Ed McBain - Ten Plus One

“What are you saying, Steve?”

“I don’t know what the hell I’m saying.”

“Maybe you are Jewish, after all,” Meyer said.

“Maybe I am. Let’s stop for an egg cream before we look up Norden’s wife.”

Mae Norden was forty-three years old, a brunette with a round face and dark-brown eyes. They found her at the funeral home where Norden’s body lay in a satin-lined coffin. The undertaker had done a remarkable job with the front of his face, where the bullet had entered. The casual observer would never have known he’d been shot. The room was filled with relatives and friends, among whom were his wife and his two children, Joanie and Mike. Mike was eight years old and Joanie was five. They both sat on straight-backed chairs near the coffin, looking very old and very bewildered at the same time. Mae Norden was dressed in black, and her eyes looked as if she had cried a lot in the past day, but she was not crying now. She led the detectives outside, and they stood on the sidewalk there and smoked cigarettes and discussed her husband, who lay dead on satin in the silent room beyond.

“I don’t know who could have done this,” Mae said. “I know it’s common for a wife to think her husband was well-liked, but I can’t think of a single person who disliked Randy. That’s the truth.”

“How about business associates, Mrs. Norden? He was a lawyer, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible that one of his clients…?”

“Look, anyone who shoots someone has to be a little crazy, isn’t that so?”

“Not necessarily,” Meyer said.

“My point is, sure, Randy lost cases. Is there a lawyer who doesn’t lose cases? But if you ask me whether or not any of his clients would be…be angry enough to do something like this, then I have to say how do I know what a crazy person would do? Where’s the basis for…for anything when you’re dealing with someone who’s unbalanced?”

“We’re not sure the killer was unbalanced, Mrs. Norden,” Meyer said.

“No?” She smiled thinly. “A perfectly normal person went up on that roof and shot my husband when he came out of the building, is that it? Perfectly sane?”

“Mrs. Norden, we’re not psychiatrists. We’re talking about sanity in the eyes of the law. The murderer may not have been what the law considers insane.”

“The hell with the law,” Mae said suddenly. “Anyone who takes another man’s life is insane, and I don’t care what the law says.”

“But your husband was a lawyer, isn’t that right?”

“That’s exactly right,” Mae said angrily. “What are you saying now? That I have no respect for the law, therefore I have no respect for lawyers, therefore I have…”

“We didn’t say that, Mrs. Norden.” Carella paused. “I feel certain a lawyer’s wife would have a great deal of respect for the law.”

“But I’m not a lawyer’s wife anymore,” Mae said. “Didn’t you know that? I’m a widow. I’m a widow with two young children, Mr.—what was your name?”

“Carella.”

“Yes. I’m a forty-three-year-old widow, Mr. Carella. Not a lawyer’s wife.”

“Mrs. Norden, perhaps you can tell us a few things that might help us to find the man who killed your husband.”

“Like what?”

“Did he usually leave the apartment at the same time each morning?”

“Yes. On weekdays. On Saturdays and Sundays, he slept late.”

“Then anyone who had made a habit of observing him would know that he went to work at the same time each day?”

“I suppose so.”

“Mrs. Norden, was your husband a veteran?”

“A veteran? You mean, was he in the service?”

“Yes.”

“He was in the Navy for three years during World War Two,” Mae said.

“The Navy. Not the Army.”

“The Navy, yes.”

“He was a junior partner in his firm, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“How did he feel about that?”

“Fine. How should he have felt about it?”

“How many partners were there, Mrs. Norden?”

“Three, including my husband.”

“Was your husband the only junior partner?”

“Yes. He was the youngest man in the firm.”

“Did he get along with the others?”

“Very well. He got along with everyone. I just told you that.”

“No trouble with any of the partners, right?”

“That’s right.”

“What sort of law did he practice?”

“The firm handled every kind of case.”

“Criminal?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did your husband ever represent a criminal?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Three or four, I don’t remember. Four, I guess, since he’s been with the firm.”

“Acquittals or convictions?”

“Two of his clients were convicted, two were acquitted.”

“Where are the convicted men now?”

“Serving jail sentences, I would imagine.”

“Would you remember their names?”

“No. But Sam could probably…Sam Gottlieb, one of the partners. He would know.”

“Was your husband a native of this city, Mrs. Norden?”

“Yes. He went through the city school system, and also college and law school here.”

“Where?”

“Ramsey.”

“And how did you come to know him?”

“We met in Grover Park one day. At the zoo. We began seeing each other regularly, and eventually we were married.”

“Before he went into the service, or afterward?”

“We were married in 1949.”

“Had you known him while he was in the service?”

“No. He went into the Navy immediately after graduation. He took his bar exams as soon as he was discharged. He passed them and began practicing shortly afterward. When I met him, he had his own small office in Bethtown. He didn’t move to Gottlieb and Graham until three years ago.”

“He had his own practice up to that time?”

“No. He’d been with several firms over the years.”

“Any trouble anywhere?”

“None.”

“Criminal cases at those firms, too?”

“Yes, but I can hardly remember what…”

“Can you tell us which firms those were, Mrs. Norden?”

“You don’t really believe this can be someone he lost a case for, do you?”

“We don’t know, Mrs. Norden. Right now, we have almost nothing to go on. We’re trying to find something, anything.”

“I’ll write out a list for you,” she said. “Will you come inside, please?” In the doorway of the funeral home, she stopped and said, “Forgive me if I was rude to you.” She paused. “I loved my husband very much, you see.”

On Monday, April 30, five days after the first murder had been committed, Cynthia Forrest came to see Steve Carella. She walked up the low, flat steps at the front of the gray precinct building, past the green globes lettered with the white numerals 87, and then into the muster room where a sign told her she must state her business at the desk. She told Sergeant Murchison she wanted to talk to Detective Carella, and Murchison asked her her name, and she said, “Cynthia Forrest,” and he rang Carella upstairs, and then told her to go on up. She followed the white sign that read detective division and climbed the iron-runged steps to the second floor of the building, coming out onto a narrow corridor. She followed the corridor past a man in a purple sports shirt who was handcuffed to a bench, and then paused at the slatted wood railing, standing on tiptoes, searching. When she spotted Carella rising from his desk to come to her, she impulsively raised her arm and waved at him.

“Hello, Miss Forrest,” he said, smiling. “Come on in.” He held open the gate in the railing, and then led her to his desk. She was wearing a white sweater and a dark-gray skirt. Her hair was hemp-colored, long, pulled to the back of her head in a ponytail. She was carrying a notebook and some texts, and she put these on his desk, sat, crossed her legs, and pulled her skirt down over her knees.