Ed McBain - Like Love

“Do you know his name?”

“Yeah, wait a minute. Andy… ? no, wait a minute… Angelo… ? something like that, just a minute. Amos! Amos, that’s it. Amos Barlow. Yeah.”

“All right, Mr. Hassler, what was Tommy Barlow doing in your apartment?”

Hassler grinned lewdly. “Well, like what do you think he was doing?”

“I meant…”

“They found him with a naked broad, what do you think he was doing?”

“I meant how’d he happen to be there, Mr. Hassler?”

“Oh. He asked me for the key. He knew I was going out of town, so he asked me if he could use the place. So I said sure. Why not? Nothing wrong with that.”

“Did you know he was going there with a married woman?”

“Nope.”

“Did you know he was going there with a woman ?”

“I figured.”

“Did he tell you as much?”

“Nope. But why else would he want the key?”

“Would you say he was a good friend of yours, Mr, Hassler?”

“Yeah, pretty good. We been bowling together a couple of times. And also, he helps me with my movies.”

“Your movies?”

“Yeah, I’m a movie nut. You know, where I work, we don’t process movie film. That’s all done by Kodak and Technicolor and like that. We just develop and print stills, you know. Black and white, color, but no movies.

Anyway, I got this urge to make movies, you see? So I’m always shooting pictures and then I edit them and splice them and Tommy used to help me sometimes. I got this Japanese camera, you see…”

“Help you with what ? The picture-taking or the editing?”

“That, and the acting, too. I’ve got a reel almost three hundred feet long that’s practically all Tommy. You should see some of my stuff. I’m pretty good. That’s why this place knocked me on my ass when I walked in here. What color! What atmosphere! Mar -velous! Just mar -velous!” Hassler paused. “You think I could come in here and take some pictures sometime?”

“I doubt it,” Carella said.

“Yeah, what a shame,” Hassler said. “Can you picture that guy’s arm bleeding in color? Boy!”

“Can we get back to Tommy for a minute, Mr. Barlow?”

“Oh, sure. Sure. Listen, I’m sorry if I got off the track. But I’m a nut on movies, you know? I got the bug, you know?”

“Sure, we know,” Hawes said. “Tell us, Mr. Hassler, did Tommy seem despondent or depressed or… ?”

“Tommy? Who, Tommy?” Hassler burst out laughing. “This is the original good-time kid. Always laughing, always happy.”

“When he asked you for the key, did he seem sad?”

“I just told you. He was always laughing.”

“Yes, but when he asked you for the key…”

“He asked me, wait a minute, it musta been three days ago. Because he knew I had to go out of town, you see. The reason I had to go out of town is I’ve got this old aunt who lives upstate and I’m hoping someday when she drops dead she’ll leave me her house. She hasn’t been feeling too good, and I got a cousin who’s got his eye on that house, too, so I figured I better get up there and hold her hand a little before she leaves it to him, you know? So I went up there yesterday, took the day off. Today’s Saturday, right?”

“That’s right.”

“You guys work on Saturdays?”

“We try to, Mr. Hassler,” Carella said. “Can we get back to Tommy for a minute?”

“Oh, sure. Sure. Listen, I’m sorry if I got off the track. But that house is important to me, you know? Not that I want the old lady to drop dead or anything, but I sure would like to get my hands on that house. It’s a big old place, you know? With lilacs all around…”

“About Tommy,” Carella cut in. “As I understand it, when he asked you for the key, he seemed his usual self, is that right? Happy, laughing?”

“That’s right.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Thursday. At work.”

“Did he take Friday off, too?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“We were just wondering what time he and the girl met. He didn’t mention anything about that, did he?”

“You’d have to check with the boss, I guess. See whether or not Tommy was off on Friday. That’s what I’d do if I was you.”

“Thanks,” Carella said.

“She was married, huh? The broad?”

“Yes.”

“Tough break. Her being married, I mean, I got a rule, you know? I never fool around with married women. The way I figure it, there’s plenty of lonely single girls in this city who’re just ready to…”

“Thanks a lot, Mr. Hassler. Where we reach you if we need you?”

“At the apartment, where do you think?”

“You’re going to be staying there?” Hawes asked incredulously.

“Sure. The bedroom’s in fine shape. You’d never even know anything happened. The living room’s not too bad, either. That’s where I keep all my film. Man, if I’da had it stored in the kitchen, brother!”

“Well, thanks again, Mr. Hassler.”

“Sure, anytime,” Hassler said. He shook hands with both detectives, waved at Meyer Meyer, who acknowledged the wave with a sour nod of his head, and then walked out of the squadroom and down the corridor.

“What’s he doing?” Meyer asked. “Running for mayor?”

“We could use a mayor in this city,” Kling answered.

“What do you think?” Carella asked Hawes.

“One thing,” Hawes said. “If Tommy Barlow was planning to commit suicide, why would he use a friend’s apartment? People don’t go around causing trouble for their friends, especially when they’re ready to take the pipe.”

“Right,” Carella said. “And since when do potential suicides go around happy and laughing?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t sound as if Tommy was planning a funeral.”

“No,” Hawes said. “It sounds as if he was planning a party.”

* * * *

It would have been very simple to call the damn thing a suicide and have done with it. Neither Carella nor Hawes were particularly anxious to whip a dead horse, and there was certainly enough evidence around to indicate that Tommy Barlow and Irene Thayer had done the Endsville bit. There was, after all, a suicide note; there was, after all, the presence of enough illuminating gas to have caused an explosion. In addition, there were two empty whisky bottles in the room, and the nearly naked condition of the bodies seemed to strongly indicate this was a true love pact, the doomed lovers perhaps indulging themselves in a final climactic embrace before the gas rendered them unconscious and then dead. All these things in combination made it very easy to reach a conclusion. And the conclusion, of course, should have been suicide.

Carella and Hawes, though, were fairly conscientious cops who had learned through years of experience that every case has a feel to it. This “feel” is something intuitive, and impervious to either logic or reasoning. It is something close to insight, something close to total identification with victim and killer alike. When it comes, you listen to it. You can find whisky bottles on the floor, and clothing stacked in neat little piles, and a typewritten suicide note, and an apartment full of illuminating gas; you can add up all these pieces of evidence and come up with an obvious suicide, and the feel tells you it ain’t. It’s as simple as that.

It was equally simple for the toxicologist attached to the Chief Medical Examiner’s office to arrive at his conclusions. Milt Anderson, Ph.D., was not a lazy man, nor was he being particularly negligent. He was, in all fairness, a man who had been practicing legal toxicology for more than thirty years, and who was a professor of forensic toxicology at one of the city’s finest universities. He knew his work well, and he performed it with accuracy and dispatch. The detectives wanted to know only three things: