Ed McBain: Poison

"What was the poison?" Carella asked.

"Nicotine," Blaney said.

Across the room, Meyer was lighting a cigarette even before he took off his hat and coat.

"Nicotine?" Carella said.

"Yeah," Blaney said. He sounded pleased. Carella could visualize him smiling. "Deadly poison," he said. "Couldn't have been a very pleasant death, either. Hot burning sensation in the upper digestive tract from the mouth to the stomach. Salivation, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, pain in the abdomen. Faintness, prostration, falling blood pressure, convulsions and then respiratory paralysis. Makes you want to quit smoking, doesn't it?"

"I don't smoke," Carella said, and looked across the room to where Meyer was puffing like a locomotive. "What's the fatal dose?"

"Depends on your source. Forty milligrams is usually cited as the minimum."

"How fast does it work?"

"The only thing faster is hydrocyanic acid."

"And how fast is that?"

"Cyanide can kill you in minutes. Seconds sometimes."

"And nicotine?"

"Convulsions within seconds, death within minutes. You looking for a post-mortem interval?"

"It would help."

"Everything else considered—body heat, lividity, stomach contents and so on—I'd say you have a relatively fresh corpse here."

"How fresh?"

"Sometime early this morning."

"How early?"

"He died at seven-twenty-four A.M.," Blaney said. "Actually, seven-twenty-four and thirty-six seconds."

For a moment, Carella thought he was serious.

"Give me a break, willya?" Blaney said. "Sometime early this morning is as far as I'll go."

"And it was taken by mouth, huh?"

"No question."

"At least forty milligrams."

"Forty would do it. Sixty would do it even better. Ninety would be better yet."

"What's forty milligrams?" Carella asked. "Like a tea-spoonful?"

"Are you kidding? We're talking about a taste ."

"That powerful, huh?"

"It's a class-6 drug. Supertoxic."

"Well, thanks," Carella said, "I appreciate this. When will I have the paperwork?"

"Will you need a dental chart on this one? I understand you already have a positive ID."

"It wouldn't hurt."

"Give me a couple of days, okay? You're not desperate for the paper, are you?"

"Not if I can go with nicotine."

"You've got my word," Blaney said.

"Okay, thanks again."

"Talk to you," Blaney said,

Carella put the receiver back on the cradle. Cotton Hawes was just coming into the squadroom. His face was red from the cold outside. Together with his red hair, it gave him a fiery appearance rescued only by the white streak of hair over his right temple. He glanced immediately at the clock and mumbled, "Sorry I'm late."

Willis came over to Carella's desk.

"What've we got?" he asked.

"Nicotine," Carella said.

"Don't you start on me, okay?" Meyer said, walking over. "That's all I hear from Sarah day and night. Nicotine, nicotine, nicotine."

"We caught a homicide this morning," Carella said. "Guy was poisoned with nicotine."

"Lay off, willya?" Meyer said.

"You ought to quit," Hawes said.

"I did quit. Five times already."

"We've got a twenty-four-hour watch on a phone in the Clerical Office," Carella said. "Don't anybody use it."

"What do you mean?" Hawes asked.

"Just don't use the phone in there," Willis said.

"What'd the guy do?" Meyer asked. "Eat some cigar butts."

From the slatted rail divider, Miscolo said, "We got a lady on your phone."

By the time they got down the hall to the Clerical Office, she was gone.

"I told her to hold on," Miscolo said. "I told her this was the police and she should hold on."

"Try it again," Willis said.

Carella hit the redial button. The phone rang once, twice, again, again, again… "Hello?"

A woman's voice. The same as the one on the tape. "This is Detective Steve Carella, Eighty-seventh Squad," Carella said. "Is this Marilyn?"

"Listen, what the hell…?"

"I'm investigating…"

"Get lost," the woman said, and hung up. Carella looked at the receiver.

"Hung up again," he said, and immediately hit the redial button.

The moment the woman answered the phone, she said, "Stop bothering me, will you?"

"Marilyn," Carella said, "I'm a police detective, my shield number is 714-5632…"

"What'd you do, creep, get my name off the machine?"

"Yes, I did," Carella said. "I work out of the Eighty-seventh Precinct, and this is a legitimate call. I'm using a redial button…"

"A what ?"

"Do you know a man named Jerome Edward McKennon?"

There was a silence on the line.

"Miss?"

"What'd you say your name was?"

"Detective Stephen Louis Carella."

Another silence.

"Has Jerry done something?"

"Do you know him?" Carella said.

"Yes. What happened, did he…?"

"Can you tell me your full name, please?"

"Marilyn Hollis."

"May I have your address, please?"

"Why?"

"We'd like to talk to you, Miss Hollis."

"What about?"

"Are you at home now?"

"Yes, I am. Listen, what…?"

"And the address there?"

"1211 Harborside. Can you tell me what the hell…?"

"We'll be there in ten minutes," Carella said. "Wait for us."

Harborside Lane was within the confines of the 87th Precinct, not quite as desirable as Silvermine Oval, but a very good neighborhood anyway—at least when one considered the rest of the precinct territory. The Oval, as it was familiarly called, lay in the center of the Silvermine Road complex like an egg in a nest, close to Silvermine Park and the luxurious apartments facing the River Harb and the next state. Striking south from there, it was all downhill, literally and figuratively.

The Stem was a gaudy stretch of real estate brimming with retail stores and restaurants, movie theaters and, of late, massage parlors. South of that was Ainsley Avenue and then Culver, both seeming evidence of the success of the Melting Pot theory in that the population on these two wide thoroughfares was composed of old-line Jews, Irish and Italians who refused to budge under the onslaught of blacks and Puerto Ricans. The precinct territory became increasingly more seedy as it sprawled southward into the short stretch of Mason Avenue where the hookers plied their trade, indignant over the fact that massage parlors were sprouting to the north, thereby encroaching on their exclusive right to the world's oldest profession.

Harborside Lane was much farther uptown than Silvermine Road, but adjacent to the River Harb nonetheless and affording an equally splendid view of the high-rise buildings springing up along the shore in the next state. A lane it wasn't. It was, instead, as wide as any other city street (as opposed to its avenues) and lined with what had once been luxurious brownstones, now covered with graffiti and occupied by upward-striving yuppies.

In this city, the graffiti looked as if it were scrawled in Cyrillic letters. One might have been in Russia—except that in Russia no one wrote on the walls of buildings unless he wanted a vacation in Siberia. The purveyors of graffiti called themselves "writers." What they wrote was a mystery in that it was illegible and therefore unintelligible. A recent law made it mandatory for any retail merchant to keep under lock and key his spray cans of paint. To date, there had been no surveys made as to the law's efficacy. In the meantime, the writers continued writing, and no one understood what they wrote, but perhaps they were hoping to be considered by the Nobel Prize Committee.

1211 Harborside Lane was in a row of brownstones adorned with inaccessible scribblings. A wrought iron gate to the right of the building guarded the entrance to a driveway that led to a garage set some fifty feet back from the pavement; the gate was padlocked. There were wrought iron grilles on the ground-floor and first-floor windows, and razor wire on the roof overhanging the third floor. There was only one name in the directory set beside the bell buttons: M. Hollis. Apparently she occupied all three floors of the building. Willis rang the bell.