Ed McBain - Kiss

Doors stretched along the entire wall that faced the stairs. Padlocks on all of the doors. Each door marked with an apartment number. 01 for the super on the ground-level floor, then 11, 12, and 13, for the first floor, on up to the fifth floor, three apartments on each floor for a total of sixteen in the building, sixteen doors locked with padlocks, sixteen narrow storage cubicles on a wall some sixty-five or seventy feet wide. The width of the building, more or less.

The padlocks hung open on the hasp eyes; this was the scene of a crime, and no one needed a court order to search for a weapon here; a man had been killed, an investigation was under way. The Crime Scene Unit had already been through the place with a fine-tooth comb. Now it was the turn of the detectives handling the case.

In this city, any murder case normally belonged to the detective team catching the squeal. Homicide Division consulted and supervised, but that was it. The two men rummaging through this musty, damp, death-reeking basement should have been DetectivestSecond Grade Jasper Loop and his partner, Fat Ollie Weeks.

Instead, operating on the First Man Up rule- sometimes known as the First Man Up Your Ass rule, because of the many inequities it fostered- Meyer and Carella were the lucky cops sifting through all this dusty shit in these crowded little storage cubicles. Looking for whatever had put the bullet hole in Roger Tilly's head.

They found bicycles and lamps and folding beach chairs and an old television set and a clown's costume and a floor fan and a thirty-set edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and a deflated inflatable rubber doll with a blonde wig and stacks of old Life magazines corded together and a pay telephone with a coin box that had come from God knew which corner phone booth and rubber tires and tools and a winepress and ironing boards and a folding bridge table and chairs and all the stored and forgotten flotsam and jetsam of crowded urban living, stacked here out of sight and out of mind, most of it covered with dust, some of it covered with mildew. They did not find anything that even remotely resembled a pistol.

There was an oil burner at the far end of the basement, humming into the stillness of the afternoon, clicking on and off as the thermostat dictated, filling the basement with a sound death would have denied it if possible. Death was everywhere here. From the bloodstain where Roger Tilly had been lowered to the gray and cracking concrete floor ... to the rope indentations in the asbestos-covered pipe from which his murderer had hanged him ... to the dark silences in corners and coves.

"I wonder why," Meyer said.

"Why what?”

"Why he bothered hanging him from the ceiling.

He had to know we'd find the head wound.”

"If it was a man.”

"Had to be a pretty strong woman to hoist him all the way up there," Meyer said, and looked up at the overhead pipes running close to the ceiling.

"Lots of strong women in this city," Carella said.

"Oh, sure. But even so ... why bother? Dead is dead, no?”

"Dead is dead, all right.”

Meyer kept looking up at the asbestos-covered pipe.

"Maybe he wanted us to think it was a crazy," he said at last. "Shoot Tilly in the back of the head and then string him up. Make us think a crazy did it.”

"Maybe it was a crazy," Carella said.

"Maybe.”

Both men fell silent again.

"I wonder if the killer followed him down here," Carella said.

"He also could've been waiting down here,”

Meyer said.

"Could've been somebody he knew, in fact.”

"Some kind of meeting down here.”

"Some kind of prearranged meeting.”

"Why would anyone meet in the goddamn basement?”

"Well, up here ...”

"Dope," Meyer said.

"Could be.”

They were both thinking it could have been dope anywhere in this city, not only up here. A man got killed, you automatically thought dope. That was the saddest fact of life in America these days.

"Think he maybe had dope stashed in one of those cubbies?" Meyer said.

"Maybe.”

"Comes down here to visit his dope.”

"Unlocks the cubby, makes sure it's still there, guy comes up behind him, nails one into his skull.”

"Runs off with the dope.”

"Could be.”

"It's a scenario, that's for sure.”

"Didn't take anything else from him, though.

More gold on him than there is in Fort Knox.

Killer left all that behind.”

"Too many questions, Steve.”

"Not enough answers.”

There was an old cast-iron coal-burning furnace in one corner of the basement, obviously unused for some time now. Its main steam pipe had been disconnected at the first elbow, the pipe running up out of the boiler and ending abruptly in midair. On the other side of the boiler, the water-return pipe had been - similarly disconnected. It ran out horizontally for some two-and-a-half feet, and then right-angled upward to the air vent, where it, too, abruptly ended. There was a coal bin to the left of the furnace, chunks of shiny coal still piled loosely against its rear wooden wall.

An overhead light bulb illuminated a shovel still thrust into the coal at an angle. They might not have opened the furnace door if Carella hadn't caught the faintest tint of red on the handle that hung from it. Just a wink of red. But enough to make him think ...

"Blood," he said.

Meyer turned from where he was peering into the coal bin, walked over to where Carella was examining the handle, and bent to look at it.

"Could be," he said.

Carella went into the bin, picked up the shovel, and carried it back to the furnace. Using the flat blade, he lifted the handle on the heavy iron door. They still couldn't see anything inside there. Meyer went rummaging in one of the storage cubbies and came back with a flashlight.

That was when they found what looked like a .32-31liber revolver.

The bar at five o'clock that Tuesday afternoon was relatively empty, but then again it wasn't near any of the big office buildings that were letting out around this time. Andrew had been tracking around with Emma Bowles all day long, and he was glad to be rid of her now. Have a few drinks, get himself a good steak dinner, forget the damn job Bowles had given him. He was lifting his glass to the bartender to signal that he wanted a refill when the girl sitting on his right turned to him and said, "Hi, I'm Daisy.”

He thought at once he would like to pluck this daisy. Nineteen, twenty years old, brownish-black hair, blue eyes, a cute little nose, a mouth made for sin. She was wearing a white longsleeved silk blouse, high-heeled black pumps, and a black mini riding up to Alaska. Her legs were crossed. She kept jiggling her right foot.

"I'm Andrew," he said, and took her extended hand.

He figured her for a hooker.

Pretty young girl sitting at a bar, opens a conversation with "Hi, I'm Daisy," that's a hooker, right?

She told him she worked for the telephone company. He believed her. He could imagine her with a headset on, jiggling that right foot, how may I help you, please? He asked her why none of the pay phones in this city worked. The other day, he had to try eight phone booths before he found one with a working telephone. Two of the booths had coin boxes but no telephones. The telephone receivers were simply missing, cut from their connecting wires. The only thing left was a sort of shiny metallic cable with a spray of narrow, colored wires blooming from its end. No telephone receiver. The next two booths had receivers, but the coin slots were plugged, and you couldn't insert your quarter. The last four were simply dead. You lifted the receiver from the hook and you put in your quarter, and you got nothing but dead air, and when you hung up, the coin box swallowed your quarter.