Ed McBain - Fiddlers

‘Six-to-five a Glock was the weapon.’

Ollie didn’t know what they were talking about.

‘The Glock Murders,’ Monroe explained.

‘The Geezer Murders,’ Monoghan said.

‘All over the newspapers.’

‘Television, too.’

‘This makes what? Number Three?’

‘Four,’ Monoghan said. ‘If it’s the same Glock.’

‘Let me in on it, okay?’ Ollie said.

He hated Homicide cops. Hated the dumb regulations in this city that made their appearance mandatory at the scene of any murder or suicide. Their role was quote advisory and supervisory unquote. Which meant they stood around with their thumbs up their asses, demanding copies of all the paperwork. Besides, both Monoghan and Monroe could stand going on diets. So could the two patrolmen who’d first responded. Not to mention the nun. When you were in love, the whole world could stand losing a little weight. Not that Ollie was in love.

‘Guy’s been running all over the city killing old farts,’ Monoghan said.

‘With a Glock nine,’ Monroe said.

‘Should be an easy one then,’ Ollie said, and turned to the first overweight uniform. ‘What’s the nun’s name?’ he asked.

‘Sister Margaret.’

‘How’d she come upon the priest?’

‘Came out to see if the garden gate was latched.’

‘She live here, or just visiting?’

‘Got a room over on the other side of the church.’

Ollie nodded.

‘You think the old priest was banging her?’ Monroe asked his partner.

‘Would you bang her?’ Monoghan said.

‘He’d bang anything that moves,’ Ollie said.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Monroe said, but the thought of having sex with a nun was stimulating in a primitive pagan sort of way. Monoghan found it vaguely exciting, too. So did Ollie, for that matter. The nun stood there trembling, saying her beads, poor soul. Ollie walked over to her.

‘Sister Margaret,’ he said, ‘I want to tell you how sorry I am for your loss.’

Actually, he didn’t give a damn one way or the other, one priest more or less in this vale of tears, especially a guy had to be a hundred years old.

‘But I have to ask a few questions, if you feel up to it,’ he said.

The nun nodded, whimpering into her beads.

‘What time was it that you found the victim… by the way, what is his name?’

‘Father Michael Hopwell,’ she said.

‘I understand you came out here into the garden to lock the gate

‘To see if it was locked.’

‘And was it?’

‘I didn’t check. I found Father Michael and ran right back inside.’

‘So if it’s unlocked now, it would have been unlocked then,’ Ollie said.

‘Or vice versa,’ Sister Margaret agreed, nodding.

One thing he couldn’t stand was a smartass nun.

‘You went inside…” he prompted.

‘Yes, and immediately called the police.’

‘Knew he was dead, did you?’

‘Knew he was hurt. All the blood…”

She shook her head.

‘See anyone when you first came out here in the garden?’

‘No. Actually, I’d hardly stepped outside when I saw him lying there. I turned right around, ran right back in again.’

‘Hear any shots before you came outside?’

‘No.’

‘When’s the last time you saw Father Michael alive?’

‘When Father Joseph arrived. I took him back.’

‘Took who back?’

‘Father Joseph.’

‘Back where?’

‘To the rectory.’

‘And Father Joseph is?’

‘An old friend of Father Michael’s. He’s retired now. He comes here often.’

‘What time did he get here tonight?’

‘Around eight o’clock.’

‘And left when?’

‘A little after ten.’

‘You saw him leave?’

‘No, I heard them exchanging “good nights.”

‘But you didn’t hear any shots?’ Ollie said, surprised.

‘No. I went into the chapel to say complin before I went to bed.’

‘Complin?’

‘That’s the last prayer of the day.’

‘Didn’t hear any shots all that time?’

‘The chapel walls are thick.’

‘Tell me about this Father Joseph.’

‘They were priests together at Our Lady of Grace, in Riverhead.’

‘They get along?’

‘Oh yes. Get along? Of course. They’re old friends.’

‘Where is he now, this Father Joseph?’

‘He lives in the community center on Stanley Street.’

Ollie looked at his watch.

It was ten past midnight.

He wondered what time priests went to bed. Well, retired priests. He wondered who paid for a priest’s retirement. He wondered who’d shot Father Michael here.

‘Who’s got these other Glock murders?’ he asked Monroe.

‘The Eight-Seven,’ Monroe said.

‘Well, well, well,’ Ollie said.

* * * *

In the middle of the night, he woke up screaming.

She sat up, yelled, ‘Chaz! What is it?’

‘A nightmare,’ he said.

But he was doubled over in bed, clutching his abdomen.

He lay beside her, trembling. He felt cold to the touch. She held him close. In a little while, he got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She heard the water in the sink running. He was in there for five minutes before he came back to bed.

‘Tell me the dream,’ she said.

He hesitated, thinking. Then he said, ‘It was in Nam.’

He was still holding his belly. The chills seemed to be gone, though.

‘This woman and her baby are sitting on the hood of a Jeep. We’re supposed to transport them back to where an interpreter is waiting to question the woman. Well, the girl, actually; she’s no more than nineteen. The sergeant thinks the girl is a spy for the Vietcong, I don’t know what gave him that idea.

‘The sergeant is driving the Jeep. He likes to drive. I’m riding shotgun. M-1 in my lap. The girl is sitting on the hood of the vehicle. Baby in one arm, holding the baby tight. Other arm extended, stiff, hand clutching this like sort of handle on the hood, so she won’t fall off with her baby. The road is rutted and bumpy, these mud roads they had over there, between the rice paddies…”

He began trembling again.

‘I don’t remember the rest of it,’ he said.

When she got up to pee later, he was sound asleep.

She kept thinking about his dream. After she’d washed her hands, she opened the door to the medicine chest over the sink.

There were five bottles of prescription pain relievers in there.

She wondered if he’d had a nightmare at all.

* * * *

It certainly had been very nice to fall into two gratuitous drug busts while investigating a pair of homicides. But these windfalls hadn’t brought them any closer to learning who had killed the blind violinist, or the cosmetics sales rep, or even the university professor. Nor did it much endear them to Connors and Brancusi, the two Narcotics cops who now had Internal Affairs to deal with because some punk nightclub manager was making noises about having greased them for protection. The things a desperate ex-con would say to avoid taking another fall!

And now, to make matters worse, a dead priest had turned up last night in the Eight-Eight.

And guess who’d caught the case?

‘Now the usual thing that would happen here,’ Ollie explained to the assembled detectives of the Eight-Seven that Friday morning, ‘would be if a person caught a body that he later learned had been shot with the same pistol used in three previous murders another squad had been investigating - fruitlessly, I might add - since the sixteenth of the month

This was now the twenty-fifth day of June. The clock on the squadroom wall read 9:10 A.M.

‘The usual thing that would happen would be for the responding detective to cite FMU, and then run the paper over posthaste to the squad that originally caught the squeal, in this case yours precisely, the Famous Eighty-seventh.’