Killer’s Wedge (87th Precinct), page 12
Carella sighed. “Yeah, I was sort of thinking along those lines, yeah.”
“Impossible. Ask any of my brothers. Ask Christine. Ask Roger. The lock was impossible. Father should have had it changed, really. We discussed it many times.”
“Ever argue about it?”
“With Father? Gracious, no. I made a point of never arguing with him. At least, not after I reached the age of fourteen. I remember making my decision at that time. I made it, as I recall, with a good deal of horror.”
“The dread Scott decision,” Carella said.
“What? Oh. Oh, yes,” Mark said, and he smiled. “I decided when I was fourteen that there was no percentage in arguing with Father. Ever since that time, we got along very well.”
“Mmm. Right up to now, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Who discovered this door was locked, Mr. Scott?”
“Alan did.”
“And who went for the crowbar?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“To force the door open. We’d been calling for Father, and he didn’t answer.”
“And did the crowbar work?”
“Yes. Of course it did.”
“Who tried the door after you’d used the crowbar on it?”
“I did.”
“And this time it opened?”
“No. There was still Father’s weight hanging against it. But we managed to open it a crack—using the crowbar again—and Alan stuck his arm in and cut the rope.”
“Did any of you use the crowbar on the bottom of the door?” Carella asked.
“The bottom?”
“Yes. Down there. Near the sill.”
“Why no. Why would we want to do that?”
“I can’t imagine. Are you gainfully employed, Mr. Scott?”
“What?”
“Do you have a job?”
“Well, I…”
“Yes or no?”
“I’ve been training at one of the factories. Preparing for an executive position. Father always felt that executives should learn from the bottom up.”
“Did you agree with him?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Where were you…ah…training?”
“The New Jersey plant.”
“For how long?”
“I’d been there for six months.”
“How old are you, Mr. Scott?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“And what did you do before you went into the New Jersey plant?”
“I was in Italy for several years.”
“Doing what?”
“Enjoying myself,” Mark said. “When Mother died, she left me a little money. I decided to use it when I got out of college.”
“When was that?”
“I was twenty-two when I graduated.”
“And you’ve been in Italy since then?”
“No. The government interfered with my graduation plans. I was in the Army for two years.”
“And then you went to Italy, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“You were twenty-four years old at the time?”
“Yes.”
“How much money did you have?”
“Mother left me thirty thousand.”
“Why’d you come back from Italy?”
“I ran out of money.”
“You spent thirty thousand dollars in three years? In Italy?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That’s an awful lot of money to spend in Italy, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“What I mean is, you must have lived rather grandly.”
“I’ve always lived rather grandly, Mr. Carella,” Mark said, and he grinned.
“Mmm. This executive position you were training for. What was it?”
“A sales executive.”
“No title?”
“Just a sales executive.”
“And what was the salary for the job?”
“Father didn’t believe in spoiling his children,” Mark said. “He realized that the business would go to pieces if he simply put his sons in at ridiculously high salaries when they didn’t know anything about running the business.”
“So what was the starting salary?”
“For that particular job? Fifteen thousand.”
“I see. And you live rather grandly. Ran through ten grand a year in Italy. I see.”
“That was a starting salary, Mr. Carella. Father fully intended Scott Industries to belong to his sons eventually.”
“Yes, his will would seem to substantiate that. Did you know about his will, Mr. Scott?”
“All of us did. Father talked of it freely.”
“I see.”
“Tell me, Mr. Carella,” Mark said. “Do you think I killed my own father?”
“Did you, Mr. Scott?”
“No.”
“He committed suicide, isn’t that right, Mr. Scott?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Mark Scott paused. “Or do you think I crawled into the room under that crack in the door?”
There she was—the city. All decked out for the pleasures of night, wearing her sleek black satin with a bright red sash. Clusters of jewels hung in her hair, the rectangles of all-night offices blinking at the darkness in defiance of the stars, the shimmering haze in the air over the incredible skyline. A necklace of dazzling light hung from her slender throat, the reds and greens of traffic, the ambers of the street globes, the harsh bright overhead fluorescents of Detavoner Avenue. Her rounded fleshy shoulders rolled to the music of the night, her full breasts heaved ecstatically to the music of the night, mournful music that oozed from the cellar dives of Isola, pounded with the beat of a glittering G-string, music that came with mathematical precision from the cool bop bistros, music that bounced with the cornball rhythms of the supper clubs.
The highways glowed with reflected river light that molded the valleys of her waist, swept north and south over her wide hips, dropped over shapely legs to capture her ankles in neon slave bracelets, terminated in the reflection of pinpoint light glowing from high-heeled slippers on slick wet asphalt.
There she was—the city.
Rushing with the night and the sound of the night, sucking in wild air through parted lips, her eyes glowing bright, bright with the fever of the tempo, Friday night, and the city clasped the weekend to her breasts, held the weekend close in a desperate embrace. A woman was the city, a beautiful woman with life in her loins and treachery in her heart, an exciting woman with a dagger behind her back in long white fingers, a gentle woman who sang forgotten melodies in windswept concrete canyons, a woman of love and a woman of hate, a woman fondled by eight million people who had tasted the pleasures of her body and knew her well and hated her with a deep abiding love.
