Ed McBain - The Mugger

“We’re talking about the night of September fourteenth. That was a Thursday night. Now, think about it a little, Clifford,” Meyer said.

“I’m thinking. I got an alibi a mile long for that night.”

“What were you doing?” Willis asked.

“I was sitting up with a sick friend.”

“Don’t get smart!” Byrnes said.

“I swear to God it’s the truth. Listen, you got me on eight thousand counts of assault. What’re you trying to stick me with a murder rap?”

“Shut your goddamn mouth and answer the questions,” Havilland said, contradicting himself.

“I am answering the questions. I was with a sick friend. The guy had ptomaine poisoning or something. I was with him all night.”

“What night was this?”

“September fourteenth,” Clifford said.

“How come you remember the date?”

“I was supposed to go bowling.”

“With whom?”

“This friend of mine.”

“Which friend?”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Where were you going bowling?”

“His name is Davey,” Clifford said.

“Davey what?”

“Davey Crockett, Clifford? Come on, Clifford.”

“Davey Lowenstein. He’s a Jew. You gonna hang me for that?”

“Where does he live?”

“Base Avenue.”

“Where on Base?”

“Near Seventh.

“What’s his name?”

“Davey Lowenstein. I told you already.”

“Where were you going bowling?”

“The Cozy Alleys.”

“Downtown?”

“Yes.”

“Where downtown?”

“You’re mixing me up.”

“What’d your friend eat?”

“Did he have a doctor?”

“Where’d you say he lived?”

“Who says he had ptomaine poisoning?”

“He lives on Base, I told you. Base and Seventh.”

“Check that, Meyer,” Lieutenant Byrnes said.

Meyer quickly left the room.

“Did he have a doctor?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know it was ptomaine?”

“He said it felt like ptomaine.”

“How long were you with him?”

“I went by for him at eight. That was when I was supposed to pick him up. The alley we were going to is on Division.”

“He was sick in bed?”

“Yeah.”

“Who answered the door?”

“He did.”

“I thought he was sick in bed.”

“He was. He got out of bed to answer the door.”

“What time was this?”

“Eight.”

“You said eight-thirty.”

“No, it was eight. Eight, I said.”

“What happened?”

“He said he was sick, said he had ptomaine, said he couldn’t go with me. To the bowling alley, I mean.”

“Then what?”

“He told me to go without him.”

“Did you?”

“No, I stayed with him all night.”

“Until when?”

“Until the next morning. All night, I stayed with him.”

“Until what time?”

“All night.”

“WHAT TIME?”

“About nine in the morning. We had eggs together.”

“What happened to his ptomaine?”

“He was all right in the morning.”

“Did he sleep?”

“What?”

“Did he sleep at all that night?”

“No.”

“What’d you do?”

“We played checkers.”

“Who?”

“Me and Davey.”

“What time did you stop playing checkers?”

“About four in the morning.”

“Did he go to sleep then?”

“No.”

“What did he do?”

“We began telling jokes. I was trying to take his mind off his stomach.”

“You told jokes until nine the next morning?”

“No, until eight. We started breakfast at eight.”

“What’d you eat?”

“Eggs.”

“What bowling alley did you say that was?”

“The Cozy—”

“Where’s it located?”

“On Division.”

“What time did you get to Davey’s house?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“Why’d you kill Jeannie Paige?”

“I didn’t. My God, the newspapers are killing me ! I didn’t go anywhere near the Hamilton Bridge.”

“You mean, that night?”

“That night, any night. I don’t even know that cliff they wrote about. I thought cliffs were out west.”

“Which cliff?”

“Where the girl was found.”

“Which girl?”

“Jeannie Paige.”

“Did she scream? Is that why you killed her?”

“She didn’t scream.”

“What did she do?”

“She didn’t do nothing! I wasn’t there! How do I know what she did?”

“But you beat up your other victims, didn’t you?”

“Yes. You got me on that, okay.”

“You son of a bitch, we’ve got a thumbprint on the sunglasses you dropped. We’ll get you on that, so why don’t you tell us about it?”

“There’s nothing to tell. My friend was sick. I don’t know Jeannie Paige. I don’t know that cliff. Lock me up. Try me on assault. I didn’t kill that girl!”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

“You did!”

“No.”

“Why’d you kill her?”

“I didn’t kill her!”

The door opened. Meyer came into the room. “I called this Lowenstein character,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“The story is true. Clifford was with him all that night.”

When the comparison tests were made with Clifford’s thumbprints and the single print found on the sunglasses, there was no longer any doubt. The prints did not match.

Whatever else Jack Clifford had done, he had not murdered Jeannie Paige.

There was only Molly Bell to call.

Once he’d done that he could leave the Jeannie Paige thing with a clear conscience. He had tried; he had honestly tried. And his efforts had led him into the jealously guarded realm of Homicide North, where he’d damn near wound up minus a shield and a uniform.

So now he would call her, and he would explain how useless he was, and he would apologize, and that would be the end of it.

Sitting in an armchair in his furnished room, Kling pulled the telephone toward him. He reached into his back pocket for his wallet, opened it, and then began leafing through the cards and scraps of paper, looking for the address and telephone number Bell had given him so long ago. He spread the cards on the end table. The collection of junk a man can…

He looked at the date on a raffle ticket. The drawing had been held three months ago. There was a girl’s name and telephone number on a match folder. He didn’t remember the girl at all. There was an entrance card to a discount house. There was the white card Claire had given him to explain Jeannie’s childish handwriting. He put the card on the table so that the reverse side showed, the side reading “Club Tempo, 1812 Klausner Street.”

And then he found the scrap of paper Peter Bell had handed to him, and he put that face up on the table alongside the other cards, and he reached for the phone receiver, studying the number at the same time.

And, suddenly, he remembered what he’d seen in the street at the first subway stop. He dropped the receiver.

He put all the cards and scraps of paper back into his wallet.

Then he put on his coat.

He was waiting for a murderer.

He had taken a train uptown, and he had got off at the first stop he’d visited earlier that week, and he was in the street now, standing alongside a police department sign and waiting for a murderer, the murderer of Jeannie Paige.

The night had turned cold, and there weren’t many people in the street. The men’s clothing store was closed, and the Chinese restaurant belched steam into the air from a vent on the side of the building. A few people straggled into the movie house.

He waited, and when the car pulled up, he put one hand on the police sign alongside him and waited for the door to open.