Ed McBain - Sadie When She Died

That had been three weeks ago, and he had not seen nor called Cindy since, and the pain of the breakup was equaled only by the pain of the bursitis in his right shoulder, despite the fact that he was wearing a copper bracelet on his wrist. The bracelet had been given to him by none other than Meyer Meyer, whom no one would have dreamed of as a superstitious man given to beliefs in ridiculous claims. The bracelet was supposed to begin working in ten days (Well, maybe two weeks, Meyer had said, hedging) and Kling had been wearing it for eleven days now, with no relief for the bursitis, but with a noticeable green stain around his wrist just below the bracelet. Hope springs eternal. Somewhere in his race memory, there lurked a hulking ape-like creature rubbing animal teeth by a fire, praying in grunts for a splendid hunt on the morrow. Somewhere also in his race memory, though not as far back, was the image of Cindy Forrest naked in his arms, and the concomitant fantasy that she would call to say she’d made a terrible mistake and was ready to drop her psychiatrist pal. No Women’s Lib man he, Kling nonetheless felt it perfectly all right for Cindy to take the initiative in re-establishing their relationship; it was she, after all, who had taken the first and final step toward ending it. Meanwhile, his bursitis hurt like hell and the elevator operator was not one of those bright snappy young men on the way up (Kling winced; he hated puns even when he made them himself), but rather a stupid clod who had difficulty remembering his own name. Kling went over the same tired ground yet another time.

“Do you know Mr. Fletcher by sight?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah,” the elevator operator said.

“What does he look like?”

“Oh, you know, he calls me Max.”

“Yes, Max, but . . .”

“ ‘Hello, Max,’ he says, ‘How are you, Max?’ I say, ‘Hello there, Mr. Fletcher, nice day today, huh?’ ”

“Could you describe him for me, please?”

“He’s nice and handsome.”

“What color are his eyes?”

“Brown? Blue? Something like that.”

“How tall is he?”

“Tall.”

“Taller than you?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Taller than me?”’

“Oh, no. About the same. Mr. Fletcher is about the same.”

“What color hair does he have?”

“White.”

“White? Do you mean gray?”

“White, gray, something like that.”

“Which was it, Max, would you remember?”

“Oh, something like that. Ask Phil. He knows. He’s good on times and things like that.”

Phil was the doorman. He was very good on times and things like that. He was also a garrulous lonely old man who welcomed the opportunity to be in a cops-and-robbers documentary film. Kling could not disabuse Phil of the notion that this was a real investigation; there was a dead lady upstairs and someone had brought about her present condition, and it was the desire of the police to bring that person to justice, ta-ra.

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Phil said, “terrible the way things are getting in this city, ain’t it? Even when I was a kid, things wasn’t this terrible. I was born over on the South Side, you know, in a neighborhood where if you wore shoes you were considered a sissy. We were all the time fighting with the wop gangs, you know? We used to drop things down on them from the rooftops. Bricks, eggs, scrap iron, a toaster one time—yeah, I swear to God, we once threw my mother’s old toaster off the roof, bang, it hit one of them wops right on the head, bad place to hit a wop, of course, never does him no damage there. What I’m saying, though, is it never was so bad like it is now. Even when we were beating up the wops all the time, and them vice versa, it was fun, you know what I mean? I mean, it was fun in those days. Nowadays, what happens? Nowadays, you step in the elevator, there’s some crazy dope fiend, he shoves a gun under your nose and says he’ll blow your head off it you don’t give him all your money. That happened to Dr. Haskins, you think I’m kidding? He’s coming home three o’clock in the morning, he goes in the elevator and Max is out taking a leak, so it’s on self-service. Only there’s a guy in the elevator, God knows how he even got in the building, probably came down from the roof, they jump rooftops like mountain goats, them dope fiends, and he sticks the gun right up under Dr. Haskins’ nose, right here, right pointing up his nostrils, for Christ’s sake, and he says, Give me all your money and also whatever dope you got in that bag. So Dr. Haskins figures What the hell, I’m going to get killed here for a lousy forty dollars and two vials of cocaine, here take it, good riddance. So he gives the guy what he wants, and you know what the guy does, anyway? He beats up Dr. Haskins. They had to take him to the hospital with seven stitches, the son of a bitch split his forehead open with the butt of the pistol, he pistol-whipped him, you know? What kind of thing is that, huh? This city stinks, and especially this neighborhood. I can remember this neighborhood when you could come home three, four, five, even six o’clock in the morning, who cared what time you came home; you could be wearing a tuxedo and a mink coat, who cared what you were wearing, your jewels, your diamond cuff links, nobody bothered you. Try that today. Try walking down the street after dark without a Doberman pinscher on a leash, see how far you get. They smell you coming, these dope fiends, they leap out at you from doorways. We had a lot of burglaries in this building, all dope fiends. They come down from the roof, you know? We must’ve fixed that lock on the roof door a hundred times, what difference does it make? They’re all experts, as soon as we fix it, boom , it’s busted open again. Or they come up the fire escapes, who can stop them? Next thing you know, they’re in some apartment stealing the whole place, you’re lucky if they leave your false teeth in the glass. I don’t know what this city’s coming to, I swear to God. It’s disgraceful.”

“What about Mr. Fletcher?” Kling asked.

“What about him? He’s a decent man, a lawyer. He comes home, and what does he find? He finds his wife dead on the floor, probably killed by some crazy dope fiend. Is that a way to live? Who needs it? You can’t even go in your own bedroom without somebody jumping on you? What kind of thing is that?”

“When did Mr. Fletcher come home tonight?”

“About ten-thirty,” Phil said.

“Are you sure of the time?”

“Positive. You know how I remember? There’s Mrs. Horowitz, she lives in 12C, she either doesn’t have an alarm clock, or else she doesn’t know how to set the alarm since her husband passed away two years ago. So every night she calls down to ask me the correct time, and to say would the day-man please call her at such and such a time in the morning, to wake her up. This ain’t a hotel, but what the hell, an old woman asks a simple favor, you’re supposed to refuse it? Besides, she’s very generous at Christmas, which ain’t too far away, huh? So tonight, she calls down and says, ‘What’s the correct time, Phil?’ and I look at my watch and tell her it’s ten-thirty, and just then Mr. Fletcher pulls up in a taxicab. Mrs. Horowitz says will I please ask the day-man to wake her up at seven-thirty, and I tell her I will and then go to the curb to carry Mr. Fletcher’s bag in. That’s how I remember exactly what time it was.”

“Did Mr. Fletcher go directly upstairs?”

“Directly,” Phil said. “Why? Where would he go? For a walk in this neighborhood at ten-thirty in the night? That’s like taking a walk off a gangplank.”

“Well, thanks a lot,” Kling said.

“Don’t mention it,” Phil said. “They shot another movie around here one time.”