Ed McBain - Fat Ollie's Book

“I think so, yes,” Carella said.

“I THOUGHT YOU MIGHTfind this interesting,” Patricia was telling Ollie. He was eating, of course. She somewhat enjoyed watching him eat. Such gusto, she thought, and wondered if the word “gusto” had Spanish roots. “I got it from the manager at King Memorial. It’s the architect’s schematic sketch of the building. Shows what’s what and where’s where.” She spread it out on her side of the table. Without missing a beat, hands and mouth working, Ollie leaned over the table to study the drawing:

“Auditorium is here on the right of the building,” she said, “offices on the left. You’ll see that these two men’s rooms, one left, one right, have windows opening on an airshaft. Little narrow passageway runs along the back of the building. The windows were wide open when I checked them out. I figured…”

“You checked them out?”

“Yeah. Earlier today.”

“That was very enterprising of you, Patricia.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I figured it was funny, the windows wide open in rest rooms? What I did, you see, was walk the passageway from one side of the building to the other. I climbed out one window and in the other.”

He visualized her climbing out the rest room window on the left here, and walking across the back of the building and then climbing through the other rest room window on the right. And then…

“I get it,” he said. “You think that’s what our killer did. He got into this rest room…”

“The men’s room here on the left of the drawing, yes.”

“…went out the window, and ran across the back of the building to the other rest room…”

“The other men’s room, yes.”

“And then out the exit doors here, and into the alleyway.”

“Where he ditched the gun down the sewer,” Patricia said, and shrugged. “That’s what I figure happened, anyway.”

“I think you’re right,” Ollie said. “Listen, is that all you’re going to eat?”

“I’m not very hungry, really.”

“You’re not?” Ollie said, surprised. “I’m hungry all the time.”

“Maybe…” she started, and then shook her head.

“No, what?” Ollie asked.

“Maybe it gives you something to do,” she suggested, and shrugged.

“I got plenty to do,” Ollie said.

“I mean, something to…well…take your mind off whatever…problems you might have.”

“I don’t have any problems.”

“Because eating is pleasurable, you know.”

“Oh, that I know,” he said.

“Instead of fighting City Hall,” she said.

“Che si puoi fare?”he said.

“I found out how to say that in Serbian, by the way.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No, the janitor at King Memorial taught me.”

“So how do you say it?”

“Shta-MO-goo,”she said.

“Shta-MO-goo,”he repeated.

“I also know how to say ‘Nothing.’ Ask me ‘What can you do?’ in Serbian.”

“Shta-MO-goo?”he said.

“Neeshta,”she answered.

“What makes you think I got problems?”

“I don’t.”

“You said I eat cause I got problems.”

“No, you eat cause it’s pleasurable is what I said.”

“You said that, too, but you also said I got problems.”

“Well, I was wrong.”

He looked at her. His cell phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt, hit the SEND button.

“Weeks,” he said. “Hey, Steve.” He listened. “When? Okay. See you.” He pressed the END button, and hung the phone on his belt again. “I gotta go up the Eight-Seven,” he said. “Carella and Kling think they’re onto something. Do you like to dance?”

“Yes, I love to dance,” Patricia said, surprised.

“You want to go dancing with me sometime?”

“Sure.”

“I’m a good dancer. I won a salsa contest one time.”

“I’ll bet you are.”

“I really am.”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“So when would you like to go?”

“I don’t know. You’re the man. You say when.”

“How about this weekend?”

“Okay.”

“Saturday night?”

“Okay.”

“Put on a nice dress.”

“I will.”

“I’ll wear my blue suit.”

“Sounds good to me,” she said.

“Shta-MO-goo?”he said.

“Neeshta,”she answered.

“OKAY, SO TELL USwhat you’ve got,” Byrnes said.

This was almost five o’clock already, and all of the detectives gathered in his office should have gone home an hour ago. But Carella and Kling thought they had real meat here.

“First,” Carella said, “she knew her husband was having an affair.”

“Everybody’shusband is having an affair,” Parker said. “That don’t mean you run out and shoot them.”

“Besides, why would she turn the bimbo’s letters over to you?” Hawes asked.

“Throw us off the scent,” Kling said.

“Throw us off the scent?” Parker said. “What is this, Sherlock Holmes? Throw us off thescent?”

“Let us think she was trying to help the investigation,” Kling explained. “It’s done all the time.”

“Okay, so we’ve got motive,” Willis said.

The men were sitting or standing or leaning everywhere in the lieutenant’s corner office. Most of them were bone-weary after a long day. Ollie looked fresh and energetic. He was the only one eating the donuts and drinking the coffee the Loot had set out.

“We’ve also got opportunity,” Carella said. “We have her leaving the compound at nine-fifteen…”

“Plenty of time to get there and do the job,” Brown said.

“Get back, too,” Kling said. “We’ve got her coming home at eleven, eleven-fifteen.”

“How about means?” Meyer asked.

“Only smeared prints on the gun. We can’t tie her to that.”

“So where’s your probable cause?” Parker asked. “Lady goes out to do some shopping…”

“No, her housekeeper was out doing that.”

“No alibi, huh?” Byrnes said.

“None.”

“You’ve still got no reason to arrest her,” Parker said.

“We’ve got a description from an eye witness. Same clothes the Smoke Rise guard saw her wearing.”

“We can get a search warrant for the hat,” Kling said.

“What hat?” Byrnes asked.

“The baseball cap she was wearing.”

“She’s a baseball player?” Willis asked.

“Her son is.”

“Maybehe’sthe killer,” Meyer said.

“He’s only eleven.”

“I’ve seen eleven-year-old killers,” Brown said philosophically.

“Not this kid. He comes up to my belly-button,” Carella said. “Our witness saw somebody five-seven, five-eight. Which is about her height.”

“You still got nothing that warrants an arrest,” Parker said.

“I agree,” Byrnes said. “Absent fingerprints on the gun…”

“How about we dust them window sills?” Ollie said, and bit into a chocolate-covered donut.

“What window sills?”

“In the toilets,” Ollie said. “Where maybe the shooter went in and out after plugging Henderson.”

Byrnes didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

Neither did any of the others.

“My girlfriend went to the toilet,” Ollie explained.

NELLIE BRANDgot to the precinct at sevenP.M. that Monday night. She was wearing a tan linen suit that complemented her short blondish hair, a darker brown silk blouse, sheer pantyhose, and dark brown, French-heeled pumps. It was raining again, and she was carrying an umbrella which she deposited in a stand just inside the slatted wooden railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside. The day shift had been relieved three hours ago. A Chinese translator was sitting at Bob O’Brien’s desk, talking to a man who’d been arrested two hours earlier. O’Brien sat looking bored as the two exchanged sing-song dialogue. The guy had killed both his wives; that was good enough for O’Brien, never mind the Mandarin or the Cantonese.