Eight million people.
Geoffrey Tamblin was a publisher.
He published textbooks. He had been in the racket for thirty-two years, and now—at the age of fifty-seven—he considered himself a knowledgeable guy who knew all the ins and outs of the racket.
Geoffrey Tamblin never called it “the publishing game.” To Tamblin, it was “the racket,” and he hated it passionately. The thing he particularly despised about the racket was the publishing of books about mathematics. These he detested. His rancor probably went back to a high school course in Geometry conducted by an old poop named Dr. Fanensel. He was unable to decide, at the age of seventeen, whether he hated Geometry more than Dr. Fanensel or vice versa. Now, forty years later, his hatred had grown admirably to include all mathematics and all teachers and students of mathematics. Plane Geometry, Analytic Geometry, Algebra, Differential Calculus, and even Long and Short Division fell into the sphere of Tamblin’s hatred.
And the terrible part of it all was that his firm published a great many mathematics texts. In fact, the largest percentage of his list was devoted to books about mathematics. Which was why Geoffrey Tamblin had three ulcers.
One day, Tamblin thought, I will stop publishing textbooks, and especially mathematics texts. I’ll bring out slim volumes of poetry or criticism. Tamblin Books will begin to mean beautiful books. No more “Given X equals 10, and Y equals 12, what then does < A equal?” No more “Log C equals Log D, therefore…” No more ulcers.
He felt a twinge even thinking about his ulcers.
Poetry, he thought. Slim, beautiful volumes of poetry. Ah, that would be wonderful. I’ll move to the suburbs and run the firm from there. No more subways. No more rushing. No more schedules. No more crummy editors fresh from Harvard with Phi Beta Kappa keys hanging on their weskits. No more disgruntled artists drawing triangles when they want to be drawing nudes. No more doddering professors bringing their creaky goddamn texts into my office. Only beautiful slim volumes of poetry written by young slim girls with golden hair. Ahhhhhh.
Geoffrey Tamblin lived on Silvermine Road at the outer fringes of the 87th Precinct. Every evening, he walked from his office on Hall Avenue in midtown Isola to the subway a block north. He rode the subway up to Sixteenth, disembarked, and then walked toward his apartment house through a neighborhood that had once been beautiful and quite elite. Now, the neighborhood was going, everything was going, it was the fault of mathematics. The world was reducing everything to simple formulas, there was no reality anymore except the reality of mathematics. X times infinity equals a hydrogen explosion. The world would not end in fire—it would end in mathematical symbols.
The neighborhood even smelled bad now. Empty lots strewn with rubble, garbage thrown from windows, street gangs wearing bright silk jackets and committing murder while the policemen slept, gangsters, all gangsters who were more interested in the mathematics of a crossword puzzle than in human decency. I’ve got to get out of this, poetry, where is all the poetry in the world?
I’ll walk past the park tonight, he thought.
The thought excited him. There was a time, before he’d become involved with a world of X’s and Y’s, when Geoffrey Tamblin could walk the paths of Grover Park and stare up at an orange ball of moon and know with certainty that the city was a place of romance and mystery. Now—with three ulcers—he thought only that he could not walk through the park because of potential muggers, he would have to walk past it—on Grover Avenue. And still, the thought excited him.
He walked rapidly, thinking of poetry, noticing the mathematical precision of the green globes hanging outside the police station across the street. 87. Figures. Always figures.
There were three boys walking ahead of him. Juvenile delinquents, gangsters? No, they looked like college boys, potential nuclear physicists, mathematicians. What were they doing up here, all the way uptown? Listen to them sing, Tamblin thought. Did I ever sing? Wait until they come face to face with the unbending reality of plus and minus. Let’s hear them sing then, let’s hear them…
Geoffrey Tamblin broke his stride.
His shoe was sticking to the pavement. Disgustedly he pulled it loose and examined the sole. Chewing gum. Damnit, when would people learn to be clean, throwing gum all over the sidewalk where a man could step on it.
Swearing under his breath, he looked around for a scrap of paper, wishing he had one of Dr. Fanensel’s texts to tear up.
He spotted the blue rectangle of paper lying next to the curb, hobbled over to it, and picked it up. He did not even glance at it. It was probably a throwaway from one of the supermarkets, full of this week’s specials, prices, prices, figures, figures, where was all the poetry in the world?
Wadding the blue sheet, he rubbed viciously at the gum on his shoe. Then, pure again, he crumpled the paper into a mathematical ball and threw it down the sewer.
It was probably just as well.
Meyer Meyer’s message would have made an exceedingly slim volume of poetry.
“ ‘The sun is a-shining to welcome the day,’ “ sang Sammy, “ ‘and it’s hi-ho, come to the fair!’ ”
“ ‘To the fair, to the fair, to the fair,’ “ Bucky sang.
“How does the rest go?” Sammy asked.
“ ‘To the fair, to the fair, to the fair,’ “ Bucky sang.
“Let’s sing a college song,” Jim said.
“Screw college songs,” Sammy said. “Lets sing ‘Minnie the Mermaid.’”
