Killer's Choice Read online

  Killer's Choice

  Ed Mcbain

  KILLER'S CHOICE

  ED MCBAIN

  Originally published in USA in 1958. Published by Penguin Books in 1963. ISBN 0-14-001972-3

  This is for Laury and Bill

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

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  The liquor store reeked.

  Shards of glass covered the floor like broken chords from a bop chorus. Long slivers and short slivers, jagged necks of bottles, the round flat bottoms of bottles, glistening, tinkling underfoot so that you waded through a shallow pool of shattered glass. A hand had swept across the shelves, swept in a destructive frenzy. Eight-dollar Scotch and twenty-five-cent wine had been spilled to the floor and mingled in the democracy of total destruction. The stench assailed the nostrils the moment you entered the shop. The alcohol spread over the bare wooden floor, sloshed in aromatic puddles underfoot, channelled by the dams and dikes of broken glass.

  The girl lay among the glass and the liquid, lay face downward, her mouth partially opened. The girl was a redhead. Her eyes seemed too large for her face because they were bulging in death. The girl had been shot four times in the chest, and her blood still ran, mingling with the alcohol on the floor. Her hair was long, wet and straggly now because her cheek was against the bare wood of the floor, and her hair, her clothes, her body were soaked with alcohol.

  It was difficult to talk inside the shop. There wasn't a cop present who didn't enjoy a hooker of booze now and then. But the alcohol fumes inside the shop, despite the fact that the door was open and a mild June breeze was blowing, were overpowering. They caught at the nose, and the throat, and the lungs until breathing them brought on a little dizziness.

  Detective Steve Carella was glad to get outside. He enjoyed whisky, and could knock over a fifth with the best of them. But he could never stand a drunkard breathing in his face, and the liquor store smelled like a convention of drunks all trying to tell the same bad joke simultaneously.

  The bad joke was the redhead lying on the floor of the shop. She would have been a bad joke at any time of the year, but especially in June when the world was coming alive, when the month of weddings had mated spring's exuberance with summer's warmth. Carella liked being alive, and he was tolerant enough to want to share the experience with everyone. Forced by his occupation to deal with the facts of sudden death, he had still never grown used to the dispassionate facade his colleagues presented. Carella liked to think there was dignity in human beings. They boffed, they drank, they belched, they fought, they swore—but they stood erect.

  From somewhere in his memory, probably from a long-forgotten college anthropology course, he dug out the sentence, 'Man stands alone—because man alone stands.' The anthropological implications were many, but Carella chose to ignore them. He liked to think of man as standing. Death knocked a man down. Death stole a man's dignity. A dead man didn't care whether or not his hair was parted. A dead girl didn't worry about whether or not her slip was showing. The postures of death managed to simplify a human being to an angular mound of fleshy rubble. And so looking at what had once been a woman—a woman who smiled prettily, and kissed her lover, and adjusted her stockings, and applied lipstick with utmost feminine care—looking at what had once been warm and alive, Carella felt overwhelming sadness, a sense of tragedy which he could not quite grasp.

  He was glad to get outside.

  On the sidewalk, the police department held its conference. This was the cocktail party of law enforcement. There were no drinks, and these men did not gather to discuss the latest novel by a twelve-year-old French girl, but there was the same feeling of camaraderie almost, the same easy relationship that comes from knowing men share the same profession.

  The two men from Homicide North were called Monoghan and Monroe. Both were huge. Both wore tweed sports jackets over grey flannel slacks.

  'We don't usually go out on stuff like this,' Monoghan said to Carella.

  'Not generally,' Monroe said.

  'The Skipper saves us for tough nuts,' Monoghan said.

  'The hard ones,' Monroe added.

  'No crimes of passion.'

  'Love, hate, like that,' Monroe explained.

  'Premeditated stuff,' Monoghan said.

  'Thought out beforehand,' Monroe amplified.

  'We're his top men,' Monoghan said modestly.

  'Crackerjacks,' Monroe said.

