Ed Mcbain: Nocturne

"None of his people knew anything about it." Naturally, Carella thought.

Hawes was thinking the same thing.

"And you say the glove compartment was locked when you got back home here?"

"I think so, yeah."

"What do you mean, you think so?"

"Why do you guys think everything I say is a lie?" Carella sighed in exasperation.

"Come on, was it locked or wasn't it?" he said. "That isn't a trick question. Just tell us yes or no."

"I'm telling you I don't know. I put the key in the lock and turned it. But whether it was locked or not..."

"You didn't try to thumb it open before you put the key in?"

"No, I always leave it locked."

"Then what makes you think it may have been unlocked this time?"

"The fucking gun was missing, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but you didn't know that before you opened the compartment."

"I know it now. If it was already unlocked when I turned the key, then what I was doing was locking it all over again. So I had to turn the key back again to unlock it."

"Is that in fact what you did?"

"I don't remember. I might have. A glove compartment isn't like your front door, you know, where you lock it and unlock it a hundred times a day, and you know just which way to turn the key to open it."

"Then what you're saying now, in retrospect, is that it might have been unlocked."

"Is what I'm saying in retrospect. Because the gun was missing. Which means somebody had already got in there."

"Did you leave a valet key with the car, or... ?" "I lost the valet key."

"So the key you left in the ignition could have unlocked the glove compartment, is that it?" "That's it."

"So you're saying someone at the garage unlocked it and stole the gun."

exactly what I'm saying."

"You don't think whoever put styrene in the crankcase might have stolen the gun, do you?"

"I don't see how."

"You didn't notice the hood open, did you?"

"Yeah, the hood was open. How would they get at the engine without liftingthe hood?" ,"I mean, before you took it to the garage.

"No, I didn't see the hood open."

"Tell us where you went with the car that Thursday. Before somebody did the styrene job"

"I don't know when the styrene job was done."

"Tell us where you went, anyway, okay? Help us out here, willya?"

"First, I drove an actress over to NBC for a television interview that morning..."

"NBC where?"

"Downtown. Off Hall Avenue."

"When was that?" "Six-thirty in the morning." "Did you go inside with her?" "No, I stayed with the car." "Then what?"

"Drove her back to her hotel, waited downstairs for her."

"Leave the car?"

"No. Well, wait a minute, yeah. I got out of the car to have a smoke, but I was standing right by it." "Gun still in the glove compartment?" "Far as I know. I didn't look."

"You said you waited for her downstairs..." "Yeah."

"What time did she come back down?" "Twelve-fifteen." "Where'd you go then?"

"To J. C. Willoughby's for lunch. She was meeting her agent there."

"And then?"

"Picked her up at two, drove her to..."

"Were you with the car all that time?"

"Come to think of it, no. I went for a bite myself. Parked it in a garage."

Where?

"Near the restaurant. On Lloyd."

"So somebody could have lifted the hood and poured that styrene in."

"I guess."

"Did you leave the key in the car?"

"Of course. How else could they drive it?"

"Then someone could have unlocked the glove compartment, too." "Yeah, but..." "Yeah?"

"I still think somebody at the gas station swiped that piece."

"What makes you think that?"

"Just a feeling. You know how you get a feeling something's wrong? I had the feeling those guys knew something about the car I didn't know."

"Like what?"

"I don't know what."

"Which guys?"

"All of them. The day manager when I went to pick it up, all the guys working..."

"When did you pick up your diamond merchant?" "What?" "You said..."

"Oh, yeah, Mr. Aaronson. I was with the actress all day, stayed with her while she shopped Hall Avenue. She was doing some shopping before she went back to L.A. Drove her to meet some friends for dinner, took her back to the hotel afterward."

"Stayed with the car all that time?"

"Didn't budge from it. Picked up Mr. Aaronson at ten-thirty, drove him home. He was heavy that night." "Heavy."

"Lots of gems in his suitcase."

"What'd you do then?"

"Started back over the bridge, heard the car starting to conk out."

"Would you remember where you parked the car while you were having lunch?"

"I told you. Place on Lloyd, just offDetavoner. Only one on the block, you can't miss it."

"You wouldn't know who parked it, would you?" "All those guys look the same to me."

"Can you think of anyone who might've put that styrene in your crankcase?"

"No."

"Or stolen the gun?"

"Yeah. Somebody at the fuckin gas station."

"One last question," Carella said. "Where were you tonight between ten and midnight?"

"Here it comes," Pratt said, and rolled his eyes. "Where were you?" Carella asked again. "Right here." "Anyone with you?"

"My wife. You want to wake her up, too?" "Do we have to?" Carella asked. "She'll tell you." "I'll bet she will."

Pratt was beginning to glower again. "Let her sleep," Carella said. Pratt looked at him.

"I think we're finished here. Sorry to have bothered you." "Cotton? Anything?"

"One thing," Hawes said. "Do you know who worked on your car?"

"Yeah, somebody named Gus. He's the one who signed the service order, but he wasn't there when I picked the car up yesterday."

"Do you know if the day manager asked him about the gun?"

"He says he did."

"What's his name?"

"The day manager? Jimmy." "Jimmy what?" "I don't know."

"How about the night manager? The one you left the car with?"

"Ralph. I don't know Ralph what. They have their names stitched on the front of their coveralls. Just the first names."

"Thanks," Hawes said. "Good night, sir, we're sorry to have bothered you."

"Mm," Pratt said sourly.

In the hallway outside, Carella said, "So now it becomes the tale of a gun."

"I saw that movie, too," Hawes said.

Bridge Texaco was in the shadow of the Majesta Bridge, which connected two of the city's most populous sectors, creating massive traffic jams at either end. Here in Isola simply and appropriately named since it was an island and Isola meant "island" in Italian. the side streets and avenues leading to the bridge were thronged with taxis, trucks and passenger vehicles from six A.M. to midnight, when things began slowing down a bit. At three-thirty in the morning, when the detectives got there, one would never have guessed that just a few hours earlier the surrounding streets had resonated with the din of

honking horns and shouted epithets, the result of a stalled track in the middle of the bridge.

There were two city statutes, both of them punishable by mere fines, that made the blowing of horns unlawful. Using profanity in public was also against the law. The pertinent section in the Penal Law was 240.20, and it was titled Disorderly Conduct. It read: "A person is guilty of disorderly conduct when, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he uses abusive or obscene language, or makes an obscene gesture." Disorderly conduct was a simple violation, punishable by not more than a term of fifteen days in jail. The two statutes and the Penal Law section only defined civilization. Perhaps this was why a uniformed cop on the street corner had merely scratched his ass at midnight while an angry motorist leaned incessantly on his horn, yelling "Move it, you fuckin cocksucker!"