Ed McBain - Fiddlers

He paused to have his droll sarcasm appreciated.

‘But it so happens that my plate at the moment is both literally and figuratively empty

He did not expect any of the cops here in this room to understand or appreciate such literary terms, but the fact was that there’d been a dearth of murders in his own precinct and besides he was on a diet, hence the empty plates all around…

‘… and so I’ve decided to join forces with you, so to speak, and take upon myself the investigation of the priest’s murder, whose name happens to be Father Michael Hopwell, should this be of any interest to you. And also to lend whatever assistance I may deem myself capable of, ah yes, in the ongoing investigations of the Geezer Murders you are already pursuing.’

The Eight-Seven detectives did not know whether this was a blessing or a curse.

‘Thank you,’ Ollie said, ‘don’t bother standing, no applause necessary,’ and executed a slight but difficult bow with one hand on his still quite ample middle, empty plate or not.

Ollie’s idle comment notwithstanding, the tabloids spread on Carella’s desktop that Thursday morning were still calling the string of homicides ‘the Glock Murders.’ Now that Ollie was on the scene, would the murders be remembered from this day to the ending of the world as ‘the Geezer Murders’? Carella hoped not.

But look at the facts.

Four murders thus far, all committed with the same automatic pistol. Two of the vics in their fifties. One in her sixties. And now one in his seventies. These were not youngsters, Maude. These were people getting on in life, you might say. Given your average life span of what -seventy, seventy-five, eighty tops? - this put middle age somewhere between thirty-five and forty. Yes, kiddies, face it. You were rounding the bend at thirty, and middle-aged at thirty-five, imagine that. Fifty was fast approaching old age. Sixty was, in fact, old. Seventy was decrepit. Eighty was ready for the box. None of these victims had been skipping off to kindergarten with a lunch pail in one hand and a box of crayons in the other. In all truth, the ages of the victims made the case sort of boring. Like watching Woody Allen kissing a beautiful blonde in one of his movies. If someone’s about to die soon, anyway, what was the sense of going to all the trouble of killing him? Or her?

Well, you couldn’t say the two fifty-something-year-olds were exactly at death’s door. In fact, Alicia Hendricks had been a damn good-looking woman, in excellent health - and sexually active when she was younger, don’t forget. And whereas the wandering violinist had been blind, he was otherwise in pretty good shape and certainly not rushing out to buy himself a burial plot. But aside from those two, the others seemed unlikely candidates for termination. Ho hum, let nature take its course was what most citizens of this city were thinking as they turned the pages of their newspapers to sexier stuff like the killing and torture of Iraqi prisoners of war.

Not that the tabloids weren’t doing their best to make the murders sound as sexy as possible. The first thing they did was suggest that the Glock Murders were in fact serial murders, and then they quoted various FBI profile statistics common to most serial murders.

Never mind that until the murder of the priest last night, there had been only three killings…

(A serial killer is someone who usually kills more than five people.)

Never mind that the now-four murders had been committed in the relatively short space of six days…

(A serial killer usually slays over a longer period of time, sometimes even months or years, allowing a so-called cooling-off period between each murder.)

Never mind that the victims here were a mixed bag: a blind musician, a cosmetics saleswoman cum dope dealer, a university professor, and now a priest.

(A serial killer’s victims are usually of the same type - prostitutes, hitchhikers, postal employees, what have you, but always easily categorized.)

Never mind that all the victims here were shot in the face at close range with an automatic pistol.

(Most serial murders are committed by strangulation, suffocation, or stabbing.)

One of the tabloids suggested that the serial killer here was trying to obliterate his victims’ faces, a supposition with which a PD profiler actually agreed. All of the tabloids agreed that the primary motive of a serial killer was sexual, whether or not any sex had actually taken place before or after the murder. They also agreed that most serial killers were white males between the ages of twenty and thirty, which description fit half the stockbrokers downtown.

The detectives looking at all these statistics saw only two converging characteristics that might have marked their man as a serial killer: his victim’s ages and their race: they were all getting on in years, and they were all white.

It was Fat Ollie Weeks who came up with the notion that three of the murders might be simple smoke-screen murders.

‘Maybe he was only after one of them,’ he said. ‘Let’s say the priest last night, for example. Maybe the rest were just to throw us off the track. No connection at all between them.’

‘Among them,’ Willis corrected, though he had to admit Ollie might have a point here. Aware that Eileen Burke was watching him, waiting for his further response, he merely said, ‘In which case, which one?’

‘Was he really after, you mean?’

‘You kill four people, you’re really after each and every one of them,’ Parker said.

‘I’m inclined to agree,’ Byrnes said, surprising Parker. ‘A smoke screen isn’t usually this prolonged. Too much danger here of us closing in.’

‘I don’t see the danger yet,’ Eileen said. ‘We haven’t found any connection, so maybe Ollie’s right.’

‘In which case, which one was he really after?’ Willis insisted. ‘Who was the real victim?’

‘Far as I’m concerned,’ Byrnes said, ‘they’re all real victims, and he was after each and every one of them. Stay on all of them,’ he advised. Or warned. ‘And bring me something!’

* * * *

Parker caught up with Ollie on his way out of the squadroom, and asked how things were going with his little Latina dish.

‘Or do you plan on marrying her?’ he said. ‘Is that it, Ollie?’

‘Well, no. I mean, the subject hasn’t come up. We’ve only seen each other a few times, whattya mean marry her?’

‘Is exactly what I’m saying. But if there are no wedding bells on the horizon, then when do you plan to make your move?’

‘I don’t know what move you mean.’

‘Ho-ho, he don’t know what move I mean,’ Parker said to the air. ‘I mean getting in her pants, sir, is what I mean. When do you plan to attempt this?’

‘I didn’t make any plans for that,’ Ollie said.

‘Then start now,’ Parker said. ‘When are you seeing her again?’

‘Saturday night.’

‘Tomorrow night?’

‘No, next Saturday night.’

‘No,’ Parker said.

‘Whattya mean no? That’s when I’m seeing her. July third, next Saturday night.’

‘Wrong,’ Parker said. ‘Saturday night is wrong, July third, July whenever. She’ll know what you’re planning, she’ll…’

‘I ain’t planning nothing.’

‘She’ll think you’re planning something. Saturday night? Of course you’re planning something! She’ll be on High Alert, she’ll put up a Panty Block.’

‘A what?’

‘These Latinas, they call themselves, they know all kinds of ways to cut off a man’s dick and sell it to a cuchi frito joint. It’s called a Panty Block. If she suspects for a single minute what you’re planning…”