Ed McBain - Fiddlers

Nine digits across the face of a simple blue card.

Nine digits divided into three parts.

Area numbers, group numbers, and serial numbers.

The number assigned to you the first time you get a job, and the number that will stay with you forever.

Your Social Security number.

A call to Social Security Admin tracked Helen Reilly back to when she was Helen Purcell and further back to when she was still Helen Rogers and took her first job at the age of seventeen. Hawes knew that her first husband’s name might have been Luke; Paula Wellington had suggested this. On the off chance that someone named Luke Purcell was still alive…

If so, he’d have to be in his late seventies or early eighties…

… Hawes checked all of the city’s five telephone directories. He came up with hundreds of Purcells, but no Lukes.

A call to the Department of Records unearthed a death certificate for a Luke Randolph Purcell, who’d died of lung cancer seven years ago, at the age of seventy-one. Several phone calls later, Hawes recovered a marriage certificate from 1950, for a Luke Randolph Purcell and a Helen Rogers, and a subsequent certificate of divorce for the couple. But if Luke and Helen Purcell had had any children - boys or girls - before they went their separate ways, the kids were still largely anonymous in a city of largely anonymous people. Hawes called the office of Vital Statistics, and asked a man named Paul Endicott to see what he had on any children for a Luke and Helen Purcell.

‘You know how many Purcells there are in the records down here?’ Endicott asked.

Hawes confessed he did not.

‘There are thousands,’ Endicott said. ‘Purcell is a very common name. Would you yourself like to come down here personally, Detective, and go through the thousands of Purcells on file here? Looking for a Helen or a Luke to see what their fucking kids’ names were?’

‘I wish you’d help me,’ Hawes told him. ‘This is a homicide we’re investigating.’

By eleven o’clock that Monday morning, Hawes had gone through four of the city’s five telephone directories and was working on the fifth, slogging through the book, dialing, and then identifying himself, and then doggedly asking the very same question of every Purcell who answered the phone: ‘Are you related to a Luke or a Helen Purcell?’

At times he felt like a telemarketer; people just hung up on him, even after he told them he was a detective. Other times, he felt hopelessly old-fashioned. In this day and age of instant messaging, there had to be a quicker, simpler way of zeroing in on the progeny of Helen and Luke - if, in fact, they even existed; so far, he had only the word of Helen’s sister-in-law for that.

He looked up at the wall clock. Sighed. Ran his finger down the page to the next Purcell in the Riverhead directory. Jennifer Purcell. Began dialing again. Listened to the phone ringing on the other end.

‘Hello?’

A woman’s voice.

‘Hello, this is Detective Hawes of the Eighty-seventh Squad. I’m trying to reach Jennifer Purcell…”

‘Yes, this is Jennifer?’ the woman said. Youngish voice, late twenties, early thirties, clearly puzzled. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Ma’am, I’m trying to locate the children of Luke and Helen Purcell. I wonder…”

‘They’re my grandparents,’ she said at once. ‘Are you investigating her murder? I heard about it on television

‘Yes, I am,’ Hawes said at once, relieved, leaning closer into the phone. ‘Miss Purcell, I’d like to come there to talk to you, if I may. Would there be any time this morning… ?’

‘I’m sorry, I was just about to leave for work. Can we make it sometime tonight? I get home around five.’

‘Well… can you spare me a few minutes on the phone?’

‘No, I’m sorry, I really have to go, I’m late as it is.’

‘Then can I come to your workplace? This is really…”

‘No, it’s a restaurant, I’m sorry. Can’t you come here later today?’

‘Yes, certainly,’ he said.

‘Can you be here around five, five thirty? I should be home by then.’

‘Your grandparents had two children, is that right? Can you tell me… ?’

‘I’m sorry, but I really have to go. We’ll talk this evening.’

‘Wait!’ he shouted.

‘What?’

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘1247 Forbes Road, Apartment 6B.’

‘I’ll see you at five,’ he said.

‘Five thirty,’ she said. ‘I have to run. I’m sorry,’ she said, and hung up.

‘Damn it!’ Hawes said out loud.

Jennifer’s own name was Purcell, so he figured her for either single or else divorced and using her maiden name. Either way, this meant her father and not her mother was one of the abandoned kids. He’d wanted to ask her whether the other Purcell kid was a boy or a girl. He’d wanted to ask whether she’d ever even known the grandmother who’d abandoned Luke and the two kids to run off with her lover. Lots of questions to ask. He couldn’t wait to ask them.

He looked up at the wall clock.

Five thirty tonight seemed so very far away.

* * * *

These holy, solemn, religious places gave Ollie the heebie-jeebies. Before the priest got himself killed, the last time Ollie’d been inside a church was when his sister Isabel got stranded at the altar by a no-good Jewboy grifter he’d warned her against from the very beginning, but who listens to their big brothers nowadays? He wondered, in fact, if Patricia’s kid brother, Alonso, was warning her against Ollie himself right this very minute. As well he might be. Which was another thing that made Ollie uncomfortable about being here in Our Lady of Grace, the fact that he was actively planning, in the darkest recesses of his primeval mind, the seduction of Alonso’s older sister, Patricia Gomez, a fellow police officer, no less. This coming Saturday night, no less.

All these goddamn candles.

The smell of incense.

Sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows.

And all he could think of was taking off Patricia’s panties.

Three or four religious fanatics were sitting in the pews, praying. A guy in his fifties was polishing the big brass candlesticks behind the altar railing. Ollie walked down the center aisle like a bishop, approached the man.

‘Who’s in charge here?’ he asked, same as he would at a crime scene.

The guy looked up, polishing rag in his right hand.

Ollie showed his detective’s shield.

‘Is there a head priest or something?’ he asked.

The man seemed bewildered. Sparrow of a man with narrow shoulders and thin arms, blue eyes darting from the shield in Ollie’s hand, to Ollie’s face, and then back to the shield again. Ollie figured he wasn’t playing with a full deck.

‘Are you looking for Father Nealy?’ the man asked.

‘Sure,’ Ollie said. ‘Where do I find him?’

* * * *

Father James Nealy was preparing next Sunday morning’s sermon when Ollie walked into his rectory at eleven thirty that Monday morning. Ollie knew right off the man would be of no earthly help to him; he was in his early thirties, and couldn’t possibly have been here at Our Lady of Grace when Father Michael was. He asked his questions, anyway.

‘Did you know Father Michael personally?’

‘Never met the man,’ Father Nealy said. ‘But I’ve heard only good things about him.’

‘Never heard anyone say he wished the old man was dead, right?’

Father Nealy smiled. He was wearing black trousers and a black shirt, looked like some kind of tunic. White collar. Black, highly polished shoes. Ollie figured he had to be some kind of fag.

‘No, I’ve never heard anyone say he wished Father Michael was dead.’