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

“I won’t keep you long,” Brown said, reaching into his pocket for his pad and pen. “If you’ll just give me a description of your husband...”

“Oh,” Mrs. Ellingham said.

“His name is Donald Ellingham, is that correct?”

“Yes, but...”

“How old is he?”

“Well, you see...”

Brown looked up from his pad. Mrs. Ellingham seemed terribly embarrassed all at once. Before she uttered another word, Brown realized what he had walked in on, and he too was suddenly embarrassed.

“You see,” Mrs. Ellingham said, “he’s back. My husband. He got back just a little while ago.”

“Oh,” Brown said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Oh.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I suppose I should have called...”

“No, no, that’s all right,” Brown said. He put his pad and his pen back into his pocket, and reached behind him for the doorknob. “Glad he’s back, glad everything worked out all right.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Ellingham said.

“Good night,” Brown said.

“Good night,” she said.

She closed the door gently behind him as he went down the steps. Just before he got into his automobile, he glanced back at the building. The upstairs light had already gone out again.

Back at the squadroom, the three detectives who had been called in off vacation were bitching about the speed with which Carella and Brown had cracked the grocery store case. It was one thing to interrupt a man’s vacation if there was a goddamn need for it; it was another to call him in and trot him around all day asking questions and gathering data while two other guys were out following a hot lead that resulted in an arrest.

“You know what I coulda been doing today?” Di Maeo asked.

“What?” Levine said.

“I coulda been watching the ball game on television, and I coulda had a big dinner with the family. My sister is in from Scranton, she come all the way in from Scranton ’cause she knows I’m on vacation. So instead I’m talking to a bunch of people who couldn’t care less whether a grocer got shot, and who couldn’t care at all whether a cop caught one.”

Meriwether the hairbag said, “Now, now, fellows, it’s all part of the game, all part of the game.”

In two separate locked rooms down the corridor, Willis was interrogating Sonia Sobolev, and Genero was interrogating Robert Hamling. Neither of the suspects had exercised their right to an attorney. Hamling, who claimed he had nothing to hide, seemed pleased in fact that he could get his story on the record. He repeated essentially what he had told them in the apartment: Lewis Scott had been on a bum acid trip and had thrown himself out the window while Hamling had done all he could to prevent the suicide. The stenographer listened to every word, his fingers moving silently over his machine.

Sonia Sobolev apparently felt no need for an attorney because she did not consider herself mixed up in the death of Lewis Scott. Her version of the story differed greatly from Hamling’s. According to Sonia, Hamling had met the bearded Scott that afternoon and the two had banked around the city for a while, enjoying each other’s company. Scott was indeed celebrating something — the arrival from home of a two-hundred-dollar money order, which he had cashed and which, in the form of ten-dollar bills, was now nestling in a money belt under his shirt. Hamling had gone back to Scott’s apartment with him and tried to get him drunk. When that failed, he asked Scott if he didn’t think they needed a little female company, and when Scott agreed that might not be a bad idea, Hamling had gone downstairs to call Sonia.

“What did he tell you when he met you later?” Willis asked.

“Well, I got off the train,” Sonia said, “and Bobby was waiting there for me. He said he had this dumb plastic hippie in an apartment nearby, and the guy had a money belt with two hundred dollars in it, and Bobby wanted that money. He said the only way to get it was to convince the guy to take off his clothes. And the only way to do that was for me to do it first.” Sonia shrugged. “So we went up there.”

“Yes, what happened then?”

“Well, I went in the john and combed my hair, and then I took off my blouse. And I went out to the other room without any blouse on. To see if I could, well, get him excited, you know. So he would take off his clothes. We were all drinking a lot of wine.”

“Were you smoking?”

“Pot, you mean? No.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, he finally went in the john, too, and got undressed. He was wearing blue jeans and a Charlie Brown sweatshirt. And he did have a money belt. He was wearing a money belt.”

“Did he take that off, too?”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“Well, he came back to the mattress, and we started fooling around a little, you know, just touching each other. Actually, I was sort of keeping him busy while Bobby went through the money belt. Trouble is, he saw Bobby. And he jumped up and ran to where Bobby was standing with the money belt in his hands, and they started fighting, and that... that was when Bobby pushed him out the window. We split right away. I just threw on my jacket, and Bobby put on his coat, and we split. I didn’t even remember the blouse until much later.”

“Where’s the money belt now?” Willis asked.

“In Bobby’s apartment. Under his mattress.”

In the other room, Hamling kept insisting that Lewis Scott was an acid freak who had thrown himself out the window to the pavement below. Di Maeo knocked on the door, poked his head inside, and said, “Dick, you send some suspect dope to the lab?”

“Yeah,” Genero said.

“They just phoned. Said it was oregano.”

“Thanks,” Genero said. He turned again to Hamling. “The stuff in Lewis Scott’s refrigerator was oregano,” he said.

“So what?” Hamling said.

“So tell me one more time about this big acid freak you got involved with.”

In the squadroom outside, Carella sat at his desk typing a report on Goldenthal and Gross. Goldenthal had been taken to Buenavista, the same hospital that was caring for Andy Parker, whom he had shot. Gross had refused to say a word to anyone. He had been booked for armed robbery and murder one, and was being held in one of the detention cells downstairs. Carella looked extremely tired. When the telephone on his desk rang, he stared at it for several moments before answering it.

“Eighty-seventh Squad,” he said, “Carella.”

“Steve, this is Artie Brown.”

“Hello, Artie,” Carella said.

“I just wrapped up this squeal on North Trinity. Guy came home, and they’re happily in the sack.”

“Good for them,” Carella said. “I wish I was happily in the sack.”

“You want me to come back there, or what?”

“What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“Go home, Artie.”

“You sure? What about the report?”

“I’m typing it now.”

“Okay then, I’ll see you,” Brown said.

“Right,” Carella said, and put the receiver back onto its cradle, and looked up at the wall clock, and sighed. The telephone on Carl Kapek’s desk was ringing.

“Eighty-seventh,” he said, “Kapek speaking.”

“This is Danny Gimp,” the voice on the other end said.

“Hello, Danny, what’ve you got for me?”

“Nothing,” Danny said.

Di Maeo, Meriwether, and Levine were packing it in, hoping to resume their vacations without further interruption. Levine seemed certain that Brown and Carella would get promotions out of this one; there were always promotions when you cracked a case involving somebody doing something to a cop. Di Maeo agreed with him, and commented that some guys had all the luck. They went down the iron-runged steps, and past the muster desk, and through the old building’s entrance doors. Meriwether stopped on the front steps to tie his shoelace. Alex Delgado was just getting back to the station house. He bummed a cigarette from Levine, said good night to all of them, and went inside. It was almost 7:45, and some of the relieving shift was already in the squadroom.