Эд Макбейн - Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here

It was therefore a pleasant surprise for Brown to come across a witness to the grocery store shootings who did not seem at all intimidated by either his size or his color. The person was a little old lady who carried a bright-blue umbrella on her arm, despite the fact that the day was clear, with that sharp penetrating bite in the air that comes only with October. The umbrella matched the lady’s eyes, which were as clear and as sharp as the day itself. She wore a little flowered hat on her head. If she had been a younger woman, the black coat she was wearing might have been called a maxi. She leaped to her feet as Brown came through the front door of the grocery, and said to him in a brisk resonant voice, “Ah, at last!”

“Ma’am?” Brown said.

“You’re the detective, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Brown admitted.

“My name is Mrs. Farraday, how do you do?”

“Detective Brown,” he said, and nodded, and would have let it go at that, but Mrs. Farraday was holding out her hand. Brown clasped it, shook it, and smiled pleasantly. Mrs. Farraday returned the smile and released his hand.

“They told me to wait in here, said a detective would be along any minute. I’ve been waiting half the morning. It’s past ten-thirty now.”

“Well, Mrs. Farraday, I’ve been talking to people in the neighborhood since a little after eight o’clock. Takes a little while to get around to all of them.”

“Oh, I can well imagine,” she said.

“Patrolman outside says you’ve got some information for me, though. Is that right?”

“That’s right. I saw the two men who held up the store.”

“Where’d you see them?”

“Running around the corner. I was on my way home from church, I always go to six o’clock mass, and I’m generally out by seven, and then I stop at the bakery for buns, my husband likes buns with his breakfast on Sundays, or coffee cake.”

“Um-huh.”

“Never goes to church himself,” she said, “damn heathen.”

“Um-huh.”

“I was coming out of the bakery — this must have been, oh, close to seven-thirty — when I saw the two of them come running around the corner. I thought at first—”

“What were they wearing, Mrs. Farraday?”

“Black coats. And masks. One of them was a girl’s face — the mask, I mean. And the other was a monster mask, I don’t know which monster. They had guns. Both of them. But none of that’s important, Detective Brown.”

“What is important?”

“They took the masks off. As soon as they turned the corner, they took the masks off, and I got a very good look at both of them.”

“Can you describe them to me now?”

“I certainly can.”

“Good.” Brown took out his pad and flipped it open. He reached into his pocket for his pen — he was one of the few cops on the squad who still used a fountain pen rather than a ball-point — took off the cap, and said, “Were they white or black, Mrs. Farraday?”

“White,” Mrs. Farraday said.

“How old would you say they were?”

“Young.”

“How young? Twenty? Thirty?”

“Oh, no. In their forties, I would say. They were young, but they were definitely not kids, Detective Brown.”

“How tall were they?”

“One was about your height, a very big man. How tall are you?”

“Six four,” Brown said.

“My, that is big,” Mrs. Farraday said.

“And the other one?”

“Much shorter. Five eight or nine, I would guess.”

“Notice the hair color?”

“The short one was blond. The tall one had dark hair.”

“I don’t suppose you saw the color of their eyes.”

“They passed close enough, but I just didn’t see. They went by very quickly.”

“Any scars? Tattoos? Birthmarks?”

“Not that I could see.”

“Both clean-shaven?”

“Do you mean did they have beards or mustaches?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“No, both clean-shaven.”

“You say they took the masks off as they came around the corner, is that right?”

“Yes. They just ripped them off. It must be difficult to see through those things, wouldn’t you imagine?”

“Was there a car waiting for them?”

“No, I don’t think they had a car, Detective Brown. They were running too fast for that. It’s my guess they were trying to make their escape on foot. Wouldn’t that be your guess as well?”

“I really couldn’t say yet, Mrs. Farraday. I wonder if you could show me where that bakery store is.”

“Certainly. It’s right around the corner.”

They walked out of the grocery, and the patrolman outside said to Brown, “You know anything about when I’m supposed to be relieved here?”

“What do you mean?” Brown asked.

“I think there’s some kind of foul-up. I mean, this ain’t even my post.”

“Where is your post?”

“On Grover Avenue. Near the park.”

“So what’re you doing here?”

That’s just it. I collared this guy around quarter to seven, must’ve been, and took him back to the station house to book him — he was trying to bust into a Mercedes parked on South Second. By the time I got finished there, it was like seven-fifteen, and Nealy and O’Hara are going by in a patrol car, so I hail them and ask for a lift back to my post. We’re on the way when all of a sudden they catch the radio squeal about the shooting here at the grocery store. So we all rush over here, and there’s a big hullabaloo, you know, Parker caught some stuff, you know, and Nealy and O’Hara take off on a Ten-Thirteen, and the sergeant tells me to stay here outside the door. So I been here all morning. I was supposed to be relieved on post at eight o’clock, but how’s my relief supposed to know where I am so he can relieve me? You going back to the station house?”

“Not right away.”

“Listen, I hate to leave here, because the sarge might get sore, you know? He told me to stay right here.”

“I’ll call in from the nearest box,” Brown said.

“Would you do that? I certainly would appreciate it.”

“Right away,” Brown said.

He and Mrs. Farraday walked around the corner to the bakery shop. “This is where I was standing when they ran by,” Mrs. Farraday said. “They were taking off the masks as they came around the corner, and they had them off by the time they passed me. Then they went racing up the street there and... oh, my goodness!” she said, and stopped.

“What is it, Mrs. Farraday?”

“I just remembered what they did with those masks, Detective Brown. They threw them down the sewer there. They stopped at the sewer grating and just threw them away, and then they started running again.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Farraday,” Brown said, “you’ve been most helpful.”

“Oh, well,” she said, and smiled.

Flora and Frieda did not get back to their apartment on North Eighth until seven minutes past eleven. They were both pretty women in their late twenties, both wearing pants suits and short car coats. Flora was a blonde, Frieda a redhead. Flora wore big gold hoop earrings. Frieda had a tiny black beauty spot near the corner of her mouth. They explained to the detectives that they always walked in the park on Sunday mornings, rain or shine. Flora offered them tea, and when they accepted, Frieda went upstairs to the kitchen, to put the kettle on.

Their apartment was in a brownstone that had run the gamut from luxury dwelling fifty years back, to crumbling tenement for as many years, to reconverted town house in a block of similar buildings trying desperately to raise their heads above the slime of the neighborhood. The women owned the entire building, and Flora explained now that the bedrooms were on the top floor, the kitchen, dining room, and spare room on the middle floor, and the living room on the ground floor. The detectives were sitting with her in that room now, sunlight streaming through the damask-hung windows. A cat lay before the tiled fireplace, dozing. The living room ran the entire length of the ground floor and was warmly and beautifully furnished. There was a false sense here of being someplace other than the city — some English country home in Dorset perhaps or some Welsh manor, quiet and secluded, with gently rolling grassy hills just outside the door. But it was one thing to convert a slum building into a beautiful town house, and quite another to ignore the whirlpool surrounding it. Neither Flora nor Frieda were fools; there were iron gates over the windows facing the backyard, and a Fox lock on the front door.