Ed McBain - Lady Killer

'Naval Administration,' a voice answered.

'This is the police,' Hawes said. 'Let me speak to your commanding officer.'

'One moment, please.' There was a pause and then some clicking on the line.

'Ensign Davis,' a voice said.

'Are you the commanding officer?' Hawes asked.

'No, sir. May I help you?'

'This is the police. We're trying to locate a sailor from a-'

'That would fall into the province of the Shore Patrol, sir. One moment, please.'

'Look, all I want to—'

The clicking on the line interrupted Hawes.

'Yes, sir?' the operator asked.

'Put this call through to Lieutenant Jergens in Shore Patrol, would you?'

'Yes, sir.'

More clicking. Hawes waited.

'Lieutenant Jergens, Shore Patrol,' a voice said.

'This is Detective Cotton Hawes,' Hawes answered, figuring he'd throw a little rank around among all this brass. 'We're looking for an enlisted man named Mickey Carmichael. He's aboard a—'

'What'd he do?' Jergens asked.

'Nothing yet. We want to stop him before—'

'If he didn't do anything, we wouldn't have any record of him. Is he connected with this building?'

'No, he's—'

'Just a moment, I'll get you Personnel.'

'I don't want—'

The clicking cut him off again.

'Operator?' Jergens said.

'Yes, sir.'

'Put this through to Commander Elliot in Personnel.'

'Yes, sir.'

Hawes waited.

Click-click.

Click-click.

'Commander Elliot's office,' a voice said.

'Is this Commander Elliot?'

'No, sir. This is Chief Yeoman Pickering.'

'Let me talk to the commander, Pickering.'

'I'm sorry, sir, he's not in right now, sir. Who's calling, please, sir?'

'Let me talk to his superior, will you?' Hawes asked.

'His superior, sir, is commanding officer here, sir. Who's calling, please, sir?'

'This is Admiral Hawes!' Hawes shouted. 'Connect me with your commanding officer at once!'

'Yes, sir, Admiral. Yes sir!'

The clicking was frantic now.

'Yes, sir?' the operator asked.

'Put this through to Captain Finchberger,' Pickering said. 'On the double.'

'Yes, sir!'

The clicking clicked again.

'Captain Finchberger's office,' a voice said.

'Get me the Captain! This is Admiral Hawes!' Hawes said, enjoying himself immensely now.

'Yes, sir!' the voice snapped.

Hawes waited.

The voice that came on to the line wasn't having any damned nonsense.

'Admiral who ?' it shouted.

'Sir?' Hawes asked, recalling his Navy days and remembering that he was talking to a Naval captain, which is very much different from an Army captain, a Naval captain being a very high rank, indeed, full of scrambled eggs and all sorts of highly polished brass. Considering this, Hawes turned on the oil. 'I'm sorry, sir, your secretary must have misunderstood. This is Detective Hawes of the Eighty-seventh Precinct here in the city. We were wondering if we could have the Navy's assistance on a rather difficult problem.'

'What is it, Hawes?' Finchberger said, but he was weakening.

'Sir, we're trying to locate a sailor who was in the city a month ago, and who is perhaps still here. He was off a picket destroyer, sir. His name is—'

'There was a picket destroyer here in June, that's right,' Finchberger said. 'The U.S.S. Perriwinkle . She's gone now. Left on the fourth.'

'All hands aboard, sir?'

'The commanding officer did not report anyone A.O.L. or A.W.O.L. The ship left with its full complement.'

'Have there been any other picket destroyers in port since then, sir?'

'No, there haven't.'

' Any destroyers at all?'

'We've got one scheduled for the end of the week. Coming up from Norfolk. That's all.'

'Would it be the Perriwinkle , sir?'

'No, it would not. It would be the Masterson .'

'Thank you, sir. Then there is no possibility that this sailor is still in the city or scheduled to arrive in the city?'

'Not unless he jumped ship in the middle of the Atlantic,' Finchberger said. 'The Perriwinkle was headed for England.'

'Thank you, sir,' Hawes said. 'You've been very kind.'

'Don't pull that admiral routine again, Hawes,' Finchberger said, and he hung up.

'Find him?' Carella asked.

Hawes replaced the phone in its cradle.

'He's on his way to Europe,' he said.

'That lets him out,' Carella said.

'It doesn't let our hooker friend out,' Hawes answered.

'No. She might still be the target. I'll call her and tell her not to worry about the sailor. In the meantime I'll ask Pete for a couple of uniformed men to watch Ida's joint. If she is the target, our boy won't try for her with cops around.'

'We hope.'

Hawes looked up at the white-faced clock on the squad-room wall. It was exactly 11 o'clock in the morning.

In nine hours, their killer—whoever he was—would strike.

From somewhere across the street in Grover Park, the sun glinted on something shiny, blinking its rays through the grilled window of the squad-room, flashing momentarily on Hawes's face.

'Draw that shade, will you, Steve?' he asked.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sam Grossman was a police lieutenant, a laboratory technician, and the man in charge of the Police Laboratory at Headquarters on High Street, downtown.

Sam was a tall, loosely jointed man who moved with angular nonchalance and ease. He was a gentle man with a craggy face, a man who wore glasses because too much reading as a child had ruined his eyesight. His eyes were blue and mild, guileless eyes that denied the fact that their owner used them to pry into the facts of crime and violence—and very often death. Sam loved lab work, and when he was not busy with his test tubes in an effort to prove the lab's effectiveness in crime detection, he could be found talking to the nearest detective, trying to impress upon him the need for cooperation with the lab.

When the letter from the 87th Precinct had arrived by messenger that morning, Sam had put his men to work on it immediately. The phone call preceding it had urged speed. His men had photographed the letter and sent the photo back to the 87th at once. And then they had begun the task of scrutinizing the letter and the envelope for latent fingerprint impressions before beginning their other tests.

The original letter was handled with the utmost care. Sam sourly reflected that half the cops in the city had probably handled it already, but he had no desire to compound the felony. Carefully, methodically, his men put a very thin, uniform layer of a ten per cent solution of silver nitrate onto the letter, passing the sheet of paper between two rollers that had been moistened with the solution. They waited while the sheet of paper dried, and then they put it under the ultraviolet light. In a few seconds, the prints appeared.

This is what the letter looked like:

There were a lot of fingerprints all over the letter. Sam Grossman had expected as much. The letter had been created by snipping words from newspapers or magazines and pasting them to a sheet of paper. Sam expected that the pasting process would have left fingermarks all over the page, and such was exactly the case. Each snip of paper had been pressed to the page so that it would stick. Each word on the page carried its own full complement of prints.

And each print on the page was hopelessly smeared or blurred or overlaid with another print—except for two thumbprints. These thumbprints were on the left hand side of the page; one close to the top, the other just a little below centre. Both were good prints.