Ed McBain - Fiddlers

She pulled open one of the file drawers.

‘Let’s hope his records haven’t already been boxed and sent up to Archives,’ she said. ‘Soboloff, was it?’

‘Sobolov,’ Carella said. ‘With an o-v.’

‘Ah. Yes,’ she said, and began riffling through the folders. When she found the one for SOBOLOV, MAX, she placed it on top of the filing cabinet, and opened it. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘an excellent student. Brilliant future ahead of him.’ She paused, reading. ‘But you see, gentlemen, he never finished the course of study here. He left after only three years.’

‘The Army,’ Meyer said.

‘Vietnam,’ Carella said.

* * * *

‘A pity,’ Abigail said.

‘This would’ve been a long time ago, you understand,’ the woman in the clerical office was telling them.

Her name was Clara Whaitsley. Parker thought she was British at first, the name and all, and this was mildly exciting because he’d never been to bed with a British girl. But she had a broad Riverhead accent, and he’d been to bed with lots of Riverhead girls in his lifetime. So had Genero. Well, a few, anyway. All business, they merely listened to her.

‘We’re talking a girl in her teens,’ Clara said. ‘They enter high school in the tenth grade, you know, when they’re fifteen, going on sixteen. According to our records, Alicia Hendricks came into Harding directly from Mercer Junior High, some forty years ago.’

‘Long time ago,’ Genero observed sagely.

‘The usual progression is Pierce Elementary to Mercer Junior High to Harding High,’ Clara said. ‘We have her leaving Harding at sixteen.’

‘Any follow-up on that?’

‘We wouldn’t have anything on her after she left our school.’

‘Went into the workforce, looks like,’ Genero said.

‘That’s awfully young to be starting work.’

‘I started work when I was fourteen,’ Parker said.

He was tempted to add that he’d got laid for the first time when he was sixteen.

‘You know,’ Clara said, ‘while I was looking through the files for you…’

Both detectives suddenly gave her their undivided attention.

‘…I came across the records for another Hendricks. I don’t know if they’re related or not, but he was here at about the same time, entered a year later.’

‘What’ve you got on him?’ Parker asked.

* * * *

Karl Hendricks was still serving the twelfth year of a fifteen-year rap. He’d been denied parole twice - the first time because he’d physically abused a prison guard, the second because he’d stabbed another inmate with a fork. He could not have been older than fifty-three or -four, but at six thirty that Monday evening, when he shuffled into the room where Genero and Parker were waiting for him, he looked like an old man.

‘What is this?’ he asked.

‘Your sister was murdered,’ Parker told him subtly.

‘Yeah?’ Hendricks said.

He seemed only mildly interested.

‘When’s the last time you saw her?’ Genero asked.

‘Be a real miracle if I did it, now wun’t it?’ Hendricks said. ‘Sittin up here in stir.’

‘We’re wondering who did,’ Parker said.

‘Who cares?’

‘We do.’

‘I don’t.’

‘So when did you see her last?’

‘She came to visit on my forty-fifth birthday. Brought me a cake with candles on it. No file inside it, mores the pity.’

Sometimes, in prison, a man developed a sense of sarcastic humor. Sometimes the humor was funny.

‘When was that, Karl?’

‘Nine years ago. I’d just started serving this bum rap.’

In prison, everyone was serving a bum rap. Nobody’d ever done the crime for which he’d been convicted. Nobody.

‘Nine years ago,’ Genero said, and nodded, thinking it over.

It seemed unlikely that Alicia Hendricks would have mentioned anyone following her nine years ago. Nine years was a long time to be following someone. Nine years was what you might call a Dedicated Stalker. Genero asked, anyway.

‘She mention anyone following her?’

Hendricks stared at him blankly.

‘Some bald-headed guy following her?’

‘No,’ Hendricks said, and shook his head unbelievingly. ‘That why you came all the way up here? Cause some bald-headed guy was following her?’

‘We came all the way up here because your sister got murdered,’ Parker said.

‘I’m surprised somebody didn’t kill her a long time ago,’ Hendricks said.

‘Oh?’

‘The friends she had. The company she kept.’

‘What kind of company?’

‘Half of them should be in here doing time.’

‘Oh?’

‘In fact, her first husband did do time, but not here.’

‘Husband? We’ve got her as single.’

‘Married twice,’ Hendricks said. ‘Both of them losers.’

‘Went back to using her maiden name, is that it?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘Tell us about these guys.’

‘The first one did time in Huntsville. One of the state prisons down there.’

‘That be in Texas?’

‘Texas, yeah.’

‘For what?’

‘Delivery and sale. Copped a plea, got off with two years and a five-grand fine.’

‘You ever meet this winner?’

‘No. Alicia told me about him.’

‘So this had to be longer ago than nine years, right?’

‘Huh?’

‘If the last time she came to visit…”

‘Oh. Yeah.’

‘So this first husband is bygone times, right?’

‘Right.’

‘When did he do his time? Before or after Alicia knew him?’

‘Before. He was out by the time they met.’

‘Living up here by then?’

‘I guess. Otherwise how would she’ve met him?’

‘That his only fall? The one in Texas?’

‘Far as I know.’

‘And his name?’

‘Al Dalton.’

‘For Albert?’

‘Who the hell knows?’

‘How about the second husband? Has he got a record, too?’

‘No. What makes you think that?’

‘Well, you said he was a loser.’

‘One thing has nothing to do with the other. I’m in jail, for example, but I’m not necessarily a loser.’

Parker nodded sympathetically.

‘But this second husband was a loser, you said.’

‘A loser, how?’ Genero asked.

‘Bad investments, like that. Also, he did dope.’

‘Ah,’ Parker said. ‘And Alicia?’

‘She dabbled.’

‘Ah.’

‘What’s his name? The second husband?’

‘Ricky Montero. For Ricardo.’

‘A spic?’ Parker said.

‘Dominican.’

‘What kind of bad investments?’

‘You name them.’

‘Is he still here in this country, or did he go back home?’

‘Who knows? She divorced him, it’s got to be ten, twelve years ago. I never liked him. He played trumpet.’

‘Is that why you didn’t like him?’

‘I got nothing against trumpet players. I’m just saying he played trumpet, is all.’

‘So that’s the bad company she kept, right?’ Genero said. ‘These two husbands. Al Dalton and Ricky Montero.’

‘I didn’t say “bad.” That’s your word.’

‘You said half of her friends should be in here doing time.’

‘That don’t make them bad.’

‘No, that makes them sweethearts.’

‘I’m doing time, and I ain’t bad.’

‘No, all you did was stab somebody twelve years ago, and then stab somebody else, right here in jail, two years ago.’

‘That don’t make you bad at all,’ Genero said.

‘That makes you an angel,’ Parker said.

‘You done breaking my balls? Cause I don’t know who killed my sister, and I don’t give a shit who did.’

‘Sit down,’ Parker said.

‘Sit down,’ Genero said.