Ed Mcbain - Fuzz

“ Meyer Meyer ,” Meyer said.

“Of course, Meyer Meyer , I’ll look into it immediately. I’ll get back to you, I promise. Bernice,” he shouted, “make a note to get back to Meyer!”

“When?” Meyer said.

That was at 10:39.

At five minutes to eleven, a tall blond man wearing a hearing aid and carrying a cardboard carton walked into the Hale Street Post Office downtown. He went directly to the counter, hefted the carton onto it, and shoved it across to the mail clerk. There were a hundred sealed and stamped envelopes in the carton.

“These all going to the city?” the clerk asked.

“Yes,” the deaf man replied.

“First class?”

“Yes.”

“All got stamps?”

“Every one of them.”

“Right,” the clerk said, and turned the carton over, dumping the envelopes onto the long table behind him. The deaf man waited. At eleven A.M., the mail clerk began running the envelopes through the cancellation machine.

The deaf man went back to the apartment, where Rochelle met him at the door.

“Did you mail off your crap?” she asked.

“I mailed it,” the deaf man said, and grinned.

John the Tailor wasn’t having any of it.

“I no wanna cops in my shop,” he said flatly and unequivocally and in somewhat fractured English.

Carella patiently explained, in English, that the police had definite knowledge of a planned holdup to take place on Friday night at eight o’clock but that it was the lieutenant’s idea to plant two men in the rear of the shop starting tonight in case the thieves changed their minds and decided to strike earlier. He assured John the Tailor that they would unobtrusively take up positions behind the hanging curtain that divided the front of the shop from the rear, out of his way, quiet as mice, and would move into action only if and when the thieves struck.

“ Lei è pazzo! ” John the Tailor said in Italian, meaning he thought Carella was crazy. Whereupon Carella switched to speaking Italian, which he had learned as a boy and which he didn’t get much chance to practice these days except when he was dealing with people like the man who had come in to complain about the garbage in his car, or people like John the Tailor, who was suddenly very impressed with the fact that Carella, like himself, was Italian.

John the Tailor had once written a letter to a very popular television show, complaining that too many of the Italians on that show were crooks. He had seventy-four people in his immediate family, all of them living here in the United States, in this city, for most of their lives, and none of them were criminals, all of them were honest, hard-working people. So why should the television make it seem that all Italians were thieves? He had received a letter written by some programming assistant, explaining that not all the criminals on the show were Italians, some of them were Jews and Irish, too. This had not mollified John the Tailor, since he was quite intelligent and capable of understanding the basic difference between the two statements Not all Italians are criminals and Not all criminals are Italians . So it was very plesant to have an Italian cop in his shop, even if it meant having to put up with strangers in the back behind the curtain. John the Tailor did not like strangers, even if they were Italian cops. Besides, the other stranger, the short one, definitely was not Italian, God knew what he was!

The tailor shop did a very thriving business, though Carella doubted it brought in anything near four hundred dollars a week, which was apparently La Bresca’s and Calucci’s estimate of the take. He wondered why either of the two men would be willing to risk a

minimum of ten and a maximum of thirty years in prison, the penalty for first-degree robbery, when all they could hope to gain for their efforts was four hundred dollars. Even granting them the minimum sentence, and assuming they’d be out on parole in three-and-a-half, that came to about a hundred and fifteen dollars a year, meager wages for any occupation.

He would never understand the criminal mind.

He could not, for example, understand the deaf man at all.

There seemed to be something absolutely lunatic about the enormous risk he had taken, a gamble pitting fifty thousand dollars against possible life imprisonment. Now surely a man of his intelligence and capabilities must have known that the city wasn’t going to reach into its treasury and plunk down fifty thousand dollars solely because someone threatened murder. The odds against such a payoff were staggering, and any shrewd manipulator of odds would have realized this. The deaf man, then, had not expected to be paid, he had wanted to kill the deputy mayor, as he had earlier killed the parks commissioner. But why? Whatever else the deaf man happened to be, Carella did not figure him for a thrill killer. No, he was a hardheaded businessman taking a calculated risk. And businessmen don’t take risks unless there’s at least some hope of a payoff. The deaf man had asked for five grand at first, and been refused, and committed murder. He had next asked for fifty grand, knowing full well he’d be refused again, and had again committed murder. He had then advised the newspapers of his unsuccessful extortion attempts, and had since remained silent.

So where was the payoff?

It was coming, baby, of that Carella was sure.

In the meantime, he sat in the back of John the Tailor’s shop and wondered how much a good pressing machine operator earned.

Mr. Carl Wahler

1121 Marshall Avenue

Isola

Dear Mr. Wahler:

If you treat this letter as a joke, you will die.

These are the facts. Read them carefully. They can save your life.

1) Parks Commissioner Cowper ignored a warning and was killed.

2) Deputy Mayor Scanlon ignored a warning and was killed.

3) JMV is next. He will be killed this Friday night.

What does all this have to do with you?

1) This is your warning. It is your only warning. There will be no further warnings. Remember that.

2) You are to withdraw five thousand dollars in small, unmarked bills from your account.

3) You will be contacted by telephone sometime within the next week. The man you speak to will tell you how and when and where the money is to be delivered.

4) If you fail to meet this demand, you too will be killed. Without warning.

Do not entertain false hopes!

The police could not save Cowper or Scanlon, although sufficiently forewarned. They will not be able to save JMV, either. What chance will you have unless you pay? What chance will you have when we strike without warning?

Get the money. You will hear from us again. Soon.

The letters were delivered to a hundred homes on Thursday. The deaf man was very cheerful that morning. He went whistling about his apartment, contemplating his scheme again and again, savoring its more refined aspects, relishing the thought that one hundred very wealthy individuals would suddenly be struck with panic come Saturday morning.

By five o’clock tonight, he could reasonably assume that most of the men receiving his letter would have read it and formed at least some tentative opinion about it. He fully expected some of them to glance cursorily at it, crumple it into a ball, and immediately throw it into the garbage. He also expected a handful, the paranoid fringe, to call the police at once, or perhaps even visit their local precinct, letter in hand, indignantly demanding protection. That part of his plan was particularly beautiful, he felt. The mayor was being warned, yes, but oh so indirectly. He would learn about the threat on his life only because some frightened citizens would notify the police.