Ed McBain - Shotgun

“A widow. Her husband died shortly after the war.”

“I didn’t know that.”

He fell silent again. He clenched his right hand and then his left. His fedora dropped to the floor, and he picked it up and then looked apologetically at Hawes, who was watching him intently.

“You knew her,” Meyer prompted.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I’m a bartender.”

Meyer nodded. “Where do you work, Mr. Martin?”

“Over at Perry’s. Do you know it? It’s on DeBeck.”

“Yes, we’re familiar with it,” Hawes said.

“I read in the paper this morning that somebody stabbed her,” Martin said, and again dropped his hat. Hawes retrieved it for him, and he mumbled a “Thank you,” and then turned to Meyer again. “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble,” he said.

The detectives waited.

“But she was a nice lady, Margie, and I can’t see how anyone who knew her could have done a thing like this.”

“Yes?” Meyer said.

“I know you guys don’t need any help from me, I’m just a bartender. I never even read a mystery in my entire life.”

“Go on,” Meyer said.

“But... well, look, the newspaper this morning said nothing was touched in the apartment, so that lets out a burglar. And whoever stabbed her, he didn’t... well, somebody on the scene said it didn’t look like rape had been the motive, I forget who said it, somebody from the District Attorney’s office. So what I mean is this wasn’t somebody who broke into her apartment, you know what I mean? If it wasn’t burglary, and it wasn’t rape, then—”

“Yes, we’re following you, Mr. Martin.”

“Well, if it wasn’t a criminal, if it wasn’t somebody who broke in to do some criminal thing, then it had to be somebody she knew, right?”

“Go on.”

“Well, anybody who really knew Margie would never do a thing like this. She was a sweet, decent person that if you knew her you couldn’t think of ever harming her. She was a lady,” Martin said.

“So what do you think?”

“I think it had to be somebody who didn’t know her.”

“But you said—”

“I mean didn’t know her good. A stranger.”

“I see.”

“A stranger,” Martin repeated, and fell silent again. “Jesus, I hate to get anybody in trouble, I mean it. I may be all wet about this.”

“What’s your idea?”

“Well... a guy came in the bar Friday night, this must’ve been about midnight, I don’t know, around then sometime.”

“Yes, go on.”

“He was pretty wound up, you know, his hands shaking and all that. He had maybe two or three drinks, I don’t remember, sitting at the bar, just putting them away and looking as if... I don’t know... as if somebody was after him or something. You know, he’d look up at the clock, and then he’d turn to look at the door, nervous, you know? Very nervous.” Martin took a deep breath. “So Margie, being the type of person she was, being a really decent human being, she got him talking, and pretty soon he seemed more relaxed. I mean, he wasn’t exactly calm, but he was more relaxed than when he came in. They talked together a long time. He didn’t leave until we closed.”

“What time was that?”

“Two o’clock.”

“He left alone?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Mr. Martin, how do you connect—?

“He came back. It must’ve been about four by then, I was still cleaning up the place. There’s lots of things to do after a bar closes, you know. I usually don’t get out of there till maybe five, five-thirty on a Friday night.”

“What’d he want?”

“He wanted to know Margie’s last name.”

“Did you give it to him?”

“No.”

“Then—”

“He begged me to tell him. He said he knew what it was, she’d told it to him while they were talking, but he’d forgotten it in all the excitement, and now he had to talk to her again, and would I please give him her name. I told him it was four o’clock in the morning, it was too late to talk to her. I told him to come back tomorrow, she usually stopped in after supper, he could talk to her then. So he said, no, he had to talk to her right then, and I told him to buzz off before he got me sore. I’m a pretty big guy, you know. I... I don’t like to shove my weight around, I don’t think I’ve been in a fight since I was twelve years old, I mean it, but this guy was beginning to get on my nerves. What the hell, it was four in the morning, what did he need to talk to Margie for? I told him if he needed a broad, he was barking up the wrong tree, he should go take a walk up Culver Avenue, he’d find a hundred hookers prowling around there.” Martin paused. “I’m sorry, I know you guys do your best, but it’s the truth.”

“Go on, Mr. Martin.”

“Well, that’s it, I guess. He finally left.”

“What time?”

“Musta been about four-thirty.”

“But you didn’t give him Mrs. Ryder’s last name?”

“No.”

“Or her address?”

“No, of course not.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you hear him talking?”

“I was pretty busy Friday night.”

“You didn’t hear any of his conversation with Mrs. Ryder?”

“No.”

“Do you think she really told him her name?”

“I guess so. People usually tell each other what their names are, don’t they?”

“But he’d said he’d forgotten it.”

“Yes.”

“In all the excitement.”

“Yes.”

“What excitement?”

“I don’t know. I guess he meant talking to her. I don’t know.”

“What makes you think he finally located her?”

“Well, he might have remembered her name, and then looked up her address in the phone book. She’s listed. I already checked that before I come here.”

“So you think he may have looked her up in the phone book, and then gone to her apartment?”

“Yes.”

“At four-thirty in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“To talk to her?”

“To lay her,” Martin said, and actually blushed.

Bert Kling had come to the apartment to make love.

It was his day off, and that was what he wanted to do. He had been thinking about it all afternoon, in fact, and had finally come over to the apartment at 4:30, letting himself in with the key Cindy had given him long ago, and then sitting in the darkening living room, waiting for her return.

The city outside was unwinding at day’s end, dusk softening her pace, slowing her step. Kling sat in an armchair near the window, watching the sky turn blood-red and then purple and then deepening to a grape-stained silky blackness. The apartment was very still.

Somewhere out there in that city of ten million people, there was a man named Walter Damascus and he had killed Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Leyden, had killed them brutally and viciously, pumping two shotgun blasts into each of their faces.

Kling wanted very much to go to bed with Cindy Forrest.

He did not move when he heard her key in the latch. He sat in the dark with a smile on his face, and then suddenly realized he might frighten her, and moved belatedly to turn on the table lamp. He was too late, she saw or sensed movement in the darkness. He heard her gasp, and immediately said, “It’s me, Cind.”

“Wow, you scared hell out of me,” she said, and turned on the foyer light. “What are you doing here so early? You said—”

“I felt like coming over,” Kling said, and smiled.

“Yeah?”

“Mmm.”

She put her bag down on the hall table, wiggled out of her pumps, and came into the living room.

“Don’t you want a light?” she asked.