Ed McBain - Shotgun

The idea for the tattoo came to me on the plane to the Coast. A kid across the aisle was making a drawing with Magic Markers, and he got some of the ink on his fingers, and I thought how much the stain looked like tattooed skin, and I scouted around in LA for marking pens with thin points, and of course they make them in all sizes now, so that part was easy. I must have drawn this tattoo a hundred times until I got it just right. It’s on my arm, you know, so all I had to do was look at it while I practiced drawing it over and over again. It’s a simple tattoo, no fancy stuff, and it was easy to draw. I figured it would get by all right because it would be expected , do you see what I mean? The police would know that Andrew Leyden had a tattoo on his left arm, and when they looked at the body, they would find a tattoo right where it was supposed to be, so why would they even once stop to think it was fake? Did you think it was fake? Still, I was afraid that on the night I actually did it, I wouldn’t have time to draw the tattoo on his arm, not after the noise of four shotgun blasts. But that was the horns of the dilemma, you see. I had to use a shotgun in order to destroy their faces, but I also had to put that fake tattoo on his arm so everyone would think he was me. Did you think he was me? Did everyone think he was me?

I wired the office from the Coast at 9:00 that Friday morning, and then called Rosie to tell her to send me a fresh checkbook. I really had run out of checkbooks, but that wasn’t why I’d called. I called to make certain she was home and also to let her know I’d be out there on the Coast while she was fooling around with her boy friend here in the city. I caught the 10:00 A.M. flight out of San Francisco and arrived at International Airport here at 5:55 P.M. By 6:30, I was in the city.

I didn’t think I’d go through with it.

It was a long night, the longest night in my life. I knew he worked until 2:00, you know, so I had to hang around until then, it was a long wait. I had dinner about 7:00, and then I walked around, and then I went to a movie, and then I went into this bar and got half-potted, and almost decided not to go ahead with it. But I left there about 1:30 and went to my building and waited downstairs for him. He didn’t show up until almost 3:30, I thought I’d missed him. I thought maybe he’d got out of work early and I’d missed him. But he showed up at last-a girl in a yellow Buick dropped him off-and he went upstairs. I gave him enough time to take off his clothes and get in bed with Rosie, and then I took the shotgun out of the trunk of the car where I’d left it from the day I bought it, and I went up the stairs and let myself in the kitchen door.

Rosie came into the living room and I shot her first.

When she fell I put another shot in her face.

I did the same to him.

In the bedroom.

Then I took off his jewelry, he was wearing a signet ring and an ID bracelet, and I put my wedding band on his left hand and my college ring on his other hand. Then I drew the tattoo on his arm.

I was very calm while I was drawing it. I thought sure the shots had been heard, they sounded so loud , you know?

But I was very calm.

When I finished the tattoo, it didn’t look right. It looked too new and clean, it didn’t look like the one I have on my arm. So I went around the apartment wiping my hand over any dusty surface I could find, deliberately getting my hand dirty, you see, and then I went back to where Damascus was lying on the floor and I rubbed the dirt onto the tattoo I’d drawn, to give it an older look, as if it had been there a long time, to take the new look off it. Then I propped the gun in his hand. I guess I thought I’d make it look like suicide.

That was an idea that just came to me while I was there.

I planned all the rest except that.

Lieutenant Byrnes put his copy of the confession on the desk and very softly said, “All right, Mr. Leyden, would you please sign all three copies?”

Leyden nodded. He took the pen Carella offered, turned the original copy so that he could sign it where a space had been left on the last page, and then suddenly shook his head.

“What’s the matter?” Byrnes asked.

“There’s more,” Leyden said. “I killed someone else.”

“What?” Byrnes said.

“I met a woman... I... when I was roaming around... before... before I went to the apartment. I met a woman in a bar and... and later... I... I realized I’d... I’d told her my name and... and told her my wife was cheating on me. We were... we were talking, you know, and I was upset, and I said too much. So... I... I... after I did the others, I... I went looking for her. I couldn’t remember her name, you see, in all the excitement her name had gone out of my head, but I knew I had to find her to... to make sure she... So I went back to the bar, and the bartender wouldn’t tell me what her name was, this must’ve been close to four o’clock in the morning, and I left there and was walking along wondering what to do when it came to me, all at once I remembered her name. I looked up her address in a phone book—”

“What was her name, Mr. Leyden?”

“Ryder. Marguerite Ryder.”

“Go on.”

“You getting this, Danny?” Carella asked the stenographer.

“Yo.”

“I went up there, and she said, ‘Who is it?’ and I said, ‘This is the fellow you met in the bar,’ thinking if she didn’t remember who I was I would leave her alone, there’d be no danger to me, do you understand? But she said, ‘Mr. Leyden?’ and I said, ‘Yes, Mr. Leyden,’ and she opened the door and said, ‘What is it?’ I said I had to talk to her. She said it was very late, but I guess I looked desperate, she was a nice person, you see, she never once thought I would harm her. She was... putting some dishes away or something, I don’t even remember. We went straight into the kitchen, and the first thing I saw was a knife on the drainboard, and I picked it up and stabbed her without saying a word to her. I didn’t want to but... she knew my name, you see. She knew I was Andrew Leyden who was having trouble with his wife.”

The squadroom was silent again.

“Danny, you want to get this new stuff typed?” Byrnes said.

“Yo,” the stenographer said.

Carella and Kling came down the squadroom steps with their topcoats open, the afternoon breeze coming in off the park across the street, carrying with it the late-autumn aroma of woodsmoke. The November sky behind the city’s spires looked too uniform, a placid blue that had to be false, a backdrop created by scenic designers. Even the sounds of traffic were muted now that the frantic activity of the world’s longest lunch hour had subsided; twilight seemed in gestation; the city already awaited the full onslaught of night.

They were both ravenously hungry. They had wanted to send out for sandwiches, so that they could finish the paperwork in the squadroom, but Byrnes had insisted that they take a break. Now, in the waning sunlight of the afternoon, they felt the sudden chill of night, and quickened their pace, walking rapidly to the corner, turning it, and heading for the luncheonette in the middle of the block.

“Who’s going to tell Meyer the Ryder case is closed?” Kling asked.

“We’d better break it gently,” Carella said.

“He’ll have a coronary.”

“You know something?” Carella said. “The fingerprints didn’t even belong to him.”

“To who?”

“Damascus.”

“What fingerprints?”

“The ones on the razor, the ones on the shotgun, the ones all over the goddamn apartment. They were Leyden’s all along.”

“Well, you can’t blame the lab for that,” Kling said. “They thought the dead man was Leyden. The wild prints—”