Эд Макбейн: Lady, Lady, I Did It!

“You’re not supposed to make private calls on the city’s time,” Carella said, and he winked at Meyer.

“I didn’t make this call. I received it. Also, a man is entitled to a certain amount of privacy, even if he works with a bunch of horny bastards. I don’t see why I can’t talk to my fiancée without—”

“He’s sore,” Meyer said. “He called her his fiancée instead of his girl. Look, talk to her. Call her back and tell her you sent all us gorillas out of the room and now you can talk to her. Go ahead.”

“Go to hell,” Kling said. Angrily, he turned back to his typewriter, forgetting that he’d been in the middle of an erasure. He began typing again and then realized he was over-scoring what he’d already typed. Viciously, he ripped the almost-completed report from the machine. “See what you made me do?” he shouted impotently. “Now I have to start all over again!” He shook his head despairingly, took a white, a blue, and a yellow Detective Division Report from his top drawer, separated the three sheets with carbon paper, and began typing again, banging the keys with a vengeance.

Steve Carella walked to the window and looked down to the street below. He was a tall man, and he stood in slender deceptive grace by the meshed grille, the late afternoon sunlight washing over him, his angular body giving no clue to the destructive power in his muscular arms and chest. In profile, he looked slightly oriental, the sun limning high cheekbones and eyes that slanted curiously downward.

“This time of day,” he said, “I feel like going to sleep.”

Meyer looked at his watch. “That’s because we’ll be relieved soon,” he said.

Across the room, Kling kept battering the typewriter keys.

There were sixteen detectives, not counting Lieutenant Byrnes, attached to the 87th Squad. Of those sixteen, four were usually on special assignment somewhere or other, leaving a twelve-man squad, which was divided into four duty sections of three-man teams. Unlike patrolmen, the detectives worked out their own schedules, and the pattern, though arbitrary, was consistent. There were two shifts, the 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. and the 6:00 P.M. to 8:00 A.M. The graveyard shift was the longer of the two, and none of the detectives particularly enjoyed it, but they nonetheless drew it every fourth day. They were also “off duty” every fourth day, a term that didn’t mean very much since all cops are technically “on duty” twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year. Besides, most of the detectives on the squad found that they needed those off-duty days to accomplish vital legwork. The schedule was a complicated thing to keep, because the specialassignment cops kept changing, and because Lineup was held every day from Monday to Thursday and the detectives were required to put in appearances there in order to acquaint themselves with the men who were committing crimes throughout the city, and because detectives had to appear in court to testify at trials, and because — the schedule was a difficult one to keep. Teams kept changing, men kept coming and going, there were often eight cops in the squadroom instead of three. The schedule was posted each week, but following it was impossible.

In any case, one thing remained constant. The relieving detectives, by unwritten agreement, always arrived at the squadroom fifteen minutes before the hour, a carry-over from their patrolman days. The graveyard shift, not due until 6:00 P.M., would undoubtedly straggle in any time between 5:30 and 5:45.

It was 5:15 P.M. when the telephone rang.

Meyer Meyer lifted the receiver and said, “87th Squad, Detective Meyer.” He moved a pad into place on his desk. “Yeah, go ahead,” he said. He began writing on the pad. “Yep,” he said. He wrote down an address. “Yep.” He continued writing. “Yep, right away.” He hung up. “Steve, Bert,” he said, “you want to take this?”

“What is it?” Carella asked.

“Some nut just shot up a bookstore on Culver Avenue,” Meyer said. “There’re three people laying dead on the floor.”

The crowd had already gathered around the bookshop. A sign out front read “GOOD BOOKS, GOOD READING.” There were two uniformed cops on the sidewalk, and a squad car was pulled up to the curb across the street. The people pulled back instinctively when they heard the wail of the siren on the police sedan. Carella got out first, slamming the door behind him. He waited for Kling to come around the car, and then both men started for the shop. At the door, the patrolman said, “Lot of dead people in there, sir.”

“When’d you get here?”

“Few minutes ago. We were just cruising when we took the squeal. We called back the minute we saw what it was.”

“Know how to keep a timetable?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come along and keep it then.”

“Yes, sir.”

They started into the shop. Not three feet from the door, they saw the first body. The man was partially slumped against one of the bookstalls, partially sprawled on the floor. He was wearing a blue seersucker suit, and his hand was still holding a book, and a line of blood had run down his arm, and stained his sleeve, and continued down over the hand holding the book. Kling looked at him and knew instantly that this was going to be a bad one. Just how bad, he did not yet realize.

“Here’s another one,” Carella said.

The second body was some ten feet away from the first, another man coatless, his head twisted and fitting snugly into the angle formed by the bookstall and the floor. As they approached, he moved his head slightly, trying to raise it from its uncomfortable position. A new flow of blood spilled onto his shirt collar. He dropped his head again. The patrolman, his throat parched, his voice containing something like awe, said, “He’s alive.”

Carella stooped down beside the man. The man’s neck had been ripped open by the force of the bullet that had struck him. Carella looked at torn flesh and muscle, and for an instant he closed his eyes, the action coming as swiftly as the clicking shutter of a camera, the eyes opening again at once, a tight hard mask claiming his face.

“Did you call for a meat wagon?” he asked.

“The minute I got here,” the patrolman said.

“Good.”

“There are two others,” a voice said.

Kling turned away from the dead man in the seersucker suit. The man who’d spoken was a small, birdlike man with a bald head. He stood crouched against one of the bookstalls, his hand to his mouth. He was wearing a shabby brown sweater open over a white shirt. There was abject terror on his face and in his eyes. He was sobbing low, muted sobs that accompanied the tears that flowed from his eyes, oddly channeling themselves along either side of his nose. As Kling approached him, he thought, Two others. Meyer said there were three. But it’s four.

“Are you the owner of this shop?” he asked.

“Yes,” the man said. “Please look at the others. Back there. Is an ambulance coming? A wild man, a wild man. Look at the others, please. They may be alive. One of them is a woman. Please look at them.”

Kling nodded and walked to the back of the shop. He found the third man bent double over one of the counters, an open book beside him; he had undoubtedly been browsing when the shots were loosed. The man was dead, his mouth open, his eyes staring sightlessly. Unconsciously, Kling’s hands went to the man’s eyelids. Gently he closed them.

The woman lay on the floor beside him.

She was wearing a red blouse.

She had undoubtedly been carrying an armful of books when the bullets took her. She had fallen to the floor, and the books had fallen around her and upon her. One book lay just under her extended right hand. Another, open like a tent, covered her face and her black hair. A third leaned against her curving hip. The red blouse had pulled free from the woman’s black skirt as she had fallen. The skirt had risen over the backs of her long legs. One leg was bent, the other rigid and straight. A black high-heeled pump lay several inches away from one naked foot. The woman wore no stockings.