Ed McBain: Eight Black Horses

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do then?’

‘Well, I... I suppose I should have gone directly to the police, but I ... you see, I was somewhat confused. The possibility existed that she’d met someone, some man, and had moved in with him. That was a possibility.’ She paused. ‘My sister wasn’t gay,’ she said, and reached for her package of cigarettes again, and then changed her mind about lighting one.

‘When did you contact the police?’ Brown asked.

‘On Monday morning.’

Carella looked at his pocket calendar.

‘October thirty-first,’ he said.

‘Yes. Halloween,’ Inge said. ‘They told me they’d turn it over to Missing Persons and let me know if anything resulted. I gave them an old photo I had ... I still carried it in my wallet... and apparently Detective Lipman was able to match that against the ... the picture you just showed me. He called me yesterday. I went down there and ... and made identification.’

The room was silent.

‘Miss Turner,’ Carella said, ‘we realize you hadn’t seen your sister in a long time...’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘... and Los Angeles is a long way from here. But ... would you have heard anything over the years ... anything at all ... from your friend or anyone else ... about any enemies your sister may have made in this city...’

‘No.’

‘... any threatening telephone calls or letters she may have...’

‘No.’

‘... any involvement with criminals or...’

‘No.’

‘... people engaged, even tangentially, in criminal activities?’

‘No.’

‘Would you know if she owed money to anyone?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She wasn’t doing drugs, was she?’ Brown asked.

The question nowadays was almost mandatory.

‘Not that I know of,’ Inge said. ‘In fact...’

She stopped herself mid-sentence.

‘Yes?’ Carella said.

‘Well, I was only going to say ... well, in fact, that was one of the things she objected to.’

‘What was that, Miss Turner?’

‘My friends and I did a few lines every now and then.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s common in Los Angeles.’

‘But your sister never, to your knowledge...’

‘Not in L.A., no. I don’t know what she might have got into once she came here.’ She paused, and then said, ‘L.A. is civilized.’

Neither of the detectives said anything.

‘You see,’ Inge said, ‘this whole thing is so unbelievable. I mean, you’d have to have known Lizzie to realize that... that dying this way, dying a violent death, someone shooting her ... well, it’s unimaginable. She was a very quiet, private sort of person. My friends used to speculate on whether she’d ever even been kissed, do you know what I’m saying? So when you ... when you ... when the mind tries to associate Lizzie, sweet goddamn innocent Lizzie with a ... with a gun, with someone holding a gun to the back of her head and shooting her ... it’s ... I mean, the mind can’t possibly make that connection, it can’t make that quantum leap.’

She looked at her hands. She had very beautiful hands, Carella noticed.

‘Detective Lipman said ... he’d read some sort of report that was sent to him ... he said she had to have been on her knees when she was shot. The angle, the trajectory, whatever the hell, indicated she’d been on her knees, with ... with ... with the ... person who ... who shot her standing behind her. Lizzie on her knees.’

She shook her head.

‘I can’t believe this has happened,’ she said, and reached into her handbag for another cigarette.

She was smoking again when the detectives left the room.

* * * *

‘His specialty is banks,’ Carella said.

‘Just what I was thinking,’ Brown said.

They were driving crosstown and downtown to Elizabeth Turner’s apartment and they were talking about the Deaf Man.

‘That’s if you consider two out of three a specialty,’ Carella said.

He was remembering that once, and only once, had the Deaf Man’s attempts at misdirection been designed to conceal and simultaneously reveal an elaborate extortion scheme. On the other two occasions it had been banks. Tell the police beforehand, but not really, what you’re planning to do, help them dope it out, in fact, and then do something different but almost the same—it all got terribly confusing when the Deaf Man put in an appearance.

Eight black horses, five walkie-talkies, and one white lady who probably had nothing whatever to do with the Deaf Man, except for the fact that she had worked in a bank.

‘Banks have security officers, you know,’ Brown said.

‘Yeah,’ Carella said.

‘And they carry walkie-talkies, don’t they?’

‘I don’t know. Do they?’

‘I guess they do,’ Brown said. ‘Do you think there might be a bank someplace in this city that’s got five security guards carrying walkie-talkies?’

‘I don’t know,’ Carella said.

‘Five walkie-talkies, you know?’ Brown said. ‘And she worked in a bank.’

‘The only real thing we’ve got...’

‘ If it’s a connection.’

‘Which it probably isn’t.’

‘That’s the trouble with the Deaf Man,’ Carella said.

‘He drives you crazy,’ Brown said.

‘What’s that address again?’

‘Eight-oh-four.’

‘Where are we now?’

‘Eight-twenty.’

‘Just ahead then, huh?’

‘With the green canopy,’ Brown said.

Carella parked the car at the curb in front of the building and then threw down the visor on the driver’s side. A sign was attached to it with rubber hands. Visible through the windshield, it advised any overzealous foot patrolman that the guys who’d parked the car here were on the job. The city’s seal and the words isola p.d. printed on the sign were presumably insurance against a parking ticket. The sign didn’t always work. Only recently they had busted a cocaine dealer who’d stolen an identical sign from a car driven by two detectives from the Eight-One. In this city it was sometimes difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

It was difficult, too, to tell a good building from a bad building.

Usually a building with an awning out front indicated that there would be a doorman or some other sort of security. There was neither here. They found the superintendent’s apartment on the street level floor, identified themselves, and asked him to unlock the door to Elizabeth Anne Turner’s apartment. On the way up in the elevator Brown asked him if she’d lived here alone.

‘Yep,’ he said.

‘Sure about that?’ Carella said.

‘Yep,’ the super said.

‘No girlfriend living with her?’

‘Nope.’

‘No boyfriend?’

‘Nope.’

‘No roommate at all, right?’

‘Right.’

‘When’d you see her last?’

‘Beginning of October, musta been.’

‘Going out or coming in?’

‘Going out.’

‘Alone?’

‘Alone.’

‘Carrying anything?’

‘Just her handbag.’

‘What time was this?’

‘In the morning sometime. I figured she was on her way to work.’

‘And you didn’t see her again after that?’

‘Nope. But I don’t keep an eye out twenty-four hours a day, you know.’

There is a feel to an apartment that has been lived in.

Even the apartment of a recent homicide victim can tell you at once whether anyone had been living there. There was no such sense of habitation in Elizabeth Turner’s apartment.

The windows were closed tight and locked—not unusual for this city, even if someone were just going downstairs for a ten-minute stroll. But the air was still and stale, a certain indication that the windows hadn’t been opened for quite some time. Well, after all, Elizabeth Turner had been found dead eight days ago, and perhaps that was a long enough time for an apartment to have gone stale.