Эд Макбейн - Jigsaw

It could have been anything, anywhere.

In the city, June worked its balmy Saturday afternoon magic.

On Third and Folger, two seventeen-year-old boys stopped a younger boy and asked him if he had any money. This being Saturday, the younger boy had no school carfare, and no lunch money. All he had was an overriding fear that transmitted itself to the older boys like animal musk in a virgin forest. When they discovered he was broke, they beat him up. It is probable that all they wanted to do was beat him up in the first place. They left him senseless, his nose shattered, four teeth knocked out of his mouth. All they took from him was a Ban-the-Bomb button he was wearing on his jacket. Then they went to a movie where John Wayne was starring in The Green Berets.

June.

In Grover Park, an old lady sat on a bench feeding the pigeons. She was wearing a flowered housedress and a woolen shawl. She kept feeding the pigeons and cooing to them gently. Her bag was on the bench beside her. From its open top, a half-completed gray sweater and a pair of knitting needles protruded. A college student with long hair and a straggly beard ambled over, and sat on the bench beside her. He was wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt and scuffed desert boots. He opened a copy of Plato’s Republic and began reading in the sunshine.

The old lady glanced at him.

She threw a handful of bread crumbs to the pigeons, cooed at them, and glanced again at the boy, who was absorbed in his book.

“Don’t you look at me that way,” she said suddenly.

The boy looked sharply to his right, not sure at first that he was being addressed.

“You heard me, you little shit,” the old lady said. “Don’t look at me that way, you bastard.”

The boy stared at the woman for a moment, decided she was crazy, closed his book, and was rising from the bench when she reached into her bag, pulled out one of the knitting needles, and stuck it clear through his eye to the back of his neck. At her feet, the pigeons pecked at the bread crumbs and gently cooed.

June, croon.

On a rooftop several miles away, the sunshine beat down on tar already growing sticky, and four boys held the twelve-year-old girl down against the black melting stuff while a fifth boy pulled off her panties and stuffed them into her mouth so that she could not scream. The girl could not move either, because they had her spread-eagled, arms and legs wide. A boy standing near the closed door of the roof whispered, “Hurry it up, Doc,” and the boy named Doc, the one who had taken off her panties and who now stood over her, tall and large against the blinding sun, unzipped his fly, displayed his masculinity to her terror-ridden eyes, and then plunged himself deep inside her, against the protest of her tearing flesh. The boy standing near the closed door danced an impatient little jig while they took turns with the little girl. By the time it was his turn, they decided they’d better get out of there before somebody caught them. The little girl, bleeding and unconscious, still lay spread-eagled against the melting tar, her panties in her mouth. The boy who had been lookout complained all the way down the stairs to the street. “You bastards,” he kept saying, “you promised I’d get some, too, you promised, you promised.”

June, croon, spoon.

As the afternoon waned, a sweet intoxicating breeze blew in off the River Harb and insinuated itself through the narrow canyons of the city. Dusk was upon the horizon now, the sounds of the day were beginning to blend with the sounds of approaching night. The sky to the west turned blood-red and then swam the color spectrum through purple to blue to black. A thin sliver of moon curled against the stars like a pale lemon rind. In an apartment on a side street not far from the river, a man sat in undershirt and trousers, watching television. His wife, wearing a half-slip and a brassiere, padded in from the kitchen carrying two open bottles of beer and two glasses. She put one beer and one glass down in front of the man, and then poured the other beer into a glass for herself. The crescent moon shone palely through the open backyard window. The woman looked at the television screen and said, “That again?”

“Yeah,” the man said, and picked up his bottle of beer.

“I hate that show,” his wife said.

“I like it,” he said.

Without a word, the woman went to the set, and turned the channel selector. Without a word, her husband got out of his chair, walked up to her swiftly, and hit her eleven times with his beer bottle, twice while she was standing, twice as she slumped to the floor, and another seven times after she was unconscious and bleeding. He turned the television set back to the channel he’d been watching, and he did not call the police until the show was over, forty-five minutes later.

June, croon, spoon, moon.

In a hotel room at the Selby Arms, sixteen blocks to the west, Arthur Brown made three telephone calls in succession, and then sat back to wait for contact from Ferguson and/or Kahn. The first call he made was to his wife Caroline who deplored the fact that they’d had to cancel a dinner date, and then went on to tell Brown that she missed him and that their daughter Connie was coming down with a cold. Brown told his wife he missed her also, to which she replied, “So why don’t you come home and do something about it?”

“Duty calls,” he said.

“Foo,” she answered.

They hung up billing and cooing and humming June, croon, spoon, moon songs.

Brown opened his notebook to the page on which he had jotted Weinberg’s address and telephone number. Weinberg answered on the third ring. As soon as they had exchanged hellos, Weinberg said, “Anything?”

“Not yet.”

“You think they’ll try to reach you?”

“I’m still hoping.”

“I ain’t had much luck, either,” Weinberg said. “You know that Property Clerk’s Office I was telling you about?”

“Yeah?”

“First of all, there must be forty or fifty guys working there, most of them civilians. They get crap from all over the city, anything that’s been involved in accidents or crimes, anything not claimed at station houses — it’s like a regular goddamn warehouse down there.”

“No kidding,” Brown said, as if he didn’t already know.

“Yeah. There’s also cops working there, because naturally they got a lot of weapons in the place, you dig?”

“Um-huh.”

“In order to claim anything after they’re done with it, you got to be a prime relative. It don’t matter if you’re a third cousin, so long as you’re the closest living relative, you dig?”

“That sounds good for us,” Brown said. “You could easily pass yourself off as...”

“Wait a second. You got to get a release from the DA first. You got to go to the DA’s office and get a goddamn release.”

“That’s bad,” Brown said.

“That stinks,” Weinberg said.

“Who runs the whole show down there?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Try to find out. He’s the man we’ve got to reach.” Brown paused. “Unless you’d like to try breaking in some night.”

“Ha!” Weinberg said. “Call me later, will you? Let me know if anything happens.”

“Will you be there all night?”

“All night. I got a sweet bottle of bourbon, and I intend to kill it.”

“Don’t let it kill you,” Brown said, and hung up.

The next person he called was Irving Krutch.

“Well, well,” Krutch said, “this is a pleasant surprise.”