  'The 87th Precinct is flattered,' Carella said, grinning. He was a tall man wearing a blue worsted suit, a white handkerchief showing at the breast pocket. His shirt was white, and his tie was a blue-and-gold rep, and he talked to the Homicide dicks standing in athletic nonchalance, a man completely at home within the hard, lithe muscularity of his body. His eyes were brown, and his cheekbones were high, and there was a clean-shaved almost-Oriental look to his face, heightened by the secret amusement with which he viewed Monoghan and Monroe.

  'The 87th should be flattered,' Monoghan said.

  'Overwhelmed,' Monroe added.

  'Ecstatic,' Carella said.

  'Everybody wants to get in the act,' Monoghan said.

  'Don't misunderstand me,' Carella said. 'It's just that we appreciate getting Homicide North's top men.'

  'He's kidding us,' Monoghan said.

  'Ribbing us,' Monroe added.

  'He thinks the 87th can do without us.'

  'He thinks he doesn't need us.'

  'Who needs us?'

  'Like a hole in the head.'

  'He's telling us to go home.'

  'He's telling us politely to go to hell.'

  'Well, frig him,' Monoghan said.

  Carella grinned, and then his face went serious. He looked into the shop. 'What do you make of it?' he asked.

  Monoghan and Monroe turned simultaneously. Inside the store, the police photographer leaned closer to the body lying on the alcohol-soaked shards. His flash bulb popped.

  'It looks to me,' Monoghan said thoughtfully, 'like as if somebody went berserk.'

  CHAPTER TWO

  Meyer Meyer would miss the bar mitzvah, of that he was certain.

  Naturally, he could not complain. He had arranged with the lieutenant to be off on the day of the bar mitzvah, but the lieutenant had not known there would be a homicide the day before. In the 87th, of course, there was the possibility of a homicide happening any day. You just had to plan your bar mitzvahs so that they didn't clash with your homicides.

  Not that Meyer Meyer really gave a damn. The child being confirmed was an obnoxious little monster named Irwin, whom the family fondly called Irwin the Vermin. But the child was his wife's sister's son, and that made Meyer his uncle, and he supposed he should have felt some sort of familial affection for the dear lad. Besides, his wife would never let him hear the end of this. Sarah would rant and rave for a week about the big bar mitzvah she missed. His dinners would come from cans. His bridal chamber would not echo to the rhythm of resounding springs. Oh well, ah zei gei-tus.

  The man sitting opposite Meyer Meyer in the squad room of the 87th Precinct did not know that Meyer was going to miss the confirmation of Irwin the
Vermin. He couldn't have cared less. Murder had been done in the man's liquor store, and there was one thing and one thing alone on his mind.

  'Four thousand dollars worth of stock!' he shouted. 'Who's supposed to pay for that? Me? Am I supposed to take the loss?'

  'Would you like the police department to send you a cheque, Mr Phelps?' Meyer asked. He asked the question patiently, and with guileless blue eyes, for Meyer Meyer was a very patient man. His father, you see, had considered himself something of a homegrown comedian and had thought it would be sidesplittingly humorous to give his son a given name which would match his surname. The result was Meyer Meyer, a truly hilarious master piece, a very funny bit of nomenclature. Meyer happened to be an Orthodox Jew who was raised in a predominantly Gentile neighbourhood. If the kids in the streets needed any further provocation for beating him up whenever the opportunity presented itself, Meyer's double-barrelled name provided it. He had, over the years, developed an almost supernatural patience concerning the accidents of birth and the vagaries of funny fathers. The patience had left almost no physical scars—except a completely bald head before Meyer had reached the age of thirty. He was now thirty-seven, and he was missing a bar mitzvah, and he leaned across the desk with utmost patience and waited for Mr Phelps's answer.

  'Well, who is supposed to pay for it?' Phelps wanted to know. 'Me? Who pays for the salary of policemen in this city, if not me? So what do I get in return? Do I get protection? Does four thousand dollars worth of destruction…?'

  'A girl was killed,' Meyer said patiently.

