tell me what you know. And once you tell me. I’m going to throw you away, doll, I’m going to throw you broken and cracked in the gutter, doll, and you’re going to wish, believe me, you are just going to wish it was you they found dead in that car, believe me.’ She paused. ‘Think about it,’ she said, and turned out the light and went out of the room.

He heard the key turning in the lock.

He was suddenly very frightened.

The car had been found at the bottom of a steep embankment off Route 407. The road was winding and narrow, rarely used branch connecting the towns of Middlebarth and York, both of which were serviced by wider, straighter highways. 407 was an oiled road, pot-holed and frost-heaved, used almost entirely by teenagers searching for a nighttime necking spot. The shoulders were muddy and soft, except for one place where the road widened and ran into the approach to what had once been a gravel pit. It was at the bottom of this pit that the burned vehicle and its more seriously burned passenger had been discovered.

There was only one house on Route 407, five and a half miles from the gravel pit. The house was built of native stone and timber, a rustic affair with a screened back porch overlooking a lake reportedly containing bass. The house was surrounded by white birch and flowering forsythia. Two dogwoods flanked the entrance driveway, their buds ready to burst. The rain had stopped but a fine mist hung over the lake, visible from the turn in the driveway. A huge oak dripped clinging raindrops onto the ground. The countryside was still. The falling drops clattered noisily.

Detectives Hal Willis and Arthur Brown parked the car at the top of the driveway, and walked past the dripping oak to the front door of the house. The door was painted green with a huge brass doorknob centered in its lower panel and a brass knocker centered in the top panel. A locked padlock still hung in a hinge hasp and staple fastened to the door. But the hasp staple had been pried loose of the jamb, and there were deep gouges in the wood where a heavy tool had been used for the job. Willis opened the door, and they went into the house.

There was the smell of contained woodsmoke, and the stench of something else. Brown’s face contorted. Gagging, he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and covered his nose and mouth. Willis had backed away toward the door again, turning his face to the outside air. Brown took a quick look at the large stone fireplace at the far end of the room, and then caught Willis by the elbow and led him outside.

‘Any question in your mind?’ Willis asked.

‘None,’ Brown said. ‘That’s the smell of burned flesh.’

‘We got any masks in the car?’

‘I don’t know. Let’s check the trunk.’

They walked back to the car. Willis took the keys from the ignition and leisurely unlocked the trunk. Brown began searching.

‘Everything in here but the kitchen sink,’ he said. ‘What the hell’s this thing?’

‘That’s mine,’ Willis said.

‘Well, what is it?’

‘It’s a hat, what do you think it is?’

‘It doesn’t look like any hat I’ve ever seen,’ Brown said.

‘I wore it on a plant couple of weeks ago.’

‘What were you supposed to be?’

‘A foreman.’

‘Of what?’

‘A chicken market.’

‘That’s some hat, man,’ Brown said, and chuckled.

‘That’s a good hat,’ Willis said. ‘Don’t make fun of my hat. All the ladies who came in to buy chickens said it was a darling hat.’

‘Oh, no question,’ Brown said. ‘It’s a cunning hat.’

‘Any masks in there?’

‘Here’s one. That’s all I see.’

‘The canister with it?’

‘Yeah, it’s all here.’

‘Who’s going in?’ Willis said.

‘I’ll take it,’ Brown said.

‘Sure, and then I’ll have the N.A.A.C.P. down on my head.’

‘We’ll just have to chance that,’ Brown said, returning Willis’s smile. ‘We’ll just have to chance it, Hal.’ He pulled the mask out of its carrier, found the small tin of antidim compound, scooped some onto the provided cloth, and wiped it onto the eyepieces. He seated the facepiece on his chin, moved the canister and head harness into place with an upward, backward sweep of his hands, and then smoothed the edges of the mask around his face.