“I don’t know the words.”
“Who needs words? It’s emotion that counts, not words.”
“Hear, hear,” Bucky said.
“Words are only words,” Sammy said philosophically, “if they don’t come from here. Right here.” He tapped his heart.
“Where’s this Mason Avenue?” Jim wanted to know. “Where’s all these Spanish chicks?”
“Up the street,” Sammy said. “North. Don’t talk so loud. That’s a police station over there.”
“I hate cops,” Jim said.
“Me, too,” Bucky said.
“I’ve never met a cop,” Jim said, “who wasn’t an out-and-out son of a bitch.”
“Me, too,” Bucky said.
“I hate aviators,” Sammy said.
“I hate aviators, too,” Bucky said. “But I hate cops, too.”
“I hate, especially,” Sammy said, “jet aviators.”
“Oh, especially,” Bucky said. “But cops, too.”
“Are you still crocked?” Jim asked. “I’m still crocked and it’s magnificent. Where are all the Spanish girls?”
“Up the street, up the street, don’t get impatient.”
“What’s that?” Bucky said.
“What’s what?”
“That blue piece of paper. Over there.”
“What?” Sammy turned to look. “It’s a blue piece of paper. What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “What do you think it is?”
They began walking again, past the second carbon copy of Meyer’s message.
“I think it’s a letter from a very sad old tart. She uses blue stationery whenever she writes to her imaginary lover.”
“Very good,” Bucky said. They continued walking.
“What do you think it is?”
“I think it’s a birth announcement from a guy who always wanted a boy. Only he got a girl by accident, but all the announcements were already printed on blue.”
“Very good,” Sammy said. “What do you think it is, Jim?”
“I’m crocked,” Jim said.
“Yes, but what do you think it is?”
They continued walking, half a block away from the message now.
“I think it’s a blue piece of toilet paper,” Jim said.
Bucky stopped walking. “Let’s check.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s see.”
“Come on, come on,” Jim said, “let’s not waste time. The tamales are waiting.”
“Only take a minute,” Bucky said, and he turned to go back for the sheet of paper. Jim caught his arm.
“Listen, don’t be a nut,” Jim said. “Come on.”
“He’s right,” Sammy said. “Who cares what the damn thing is?”
“I do,” Bucky said, and he pulled his arm free, whirled, and ran up the street. The other boys watched him as he picked up the sheet of paper.
“Crazy nut,” Jim said. “Wasting our time.”
“Yeah,” Sammy said.
Up the street, Bucky was reading the sheet. Suddenly, he broke into a trot.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey!”
Teddy Carella looked at her wristwatch.
It was 6:45.
She walked to the curb, signaled for a cab, and climbed in the moment it stopped.
“Where to, lady?” the cabbie asked.
Teddy took a slip of paper and a pencil from her purse.
Rapidly, she wrote “87th Precinct, Grover Avenue,” and handed the slip to the driver.
“Right,” he said, and put the taxi in gear.
Alf Miscolo lay in delirium, and in his tortured sleep he cried out, “Mary! Mary!”
His wife’s name was Katherine.
He was not a handsome man, Miscolo. He lay on the floor now with his head propped against Willis’s jacket. His forehead was drenched with sweat which rolled down the uneven planes of his face. His nose was massive, and his eyebrows were bushy, and there was a thickness about his neck which created the impression of head sitting directly on shoulders. He was not a handsome man, Miscolo, less handsome now in his pain and his delirium. Blood was seeping through the sulfanilamide bandage, and his life was leaking out of his body drop by precious drop, and he cried out again, “Mary!” sharply because he once had been in love.
He had been in love a long while ago, and then only for a few short weeks before his ship left Boston. He had never again gone back to that city, never again sought out the girl who’d presented him with a memory that would last a lifetime. His destroyer had been berthed in the Charlestown yards. He was a bosun at the time, the toughest goddamn bosun in the US fleet. The Second World War was still a long way off, and Miscolo had only three things on his mind: how to be the toughest goddamn bosun in the US fleet, how to enjoy himself to the fullest, and how to find an Italian meal whenever he left the ship.
He had possibly eaten in every Italian restaurant in Boston before he found the little dive off Scollay Square. Mary worked as a waitress in that dive. Miscolo was twenty-one years old at the time and, to his eyes, Mary was the loveliest creature that walked the face of the earth. He began taking her out. He lived with her for two weeks. In those two weeks, they shared a lifetime together, and then the two weeks were over and the ship pulled out. And Miscolo swam at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. And he attended a luau on the beach at Kauai, and he ate heikaukau rock crab, and poi and kukui nuts while the hula girls danced. And later, in a Japanese town called Fukuoka—the Japanese were still our friends and no one even dreamed of Pearl Harbor then—Miscolo drank saki with a sloe-eyed girl whose name was Misasan, and he watched her pick up strips of dried fish with chopsticks and later he went to bed with her and learned that Oriental girls do not like to kiss. And on the way back, he hit San Francisco and had a ball there looking down from the hills at the magnificent city spread out in a dazzling array of lights, flushed with his overseas pay, the toughest goddamn bosun in the US fleet.