  'Yes, yes, I know,' Phelps said. 'Do you know how long it's taken me to build that spot? It's not on the main drag, you know, it's not in a brightly lighted area. People come there because of the reputation I've built, and that's the only reason. There are more liquor stores in this precinct than…'

  'What time did you leave the shop last night, Mr Phelps?' Meyer asked.

  'What difference does it make? Did you see the place? Did you see all those broken bottles? Almost my entire stock! Where was the cop on the beat? How could anyone break all those bottles without attracting…?'

  'And fire four shots. Whoever broke the bottles fired four shots, Mr Phelps.'

  'Yes, yes, I know. All right, there aren't many apartment buildings in the block, no people to hear. But isn't a cop supposed to hear? Where was the cop on the beat? In some damn bar drinking himself silly?'

  'He was, as a matter of fact, answering another call.'

  'What's more important? My stock, or another damn call?'

  'Your stock is very important, Mr Phelps,' Meyer said. 'Without your stock, the people of this precinct might very well shrivel up and die. The police department never underestimated the value of your stock. But a man was being held up approximately twelve blocks away. A cop can handle only one crime at a time.'

  'Suppose my store was being held up? What then, huh?'

  'Your store wasn't being held up. As I understand it, none of the money in the cash register was touched.'

  'Thank God I'd only left about fifty dollars for Annie. Just to wind up the night.'

  'Had Annie worked for you a long time?'

  'About a year.'

  'Would you say…?'

  'God, all that stock. It'll cost a fortune to replace.'

  'What about Annie?' Meyer said, and his patience seemed suddenly to wear very thin.

  'Annie?'

  'The girl who was killed. The girl who was laying with her broken body and her pretty face in the goddamn remains of your stock!'

  'Oh. Annie.'

  'Can we talk about her for a few minutes? Would that be all right with you, Mr Phelps?'

  'Yes, of course. Certainly.'

  'Annie Boone. Is that her name as you knew it?'

  'Yes.'

  'And she worked for you for a year, is that right?'

  'Yes. Just about a year.'

  'Was she married?'

  'Yes.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'Yes.'

  'We have her listed as divorced.'

  'Oh. Well, yes, I suppose she was.'

  'One child, is that right? Left the child with her mother when she was working.'

  'Yes, that's right. A boy, I believe.'

  'No,' Meyer said. 'A girl.'

  'Oh. Was it a girl? Well, then I suppose so.'

  'Thirty-two years old, right, Mr Phelps?'

  'Yes. Thirty-two or thirty-three.'

  'Are you married, Mr Phelps?'

  'Me?'

  'Yes.'

  'I thought we were talking about Annie?'

  'We were. Now we're talking about you.'

  'Yes, I'm married.'

  'How long?'

  'Fourteen years.'

  'Children?'

  'No. No children.'

  'How old are you, Mr Phelps?'

  'I'm forty-one.'

  'Get along?'

  'What?'

  'Do you get along with your wife?'

  'What!'

  'I said, 'Meyer repeated patiently, 'do you get along with your wife?'

  'Well, of course I do! What the hell kind of a question is that to ask?'

  'Don't get excited, Mr Phelps. Lots of men don't.'

  'Well, I do! And I don't see how this line of questioning is going to find the person who wrecked my store.'

  'We're primarily interested in the person who did murder, Mr Phelps.'

  'Then I suppose I should be delighted that Annie was killed. Otherwise the police would be happy to pass off the wreckage as just one of those unfortunate breaks.'

  'I think you're oversimplifying it, Mr Phelps,' Meyer said. He looked up suddenly. 'Do you own a revolver?'

  'What?'

  'A revolver? A pistol? A gun?'

  'No.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'Of course, I'm sure.'

  'We can check, you know.'

  'Of course I know you can ch…' Phelps stopped talking. Slow recognition crossed his face. He studied Meyer, and then a scowl brought his eyebrows into sharp angry wings. 'What are you saying?'

  'Hmh?' Meyer asked.

  'I'm not a suspect, am I? You're not saying that I'm a suspect?'

  Meyer nodded sadly. 'Yes, Mr Phelps,' he said. 'I'm afraid you are.'

