Ed McBain - Ax

“I’m a police officer,” Hawes said. “I want to have another look at that basement.”

“Let me see your badge,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Hawes asked.

“My name’s John Iverson. I’m superintendent of the building next door, 4113.”

“Well, what are you doing here, if you’re the super over there?”

“Mr. Gottlieb—he’s the landlord—he asked me if I could help out for a few days. Until he found somebody to take George’s job.”

“Help out doing what?”

“Tend the furnace, get the garbage cans out in the morning. Same as I do next door.” Iverson paused. “Let me see your badge.”

Hawes showed Iverson his shield and then said, “I’m going to be in the building most of the day, Mr. Iverson, part of the time here in the basement and part of the time questioning the tenants.”

“Okay,” Iverson said, as though he were granting Hawes permission to remain. Hawes made no comment. Instead, he went down to the basement. Iverson followed him down the steps.

“Time to check the heat,” he said almost cheerfully and then went over to the black cast-iron furnace sitting in one corner of the basement. He glanced at a gauge, picked up a shovel standing against the wall of the coal bin, and lifted open the furnace door with the blade of the shovel. He threw a dozen shovelfuls of coal into the furnace, slammed the door shut with the shovel, put the shovel back against the wall, and then leaned against the wall himself. Hawes stared at him across the length of the basement room.

“If you’ve got something else to do,” he said, “don’t let me hold you up.”

“I got nothing to do,” Iverson said.

“I thought maybe you wanted to go back next door and check the furnace there.”

“I done that before I come here,” Iverson said.

“I see. Well…” Hawes shrugged. “What’s this back here?” he asked.

“George’s workbench.”

“What kind of work did he do?”

“Oh, odds and ends,” Iverson said.

Hawes studied the bench. A broken chair was on its top and alongside that a partially completed rung that would have replaced the broken one. There were three shelves hanging on the basement wall over the bench, all dust-covered, all crammed full of jars and tin cans containing nails, screws, and assorted hardware. Hawes looked at the shelves again. They were not, as he had first thought, all dust-covered. The middle one, in fact, had been wiped clean of dust.

“Anybody been down here since Friday?” he asked Iverson.

“No, I don’t think so. They wouldn’t let anyone come down. They were taking pictures, you know.”

“Who was?”

“The police.”

“I see,” Hawes said. “Well, was anyone down here this morning?”

“Not from the police, no.”

“Anyone from the building?”

“Tenants come down here all the time,” Iverson said. “There’s a washing machine down here, same as in my building next door.”

“Where’s that? The washing machine.”

“Over there. No, behind you.”

Hawes turned and saw the machine standing against one wall, its door open. He walked over toward it.

“Then anyone could have come down here this morning, is that right?” he asked. “To use the machine?”

“That’s right,” Iverson said.

“Did you see anyone come down?”

“Sure, I seen lots of tenants down here.”

“Which ones? Would you remember?”

“No.” “Try.”

“I don’t remember,” Iverson said.

Hawes grunted, barely audibly, and walked back to the workbench. “Was Lasser working on this chair?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Iverson said. “I guess so. If it’s on his workbench, then I guess he was working on it.”

Hawes looked at the middle shelf again. It had definitely been wiped clean. He pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket, tented it over his hand, and pulled open one of the drawers under the workbench. The drawer was cluttered with old pencils, a straightedge, thumbtacks, a plumber’s snake, a broken stapler, rubber bands, and a dusty package of Chiclets. Hawes closed the drawer. It went halfway into the bench and then refused to move. He shoved at it again, cursed mildly, and then got on his hands and knees and crawled under the bench. He looked up at the drawer. The plumber’s snake had caught on one of the cross supports, snagging the drawer. With one hand on the basement floor, close to the right rear leg of the bench, Hawes reached up and shoved at the snake, coiling it back into the drawer. He slid out from under the bench, dusted off his trousers, and closed the drawer.

“Is there a sink down here?” he asked.

“Over near the washing machine,” Iverson answered.

He walked away from the workbench and over to the sink against the opposite wall. A small covered drain was set into the basement floor in front of the sink. Hawes stopped with his feet on the drain cover, turned on the faucet, and began washing his hands with a bar of laundry soap that was resting in the basin.

“It gets dirty in basements,” Iverson said.

“Yeah,” Hawes answered.

He dried his hands on his handkerchief and then left the basement, walking directly out of the building and to the corner and into a candy store. From a pay phone he called the Police Laboratory and asked to talk to Detective-Lieutenant Sam Grossman.

“Hello?” Grossman said.

“Sam, this is Cotton Hawes. I’m here on South Fifth, just came from the basement. They tell me your boys were down there taking pictures.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Grossman said.

“Sam, have you got any pictures of the dead man’s workbench?”

“Which one is this, Cotton? Which case?”

“The ax murder. 4111 South 5th.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah. The workbench, huh? I think we’ve got some. Why?”

“Have you looked them over yet?”

“Only casually. I just got to the office a little while ago. My brother got married last night.”

“Congratulations,” Hawes said.

“Thanks. What about the workbench?”

“Take another look at the pictures,” Hawes said. “I don’t know if it’ll show or not, but there are three shelves over the bench. The middle shelf’s been wiped clean of dust.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll take a look,” Grossman said. “If it’s anything, I’ll follow it up.”

“Let us know, will you, Sam?”

“Who’s working this with you?”

“Steve Carella.”

“Okay, I’ll get back to you. Cotton?”

“I’m here.”

“This may take a while.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll have to send a man down there, look over the place again, more pictures, maybe tests.”

“Okay, just let us know.”

“Right. Thanks a lot.”

Hawes hung up and walked back to Lasser’s building. He wanted more than ever now to question the tenants in the building. Someone had wiped off that middle shelf, and he wondered who, and he wondered why.

It was unfortunate that he was a cop who looked like a cop. That’s the worst kind of cop you can possibly be when you’re questioning people who dislike cops as a matter of principle. Hawes was six foot two inches tall, and he weighed 190 pounds. He had blue eyes and a square jaw with a cleft chin. His hair was red, except for a streak over his left temple where he had once been knifed and where the hair had curiously grown in white after the wound had healed. He had a straight, unbroken nose and a good mouth with a wide lower lip, but there was a look of arrogance on his face, even when he was in a good mood. He was not in a good mood when he began questioning the tenants in the building, and he was in a worse mood after he had gone through two and a half floors of snotty answers and surly attitudes.