Ed McBain: King's Ransom

The man said his name was David Peck. He owned a radio supply store, he told Meyer.

“You sell radio parts, is that right?” Meyer asked.

“Well, not for commercial stuff. I mean, we sell a little of that, but mostly we sell stuff for hams, you know what I mean?” Peck tweaked his nose with his thumb and forefinger. It seemed to Meyer that Peck wanted to blow his nose, or perhaps pick it. He wondered if Peck had a handkerchief. He was going to offer him a Kleenex, but he decided the man might be offended by the gesture.

“Hams?” Meyer said.

“Yeah, hams. I don’t mean like you eat. Not them hams.” Peck smiled and tweaked his nose again. “Like, I mean, we don’t run a delicatessen or nothing. By hams, I mean amateur radio operators. Like that. We sell equipment to them mostly. You’d be surprised how many hams there are in this neighborhood. You wouldn’t think so, huh, would you?”

“No, I guess I wouldn’t,” Meyer said.

“Sure, lots of hams. My partner and me, we got a pretty good business here. We also sell some commercial stuff, like portables and hi-fi units and like that, but that’s only a service we run, you understand, what we are primarily interested in is selling stuff to hams.”

“I understand, Mr. Peck,” Meyer said, wishing the man would blow his nose, “but what is the nature of your complaint?”

“Well,” Peck said, and he tweaked his nose, “like somebody busted into our store.”

“When was this?”

“Last week.”

“Why’d you wait until now to report it?”

“We wasn’t going to report it because the guy who busted in, he didn’t steal very much, you know. This equipment is pretty heavy stuff, you know, so I guess you have to be strong to cart away a whole store. Anyway, he didn’t take very much, so my partner and me we figured we’d just forget about it.”

“What makes you report it now?”

“Well, he came back. The crook, I mean. The thief.”

“He returned?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“And this time he stole a lot of equipment, is that right?”

“No, no. This time he took even less than last time.”

“Now, just a minute, Mr. Peck, let’s start from the beginning. Would you like a Kleenex, Mr. Peck?”

“A Kleenex?” Peck said. “What do I need a Kleenex for?” And he tweaked his nose again.

Meyer sighed patiently.

Of all the detectives on the 87th Squad, Meyer Meyer was perhaps the most patient. The patience was not an inherited trait. If anything, Meyer’s parents had been capable of behaving somewhat impulsively on occasion. Their first impetuous act involved the conception and birth of Meyer Meyer himself. He was, you see, a change-of-life baby. Now whereas news of an impending birth will generally fill the prospective parents with unrestrained glee, such was not the case when old Max Meyer discovered he was to be presented with an offspring. Max did not take kindly to the news. Not at all. He mulled it over, he stewed about it, he sulked, and finally he decided impulsively upon a means of revenge against the new baby. He named the boy Meyer Meyer, a splendid practical joke, to be sure, a gasser. It almost killed the kid.

Well, perhaps that’s exaggeration. After all, Meyer had grown to manhood, and he was a sound physical and mental specimen. But Meyer had done all his growing in a predominantly Gentile neighborhood, and the fact that he was an Orthodox Jew with a double-barreled name like Meyer Meyer did not help him in the winning of friends or the influencing of people. In a neighborhood where the mere fact of Jewishness was enough to provoke spontaneous hatred, Meyer Meyer had had his troubles. “Meyer Meyer, Jew on fire,” the kids would chant, and whereas they never translated the chant into an actual conflagration, they committed everything short of arson against the Jewboy with the crazy monicker.

Meyer Meyer learned to be patient. You couldn’t win a fight against a dozen other boys by using your fists. You learned to use your head instead. Patiently, intelligently, Meyer Meyer handled his problem without the aid of a psychiatrist. Patience became an ingrown trait. Patience became a way of life. So perhaps old Max Meyer’s joke was harmless enough. Unless one cared to make note of the fact that Meyer Meyer was as bald as a cue ball. And even this fact assumed no real importance until it was connected with a second purely chronological fact:

Meyer Meyer was only thirty-seven years old.

Patiently now, he poised his pencil over the yellow pad and said, “Tell me, Mr. Peck, what did this thief steal the first time he broke into your store?”

“An oscillator,” Peck said.

Meyer made a note on his pad. “How much does the oscillator sell for?” he asked.

“Well, this is a six-hundred-volt oscillator, number 2L-2314. We sell it for fifty-two dollars and thirty-nine cents. That’s including tax.”

“And that’s all he took the first time?”

“Yes, that’s all he took. We get a forty per cent markup on the item, so our loss wasn’t really that big. So we decided like to forget about it, you know?”

“I see. But the thief broke into your store again last night, is that correct?”

“That is correct,” Peck said, tweaking his nose.

“And what did he steal this time?”

“Little items. Like a relay which we sell for ten dollars and twenty-two cents, including tax. And some batteries. And a knife switch. Things like that. He couldn’t have swiped more than twenty-five bucks’ worth of equipment.”

“But this time you’re reporting it?”

“Yes.”

“Why? I mean, if the loss this time was smaller than the loss…”

“Because we’re afraid he might come back a third time. Suppose he comes back with a goddamn truck and cleans out the store? It’s possible, you know.”

“I know it is. And we appreciate your reporting the crimes to us, Mr. Peck. We’ll keep a special watch on your store from now on. Would you give me the name of it, please?”

“Pecker Parts,” Peck said.

Meyer blinked. “Uh… where’d you get that name?” he asked.

“Well, my last name is Peck, as you know.”

“Yes.”

“And my partner’s first name is Erwin. So we put the two names together and we got Pecker Parts.”

“Wouldn’t you have done better by using some other portion of your partner’s name? His last name perhaps?”

“His last name?” Peck said. “I really don’t see how we could have used that.”

“What is his last name?”

“Lipschitz.”

“Well,” Meyer said, and he sighed. “And what is the address of the store, Mr. Peck?”

“Eighteen twenty-seven Culver Ave-nue.

Thank you,” Meyer said. “We’ll keep an eye on it.

“Thank you,’ Peck said. He rose, tweaked his nose, and left the squadroom.

The theft of equipment amounting to a loss of some seventy-five dollars was certainly not important in itself. Or, at least, not important as thefts go, unless you’re a stickler for the letter of the law, one of those people who insist that any silly little theft is really crime. In the 87th Precinct, however, seventy-five-dollar losses were commonplace, and if you knocked yourself out tracking down every bit of petty larceny, you’d have no time left for the really serious crimes being committed. No, on the face of it Mr. Peck’s paltry pilfering complaint was nothing to get all excited about—unless you happened to be a man named Meyer Meyer who kept abreast of what was happening around him in the squadroom and in the precinct and who was blessed with a fairly retentive memory.

Meyer studied the notes on the pad before him and then walked over to a desk on the other side of the room. Steve Carella was sitting at that desk, busily typing up a report, the forefingers of both hands beating the typewriter into reluctant submission.