  The man in Lieutenant Byrnes's office was six feet two inches tall, and he weighed one hundred and ninety pounds. He had blue eyes and a square jaw with a cleft chin. His hair was red, except for a streak over his left temple where he had once been knifed and where the hair had curiously grown in white after the wound had healed. He had a straight unbroken nose, and a good mouth with a wide lower lip. There was something of arrogance on his face, as if he did not approve of the lieutenant, or of Carella who stood alongside the lieutenant's desk, or even in fact of the lieutenant's office.

  'Steve,' Byrnes said, 'this is… ah…' Byrnes consulted the sheet of paper in his right hand. '… ah… Cotton Hawes.' He looked at the redhead curiously. 'Is that right? Cotton Hawes?'

  'Yes, sir. Cotton.'

  Byrnes cleared his throat. 'Cotton Hawes,' he said again, and he stole a somewhat surreptitious glance at Carella, and then was silent for a moment as if he were allowing the name to penetrate the layers of his mind. 'Detective 2nd Grade,' he said at last, 'be working out of this squad from now on. Transfer from the 30th.'

  Carella nodded.

  'This is Steve Carella,' Byrnes said.

  Carella extended his hand. 'Glad to know you.'

  'Carella,' Hawes answered, and he took Carella's hand in a firm grip. There were red hairs curling on the backs of Hawes's hands, and the hands were big. But Carella noticed that he did not try a bonecrusher handshake, the way some big men did. He gripped Carella's hand firmly and briefly, and then let it drop.

  'I thought Steve might show you the ropes,' Byrnes said.

  'How did you mean, sir?' Hawes asked.

  'Huh?'

  'How did you mean, sir?'

  'Show you around,' Byrnes said. 'T
he squad, and the house, and maybe the streets. Won't hurt to get to know the precinct.'

  'No, sir.'

  'In the meantime, Cotton…' Byrnes paused. 'Is… ah… that what people call you? Cotton?'

  'Yes, sir. Cotton.'

  'Well… ah… in the meantime, Hawes, we're happy to have you aboard. You won't find the 87th to be a garden spot, not after working in the 30th. But it's not such a bad dump.'

  'It's pretty bad,' Carella said.

  'Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it's pretty bad. But you'll get used to it. Or it'll get used to you. It's hard to tell which around here.'

  'I'm sure I'll get into the swing of things, sir,' Hawes said.

  'Oh, no question, no question.' Byrnes paused again. 'Well, unless there was anything else…' He paused. He felt exceptionally awkward in the presence of Hawes, and he did not know why. 'You might show him around, Steve,' he concluded.

  'Yes, sir,' Carella said, and he led Hawes to the door which opened on the Detective Squad Room. 'I guess the layout is pretty much the same all over the city,' he said when they were outside.

  'More or less,' Hawes said.

  'Cotton,' Carella said. 'That's an unusual name.'

  'My father was intrigued with the Puritan priest.'

  'Huh?'

  'Cotton Mather. Figured him to be one of the great colonists. It could have been worse.'

  'How so?'

  'He might have named me Increase.'

  'Yeah,' Carella said, smiling. 'Well, this is the squad room. Desks, windows—bulletin board there has the wanted posters and any notices we don't know what to do with. Filing cabinets are over there on your right. The usual stuff. Lousy File, Wanted cards, Arrests, Stolen Goods, hell, it must have been the same in your squad.'

  'Sure,' Hawes said.

  'We've got a file on lost bicycles,' Carella said. 'Maybe you didn't have that.'

  'No, we didn't.'

  'Helps every now and then. Lots of kids in this precinct.'

  'Um-huh.'

  'Only free desk we've got is the one by the window. We use it as a junk collector. You'll find everything in it but your mother-in-law.'

  'I'm not married,' Hawes said.

  'Oh. Well. Anyway, we can clean it out, and you can use it. If in case you ever do get married.' He smiled, but Hawes did not return the smile. 'Well… uh…' Carella paused, thinking. His eye lighted on Meyer Meyer and he quickly said, 'Meyer!' and Meyer looked up from his typewriter. Carella steered Hawes over to the desk.