Shotgun (87th Precinct) Read online

  Praise for Ed McBain & the 87th Precinct

  “Raw and realistic…The bad guys are very bad, and the good guys are better.” —Detroit Free Press

  “Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series…simply the best police procedurals being written in the United States.” —Washington Post

  “The best crime writer in the business.” —Houston Post

  “Ed McBain is a national treasure.” —Mystery News

  “It’s hard to think of anyone better at what he does. In fact, it’s impossible.”—Robert B. Parker

  “I never read Ed McBain without the awful thought that I still have a lot to learn. And when you think you’re catching up, he gets better.” —Tony Hillerman

  “McBain is the unquestioned king…light years ahead of anyone else in the field.” —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “McBain tells great stories.” —Elmore Leonard

  “Pure prose poetry…It is such writers as McBain who bring the great American urban mythology to life.” —The London Times

  “The McBain stamp: sharp dialogue and crisp plotting.” —Miami Herald

  “You’ll be engrossed by McBain’s fast, lean prose.” —Chicago Tribune

  “McBain redefines the American police novel…he can stop you dead in your tracks with a line of dialogue.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “The wit, the pacing, his relish for the drama of human diversity [are] what you remember about McBain novels.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “McBain is a top pro, at the top of his game.” —Los Angeles Daily News

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 1969 Hui Corporation

  Republished in 2011

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781612181813

  ISBN-10: 1612181813

  This is for Corinne and Ken Davis

  CONTENTS

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The city in these pages is imaginary. The people, the places are all fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique.

  Detective Bert Kling went outside to throw up.

  Coming down the corridor toward him, Detective Steve Carella saw the look on his face, said, “What’s the matter, kid?” as he brushed past, and then understood immediately. He hesitated before approaching the patrolman stationed outside the apartment door. Then, with a brief nod of resignation, he took his shield from where it was pinned inside his wallet, fastened it to the pocket of his suit jacket, exchanged only the shortest glance with the patrolman, and entered the apartment.

  The building was on South Engels in an upper-middle-class area on the northern fringe of the 87th Precinct, not a part of Smoke Rise, nor even in that section of buildings lining the River Harb, but further east and somewhat less fashionable than either. The patrolman had been stationed outside the apartment’s service entrance, so that was where Carella went in. He found himself in a smallish kitchen with an abundance of tile, a spotlessly clean checkerboard vinyl floor, an equally clean, white enamel-top table, and appliances that noisily hummed with age.

  The first body was in the living room.

  The woman, as the newspapers would faithfully report later, was clad only in nylon panties, but there was not the faintest suggestion of sexuality about her; the image such a description evoked was entirely invalid because the woman was dead, the woman was sprawled in an utterly grotesque posture of lifelessness, her face and part of her skull ripped away by what appeared even at first glance to have been a shotgun blast. She was a woman in her late thirties perhaps, possibly attractive when alive, seeming now only a loose bundle of bones held together by a flaccid skin case. She had soiled herself in death, either in fear before the act, or in a relaxation of sphincter muscles when the shotgun blast tore away half her head. She was wearing a wedding band on her left hand, no engagement ring. She was lying exposed in front of a large sofa slipcovered in a riotous print of hibiscus blooms. Two spent shotgun-cartridge cases were on the rug beside her. Her blood had soaked into the pale-blue tufts of the rug and spread in a wide puddle beneath her head. It was this scene that had sent Bert Kling rushing out of the apartment.

  Steve Carella had a stronger stomach, or perhaps he was simply a more experienced cop. He left the living room and proceeded into the apartment’s master bedroom.

  A man in undershorts and undershirt was lying just inside the door in an almost fetal position. His entire face and most of his head had been blown away. His thumb was locked around the trigger of the shotgun still clutched in one hand; the barrel of the 12-gauge gun lay close to what remained of his jaw. A single spent cartridge case was on the floor beside his open head, surrounded by several small white objects. It took Carella a moment to realize they were fragmented teeth.

  He went outside.

  Monoghan and Monroe, the two bulls on mandatory call from Homicide, were standing in the hallway.

  “Nice one, huh?” Monoghan said.

  “Beauty,” Monroe said.

  “Takes all kinds,” Monoghan said.

  “More nuts outside than in,” Monroe said.

  They had played this particular scene before. Nothing fazed them; they had seen it all and heard it all. They stood in stoic nonchalance against the buff-colored wall of the building’s hallway, both smoking cigars, both dressed in black topcoats and gray fedoras, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of criminal detection. A window at the far end of the hallway, newly washed because this was Saturday and yesterday was when the cleaning service had come to do the building, was open a trifle at the bottom. A brisk October breeze swept the corridor, fresh and clean and reeking of life. Beyond the window, the early-morning sun limned the city’s towers. A haze hung in the distant sky.

