Ed Mcbain: The Heckler

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Copyright © 1960 by Ed McBain

Copyright renewed © 1988 by Evan Hunter

Afterword copyright © 2003 by Hui Corp.

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ISBN: 0-7434-6694-2

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This is for my father-in-law

Harry Melnick—

who inspired it

The city in these pages is imaginary.

The people, the places are all

fictitious. Only the police routine is based

on established investigatory technique.

SHE CAME INlike a lady, that April.

The poet may have been right, but there really wasn’t a trace of cruelty about her this year. She was a delicate thing who walked into the city with the wide-eyed innocence of a maiden, and you wanted to hold her in your arms because she seemed alone and frightened in this geometric maze of strangers, intimidated by the streets and the buildings, shyly touching you with the pale-gray eyes of a lady who’d materialized somehow from the cold marrow of March.

She wandered mist-shrouded through the city, a city that had become suddenly green in exuberant welcome. She wandered alone, reaching into people the way she always does, but not with cruelty. She touched wellsprings deep inside, so that people for a little while, sensing her approach, feeling her come close again, turned a soft vulnerable pulsing interior to her, turned it outward to face the harsh angles of the city’s streets and buildings, held out tenderness to be touched by tenderness, but only for a little while.

And for that little while, April would linger on the walks of Grover Park, linger like white mist on a mountain meadow, linger on the paths and in the budding trees, spreading a delicate perfume on the air. And along the lake and near the statue of Daniel Webster below Twelfth Street, the cornelian cherry shrubs would burst into early bloom. And further west, uptown, facing Grover Avenue and the building which housed the men of the 87th Precinct, the bright yellow blossoms of forsythias would spread along the park’s retaining wall in golden-banked fury while the Japanese quince waited for a warmer spring, waited for April’s true and warm and rare and lovely smile.

For Detective Meyer Meyer, April was a Gentile.

Sue him; she was a Gentile. Perhaps for Detective Steve Carella April was a Jewess.

Which is to say that, for both of them, April was a strange and exotic creature, tempting, a bit unreal, warm, seductive, shrouded with mystery. She crossed the avenue from Grover Park with the delicate step of a lady racing across a field in yellow taffeta, and she entered the squadroom in her insinuating perfume and rustling petticoats, and she turned the minds of men to mush.

Steve Carella looked up from the filing cabinets and remembered a time when he was thirteen and experiencing his first kiss. It had been an April night, long, long ago.

Meyer Meyer glanced through the grilled windows at the new leaves in the park across the street and tried to listen patiently to the man who sat in the hard-backed chair alongside his desk, but he lost the battle to spring, and he sat idly wondering how it felt to be seventeen.

The man who sat opposite Meyer Meyer was named Dave Raskin, and he owned a dress business. He also owned about two hundred and ten pounds of flesh which was loosely distributed over a six-foot-two-inch frame garbed at the moment in a pale-blue tropical suit. He was a good-looking man in a rough-hewn way, with a high forehead and graying hair which was receding above the temples, a nose with the blunt chopping edge of a machete, an orator’s mouth, and a chin which would have been completely at home on a Roman balcony in 1933. He was smoking a foul-smelling cigar and blowing the smoke in Meyer’s direction. Every now and then Meyer waved his hand in front of his face, clearing the air, but Raskin didn’t quite appreciate the sublety. He kept sucking on the soggy end of his cigar and blowing smoke in Meyer’s direction. It was hard to appreciate April and feel like seventeen while swallowing all that smoke and listening to Raskin at the same time.

“So Marcia said to me, you work right in his own precinct, Meyer’s,” Raskin said. “So what are you afraid of? You grew up with his father, he was a boyhood friend of yours, so you should be afraid to go see him? What is he now, a detective? This is to be afraid of?” Raskin shrugged. “That’s what Marcia said to me.”

“I see,” Meyer said, and he waved his hand to clear the air of smoke.

“You want a cigar?” Raskin asked.

“No. No, thank you.”

“Good cigars. My son-in-law sent them to me from Nassau. He took my daughter there on their honeymoon. A good boy. A periodontist. You know what that is?”

“Yes,” Meyer said, and again he waved his hand.

“So it’s true what Marcia said. I did grow up with your father, Max, God rest his soul. So why should I be afraid to come here to see his son, Meyer? I was at the briss, would you believe it? When you were circumcised, you, I was there, me . So I should be afraid now to come to you with a little problem, when I knew your father we were kids together? I should be afraid? You sure you don’t want a cigar?”

“I’m sure.”

“Very good cigars. My son-in-law sent them to me from Nassau.”

“Thank you, no, Mr. Raskin.”

“Dave, Dave. Please. Dave.”

“Dave, what seems to be the trouble? I mean, why did you come here? To the squadroom.”

“I got a heckler.”

“What?”

“A heckler.”

“What do you mean?”

“A pest.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“I’ve been getting phone calls,” Raskin said. “Two, three times a week. I pick up the phone and a voice asks, ‘Mr. Raskin?’ and I say, ‘Yes?’ and the voice yells. ‘If you’re not out of that loft by April thirtieth, I’m going to kill you!’ And then whoever it is hangs up.”

“Is this a man or a woman?” Meyer asked.

“A man.”

“And that’s all he says?”

“That’s all he says.”

“What’s so important about this loft?”

“Who knows? It’s a crumby little loft on Culver Avenue, it’s got rats the size of crocodiles, you should see them. I use it to store dresses there. Also I got some girls there, they do pressing for me.”

“Then you wouldn’t say it was a desirable location?”

“Desirable for other rats, maybe. But not so you should call a man and threaten him.”

“I see. Well, do you know anyone who might want you dead?”

“Me? Don’t be ridiculous,” Raskin said. “I’m well liked by everybody.”

“I understand that,” Meyer said, “but is there perhaps a crank or a nut among any of your friends who might just possibly have the foolish notion that it might be nice to see you dead?”

“Impossible.”

“I see.”

“I’m a respected man. I go to temple every week. I got a good wife and a pretty daughter and a son-in-law he’s a periodontist. I got two retail stores here in the city, and I got three stores in farmers’ markets out in Pennsylvania, and I got the loft right here in this neighborhood, on Culver Avenue. I’m a respected man, Meyer.”