Эд Макбейн - Jigsaw

“Course not,” Carella said. “How we doing there?”

“I may get cancer of the thumb,” Brown said.

He looked up at Carella. Their eyes met, and instant recognition flashed onto both their faces at the same moment, leaping the distance between them like heat lightning.

“Yeah!” Carella said, and started moving back toward the floor lamp.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Brown said, following him instantly.

“Oh, you know it,” Carella said.

There were three electric light bulbs in the lamp. Two of them were illuminated, and the third one was out. Carella reached in through the open top of the shade and unscrewed the one bulb that was not burning.

“There it is,” he said. “Unplug this damn thing before we electrocute ourselves.”

“Talk about a light bulb going on over a man’s head,” Brown said, and pulled the plug. Carella reached into the open socket with his thumb and forefinger. Neatly folded in half and then in half again, nestled into the bottom of the socket where it had been hidden by the light bulb screwed in on top of it, was the piece of the photo Krutch had promised they would find.

The Bureau of Criminal Identification was located at Headquarters, downtown on High Street. It was open twenty-four hours a day, its sole reason for existence being the collection, compilation, and cataloguing of any and all information descriptive of criminals. The IB maintained a Fingerprint File, a Criminal Index File, a Wanted File, a Degenerate File, a Parolee File, a Released Prisoner File, and Known Gamblers, Known Rapists, Known Muggers, Known You-Name-It files. Its Modus Operandi File alone contained more than 100,000 photographs of known criminals. And since all persons charged with and convicted of a crime were photographed and fingerprinted as specified by law, the file was continually growing and continually being brought up to date. The IB received and classified some 206,000 sets of prints yearly, and answered requests for more than 250,000 criminal records from police departments all over the country. Arthur Brown’s request for information on Albert Weinberg was one of those. The package from the IB was waiting on his desk when he got to work that Friday morning.

As Krutch had faithfully reported, Weinberg had indeed been busted several years back. According to the supplementary information enclosed with his yellow sheet, he had started a fistfight in a bar, and then — for no apparent reason — suddenly attacked a little old lady who was sitting on a stool at the end of the bar, knocking her senseless and taking seventeen dollars and eighty-four cents from her purse. He had pleaded guilty to all charges and had served his time at Castleview Prison upstate, from which he had been released two years back. He had not been in any trouble with the law since.

Brown studied the information carefully, glanced up at the clock on the squadroom wall, and decided he had better get his ass down to the Criminal Courts Building. He told Carella where he was going, advised him that he would probably try to contact Weinberg later that day, and then left the office. He thought of the snapshot all the way downtown. There were now three pieces: the one they had found clenched in the dead Ehrbach’s fist, and which was shaped somewhat like a dancing girl; the one Irving Krutch had voluntarily delivered to the squadroom, and which was obviously a corner piece; and now the one they had found hidden in Ehrbach’s floor lamp, shaped like a drunken amoeba. He kept thinking of those pieces all during the trial.

His testimony was relatively simple. He explained to the assistant district attorney that at the time of the arrest, the defendant Michael Lloyd had been sitting in the kitchen of his home with a bloody bread knife in his hand. His wife was in the bedroom, stabbed in the shoulder. Her lover was no place to be found; he had apparently left in a great hurry, leaving behind his shoes and his socks. Brown testified that the defendant Michael Lloyd had not resisted arrest, and that he had told the arresting officers that he had tried to kill his wife and hoped the bitch was dead. On the basis of his statement and the evidence of the bloody knife in his hands and the wounded woman in the bedroom, he had been charged with attempted murder. In the cross-examination, the defense lawyer asked a lot of questions about Lloyd’s “alleged” statement at the time of his arrest, wanting of course to know whether the prisoner had been properly advised of his rights, and Brown testified that everything had been conducted according to Miranda-Escobedo, and the district attorney excused him without a redirect, and called his next witness, the patrolman who had been present in the apartment when Lloyd had made his statement about having wanted to kill his wife. Brown left the Criminal Courts Building at 3:00 that afternoon.

Now, at 6:00 P.M., he sat at a table near the plate-glass front window of a cafeteria called The R&R, and knew that he was being cased from the street outside by none other than Albert Weinberg himself in person. Weinberg was even bigger than Krutch had described him, and certainly bigger than he had looked in the IB’s mug shot. At least as tall as Brown, heavier, with tremendous shoulders and powerful arms, a huge barrel chest and massive hands, he walked past the plate-glass window four times before deciding to come into the restaurant. He was wearing a plaid, long-sleeved sports shirt, the sleeves rolled up past his thick wrists. His reddish-blond hair was curly and long, giving his green-eyed face a cherubic look that denied the brute power of his body. He came directly to Brown’s table, approaching him with the confident stride most very strong men possess, stood staring down at him, and immediately said, “You look like fuzz.”

“So do you,” Brown answered.

“How do I know you’re not?”

“How do I know you’re not?” Brown said. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“Sure,” Weinberg answered. He pulled out a chair, adjusted his body to the seat and back as though he were maneuvering a bulldozer into a tight corner, and then folded his huge hands on the tabletop. “Let’s hear it again,” he said.

“From the top?”

“From the top,” Weinberg said, and nodded. “First, your name.”

“Artie Stokes. I’m from Salt Lake City, you ever been there?”

“No.”

“Nice city,” Brown said. “Do you ski? Supposed to be great powder skiing at Alta.”

“Did you call me to talk about the Olympics, or what?” Weinberg said.

“I thought you might be a skier,” Brown answered.

“Are you? ”

“How many Negroes have you ever seen on the ski slopes?”

“I’ve never been on the ski slopes.”

“But you get my point.”

“I’m still waiting for your story, Stokes.”

“I already gave it to you on the phone.”

“Give it to me again.”

“Why?”

“Let’s say we had a poor connection.”

“Okay,” Brown said, and sighed. “Couple of weeks ago, I bought a piece of a picture and a couple of names from a guy in Salt Lake. I paid two grand for the package. Guy who sold it to me was fresh out of Utah State, and strapped for cash.”

“What’s his name?”

“Danny Firth. He was doing eight years for armed robbery, got out in April, and needed a stake to set up his next job. That’s why he was willing to part with what he had.”

“What’d he have?”

“I just told you. Two names and a piece of a snapshot.”

“And you were willing to pay two grand for that? ”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Because Firth told me I could get seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars just by fitting my piece of the snapshot into the whole picture.”