Ed McBain: Ax

January.

It refuses to obey the clichés this year. December did not provide a white Christmas, and now there is no lingering snow on the city pavements. The clouds above the jagged skyline are threatening, but it is too warm to snow, and yet there is no real warmth. Neither is there a blustering wind, or frost-rimmed windows. There is instead a sunless lack of cheer, an overall impression of solemn monochromatic gray.

The gray descends from the curving sky in motion, covers the motionless city buildings, gray themselves with the soot of centuries, extends to the gray concrete pavements and the deeper gray of asphalt streets, becomes a part of the residents themselves, a teeming gray mass that moves along the city streets as though suspended in melancholy, captured in the doldrums of January. This is the first month. It contains thirty-one days, year in and

year out. There will be no future days or years for the man lying against the basement wall.

An ax is embedded in his skull.

It is not a hatchet, it is an ax; designed for the felling of trees and the chopping of wood. Its wedge-shaped metallic striking head has been driven with astonishing force into the man’s skull, splitting it wide, covering blade and hair and face and floor and wall with blood and brain matter. There is no question but that this was the final blow, and the condition of the dead man makes it equally clear that this final blow was not at all necessary: there are more than twenty other wounds on the man’s face and body. His jugular is severed and pouring blood, his fingers and hands are mutilated from the repeated slashing of the ax head as he raised his hands to ward off the savage blows. His left arm dangles loosely from the shoulder where a vicious cleaving blow of the ax has left a wide trench across skin and bone. He was undoubtedly dead even before his assassin drove the ax blade into his skull and left it there, the curving wooden handle arcing against the gray wall, the wood stained with blood and pulp.

Blood has no aroma.

There was the smell of coal dust in the basement, and the smell of human sweat, and even the smell of urine from behind one of the coal bins near the furnace, but Detective Steve Carella could smell no blood. The police photographers were snapping pictures and the assistant medical examiner was pronouncing the man dead and waiting for the lab boys to chalk his position on the floor before carting him off to the morgue for autopsy, as if autopsy were needed with an ax sticking out of his head. Detective Cotton Hawes was talking to the two cops sent over by Homicide, and Carella was down on his knees before a boy of about seven who kept trying desperately not to look at the bloody corpse against the wall.

“All right, sonny, what’s your name?” Carella said.

“Mickey,” the boy answered.

“Mickey what?”

“Mickey Ryan. Will there be a ghost?”

“No, son, no ghost.”

“How can you tell?”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Carella said.

“That’s what you think,” Mickey said. “My father saw a ghost one time.”

“Well, there won’t be any ghost this time,” Carella said. “You want to tell me what happened, Mickey?”

“I came down to get my bike, and I found him,” Mickey said. “That’s all.”

“Right where he is? Against the wall there?”

Mickey nodded.

“Where’s your bike, Mickey?”

“Over there. Behind the bin.”

“Well, what brought you over here, on this side of the bin? Did you hear something?”

“No.”

“Then what brought you here? Your bike is all the way over on the other side there.”

“The blood,” Mickey said.

“What?”

“The blood was running across the floor, and I looked down and saw it, and I wondered what it was, so I went to take a look. That’s when I saw Mr. Lasser.”

“Is that his name?”

“Yes. Mr. Lasser.”

“Would you know his first name?”

“George.”

“George Lasser, is that right?”

Mickey nodded.

“And Mr. Lasser is superintendent of the building, is that right?”

“Yeah,” Mickey said, and he nodded again.

“All right, Mickey. After you saw Mr. Lasser, what did you do?”

“I ran.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs.”

“Upstairs where?”

“To my mother.”

“And then what?”

“I told her Mr. Lasser was dead in the basement with an ax in his head.”

“And then what?”

“Then she said, ‘Are you sure?’ and I said I was sure, so she called the police.”

“Mickey, did you see anyone in the basement besides Mr. Lasser?”

“No.”

“Did you see anyone while you were going down to the basement?”

“No.”

“While you were running upstairs?”

“No.”

“Excuse me, but would you mind?” a voice said, and Carella looked up to where a very tall, plain blonde woman wearing a light topcoat had pushed her way past a patrolman near the basement door.

“I’m the boy’s mother,” she said. “I don’t know what the legality of this is, but I’m sure you’re not permitted to question a seven-year-old boy in the basement of a building! Or anywhere, for that matter.”

“Mrs. Ryan, I understand my partner asked your permission before we—”

“He didn’t tell me you were going to take the boy down here again.”

“I’m sure he—”

“I turn my back for one minute, and the next thing I know both your partner and the boy are gone, and I haven’t the faint est clue where. I mean, I’m pretty upset anyway, as you can imagine, my seven-year-old son finding a body in the basement with an ax in the head no less, so here he vanishes from the apartment, and I don’t know where he’s gone.”

“He’s been here all along, Mrs. Ryan,” Carella said. “Safe and sound.”

“Yes, with a corpse all full of blood staring him in the face not ten feet away from him.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ryan.”

“My point is he’s only seven years old and he shouldn’t be put through this sort of ordeal. We don’t live in Russia, you know.”

“No, ma’am. But he did discover the body, and we thought it might be easier for him to reconstruct what happened if we—”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I think he’s reconstructed enough,” Mrs. Ryan said.

“Of course, Mrs. Ryan,” Carella said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Is that meant to be sarcastic?” Mrs. Ryan asked.

“No, ma’am, I meant it sincerely,” Carella said.

“Yeah, cops,” Mrs. Ryan said, and she took her son’s hand and pulled him out of the basement.

Carella sighed and walked over to where Hawes was talking with the two Homicide cops. He did not recognize either of the two men.

“My name’s Carella,” he said, “the 8-7.”

“I’m Phelps,” one of the Homicide cops said.

“I’m Forbes,” the other said.

“Where’s Monoghan and Monroe?” Carella asked.

“Vacation,” Phelps said.

“In January?”

“Why not?” Forbes said.

“They both got nice places down in Miami,” Phelps said.

“No reason they shouldn’t go there in January,” Forbes said.