Ed Lacy - Lead With Your Left

“No. I have a... a... feeling this was more than a hold-up. The worthless bonds, the torn pockets, for example, make me uneasy.”

Austin let me have the chuckle again. “You sound like a song, 'that old feeling.' Better gag than anything I've seen on TV this week. Keep your feelings for your girl friends.”

I shut up. When we reached Third Avenue I turned downtown and then east again and we were in a neighborhood of run-down wooden private houses, most of them with tiny lawns bordered by a struggling bush or even flowers. It was like a couple of blocks of some hick town set down in New York City. I pulled up before one that had a few busted chairs on the porch, chairs that had been left out all winter, a lot of winters. It was a squat two-family house, badly in need of paint and new shingles. I said, “This is it.”

“Some dump.” Austin took out his notebook, checking the address. “Imagine a guy ever wanting to buy one of these joints? Let's get it over with.”

The Owens apartment was the bottom one and the woman who opened the door was dressed in a clean worn house dress that looked too heavy for May. She was plump, lots of veins in her fat legs, and her moon-shaped flabby face was topped with dirty gray hair braided around her head. Her eyes were red and the skin around them looked raw. Austin took off his hat as he asked, “Mrs. Edward Owens?”

“Yes, but if you're reporters I—”

“I'm Detective Austin and this is Detective... Winston.”

“Wintino, David Wintino, Mrs. Owens,” I told her.

“I know you've been under a terrific strain, an ordeal, but we're on police business and would appreciate it if you would answer a few questions.” The sugar in Austin's voice sounded phony as hell.

“I understand. I'm sorry I wasn't able to talk much last night. Last night... God, I still can't believe it. Step inside, please,” Mrs. Owens said, holding the door open. Her hands were short and covered with spots like large freckles.

We walked into an old-fashioned neat living room: a clumsy big radio set with a million dials that probably still ran on A and B batteries, an old seven-inch TV set in a large cabinet, an upright piano, two leather chairs, a couple of plain ones, and a couch that looked hard. Atop the piano there was a picture of a plain-faced girl with fat cheeks, about eighteen, and a cracked picture in a gold frame of a towheaded boy of about twelve.

Mrs. Owens pointed to the leather chairs and we put it down and she sat on the couch and said, “I suppose you want to know about Ed.” She spoke in a faraway voice.

“As a police officer's wife, you know we need all the information we can get to help us track down your husband's killer,” Austin said like an idiot, as though he was selling something. “Do you live here alone, Mrs. Owens?”

“I do now. The Sarasohns who live upstairs have been most helpful, they did all they could for me last night. I even slept up there. My daughter Susan is down in Venezuela. She's wired she's flying up for the funeral. Our son, Edward Junior,” she nodded toward the picture on the piano, “was taken from us many years ago. Now Ed... I just can't seem to think straight or believe it. He is dead, isn't he?”

“Yes, he is. I understand what you're going through and I'll try to make the questioning brief as possible. Now...”

“That's all right. I can talk about things. Only at times... Well, when Junior died it was bad but Ed was at my side. Now without Ed I feel lost, alone... kind of empty.” She looked around the room helplessly. “I was in the kitchen when you rang. You know his garden tools are still beside the tub where he left them yesterday morning. Said he might use them in the evening before it got too dark.”

“What gardening tools?” Austin asked.

“A spade and a rake. We have a nice little back yard and Ed loved to raise flowers and things. It's time for planting. Ed always had a green thumb. That's what he dreamt about, retiring to a place in California where he could really grow things.”

“We all want a house in the country,” Austin said. “Now about—”

“But we've been dreaming about it for so many years,” Mrs. Owens said, as if talking to herself. “From way back when Ed was first appointed. Then the children came. We put money aside for their education but that went for Junior's burial, although Susan finished business school. But children, payments on the house, not much left out of a policeman's salary. Not that I complained but... I'm sorry, all this is no concern of yours. Ed always joked about my chattering too much. What is it you want to ask me?”

“A few routine questions. We're sure Mr. Owens was the victim of a nervous stick-up punk but we're not overlooking any other possibilities, of course. £)id your husband have any enemies? Did he seem worried?”

“You wouldn't ask that if you'd known my Ed. He was always an easygoing man. His only troubles were financial and he never let them get him down. If anything he was in better spirits than ever lately. A few weeks ago he came home and started dancing me around. 'Janie,' he says, 'we have that California cottage, be raising oranges soon.' He's—was—in a gay mood all the time lately.”

“About this cottage, do you think he came into some money?” I asked, although as junior man it was up to Austin to do the questioning.

“No. You see Ed had one vice, he loved to play the horses. I didn't mind, a person has to relax some way, I say. Whenever he had a spare dollar or two he would make a bet. Naturally most times he lost but whenever he won, maybe five or ten dollars, he was like a small boy who thinks he has the world by the tail. I imagine Ed must have made himself a few dollars and was talking big. That's all it was.”

Austin asked, “Is it possible Mr. Owens was playing the races big and might have gotten in over his head with a gambling mob?”

The old lady stroked her coiled braids. “I hope I haven't given you a bad impression of Ed. He wasn't a gambler. He merely played a few dollars now and then like I play bingo or even put a few pennies on a number if I have a dream.”

“Did he drink much?”

“No, sir, beer was all my Ed touched and not much of that. I never saw Edward Owens drunk except once, when sickness took our Junior. Now Al—Mr. Wales—he began to drink something frightful and Ed was always on him to stop it. That was after his dear wife died of cancer back in nineteen and forty-nine. Al's a good man but a strange one. He never seemed too emotional about things but he went to pieces when Dora passed on. That was one reason why Ed got him to work at the brokerage house. Did Al a world of good, although he still goes off on toots at times. Poor Al, he talked to me on the phone last night and actually cried.”

“About this brokerage house, did your husband like the job? Was he happy there?”

Mrs. Owens tried to smile. “He liked the job very much. I think Ed liked most the idea that he didn't have to work. We needed the few dollars he made but we could have gotten along without them, too. It was more like it gave him something to do. He was always nosy and liked going to these big offices, the rich houses.”

“Why did he carry a gun?”

She looked puzzled. “My goodness, Ed's worn a gun every day for as long as I can remember. Be like asking why he wore pants.”

“Did your husband usually drop into any bars around here, for a beer, and perhaps talk about the bonds he was carrying, some of the rich homes he'd been to?”

She shook her head. “No, sir, not Ed. Did his beer drinking right here while watching the TV. In the mornings he'd fool around in his garden. When he came home from work we'd have supper and watch TV, maybe play rummy, or he'd get out his books and booklets and try to figure a winner in the races. He was strictly a homebody, always was.”