Эд Макбейн - Let’s Hear It For The Deaf Man

“You’re a big boy, I’m impressed,” Carella said, and, without another word, drew his gun. “This is a.38 Detective’s Special,” he said. “It carries six cartridges, and I’m a great shot. I don’t intend tangling with three gorillas. Sit down and be nice, or I’ll shoot you in the foot and say you were attempting to assault a police officer.”

Yank blinked.

“Hurry up,” Carella said.

Yank hesitated only a moment longer, and then sat at the table again.

“Very nice,” Carella said. He did not holster the pistol. He kept it in his hand, with his finger inside the trigger guard. “The silver bike is yours, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Which one is yours, Ox?”

“The black.”

“How about you?” he said, turning to Willie.

“The red one.”

“They all properly registered?”

“Come on,” Yank said, “you’re not going to hang any bullshit violation on us.”

“Unless I decide to lean on you about the garbage outside.”

“Why you doing this?” Ox asked suddenly.

“Doing what, Ox?”

“Hassling us this way? What the hell did we do?”

“You lied about being in Elliot’s shop Saturday, that’s what you did.”

“Big deal. Okay, we were there. So what?”

“What were you arguing about?”

“The price of a statue,” Ox said.

“It didn’t look that way.”

“That’s all it was,” Ox said. “We were arguing about a price.”

“What’d you decide?”

“Huh?”

“What price did you agree on?”

“We didn’t.”

“How well do you know Elliot?”

“Don’t know him at all. We saw his stuff in the window, and we went in to ask about it.”

“What about Mary Margaret Ryan?”

“Never heard of her.”

“Okay,” Carella said. He went to the door, opened it, and said, “If you were planning to leave suddenly for the Coast, I’d advise against it. I’d also advise you to get that garbage out of the hallway.” He opened the door, stepped outside, closed the door behind him, and went down the steps. He did not return the gun to its holster until he was on the ground floor again. He knocked on the door at the end of the hall there, and the same man answered it.

“Did you bust them?” the man asked.

“No. Mind if I come in a minute?”

“You should have busted them,” the man said, but he stepped aside and allowed Carella to enter the apartment. He was a man in his fifties, wearing dark trousers, house slippers, and an undershirt with shoulder straps. “I’m the superintendent here,” he said.

“What’s your name, sir?” Carella asked.

“Andrew Halloran,” the super said. “And yours?”

“Detective Carella.”

“Why didn’t you bust them, Detective Carella? They give me a hell of a lot of trouble, I wish you would have busted them for something.”

“Who’s paying for the apartment, Mr. Halloran?”

“The one with all the muscles. His name’s William Harcourt. They call him Willie. But he’s never there alone. They come and go all the time. Sometimes a dozen of them are living in there at the same time, men and women, makes no difference. They get drunk, they take dope, they yell, they fight with each other and with anybody tries to say a decent word to them. They’re no damn good, is all.”

“Would you know the full names of the other two?”

“Which two is that?” Halloran asked.

“Ox and Yank.”

“I get mixed up,” Halloran said. “Three of them came in from California a few weeks back, and I sometimes have trouble telling them apart. I think the two up there with Willie...”

“ Three of them, did you say?” Carella asked, and suddenly remembered that Yank had given him this same information last Tuesday, when he’d been sitting outside the candy store with his chair tilted back against the brick wall. “ Three of us blew in from the Coast a few weeks back .”

“Yeah, three of them, all right. Raising all kinds of hell, too.”

“Can you describe them to me?”

“Sure. One of them’s short and squat, built like an ape with the mind of one besides.”

“That’d be Ox.”

“Second one’s got frizzy hair and a thick black beard, scar over his right eye.”

“Yank. And the third one?”

“Tall fellow with dark hair and a handlebar mustache. Nicest of the lot, matter of fact. I haven’t seen him around for a while. Not since last week sometime. I don’t think he’s left for good, though, because his bike’s still here in the hall.”

“Which bike?”

“The red one.”

“I thought that belonged to Willie.”

“Willie? Hell, he’s lucky if he can afford roller skates.”

Carella took the notebook from his jacket pocket, removed the photograph from it, and asked, “Is this the third bikie?”

“That’s Adam, all right,” Halloran said.

“Adam what ?” Carella said.

“Adam Villers.”

He called the squadroom from a pay phone in the corner drugstore, told Meyer he’d had a positive identification of the dead boy in the Jesus Case, and asked him to run a routine I.S. check on Adam Villers, V–I-L–L-E-R-S. He then asked if there had been any calls for him.

“Yeah,” Meyer said. “Your sister called and said not to forget Wednesday is your father’s birthday and to mail him a card.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“Kling wants to know if you feel like taking your wife to a strip joint in Calm’s Point.”

“What?”

“He’s tailing a guy on those burglaries, and the guy knows what he looks like, and Cotton was spotted for a cop first crack out of the box.”

“Tell Kling I’ve got nothing better to do right now than take Teddy to a strip joint in Calm’s Point. Jesus!”

“Don’t get sore at me, Steve.”

“Any other calls?”

“Did you have a mugging on Ainsley back in March? Woman named Charity Miles?”

“Yes.”

“The Eight-eight just cracked it. Guy’s admitted to every crime of the past century, including the Brink’s Robbery.”

“Good, that’s one less to worry about. Anything else?”

“Nothing.”

“Any mail?”

“Another picture from our Secret Pen Pal.”

“Who’d he send this time?”

“Who do you think?” Meyer said.

He did not find Mary Margaret Ryan until close to midnight. It had begun drizzling lightly at 11:45 P.M., by which time he had tried the apartment on Porter again, as well as all the neighborhood hangouts, and was ready to give up and go home. He recognized her coming out of a doorway on Hager. She was wearing an army poncho, World War II salvage stuff, camouflaged for jungle warfare. She walked swiftly and purposefully, and he figured she was heading back for the apartment, not two blocks away. He caught up with her on the corner of Hager and McKay.

“Mary Margaret,” he said, and she turned abruptly, her eyes as wide and frightened as they had been that first day he’d talked to her.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home,” she said. “Excuse me, I...”

“Few things I’d like to ask you.”

“No,” she said, and began walking up McKay.

He caught her elbow and turned her to face him, and looked down into her eyes and said, “What are you afraid of, Mary Margaret?”

“Nothing, leave me alone. I have to get home.”

“Why?”

“Because... I’m packing. I’m getting out of here. Look,” she said, plaintively, “I finally got the money I need, and I’m splitting, so leave me alone, okay? Let me just get the fuck out of here.”

“Why?”

“I’ve had this city.”