Ed McBain - Ax

“The corpse is cold,” Carella said.

“So’s the case.”

“What can you do? It’s January,” Carella answered, and they crossed the street.

The boy on the tricycle fired at them as they approached. “P-kuh, p-kuh, p-kuh,” and then braked to a stop, his soles scraping along the pavement. He was perhaps four years old, wearing a red-and-white stocking cap pulled down over his ears. A hank of red hair stuck out of the cap’s front and hung onto his forehead. His nose was running, and his face was streaked with dried mucus where he had repeatedly wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

“Hi,” Carella said.

“Who’re you?” the boy asked.

“Steve Carella. Who’re you?”

“Manny Moscowitz,” the boy said.

“Hi, Manny. This is my partner, Cotton Hawes.”

“Hi,” Manny said, and waved.

“How old are you, Manny?” Hawes asked.

“This many,” the boy said, and held up four fingers.

“Four years old. That’s very good.”

“Five,” Manny said.

“No, that was four.”

“It was five,” Manny insisted.

“Okay, okay,” Hawes said.

“You don’t know how to deal with kids,” Carella said. “You’re five, right, Manny?”

“Right,” Manny said.

“How do you like it around here?”

“Fine.”

“Do you live in this house right here?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know the old lady across the street?”

“What old lady?”

“The one across the street,” Carella said.

“Which one across the street? There’s lots of old ladies across the street.”

“Well, the one right in the house there,” Carella said.

“Which house?”

“Right there,” Carella said. He did not want to point because he had the certain feeling that Anthony Lasser was watching him from behind his drawn drapes.

“I don’t know which house you mean,” Manny said.

Carella looked across the street at the identical Tudor reproductions, and then he sighed.

“He means, do you know Mrs. Lasser?” Hawes asked, coming to his rescue.

“That’s right,” Carella said. “Do you know Mrs. Lasser?”

“Is she the one in the house across the street?”

“Yes,” Carella said.

“Which house?” Manny asked, and a voice shouted, “Manny! What are you doing there?”

Even before he turned, Carella knew it was another mother. There were days when all you got was mothers, sane or otherwise, and he knew without doubt that this was another mother, and he braced himself and turned just as a woman in a housedress with an open coat thrown over it, her hair in curlers, came marching down the front walk like a chowder society on Pennsylvania Avenue during Easter week.

“What is it?” she said to Carella.

“How do you do, ma’am?” Carella said. “I’m a police detective. We were simply asking your son some questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Oh, about the neighborhood in general.”

“Did you just come from the Lasser house across the street?” the woman asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Have you had complaints, is that it?”

“No, no complaints,” Carella said. He paused. “Why do you say that, Mrs. Moscowitz? You are Mrs. Moscowitz?”

“Yes.” She shrugged. “I just thought maybe you’d had some complaints. I thought maybe they were going to put the old lady away.”

“No, not that we know of. Why? Has there been any trouble?”

“Well, you know,” Mrs. Moscowitz said. “You hear stories.”

“What kind of stories?”

“Oh, you know. The husband a janitor someplace in the city, and he goes out every Sunday chopping down trees—God knows where he chops them—and carries them in to sell to his tenants, some funny business there, don’t you think? And the old lady laughing half the night away and crying if her husband doesn’t buy her an ice cream pop in the summer when the Good Humor truck comes around, that’s peculiar, isn’t it? And how about the son, Anthony? Drawing his pictures all day long in that back room overlooking the garden, summer and winter, and never stepping outside the house. I call that strange, mister.”

“He never goes out, you say?”

“Never. He’s a shut-in. He’s a regular shut-in.”

“Who’s a shut-in?” the boy asked.

“Shut up, Manny,” his mother said.

“Anyway, what is a shut-in?” he asked.

“Shut up, Manny,” his mother said.

“You’re sure he never goes out?” Carella asked.

“I’ve never seen him go out. Listen, how do I know what he does when it’s dark? He may sneak out and go to opium dens, who knows? I’m only telling you that I, personally, have never seen him leaving the house.”

“What can you tell us about the old man?” Hawes asked.

“Mr. Lasser?”

“Yes.”

“Well, now there’s another peculiar thing, I mean besides his going out to chop down trees. I mean, this man is eighty-six years old, you follow? That’s not exactly a young teenager. But every Saturday and Sunday, out he goes to chop down his trees.”

“Does he take an ax with him?”

“An ax? No, no, he has one of those saws, what do you call them?”

“A chain saw?” Hawes suggested.

“Yes, that’s right,” Mrs. Moscowitz said. “Even so, even with that saw, cutting down trees is very strenuous work for a man of eighty-six years of age, am I right?”

“Absolutely,” Carella said.

“Certainly, but this isn’t where it ends. Now mind you, there are hearty specimens in the world. I’ve seen men—well, my own father, may he rest in peace, he weighed a hundred eighty pounds, all muscle, God bless him, when he died aged seventy-nine. But Mr. Lasser is not a hearty specimen. Mr. Lasser is a frail old man, but he is always doing very heavy work. Moving big rocks out of his backyard, and pulling up stumps, and painting the house, well, that’s not very heavy work, but still, an old man like him on a ladder, to me it’s very peculiar.”

“In other words, then, you feel the entire family is peculiar, is that right, Mrs. Moscowitz?”

“I wouldn’t say anything against neighbors,” Mrs. Moscowitz said. “Let’s put it this way. Let’s say I consider it odd, well, strange, well, let’s say peculiar, all right? Let’s say I find it peculiar that a nutty old lady like Mrs. Lasser is left in the hands of two other nuts like her husband and her son, okay? Which is why I thought maybe somebody was going to have her put away, is all I’m saying.”

“Who’s nutty?” the boy asked.

“Shut up, Manny,” Mrs. Moscowitz said.

“Mrs. Moscowitz,” Carella said, “can you tell us whether or not you saw Anthony Lasser leaving the house at any time today?”

“No, I did not,” Mrs. Moscowitz said.

“Can you say with certainty that he was inside that house all day long?”

“What?”

“Did you actually see him across the street at any time today?”

“No, I did not.”

“Then he could have been gone, without your knowing it?”

“Well, what do you think I do?” Mrs. Moscowitz asked. “Go peeking over my neighbors’ windowsills?”

“No, of course not.”

“I should hope not,” Mrs. Moscowitz said, offended.

“We were simply trying to—”

“Yes, I understand,” Mrs. Moscowitz said. “Come along, Manny. Say goodbye to the two gentlemen.”

“Goodbye,” Manny said.

“Goodbye,” Carella answered. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Moscowitz.”

Mrs. Moscowitz did not answer. With one hand on the handlebar of her son’s bike, she led bike and child up the walk and into the house, and then slammed the door.