Ed McBain - Ax

“Don’t you want me to take this down?” the stenographer asked.

“No,” Carella said. “We’ll call you if we need you.”

“Okay,” the stenographer said, and he went out of the squadroom, but he was still puzzled. In the straight-backed chair near the frost-whitened windows, Tony Lasser shivered and sobbed.

“What happened, Mr. Lasser?” Carella asked.

Lasser shook his head.

“Something must have happened to bring you here, sir.”

Again Lasser shook his head.

“Won’t you please tell us?” Hawes said softly, and Lasser reached for his handkerchief with trembling fingers and blew his nose, and then, shivering, stuttering, sobbing, told them what had happened.

Someone on that quiet New Essex street with its Tudor reproductions, someone among Tony Lasser’s neighbors…

“Was it Mrs. Moscowitz across the street?” Carella asked.

No, no, Lasser said. No, not Mrs. Moscowitz. She was a pain in the neck, but not a malicious woman. No, it was someone else. It didn’t matter who, really, just someone in the neighborhood.

“Yes, go ahead, what happened?” Hawes said.

Well, someone had come to Tony Lasser the day before. The someone was a spokesman for a sort of lynch party, northern style, except that no one was really going to be hanged or tarred and feathered, not really, not if everyone would “go along.” That was just the way Lasser’s neighbor had phrased it. He had said everything would be fine and dandy and everyone would be satisfied if they would all just “go along.” Lasser still hadn’t the faintest inkling what this neighbor wanted of him. He had been called from his study at the back of the house where he’d been illustrating a children’s book about tolerance, and here was this stranger—well, practically a stranger—whom he’d seen perhaps once or twice from his window, but whom he did not know at all. Now the stranger was talking about going along, and Lasser asked him what he meant.

“Your mother,” the neighbor said.

“My mother?”

“Mmm.”

“Well, what about her?” Lasser asked.

“We want her put away, Mr. Lasser.”

“Why?”

“That’s the wish of the neighborhood, Mr. Lasser.”

“That’s not my wish,” Lasser said.

“Well, you haven’t got a hell of a lot to say about it, Mr. Lasser,” the neighbor said, and then went on to explain the barrel the neighbors had constructed, the barrel over which they felt they now had Tony Lasser.

They had all read about the murder of Lasser’s father, and one of the newspapers had mentioned that the ax had been wielded by someone who possessed “the strength of a madman,” or some such journalese which had given them their idea. They had got together and taken a vote and decided that they would go to the police and say they had seen Estelle Lasser leaving her house at about noon on Friday, January 3, the day her husband George was hacked to death in the basement of his tenement building.

“But that isn’t true,” Tony Lasser said.

“Yes, but we have two people who will swear that they saw her leaving the house.”

“My mother will say she didn’t.”

“Your mother is insane.”

“I’ll say she didn’t,” Lasser said.

“Everybody knows you won’t step out of this house,” the neighbor said.

“What has that got to do with—”

“You think they’ll take the word of a man who’s afraid to go outside? You think they’ll take his word over the word of two normal citizens?”

“I’m normal,” Lasser said.

“Are you?” the neighbor asked.

“Get out of my house,” Lasser said in a hushed and deadly whisper.

“Mr. Lasser,” the neighbor said, unruffled, “everything work out fine here if we just go along with each other. We’re not trying to get anyone in trouble. We’re just trying to get a woman who is a maniac—”

“She is not a maniac!” Lasser said.

“—a maniac, Mr. Lasser, all we’re trying to do is get her out of this neighborhood and away where she belongs. Now we figure that either you’ll voluntarily have her committed, Mr. Lasser, or we’ll get her involved with the police, call her to the attention of the authorities as it were, have them ask her a few questions. Do you think she could stand up under a third degree, Mr. Lasser? Do we go along, or what?”

“She isn’t harming anyone.”

“She’s a pain in the ass, Mr. Lasser, and we’re all sick of apologizing for the maniac who lives on the block.”

“She isn’t harming anyone,” Lasser repeated.

“Mr. Lasser, this is it now, you listening? We’re going to give you till Monday morning to make up your mind. If you can assure us by then that you’ve contacted the authorities and your mother will be taken away, why, fine, we’ll all shake hands and have a drink to our continued good fellowship. If on the other hand, Mr. Lasser, we do not hear from you by then, we’ll go to the police and say that your mother was out of this house on the day your father was killed. We’ll just let them take it from there.”

“That would be lying,” Lasser said. “My mother was here.”

“Yes, that’s right, Mr. Lasser. It’d be lying.” The neighbor smiled. “But a lie ain’t a lie no more when somebody swears to it.”

“Get out,” Lasser said.

“Think it over.”

“Get out.”

“Think it over.”

He had thought it over. He had decided that whatever else happened, his mother was not to be institutionalized again. If his neighbors went to the police and cast suspicion on his mother… if the police began asking her questions…if God forbid she lost control…they would surely ask for her commitment. He could not allow that to happen. There was one way he could protect her. If he confessed to the crime himself, why, then they would leave her alone.

Lasser dried the tears from his eyes.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said.

“Okay, Mr. Lasser,” Carella said. “Genero, bring us some coffee!” he yelled.

“I d-d-don’t want any coffee,” Lasser said.

Carella ignored him. When the coffee came, they asked him whether he took it black or with cream, and Lasser said he took it black. How much sugar, they asked him, and he said he took it with no sugar. He wanted to get back to his mother, he said. He shouldn’t have left her alone for so long.

“Mr. Lasser,” Carella said, “suppose we’d believed your story?”

“What story?”

“That you killed your father.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“Suppose we’d believed you, and suppose you’d gone to trial and been convicted…”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Lasser, who’d have taken care of your mother?”

Lasser seemed suddenly confused. “I never thought of that,” he said.

“Mmm. Then it’s a good thing we didn’t believe you, huh?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“We’re going to have a patrolman see you home, Mr. Lasser,” Hawes said. “As soon as you finish your coffee...”

“I can get home by myself.”

“We know you can, sir,” Hawes said gently, “but we’d like to—”

“I can take a taxi,” Lasser said.

“It’s no trouble at all, believe me, sir,” Hawes said. “We’ll radio for a car—”

“I’ll take a taxi,” Lasser said. “I took one here, and I’ll take one home. I…I…I don’t want a police car pulling up in…in front of the house. There’ve been enough police since…since my…my father died.” Lasser paused. “He was not a bad man, you know. I…I…was never overly fond of him, I…I must say I couldn’t cry when I learned he was…was…d-d-dead. No tears would come. But he was not a bad man. He sent me to a good school, he sent my mother to a private institution. He was not a bad man.”