Ed McBain - Poison

April that year came in with a suddenness that took the breath away. There had been in the city a sense of seige, the winds of March blowing like war trumpets, troop-trampled soot-blackened snow underfoot, a gunpowder sky unrelieved by sunshine. The citizenry hurried along the streets, bundled inside bulky garments, faces pinched and tempers short.The cold was something that attacked incessantly, turning even more inward a populace never noted for its generosity of spirit. Willis despised the cold. He felt disembodied in time and space, the victim of a relentless foe attacking without provocation, determined to level the city and devour its dead. Relief seemed only a distant dream. The forecasters kept promising warm fronts from Georgia but the warm fronts never materialized. Day by day, the gloomy greyness of March persisted, the cold a penetrating, remorseless, vengeful adversary bent on abject surrender.

But all at once, it was April.

Balmy breezes wafted in unexpectedly off the Old Seawall downtown. Heads bowed too long by the enemy lifted tentatively toward the clearing sky, numbed noses sniffed suspiciously of the warming air, watery eyes blinked in surprise and disbelief. The coats came off. Strangers in this city of strangers smiled at each other in the streets. Uptown, along the stone walls bordering Grover Park, forsythia bushes and cornelian cherry shrubs burst into shy, tentative yellow and pink bloom against the soiled and melting patches of snow.

It was April at last.

And in April, two days after Easter, a corpse turned up in the Twelfth Precinct.

The dead man's neighbor, perhaps remembering Sweeney Todd, complained to the building superintendant that it smelled like somebody was baking human meat pies in apartment 401. The Emergency-911 cops who responded recognized the stench of decomposing flesh at once. They cursed the suddenly balmy weather and unrolled a body bag before they took two steps inside the apartment.

The dead man was identified as Basil Hollander, who was an accountant with the firm of Kiley, Benson, Marx and Rudolph.

The Twelfth Squad detectives investigating the case were named Sam Kaufman and Jimmy (The Lark) Larkin. Neither of them knew that a pair of detectives uptown were investigating a poisoning case. In fact, neither of them knew Carella or Willis at all. The two Homicide detectives who put in a mandatory appearance at the scene of the crime were named Mastroiano and Manzini. They worked out of Homicide West and knew Monoghan and Monroe—who worked out of Homicide East—only casually.

Monoghan and Monroe had read most of the 87th Squad D.D. reports on the McKennon case, and presumably knew that among the men questioned was an accountant named Basil Hollander. But they had nothing to do with the case down there in the Twelfth; this was a big city. As a matter of fact, they might not have made the connection even if they'd been called in on the case, which they could not have been, the police department guarding its geographic territories as jealously as it guarded its spotless reputation. Anyway, Monoghan and Monroe were very busy cops with a lot of scatological jokes to tell.

It was therefore not until the next day, April 2, that Willis happened to read about the downtown corpse.

He'd been busy until then trying to get a handle on the black Mercedes-Benz that had driven up to Marilyn Hollis's townhouse on the twenty-seventh of March and deposited a great big raccoon on her doorstep. A check with Motor Vehicles had advised Willis that the license plate on the car he'd seen was affixed to a new model Mercedes-Benz registered to the president of a dress firm called Lily Fashions, Inc. with offices on Burke Street downtown. The president's name was Abraham Lilienthal, hence (Motor Vehicles guessed) the Lily Fashions.

A call to Mr. Lilienthal revealed that his car had been stolen on the night of March 23 and to his knowledge had not yet been recovered. Was Willis calling to say it had been found? Willis asked Lilienthal if anyone ever called him Mickey. Lilienthal said, "What? Mickey? You kidding me or something?"

A subsequent call to Auto Theft informed Willis that the car had been snatched outside a homosexual bar in the Quarter, though Lilienthal claimed he had been upstairs in an apartment over the bar, visiting a friend who was as straight as a Methodist minister. At any rate, it was true that the car had not yet been recovered. It was the opinion of the detective at Auto Theft that by now the car had already been inside a chop shop and that its parts were being sold hither and yon across the great length and breadth of these United States.

When Willis informed him that he had spotted the car as recently as last Tuesday night, the Auto Theft detective said, "That was last Tuesday night, pal. This is this Wednesday." Willis nonetheless said the car might have been driven by a man named Mickey who'd been wearing a raccoon coat. The Auto Theft detective said, wryly it seemed to Willis, "Terrific, I'll check our M.O. file for raccoons," and hung up.

So it now appeared that Marilyn's line backer girlfriend was either a car thief or else knew someone who stole cars. Willis was ready to call Marilyn again, not so they could become pals but because it now seemed she had a few more questions to answer. But then he spotted the news item on Basil Hollander, and called the Twelfth Detective Squad instead.

Detective/First Grade James Larkin was a burly man in his mid-fifties, red hair going grey, blue eyes on the thin edge of burn-out. He wore a shoulder harness, baggy blue trousers with brown shoes, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His jacket was on the back of his chair. He seemed relieved that Willis had called him.

"If he's yours, take him," he said into the telephone.

"Well, I don't know if they're related yet," Willis said.

"Even if they ain't related you can have him," Larkin said.

"Was he poisoned?" Willis asked.

"Stabbed," Larkin said.

"When?"

"M.E. estimates sometime Sunday night."

"That would make it…"

"Easter Sunday. We didn't catch it till yesterday. April Fool's Day. Guy next door notified the superintendant about a stink, the super called 911. The front door was unlocked, they walked right in. Found the body in the living room, fully clothed, throat slit."

"What kind of lock on the front door?"

"Spring latch. Mickey Mouse."

"Any security in the building?"

"Nope. What makes you think he's yours?"

"My guy knew a lady your guy also knew."

"This lady carries a knife?"

"I don't know."

"So what do you want to do, Willis? You're welcome to him, believe me. But if this is gonna go ping-ponging back and forth between precincts, we'll be asking for more headaches than we already got."

"How far along on this are you?"

"I told you, we only caught it yesterday. We done the building and neighborhood canvass, and we got a verbal report from the M.E.s office, but no paperwork from them yet. Cause was severance of the carotid artery with a very sharp instrument. Post-mortem interval I already gave you."

"Any latents in the apartment?"

"Just the victim's. No wild prints."

"Any sign of forced entry?"

"Like I told you, it's a Mickey Mouse lock. Could've been loided, but who knows? Maybe he knew the killer, just opened the door for him."

"Any signs of socializing?"

"Like what?"

"Glasses on the coffee table… peanuts in a bowl… whatever."

"You looking for a lady's lipstick stains?"

"I'm looking for a place to hang my hat."

"Ain't we all?" Larkin said. "Looks to me like the guy was reading a book and drinking a cup of coffee when the killer came in. We found the coffee cup on an endtable alongside the couch, the book on the floor."