Ed Mcbain - Nocturne

He was sixty-nine years old, he told them, a creature of impeccable habit, set in his ways. Got up to pee every night at three-thirty. They'd got him out of bed forty minutes early, he didn't like this break in his routine. Hoped he could fall back asleep again after they were done with him here and he had his nocturnal pee. For all his grumbling, though, he seemed cooperative, even hospitable. Like buddies about to go on an early morning fishing trip, the three men sat around the oil cloth covered kitchen table sipping coffee. Their hands were warm around the steaming cups. Heat poured from the oven. Springtime didn't seem all that far away.

"I hated those records she played day and night," he told them. "Sounded like somebody practicing. All clasical music sounds that way to me. How could

anyone make any sense of it? I like swing, do you know what swing is? Before your time, swing. I'm sixty-nine years old, did I tell you that? Get up to pee regular every night at three-thirty in the morning, go back to sleep again till eight, get up, have my breakfast, go for along walk. Jenny used to go with me before she died last year. My wife. Jenny. We'd walk together in the park, rain or shine. Settled a lot of our problems on those walks. Talked them out. Well, I don't have any problems now she's gone. But I miss her like the devil."

He sighed heavily, freshened the coffee in his cup. "More?" he asked.

"Thank you, no," Carella said.

"Just a drop," Hawes said.

"Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, that was swing. Harry James, the Dorsey Brothers, wonderful stuff back then. You had a new song come out, maybe six, seven bands covered it. Best record usually was the one made the charts. "Blues in the Night' came out, there must've been a dozen different big-band versions of it. Well, that was some song. Johnny Mercer wrote that song. You ever hear of Johnny Mercer?"

Both detectives shook their heads.

"He wrote that song," Turner said. "Woody Herman had the best record of that song. That was some song." He began singing it. His voice, thin and frail, filled the stillness of the night with the sound of train whistles echoing down the track. He stopped abruptly. There were tears in his eyes. They both wondered if he'd been singing it to Jenny. Or for Jenny.

"People come and go, you hardly get a chance to say hello to them, not less you really know them," he said. "Woman who got killed tonight, I don't think I even knew her name till the super told me later on. All I knew was she irritated me playing those damn old records of hers. Then I hear three shots and first thing I wonder is did the old lady shoot herself?. She seemed very sad," he said, "glimpses I got of her on the stairs. Very sad. All bent and twisted and bleary-eyed, a very sad old lady. I ran out in the hall..."

"When was this?"

"Right after I heard the shots."

"Do you remember what time that was?" "Around a quarter past eleven." "Did you see anyone in the hall?"

"No."

"Or coming out of her apartment?"

"No."

"Was the door to the apartment open or closed?" "Closed."

"What'd you do, Mr. Turner?"

"I went right downstairs and knocked on the super's door."

"You didn't call the police?" "No, sir." "Why not?"

"Don't trust the police."

"What then?"

"I stayed in the street, watched the show, Cops coming, ambulances coming. Detectives like you. A regular show. I wasn't the only one."

"Watching, do you mean?"

"Watching, yes. Is it getting too hot in here for you?" "A little."

"If I turn this off, though, we'll be freezing again in five minutes. What do you think I should do?" "Well, whatever you like, sir," Hawes said.

"Jenny liked it warm," Turner said. He nodded. He was silent for several moments, staring at his hands folded on the kitchen table. His hands looked big and dark and somehow useless against the glare of the white oilcloth.

"Who else was there?" Carella asked. "Watching the show?"

"Oh, people I recognized from the building mostly. Some of them leaning out their windows, others coming downstairs to see things firsthand." "Anyone you didn't recognize?" "Oh, sure, all those cops."

"Aside from the cops or the ambulance people

"Lots of others, sure. You know this city. Anything happens, a big crowd gathers,"

"Did anyone you didn't recognize come out of the building? Aside from cops or..."

"See what you mean, yeah. Just let me think a minute."

The gas jets hissed into the stillness of the apartment. Somewhere in the building, a toilet flushed. Outside on the street, a siren; doowah, doo-wahed to the night. Then all was still again.

"A tall blond man," Turner said.

As he tells it, he first sees the man when he comes out of the alleyway alongside the building. Comes out and

stands there with the crowd behind the police lines, hands in his pockets. He's wearing a blue overcoat and a red muffler. Hands in the pockets of the coat. Black shoes. Blond hair blowing in the wind. "Beard? Mustache?" "Clean-shaven."

"Anything else you remember about him?"

He just stands there like all the other people, behind the barricades the police have set up, watching all the activity, more cops arriving, plainclothes cops, they must be, uniformed cops, too, with brass on their hats and collars, the man just stands there watching, like interested. Then the ambulance people carry her out of the building on a stretcher, and they put her inside the ambulance and it drives off.

"That's when he went off, too," Turner said. "You watched him leave?" "Well, yes." "Why'?"

"There was a... a sort of sad look on his face, I don't know. As if... I don't know."

"Where'd he go?" Hawes asked. "Which direction?"

"Headed south. Toward the corner. Stopped near the sewer up the street..."

Both detectives were suddenly all ears.

"Bent down to tie his shoelace or something, went on his way again."

Which is how they found the murder weapon.

The gun they'd fished out of the sewer was registered to a man named Rodney Pratt, who on his application for the pistol permit had given his occupation as "security escort" and had stated that he needed to carry a gun because his business was "providing protection of privacy, property, and physical wellbeing to individuals requiring personalized service." They figured this was the politically correct way of saying he was a private bodyguard.

In the United States of America, no one is obliged to reveal his race, color, or creed on any application form. They had no way of knowing Rodney Pratt was black until he opened the door for them at five minutes past three that morning, and glowered out at them in undershirt and boxer shorts. To them, his color was merely an accident of nature. What mattered was that Ballistics had already identified the gun registered to him as the weapon that had fired three fatal bullets earlier tonight.

"Mr. Pratt?" Hawes asked cautiously.

"Yeah, what?" Pratt asked.

He did not have to say This is three o'fucking clock in the morning, why the fuck are you knocking my door down? His posture said that, his angry frown said that, his blazing eyes said that.

"May we come in, sir?" Hawes asked. "some questions we'd like to ask you."

"What kind of questions?" Pratt asked.

The "sir" had done nothing to mollify him. THere were two honkie cops shaking him out of bed in the middle of the night, and he wasn't buying any thank you. He stood barring the door in his tank undershirt and striped boxer shorts, as muscular as a prizefighter at a weigh-in. Hawes now saw that tattoo on his bulging right biceps read Semper Fidelis An ex-Marine, no less. Probably a sergeant. had seen combat in this or that war the United State seemed incessantly waging. Probably drank the bl of enemy soldiers. Three o'clock in the momingl Hawes bit the bullet.