Ed McBain - The Empty Hours

“That’s very good,” Meyer said.

“You think so?” Loomis seemed thoughtful. “I think I coulda boosted it to two hundred if I held out a little longer. The bitch was running around with another guy, you see, and was all hot to marry him. He’s got plenty of loot. I bet I coulda boosted it to two hundred.”

“How long do these payments continue?” Hawes asked, fascinated.

“Until I get married again — which I will never ever do as long as I live. Drink your beer. It’s good beer.” He took a drag at his bottle and said, “What’d you want to see me about?”

“Do you know a man named Arthur Finch?”

“Sure. He in trouble?”

“Yes.”

“What’d he do?”

“Well, let’s skip that for the moment, Mr. Loomis,” Hawes said. “We’d like you to tell us —”

“Where’d you get that white streak in your hair?” Loomis asked suddenly.

“Huh?” Hawes touched his left temple unconsciously. “Oh, I got knifed once. It grew back this way.”

“All you need is a blue streak on the other temple. Then you’ll look like the American flag,” Loomis said, and laughed.

“Yeah,” Hawes said. “Mr. Loomis, can you tell us where you were last night between seven and eight o’clock?”

“Oh, boy,” Loomis said, “this is like ‘Dragnet,’ ain’t it? ‘Where were you on the night of December twenty-first? All we want are the facts.’ “

“Just like ‘Dragnet,“ Meyer said drily. “Where were you, Mr. Loomis?”

“Last night? Seven o’clock?” He thought for a moment. “Oh, sure.”

“Where?”

“Olga’s pad.”

“Who?”

“Olga Trenovich. She’s like a sculptress. She does these crazy little statues in wax. Like she drips the wax all over everything. You dig?”

“And you were with her last night?”

“Yeah. She had like a little session up at her pad. A couple of colored guys on sax and drums and two other kids on trumpet and piano.”

“You got there at seven, Mr. Loomis?”

“No. I got there at six-thirty.”

“And what time did you leave?”

“Gosssshhhhh, who remembers?” Loomis said. “It was the wee, small hours.”

“After midnight, you mean?” Hawes asked.

“Oh, sure. Two, three in the morning,” Loomis said.

“You got there at six-thirty and left at two or three in the morning? Is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“Was Arthur Finch with you?”

“Hell, no.”

“Did you see him at all last night?”

“Nope. Haven’t seen him since — let me see — last month sometime.”

“You were not with Arthur Finch in a restaurant called The Gate?”

“When? Last night, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Nope. I just told you. I haven’t seen Artie in almost two weeks.” A sudden spark flashed in Loomis’ eyes and he looked at Hawes and Meyer guiltily.

“Oh-oh,” he said. “What’d I just do? Did I screw up Artie’s alibi?”

“You screwed it up fine, Mr. Loomis,” Hawes said.

Irene Granavan, Finch’s sister, was a twenty-one-year-old girl who had already borne three children and was working on her fourth, in her fifth month of pregnancy. She admitted the detectives to her apartment in a Riverhead housing development, and then immediately sat down.

“You have to forgive me,” she said. “My back aches. The doctor thinks maybe it’ll be twins. That’s all I need is twins.” She pressed the palms of her hands into the small of her back, sighed heavily, and said, “I’m always having a baby. I got married when I was seventeen, and I’ve been pregnant ever since. All my kids think I’m a fat woman. They’ve never seen me that I wasn’t pregnant.” She sighed again. “You got any children?” she asked Meyer.

“Three,” he answered.

“I sometimes wish ...” She stopped and pulled a curious face, a face which denied dreams.

“What do you wish, Mrs. Granavan?” Hawes asked.

“That I could go to Bermuda. Alone.” She paused. “Have you ever been to Bermuda?”

“No.”

“I hear it’s very nice there,” Irene Granavan said wistfully, and the apartment went still.

“Mrs. Granavan,” Meyer said, “we’d like to ask you a few questions about your brother.”

“What’s he done now?”

“Has he done things before?” Hawes said.

“Well, you know ...” She shrugged.

“What?” Meyer asked.

“Well, the fuss down at City Hall. And the picketing of that movie. You know.”

“We don’t know, Mrs. Granavan.”

“Well, I hate to say this about my own brother, but I think he’s a little nuts on the subject. You know.”

“What subject?”

“Well, the movie, for example. It’s about Israel, and him and his friends picketed it and all, and handed out pamphlets about Jews, and…You remember, don’t you? The crowd threw stones at him and all. There were a lot of concentration-camp survivors in the crowds you know.” She paused. “I think he must be a little nuts to do something like that, don’t you think?”

“You said something about City Hall, Mrs. Granavan. What did your brother —”

“Well, it was when the mayor invited this Jewish assemblyman — I forget his name — to make a speech with him on the steps of City Hall. My brother went down and — well, the same business. You know.”

“You mentioned your brother’s friends. What friends?”

“The nuts he hangs out with.”

“Would you know their names?” Meyer wanted to know.

“I know only one of them. He was here once with my brother. He’s got pimples all over his face. I remember him because I was pregnant with Sean at the time, and he asked if he could put his hands on my stomach to feel the baby kicking. I told him he certainly could not. That shut him up, all right.”

“What was his name, Mrs. Granavan?”

“Fred. That’s short for Frederick. Frederick Schultz.”

“He’s German?” Meyer asked.

“Yes.”

Meyer nodded briefly.

“Mrs. Granavan,” Hawes said, “was your brother here last night?”

“Why? Did he say he was?”

“Was he?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“No. He wasn’t here last night. I was home alone last night. My husband bowls on Saturdays.” She paused. “I sit at home and hug my fat belly, and he bowls. You know what I wish sometimes?”

“What?” Meyer asked.

And, as if she had not said it once before, Irene Granavan said, “I wish I could go to Bermuda sometime. Alone.”

“The thing is,” the house painter said to Carella, “I’d like my ladder back.”

“I can understand that,” Carella said.

“The brushes they can keep, although some of them are very expensive brushes. But the ladder I absolutely need. I’m losing a day’s work already because of those guys down at your lab.”

“Well, you see —”

“I go back to the synagogue this morning, and my ladder and my brushes and even my paints are all gone. And what a mess somebody made of that alley! So this old guy who’s sexton of the place, he tells me the priest was killed Saturday night, and the cops took all the stuff away with them. I wanted to know what cops, and he said he didn’t know. So I called headquarters this morning, and I got a runaround from six different cops who finally put me through to some guy named Grossman at the lab.”

“Yes, Lieutenant Grossman,’ Carella said.

“That’s right. And he tells me I can’t have my goddamn ladder back until they finish their tests on it. Now what the hell do they expect to find on my ladder, would you mind telling me?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Cabot. Fingerprints, perhaps.”