  “Think the guy went berserk?” Monroe asked Carella.

  “Sure,” Monoghan said. “Plugged his wife and then went into the bedroom to give himself the coup d’état.”

  “De grâce,” Monroe corrected.

  “Sure,” Monoghan said, and shrugged.

  Carella said nothing.

  “Do us a favor,” Monroe said to Carella.

  “Save us a lot of paperwork.”

  “Don’t make this a big deal.”

  “It’s pure and simple. He knocked her off, and then turned the gun on himself.”

  “Don’t make it a federal case.”

  “I wonder who heard the shots,” Carella said.

  “Huh?”

  “It must have happened last night sometime. I wonder who heard the shots.”

  “In prime time, nobody hears shots,” Monroe said.

  “I also wonder who called it in. Was Kling here when you arrived?”

  “The blond cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was here,” Monroe said.

  “A little pale around the gills, but here,” Monoghan said.

&
nbsp; “Did he say how he got the squeal?”

  “Milkman called him,” Monoghan said.

  “The milkman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How come?”

  “Saw the door open, thought it was strange.”

  “What door?”

  “To the kitchen. The service entrance.”

  “It was open?”

  “Wide open.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I don’t know. An hour or so ago.” Monoghan looked at his watch. “About five o’clock, I guess.”

  “The kitchen door was open at five o’clock in the morning?”

  “That’s what the milkman said. Ask Kling, he took a statement.”

  “One thing I hate,” Monroe said, “is these early-morning calls.”

  “Anyway, this one looks about wrapped up,” Monoghan said. He met Carella’s eyes. “Right, Carella?”

  “You think so?”

  “I could draw you a blueprint and write the whole scenario,” Monoghan said.

  “Gee, I wish you would,” Carella said. “Save us a whole lot of time.”

  “Only trouble is,” Monoghan said, “a homicide belongs to the precinct taking the squeal.”

  “Yeah, that’s a shame,” Monroe said.

  “So I guess we’ll have to leave it to you fellows, after all.”

  “I guess so.”

  Monroe took a handkerchief, blew his nose, put the handkerchief back into his pocket and then said, “Carella, let’s close it out as soon as possible, huh?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s an obvious goddamn case, that’s why.”

  “Except for the door being wide open at five in the morning.”

  “A technicality,” Monroe said.

  “You start looking around, you’ll probably find a note the old man left.”

  “You think so, huh?” Carella said.

  “Sure, they usually leave notes. It’s because they’re filled with remorse—”

  “Regret,” Monroe said.

  “So they write a note begging the world to understand they’re really only nice guys who just happened to behave bad once in their lives. A slight lapse, you know what I mean?”

  “A minor little bit of mischief.”

  “Please understand.”

  “Please forgive.”

  “That’s why they leave notes.”

  “You’re sure to find one,” Monroe said. “You just look around, you’ll find one.”

  “You think it’ll tell us about that spent cartridge case?” Carella asked.

  “Huh?” Monroe said.

  “The one in the bedroom alongside the dead man.”

  “What about it?”

  “He’s holding a 12-gauge pump shotgun,” Carella said.

  “Yeah?”

  “That means you’ve got to pump it to eject the spent cartridge and get the next one into the firing chamber. Maybe you’d like to tell me how he managed to shoot himself in the head and then pump the gun to eject that cartridge.”

  “Boy,” Monroe said.

  The milkman was still in a state of shock. He and Kling made a perfect couple, each sitting pale and trembling across from Carella in the small luncheonette several blocks from the apartment building. It was 6:10 A.M. and the place had just opened. Several truck drivers were sitting at the counter, sharing a privileged early-morning jocularity with the owner of the place. A sleepy-eyed waitress wearing a uniform already soiled swiveled over to the leatherette booth where Carella and his wan companions sat, and took their breakfast orders. Both Kling and the milkman ordered only coffee.

  “What time did you discover the open door, Mr. Novello?” Carella asked the milkman.

  “About a quarter to five. Just before I called the police. What time was that?” he asked Kling.

  “Murchison clocked the squeal in at four forty-seven,” Kling said.

  “Is that when you usually deliver milk in that building?”

  “Yeah, I start there about four-thirty. I’m generally out by five. I start on the top floor, you know, and work my way down. The Leydens live on the third floor.”

  “All right, what happened?”

  “I already told your partner.”

  “Let’s hear it again.”

  “Well, I come to the back door, which is where I usually make my delivery—they got a milk catch on the door, you know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Carella said.

