Ed McBain - The Big Bad City

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Harding looked at him. "I'll take you p,. he said grudgingly.

Behind him, they labored up the steps to the sixth floor. Outside the door to 6C, they waited patiently while he fumbled with his key ring again. At last, he unlocked the door, opened it, and said, "Mind if I see that warrant you mentioned?”

Carella showed it to him. Harding read it carefully, word for word, and then handed it back, and stepped aside for the detectives to enter the apartment. Someone had beat them to it. The place was a shambles.

The refrigerator door was open, its contents swept out onto the kitchen floor. They could see into the bathroom, where the intruder had searched the medicine cabinet and the toilet tank, leaving the lid on the seat. The bed had been stripped. The closet door was open, Mary's meager belongings strewn everywhere. The dresser drawers ... "Window's open here," Brown said.

The window was on the wall beside the dresser. It was locked the last time they were here. Now it was wide open. Several clay pots of blooming flowers were of the fire escape outside. One of the pots had been overturned in the intruder's haste to leave.

"See anybody in the backyard late this afternoon?" Carella asked.

"Wasn't in the backyard late this afternoon," Harding said.

"Would've been sometime after three," Brown said. "Why then?”

"That's when we left here.”

"Didn't see anybody anytime cause I wasn't in the backyard after I fixed that pulley.”

"You got a hair across your ass, mister?" Brown said.

"I don't like cops shoving their weight around, that's all," Harding said.

"Maybe you'd like to come to the station house, answer some questions there," Brown said heatedly. "Would you like to do that, sir?”

"You got no reason to detain me," Harding said. "Try obstructing the progress of a murder investi ...”

“Let it go, Artie," Carella said.

"Man's beginning to annoy me! A woman's been killed here, he's acting like ...”

"Let it go," Carella said again. "Let's see if we can find that letter.”

Harding stood just inside the door while they searched, his arms folded across his chest, a smug look on his face. Brown wanted to smack the bastard. In the night-table drawer, they found the various books they'd tried to remove from the apartment earlier ... "We'll be taking these now," Carella said.

Harding nodded. but they did not find the letter Mary Vincent had mentioned to Father Clemente.

Or any letter at all, for that matter.

Not in the night table or anywhere else.

"If you're finished here," Harding said, "I got work to do.”

Brown was thinking of all the fire-department and building code violations he'd noticed on the arduous climb up to the sixth floor: the burnt-out lightbulb on the first-floor landing, the air shaft window painted shut on the third floor, the exposed electrical wiring on the fifth floor, the stacked cardboard cartons obstructing passage on the sixth floor.

He smiled like a Buddha.

If Mary Vincent's appointment calender was a true indicator of her social life, the nun had been fairly busy during the two weeks preceding her death. The calendar listed: August 11:6:30 P.M.

Felicia @ CM.

August 14:7:00 P.M.

Jenna and Rene Here.

August 15:7:30 '.M.

Michael @ Med August 18:6:00 '.M.

Frank @ OLF August 20:5:00 '.M.

Annette @ CM They had already talked to latlaer trane temcm at Our Lady of Flowers and Sister Annette Ryan at the Christ's Mercy convent. A check of first names in Mary's address book came up with the information that Felicia Locasta was a nun at Christ's Mercy, Jenna DiSalvo and Rene Schneider were both registered nurses at St. Margaret's, and Dr.

Michael Paine was a physician at the hospital.

It was still relatively early on Monday night. They hit the phones.

"She was upset about her budget," Sister Felicia Locasta said. "I think that's why came to see me that night. I was a math major in college before I joined the order. We often talked about money matters.”

The detectives were back in Riverhead again, at the Convent of the Sisters of Christ's Mercy, at the crack of dawn, and they were sitting in a little room off the chapel, where there was a coffee machine, a refrigerator, and a sink.

"Please call me just Felicia, okay?" she said. "I mean, I know there are nuns who dig the sister bit, but they're all a hundred years old.”

Felicia was in her mid-thirties, a dark-eyed woman with curly black hair fastened at the back of her head with a simple ribbon. She was wearing jeans, loafers without socks, and a white T-shirt lettered with the words SISTERS OF CHRIST'S MERCY ... "... which Sister Carmelita might not find appropriate," she said, hitting the word hard, "but she's in San Diego, and I'm here. Anyway, I am a Sister of Christ's Mercy and I only wear this around here before I go to work, what time is it, anyway?”

It was seven A.M. on August twenty-fifth, a blistering-hot Tuesday with the sun barely risen, an exaggeration, but, man, it was hot! Felicia had told them last night that she had to be at work by nine sharp, so if they wanted to talk to her they had to be at the convent by seven latest.

Her work was teaching mathematics to the little deaf kids at the school next door, so if they could be out of here by eight, she could shower and dress like a proper nun before she faced the day.

Carella wondered if he should mention that his wife was deaf.

Funny, but he never thought of her as deaf.

He let the moment pass.

"Mary always had trouble making ends meet," Felicia said, "I don't know why, I kept telling her to ask Sister Carmelita to move her up here to the convent. We pool our resources here and I know it's a lot cheaper than living alone in the city. But she said she wanted to be near the hospital. "You never know what's going to happen," she used to say.

"One of my patients might need me." She was very conscientious, you know. I was with her one night when she'd lost a patient and she was virtually inconsolable.”

"Did she come up here often?”

"Or I'd take the train into the city. We were close friends. I mean, we're all united in Christ, all the sisters in the order, but you naturally gravitate to some people more than you do others. We became friends shortly after she came here from San Diego. We met through Annette. Her spiritual advisor? Have you talked to Annette?”

"Yes, we have," Carella said. "This would've been in February sometime, is that it? When you met Mary?”

"February, March, along about then.”

i-/ow o ten did you see her?”

"We got together for dinner every three weeks or so. Usually she came here, sometimes we met in the city.”

"According to this," Brown said, consulting Mary's calendar, "she was here at the convent on the eleventh. That would've been a Tuesday night. She has you listed for six-thirty.”

"Yes, that's when we have supper here at the convent. Right after vespers. The evening prayer. You have to understand ... this will sound terrible, I know, but, well, I'm sorry, but it's the way it is.

You see, we take vows of poverty, charity, and obedience. We are poor, we don't simply pretend to be poor. So whenever Mary came here for supper ... well ... it was an extra mouth to feed, you see. We have a budget, too. So she chipped in for the meal. And we gratefully accepted whatever she could offer. What ever her budget would allow.”

"How about when you went out to eat together?”

“Oh, we never went to anyplace fancy. You'd be surprised how many inexpensive little places there are in the city. We usually had pasta and a salad, a glass of wine. There are places that will let you sit and talk. We knew a lot of them," she said, her eyes twinkling as if she were in possession of a state secret. "And in the spring and summer months, we'd walk. It was a gorgeous spring this year. There are a lot of very poor people in this city, you know. And not many of them had a choice in the matter. We chose this life. You must never forget that.”