Ed McBain - Shotgun

Yancy looked at them suspiciously. He was used to all sorts of bullshit from Whitey, and he nodded skeptically now, letting the detectives know he wasn’t about to be that easily flattered.

“I still got to get my garbage cans off the sidewalk,” he said flatly.

“We’ll straighten out any problems with the cop on the beat,” Carella promised.

“Sure. You’ll pay the fine, too, I suppose.”

“There won’t be any fine, Mr. Yancy. Try to remember whether or not Damascus leaves the house and returns at any regularly set times, would you?”

“When he’s here, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“If he’s got a job, it must be nights,” Yancy said. “Only time I ever seen him around was during the day.”

“He leaves the apartment at night?”

“I guess so.”

“What time?”

“Eight, nine o’clock, something like that.”

“But you wouldn’t know where he goes?”

“No.”

“Thank you, Mr. Yancy.”

“That it?”

“That’s it, thank you.”

They watched as he limped toward the doorway. At the door, he turned and said, “Ain’t nothing wrong with my eyes.”

“What?” Carella said.

“The description,” Yancy answered, and went out.

Carella went to the dresser. In the top drawer, in a box containing tie clasps and cuff links, he found an uncanceled check made out to Walter Damascus for $110.79. The check was drawn to the account of The Cozy Corners and signed by someone named Daniel Cudahy.

“Something?” Kling asked.

“I think so,” Carella answered.

The Cozy Corners was a bar-cum-nightclub on Dover Plains Avenue in Riverhead. The owner’s name was Daniel Cudahy, and when Carella and Kling got there at 5:00 in the afternoon, he was eating his dinner.

“In this crazy racket,” he said, “you got to eat when you get a chance. It starts becoming a madhouse around here in a little while.”

Cudahy was a diminutive man with a balding head and a broken nose. There was a knife scar on his right temple, and his right eye twitched spasmodically as though in memory of how close the knife had come to gouging it. He sat at a table near the bar, eating a minute steak and French fries, sipping a bottle of Heineken’s beer. The decor of the place was cozy-cute, with checkerboard tablecloths and wood paneling and phony electric candlesticks on each table. A small dance floor was at one end of the room, a piano, a set of drums, and three music stands behind it. The name of the band performing — according to what was lettered on the bass drum — was KEN MURPHY’S MARAUDERS. The detectives sat at Cudahy’s invitation and watched him demolish the steak. Between mouthfuls, he said, “Sure, I know Wally. Where the hell is that bum?”

“He works for you, does he?”

“He’s my bouncer,” Cudahy said.

“Does he work full-time?”

“Every night except Sunday. We’re closed Sunday.”

“When’d you see him last, Mr. Cudahy?”

“Friday night. He was supposed to come in Saturday night, and never showed. I’m expecting him tonight, but who the hell knows?”

“Did he call in?”

“Nope.”

“Did you call him?”

“He hasn’t got a phone.”

“No place you can reach him?”

“He lives in Isola someplace, some crumby neighborhood. I wouldn’t go down there personally if you gave me a million dollars.”

“He lives on South Second, isn’t that right?”

“Yeah, somewhere down there. All full of spies and niggers,” Cudahy said. “I wouldn’t go down there with the National Guard.”

“And he has no phone?”

“No phone.”

“How come?”

“What do you mean, how come?”

“Almost everybody has a phone.”

“Well, he’s hardly ever there, what the hell does he need a phone for?”

“If he’s not there, where is he?” Kling asked.

“Who knows? He works for me, that’s all. His private life is his own business. I pay him seventy-five bucks a week, and he throws out anybody causing a disturbance. That’s our agreement. He can live wherever the hell he wants, in the park if he wants, on a park bench, it don’t matter to me.”

“Is he married, would you know?”

“If he is, he’s sure got it going for him six ways.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s always got broads hanging on him. He’s a real handsome guy, you know. I think he wanted to be an actor onetime.”

“Has he ever mentioned a wife to you?”

“Naw, I think he’s single, actually. A guy who looks like he does, why would he want to get married?”

“He was here Friday night, you said?”

“Yeah.”

“From when to when?”

“Got here at nine, left at closing time.”

“Which was when?”

“Two o’clock. We’re open till one every weekday night except Friday. Friday it’s two, Saturday it’s three, and Sunday we’re closed. That’s it.”

“So he left here at two.”

“That’s right. I paid him and he took off.”

“Is this the check you gave him?” Carella asked, and took the check from his wallet.

“That’s it. I pay every two weeks. That’s for two weeks’ salary less social security, disability, and federal and state withholding. It comes to one hundred ten dollars and seventy-nine cents.”

“Which means he’s been to that apartment sometime between Friday night and today,” Kling said.

“Huh?” Cudahy asked.

“We’re just thinking out loud,” Carella said.

“Oh,” Cudahy said, and poured more beer from the bottle into his glass. “You guys want a drink or something?”

“No, thanks,” Kling said.

“Too early for you?”

“We’re not allowed,” Carella said.

“Yeah, sure. I wish I had a nickel for every cop who ain’t allowed to drink on duty who comes in here and knocks off three shots in a row. Especially in the wintertime.”

“Well,” Carella said, and shrugged.

“What do you want Wally for? Did he do something?”

“Maybe.”

“Will you let us know if he comes in?” Kling said.

“Sure. What’d he do?”

“He might have killed a few people.”

Cudahy whistled softly and then swallowed some beer.

“Ever see him with a gun?” Kling asked.

“Nope.”

“Didn’t wear one on the job, huh?”

“Nope.”

“We’re thinking of an Iver Johnson .22,” Carella said.

“I wouldn’t know an Iver Johnson .22 from a 1937 Packard,” Cudahy said, and grinned. “Is that what he killed somebody with?”

“No,” Carella said, and frowned.

“When’s he supposed to have done it?” Cudahy asked.

“Friday night sometime.”

“After he left here?”

“Looks like it.”

“You got the wrong man,” Cudahy said flatly.

“What makes you think so?”

“Unless she was in it with him.”

“Who?”

“The broad.”

“What broad?”

“He left here Friday night with some broad.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know her name. I seen her around here before, though. She comes pick him up every now and then. She drives a big yellow Buick.”

“What does she look like?”

“A good-looking tomato,” Cudahy said. “Red hair, green eyes, everything in the right places.”

“You say she left here with him Friday night?”

“Yeah.”

“At two in the morning?”

“Yep.”

“Did she have the Buick with her?”

“Yeah, she’s always got that submarine with her. I think she goes to bed with that goddamn submarine.”

“Did Damascus say where they were going?”

“Where would you go with a gorgeous redhead at two o’clock in the morning?” Cudahy asked.