  “It’s the wire thing,” Novello said, explaining anyway, “that has a loop goes around the neck of the bottle. You put the bottle in it, then you shove the catch back through this hole in the door, and it drops down on the inside, locking the bottle in, you know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Carella said again.

  “They take a bottle every other morning, the Leydens. You find with most people in the neighborhood, they just take enough to get them through breakfast, you see, and later they shop at the grocery for however much more they’ll need. That’s the way it works.”

  “I see. Go on.”

  “So I come down to the third floor—”

  “How?”

  “Huh? Oh, by the steps. I walked down from the fourth floor. I got Levine and Davidson on the fourth floor, and then only the Leydens on three. By the steps.”

  “Yes?”

  “And I put down the carrier, and I’m reaching for the bottle when I see the kitchen door is open.”

  “Wide open or just ajar?”

  “Wide open. I could see right in the kitchen and also some of the living room.”

  “So what’d you do?”

  “I didn’t know what to do. I figured maybe I should just close the door and beat it, you know? But then I wondered what the kitchen door was doing open at five o’clock in the morning. I mean, what’s the door doing open?”

  “Did you go in?”

  “I went in.”

  “And saw the bodies?”

  “I saw only Mrs. Leyden,” Novello said, and swallowed.

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I went downstairs and called the police.”

  “Why didn’t you use the phone in the apartment?”

  “I didn’t want to get my fingerprints on nothing. I didn’t touch nothing in that apartment, I didn’t want to get involved in nothing.”

  “Where’d you make you call from?”

  “There’s an all-night cafeteria on Dixon, I called from there.”

  “Then what?”

  “I was told to go back to the building and wait, which is what I did. That’s when Mr. Kling here come over to investigate.”

  “Did you call your boss?”

  “Yeah, right after I hung up with Mr. Kling. I’m a working man, you know, I still had milk to deliver.” Novello sighed and said, “He sent out another man to finish the route. I sure hope he don’t dock me for it.”

  “You did the right thing, Mr. Novello,” Carella said.

  “I hope so. It’s a tough decision to make, you know? Like your first instinct is to just get out of there, just get as far away as possible. It’s a funny thing. It scares you. A thing like that.”

  “But you called the police.”

  “Yeah, well…” Novello shrugged. “I liked that lady. She was a nice lady. She used to give me a cup of coffee every Wednesday when I came around to collect the bill. What the hell, she didn’t have to do that.” He shook his head. “I can’t understand it. I met Mr. Leyden one Wednesday when he was home, he travels a lot, you know, I think he sells heavy machinery or something. He seemed like a very nice man. He was telling me about how he loved his job and all, you know, but how he didn’t like being away from home for such long periods of time, poor guy was sometimes on the road two or three mon
ths at a stretch. He seemed like a really nice man.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, during the summer sometime.”

  “Was that the only time you’d seen them together?”

  “Yeah, just that once. But they seemed like a real happy couple, you know what I mean? You know, you can tell when a man and his wife ain’t getting along. But she kept calling him ‘honey’ and ‘dearie’ and things like that, you could see they were happy. I don’t want to sound corny, but you could see they…” Novello paused. “Loved each other,” he said at last.

  “Now, you say you went into the building at four-fifteen, is that right, Mr. Novello?”

  “No, four-thirty,” Novello said. “That’s the time I usually go in, about four-thirty.”

  “And went directly to the tenth floor?”

  “Yeah. There’s a self-service elevator, you know, so I just take that up each morning.”

  “See anyone in the lobby?”

  “Not a soul.”

  “Anyone stirring in the building?”

  “Just Mr. Jacobson, he’s a postman.”

  “Where’d you see him?”

  “On the fifth floor. He usually leaves about a quarter to five each morning, he works all the way up in Riverhead. He probably stops for breakfast, you know, and then goes to work. They got to be in early, those letter carriers.”

  “He say anything to you?”

  “Yeah, he said, ‘Good morning, Jimmy,’ and I said, ‘Good morning, Mr. Jacobson, little chilly out there this morning.’ Something like that. We usually exchange a few words, you know. They been taking milk from me for seven years now, the Jacobsons. We whisper, you know, because the whole building’s usually asleep.”

  “See anybody else?”

  “Not a soul.”

  “Either before or after you discovered Mrs. Leyden’s body?”

  “Just Mr. Jacobson, nobody else.”

  “Okay, Mr. Novello, thanks very much,” Carella said. “Bert? You have anything to ask?”

  “No, nothing,” Kling said. He was still pale. He had hardly touched his coffee.

  “Why don’t you take a break, meet me at the building later?” Carella suggested.

  “No, I’ll stick with it,” Kling said.