Ed Mcbain - The Heckler

“All right,” she said, “he was shot at close range with a shotgun. Who did it?”

“We don’t know.”

“ I didn’t.”

“Nobody said you did.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?”

“We’re only trying to make a positive identification, Miss Constantine.”

“Well, you’ve made it. Your dead man is John Smith.”

“Would you say that name was a great deal of help, Miss Constantine?”

“What the hell do you want from me? It was his name, not mine.”

“And he never told you his real name?”

“He said his name was John Smith.”

“And you believed him?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose he’d told you his name was John Doe?”

“Mister, I’d have believed him if he told me his name was Joseph Stalin. Now how about that?”

“That’s how it was, huh?” Carella asked.

“That’s how it was.”

“What’d he do for a living?” Carella asked.

“Retired. He was getting social security.”

“And the uniform?”

“What uniform?” Lotte Constantine asked with wide open eyes.

“The uniform. The one somebody stripped off of him and dumped into an incinerator.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You never saw him in a uniform?”

“Never.”

“Did he have any job? Besides the retirement money. Did he run an elevator or anything?”

“No. I gave him—” Lotte stopped suddenly.

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

“You gave him money? Is that what you were about to say?”

“Yes.”

“Where did he live, Miss Constantine?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you—”

“I don’t know where he lived. He…he came here a lot.”

“To stay?”

“Sometimes.”

“For how long?”

“The…the longest he ever stayed was…was for two weeks.”

“Pitt know about this?”

Lotte shrugged. “I don’t know. What difference does it make? I’m a good customer. I’ve been living in this hotel ever since I came to the city four years ago. What difference would it make if an old man—” She caught herself, stopped speaking, and returned Carella’s level gaze. “Stop staring at me as if I was Lolita or something. I loved him.”

“And he never mentioned a uniform, is that right? Or a job?”

“He mentioned a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?” Carella asked, leaning forward.

The girl uncrossed her legs. “He didn’t say.”

“But he did mention a deal?”

“Yes.”

“When was this?”

“The last time I saw him.”

“What did he say?”

“Only that he had a deal cooking with the deaf man.”

They were sitting in velvet chairs around a small coffee table in an ornate lobby which suddenly went as still as death.

“The deaf man?” Carella said.

“Yes.”

He sucked in a deep breath.

“Who’s the deaf man?”

“I don’t know.”

“But Johnny had some kind of a deal with him, right?”

“Yes. That’s what he said. He said he had a deal with the deaf man, and that he’d be very rich soon. He was going—We were going to get married.”

“The deaf man,” Carella said aloud. He sighed heavily. “Where can I reach you if I need you, Miss Constantine?”

“Either here or at The Harem Club.”

“What do you do there?”

“I’m a cigarette girl. I sell cigarettes. That’s where I met Johnny. At the club.”

“He bought cigarettes from you?”

“No. He smokes—he smoked —a pipe. I sold him pipe tobacco.”

“Smoker’s Pipe?” Carella asked. “Was that the brand?”

“Why…why, yes. How—”

“Here’s my card, Miss Constantine,” Carella said. “If you should think of anything else that might help me, give me a call, won’t you?”

“Like what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like what do you want me to call you about? How do I know what’ll help you?”

“Well, any further information about this deaf man would—”

“I don’t know anything else about him.”

“Or anything Johnny might have said regarding this deal of hi—”

“I told you everything he said.”

Carella shrugged.

“You want your card back?” Lotte Constantine asked.

THAT NIGHT,the deaf man celebrated.

Perhaps things were going well at the ice-cream store behind the construction site. Or perhaps he was simply anticipating what would begin happening the next day. Perhaps, like a good general, he was drinking a symbolic toast on the eve of battle.

The symbolic toast, in this case, was the taking of a nineteen-year-old girl whose attributes were surely not mental.

But the deaf man, you see, was an economical man and a man who never lost sight of his goals. He was not interested, that evening, in a discussion of mathematics. Nor was he interested in learning about the ambitions or tribulations or strivings for independence or strugglings for realization of self of any member of the opposite sex. He was interested in making love, pure and simple. He had been casing his love partner in much the same way he’d have cased the site of a future robbery. He had been casing her for two weeks, attracted by her obvious beauty at first—the girl was a brunette with luminous brown eyes and a full pouting mouth; her breasts, even in the waitress uniform she wore, were large and inviting; her legs beneath the hem of the white garment were splendidly curved to a trim ankle—and attracted, too, by the smooth-skinned freshness of her youth.

But youth and beauty were not, to the deaf man, qualities which when taken alone would assure a good bed partner. He had explored the girl further.

He had noticed that her luminous eyes carried a challenge, and that the challenge was directed toward any man who walked into the restaurant. He was surprised to find such blatancy in the eyes of a nineteen-year-old, and he tried to evaluate it. He did not want a nymphomaniac. He knew that satisfaction could be multiplied to infinity when allowed to ricochet off the simultaneous pleasures of two, and he had no desire to become involved with an insatiable woman. At the same time, he did not want an uninitiated girl who would allow the evening to dissolve into a literal shower of blood, sweat and tears. The challenge in this girl’s eyes boldly stated that she had been had, and that she could be had again, and that the taking might well be worth the efforts of whoever successfully met the challenge. Pleased with what he saw, he continued his surveillance.

The girl’s breasts, while admittedly comfortable-looking, could have amounted to nothing more than so much excess fat imbued with a nonexistent sexuality by a culture with an obsessive mammary fetish—were it not for the way the girl carried them. She knew they were there. She never once took them for granted. Her every motion, her every step indicated an extreme awareness of the rich curve below her throat. He was sure that her awareness was sensual, an awareness so total could be nothing else. And, observing her secure knowledge, he never once doubted her potential passion.

Her legs, too, indicated a promising sensuality. They were well-shaped, with a full, curving calf that dropped with surprising grace and swiftness to a narrowness of ankle and a sharpness of arch. The girl was a waitress, and her expected footgear should have been flat-soled shoes. But she chose to emphasize the shape of her leg, and whereas she did not commit the folly of wearing a bona fide high-heeled spike she nonetheless wore a pump with a French heel that was both flattering and promising. She used her legs in two ways. One was strictly utilitarian. They were strong legs, and they carried her from table to table with speed and directness. The other use was calculated and strictly decorative. She used her legs as pistons to manipulate her buttocks.