Ed McBain - Eight Black Horses

Elizabeth Turner had been found naked in the park across the street.

Elizabeth Turner had worked for a bank in Los Angeles, had worked for another bank in this city, and had left employment here to work for yet another bank in Washington, D.C.

The Deaf Man’s specialty was banks.

Something was in the wind.

And it smelled mightily of the Deaf Man.

Something was in the mail as well, and it arrived in the squadroom that Friday afternoon, while Carella was on the phone with the manager at the main branch of Union Savings and Trust in Washington.

When Carella saw the white envelope in Sergeant Murchison’s hand, he almost lost track of the conversation. Murchison was wearing a long-sleeved blue woolen sweater over his uniform shirt, a sure sign that Indian summer was gone. Outside the squadroom windows the sky was gray and a sharp wind was blowing. The forecasters had promised rain. Shitty November was here at last. And so was another envelope from the Deaf Man, if that’s what it was. From the look of Murchison’s face, that’s what it was.

‘... clash of personalities, you might say.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Carella said. ‘What did you... ?’

‘I said you might describe the differences between Miss Turner and Mrs. Hatchett as a clash of personalities.’

‘And Mrs. Hatchett, as I understand it, is a manager with Union Savings and Trust?’

‘Yes, at our Sixteenth Street branch.’

‘And, as such, was Miss Turner’s immediate superior?’

‘Exactly.’

Murchison was waving the white envelope in Carella’s face. Carella covered the mouthpiece, said, ‘Thanks, Dave,’ and uncovered the mouthpiece again.

‘It’s him again,’ Murchison whispered.

Carella nodded sourly. His name was staring up at him from the envelope. Why me ? he wondered.

‘I recognize the typewriter,’ Murchison whispered.

Carella nodded again. Murchison kept hanging around, curious about what was in the envelope. Into the phone Carella said, ‘What sort of personality clash was this, Mr. Randolph?’

‘Well, Miss Turner was a very gentle person, you know, soft-spoken, easygoing, very ... well ... different in every way from Mrs. Hatchett. Mrs. Hatchett is ... uh ... aggressive, shall we say? Competitive? Abrasive? Sharp-edged? Appropriately named, shall we say?’

Carella was sure he detected a smile in Randolph’s voice.

‘In any event,’ Randolph said, ‘it became apparent almost immediately that Miss Turner and she would not get along. It was merely a matter of time before the tension between them achieved its full potential, that’s all.’

‘How long did it take?’

‘Well, longer than most. Miss Turner gave us notice in April.’

‘Left the job in April?’

‘No. Told us she was quitting. Gave us two weeks’ notice in April.’

‘And left when?’

‘At the beginning of May.’

‘Then she was there in Washington for three months.’

‘Yes. Well, a little less actually. She began work here on the seventh of February. Actually it was something of a record. We’ve had nine assistant managers working under Mrs. Hatchett in the past eighteen months.’

‘She sounds like a dreamboat, your Mrs. Hatchett.’

‘She’s the daughter-in-law of one of our board directors.’

‘Oh,’ Carella said.

‘Yes,’ Randolph said drily.

‘And that was the only reason Elizabeth Turner left the job? This personality clash with Mrs. Hatchett?’

‘Well, Mr. Carella, I’m afraid you’d have to know Mrs. Hatchett in order to appreciate the full horror of a personality clash with her.’

‘I see.’

‘Yes,’ Randolph said, again drily.

‘Thank you very much, Mr. Randolph,’ Carella said. ‘I appreciate your time.’

‘Not at all,’ Randolph said, and hung up.

Carella replaced the receiver on its cradle and looked at the white envelope. Murchison was still standing by his desk.

‘So open it,’ Murchison said. ‘It ain’t a bomb.’

‘How do you know?’ Carella said, and nudged the envelope with his pencil. It suddenly occurred in him that the Deaf Man was something of a sideshow for the cops of the Eight-Seven, something that broke the monotony of routine. The Deaf Man arrived, and suddenly the circus was back in town. With a small shock of recognition he realized that he himself was not immune to the sense of excitement the Deaf Man promised. Almost angrily he picked up the envelope and tore off the end on its long side.

Murchison was right. It wasn’t a bomb. Instead, it was:

And suddenly it began raining outside.

* * * *

The rain lashed the windows of the bar on Jefferson Avenue, some three and a half miles southwest of the station house. The tall blond man with the hearing aid in his right ear had just told Naomi he was a cop. A police detective, no less. She didn’t know the police department was hiring deaf people nowadays. Antidiscrimination laws, she supposed. They allowed you to hire anybody. Next you’d have detectives who were midgets. Not that a hearing aid necessarily meant you were deaf. Not stone cold deaf anyway. Still she guessed any degree of hearing loss could be considered an infirmity, and she was far too polite to ask him how a man wearing a hearing aid had passed the physical examinations she supposed the police department required. Some people were sensitive about such things.

He was good-looking.

For a cop.

‘So what’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Steve,’ he said.

‘Steve what?’

‘Carella,’ he said. ‘Steve Carella.’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘Italian?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Me too,’ Naomi said. ‘Half.’

‘What’s the other half?’

‘Wildcat,’ she said, and grinned, and then lifted her glass. She was drinking C.C. and soda, which she thought was sophisticated. She looked up at him seductively over the rim of her glass, which she had learned to do from one of her women’s magazines, where she had also learned how to have multiple orgasms, occasionally.

Actually she was half-Italian and half-Jewish, which she guessed accounted for the black hair and blue eyes. The tip-tilted nose was Irish, not that her parents could claim any credit for that. The nose’s true father was Dr. Stanley Horowitz, who had done the job for her three years ago, when she was twenty-two years old. She’d asked him at the time if he didn’t think she should get a little something done to her boobs as well, but he’d smiled and said she didn’t need any help in that department, which she supposed was true.

She was wearing a low-cut blue nylon blouse that showed her breasts to good advantage and also echoed the color of her eyes. She noticed that the deaf man’s eyes—what’d he say his name was?—kept wandering down to the front of her blouse, though occasionally he checked out her legs, too. She had good legs. That’s why she was wearing very high-heeled, ankle-strapped shoes, to emphasize the curve of the leg. Lifted the ass, too, the high heels did, though you couldn’t tell that when she was sitting. Dark blue shoes and smoky blue nylons. Sexy. She felt sexy. Her legs were crossed now, her navy blue skirt riding up over one knee.

‘I’m sorry, what was your name again?’ she asked.

‘Steve Carella,’ he said.

‘I got so carried away with your being Italian’ she said, rolling her eyes, ‘that I...’

‘A lot of people forget Italian names,’ he said.

‘Well, I certainly shouldn’t,’ Naomi said. ‘My mother’s maiden name was Giamboglio.’