McBain, Ed - Killer's Wedge

Provided the exercise which was lacking in his life." Mark smiled again. His smile was a charming one, a sudden parting of the thick lips over dazzlingly white teeth.

"Just how hard did you have to pull on the door?" Carella asked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"When slipping the bolt."

"Oh. Very hard."

"Do you imagine your father's weight pulling against the doorknob whould have provided the pressure necessary to slip the bolt?"

"To hold the door shut, perhaps yes. But it took quite a bit of pressure to push the bolt across. You are thinking, are you not, of someone having managed it from the outside? With string or something?"

Carella sighed.

"Yeah, I was sort of thinking along those lines, yeah."

"Impossible. Ask any of my brothers.

Ask Christine. Ask Roger. That lock was impossible. Father should have had it changed, really. We discussed it many times."

"Ever argue about it?"

"With Father? Gracious, no. I made a point of never arguing with him. At least, not after I reached the age of fourteen. I remember making my decision at that time.

I made it, as I recall, with a good deal of horror."

"The dread Scott decision," Carella said.

"What? Oh. Oh, yes," Mark said, and he smiled.

"I decided when I was fourteen that there was no percentage in arguing with Father. Ever since that time, we got along very well."

"Mmm. Right up to now, huh?"

"Who discovered this door was locked, Mr. Scott?"

"Alan did."

"And who went for the crowbar?"

"I did."

"Why?"

"To force the door open. We'd been calling for Father, and he didn't answer."

"And did the crowbar work?"

"Yes. Of course it did."

"Who tried the door after you'd used the crowbar on it?"

"I did."

"And this time it opened?"

"No. There was still Father's weight banging against it. But we managed to open it a crack-using the crowbar again-and Alan stuck his arm in and cut the rope."

"Did any of you use the crowbar on the bottom of the door?" Carella asked.

"The bottom?"

"Yes. Down there. Near the sill."

"Why no. Why would we want to do that?"

"I can't imagine. Are you gainfully employed. Mr. Scott?"

"What?"

"Do you have a job?"

"Well, I .

"Yes or no?"

"I've been training at one of the factories.

Preparing for an executive position. Father always felt that executives should learn from the bottom up."

"Did you agree with him?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Where were you ... ah ... training?"

"The New Jersey plant."

"For how long?"

"I'd been there for six months."

"How old are you, Mr. Scott?"

"Twenty-seven."

"And what did you do before you went into the New Jersey plant?"

"I was in Italy for several years."

"Doing what?"

"Enjoying myself," Mark said.

"When Mother died, she left me a little money. I decided to use it when I got out of college."

"When was that?"

"I was twenty-two when I graduated."

"And you've been in Italy since then?"

"No. The Government interfered with my graduation plans. I was in the Army for two years."

"And then you went to Italy, is that right?"

"Yes."

"You were twenty-four years old at the time?"

"Yes."

"How much money did you have?"

"Mother left me thirty thousand."

"Why'd you come back from Italy?"

"I ran out of money."

"You spent thirty thousand dollars in three years? In Italy?"

"Yes, I did."

"That's an awful lot of money to spend in Italy, isn't it?"

"Is it?"

"What I mean is, you must have lived rather grandly."

"I've always lived rather grandly, Mr.

Carella," Mark said, and he grinned.

"Mmm. This executive position you were training for.; What was it?"

"A sales executive."

"No title?"

"Just a sales executive."

"And what was the salary for the job?"

"Father didn't believe in spoiling his children," Mark said.

"He realized that the business would go to pieces if he simply put his sons in at ridiculously high salaries when they didn't know anything about running the business.

"So what was the starting salary?"

"For that particular job? Fifteen thousand."

"I see. And you live rather grandly. Ran through ten grand a year in Italy. I see."

"That was a starting salary, Mr. Carella.

Father fully intended Scott Industries to belong to his sons eventually."

"Yes, his will would seem to substantiate that. Did you know about his will, Mr.

Scott?"

"All of us did. Father talked of it freely."

"I see."

"Tell me, Mr. Carella," Mark said.

"Do you think I killed my own father?"

"Did you, Mr. Scott?"

"He committed suicide, isn't that right, Mr. Scott?"

"Yes, that's right." Mark Scott paused.

"Or do you think I crawled into the room under that crack in the door?"

CHAPTER I4

There she was – the city. All decked out for the pleasures of night, wearing her sleek black satin with a bright red sash. Clusters of jewels hung in her hair, the rectangles of all night offices blinking at the darkness in defiance of the stars, the shimmering haze in the air over the incredible skyline. A necklace of dazzling light hung from her slender throat, the reds and greens of traffic, the ambers of the street globes, the harsh bright overhead fluorescents of Detavoner Avenue. Her rounded fleshy shoulders rolled to the music of the night, her full breasts heaved ecstatically to the music of the night, mournful music that oozed from the cellar dives of Isola, pounded with the beat of a glittering G-string, music that came with mathematical precision from the cool bop bistros, music that bounced with the cornball rhythms of the supper clubs.

The highways glowed with reflected river light that molded the valleys of her waist, swept North and South over her wide hips, dropped over shapely legs to capture her ankles in neon slave bracelets, terminated in the re~ flection of pinpoint light glowing from high-heeled slippers on slick wet asphalt.

There she was-the city.

Rushing with the night and the sound of the night, sucking in wild air through parted lips, her eyes glowing bright, bright with the fever of the tempo, Friday night, and the city clasped the weekend to her breasts, held the weekend close in a desperate embrace.

A woman was the city, a beautiful woman with life in her loins and treachery '~ in her heart, an exciting woman with a dagger behind her back in long white fingers, a gentle woman who sang for4 - ~U~1LIIJLt. ~.~jiyuns, a woman if love and a woman of hate, a woman fondled by eight million people who had tasted the pleasures of her body and knew her well and hated her with a deep abiding love.

Fight million people.

Geoffrey Tamblin was a publisher.

He published textbooks. He had been in the racket for thirty-two years, and now-at the age of fifty-seven-he considered himself a knowledgeable guy who knew all the ins and outs of the racket.

Geoffrey Tamblin never called it "the publishing game." To Tamblin, it was "the racket," and he hated it passionately. The thing he particularly despised about the racket was the publishing of books about mathematics. These he detested. His rancor probably went back to a high-school course in Geometry conducted by an old poop named Dr. Fanensel. He was unable to decide, at the age of seventeen, whether he hated Geometry more than Dr. Fanensel, or vice versa. Now, forty years later, his hatred had grown admirably to include all mathematics and all teachers and students of mathematics. Plane Geometry, Analytic Geometry, Algebra, Differential Calculus, and even Long and Short Division fell into the sphere of Tamblin's hatred.

And the terrible part of it all was that his firm published a great many mathematics texts. In fact, the largest percentage of his list was devoted to books about mathematics. Which was why Geoffrey Tamblin had three ulcers.