The Heckler Read online

“You ran a picture of a dead man in the newspaper today,” Savage said.

  “Yeah? What about it?”

  “I know who he is. I’d like to talk to the detective handling the case.”

  “One moment, sir,” Murchison said.

  Savage nodded, grinned, and then waited. In a moment, another voice came onto the line.

  “Eighty-seventh Squad, Detective Carella.”

  “Are you the cop in charge of the case involving the man they found in the park?”

  “That’s right,” Carella said. “Who’s this, please?”

  “Are you the cop who sent the pictures out to the newspapers?”

  “That’s right. Sir, the desk sergeant tells me—”

  “Why didn’t you send one to my paper, Carella?”

  “Wha—” There was a long pause on the line. “Is that you, Savage?”

  “Yeah, this is me.”

  “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “It would be inconvenient for me to drop dead at the moment.”

  “Look, Savage, I’m not a polite feuder. I’m not interested in mixing clever talk with you. You almost got my wife killed once, you son of a bitch, and if you ever show your face around here I’ll throw you out the window. Does that make it clear?”

  “The Commissioner might like to know why every other paper in the city—”

  “The hell with you and the Commissioner both! Goodbye, Savage,” Carella said, and he hung up.

  Savage held the dead receiver in his hand for just a moment, then he slammed it onto the hook and stormed out of the booth.

  * * *

  THE PUERTO RICAN GIRL’Sname was Margarita. She had been in the city for only six months, and she didn’t speak English too well. She enjoyed working for Mr. Raskin because he was a nice cheerful man who did not shout too much. It was important to Margarita that the person for whom she worked did not shout. Margarita reported for work at nine o’clock each morning. The Culver Avenue loft was only five blocks from her house, and she enjoyed the walk to and from work each day. Once she got to the loft, she went into the bathroom and changed from her street clothes to a smock which she wore while pressing. Since she lived so close to the loft, someone had once suggested to her that she wear the smock to work rather than changing after she got there. But Margarita felt that the smock was not suitable attire for the street. And so every morning she put on a sweater and a skirt and then changed to the smock after she got to the loft. She never wore anything under the smock. She pressed dresses all day long, and it got very hot in that loft and she didn’t want the bother of panties and brassiere.

  She was a very well-formed girl, Margarita, and as she hefted that steam iron her breasts frolicked beneath the loose smock in time to the accompanying jiggle of her buttocks. Which was another thing she liked about Mr. Raskin. Mr. Raskin never came up behind her and pinched her. She had worked for another man before him, and he was always pinching her. Mr. Raskin was a very cheerful man who kept his hands to himself and who didn’t mind the girls telling jokes in Spanish every now and then. So long as they got the work done.

  There were two other girls besides Margarita, but Margarita was the unofficial foreman of the group. Each morning, when all the girls had had their second cup of coffee and changed into their smocks and fixed their makeup, Margarita would roll over the dollies with the cartons of dresses which Mr. Raskin had bought in wholesale lots, and she would turn them over to the girls who would press out all the wrinkles. Margarita would work right alongside them, that iron flashing over the creased skirts and bodices, those breasts jutting and bouncing. Then she would have a consultation with Mr. Raskin about pricing the dresses, and then she and the girls would mark each of the dresses and that evening Mr. Raskin would take them to the retail stores or to the farmers’ markets, depending on which outlets needed merchandise. It was a very smooth-running operation. Sometimes, when she discussed prices with Mr. Raskin, he would try to see into the low front of her dress because he knew she wore nothing underneath, but she didn’t mind him looking because he never touched. He was a gentleman, and she liked working for him. As far as Margarita was concerned, David Raskin was the nicest man in the world.

  Which is why she couldn’t understand the threatening calls.

  Why would anyone in the world want to threaten Mr. Raskin? And especially over so stupid a thing as a dirty loft? No, Margarita could not understand it, and each time the caller phoned again, she would feel frightened for her boss, and she would say a silent prayer in Spanish.

  She was not frightened on the afternoon of Thursday, April 9 when the delivery man entered the loft.

  “Anybody here?” he called from the door at the opposite end.

  “Jus’ a mini’,” Margarita said, and she put down her steam iron and then ran the length of the loft to the entrance doorway, forgetting that she was wearing nothing beneath the smock, and puzzled by the goggle-eyed expression on the delivery man’s face when she reached him.

  The delivery man took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his forehead with it.

  “You know something?” he said breathlessly.

  Margarita smiled. “What?”

  “You ought to be in burlesque, sister. I mean it. Burlesque is crying for you.”

  “What eees thees bul-esk?”

  “Oh, sister. Oh, sister.” The delivery man sighed and rolled his eyes. “Look, where do you want these cartons?” he asked, his eyes swinging back to the low-cut front of the smock. “I’ve got about fourteen cartons of stuff downstairs, so tell me where you want it, and it’s yours.”

  “Oh, I don’ know,” Margarita said. “My boss, he is no’ here ri’ now.”

  “I only want to know where you want it dumped, sister.”

  “What ees it, anyways?” Margarita asked.

  “Don’t know, sister, I only work for the trucking company. Come on, choose a spot. Go down to the other end of the loft again, and then run down this way and choose a spot as you come, okay?”

  Margarita giggled. “Why I got to run for?” she asked, knowing full well what he was referring to. “You put them inside here, near the door, okay?”

  “Okay, sister.” The delivery man winked. “Sssssss,” he said, as if he were a steam radiator. He wiggled his eyebrows, rolled his eyes and then went downstairs. He came up a few moments later with another man, carrying a heavy carton between them. Together they began setting it down just inside the door. The first man gestured with his eyebrows toward Margarita who was stooping to pick up a hanger. The second man almost crushed his fingers as they put down the carton. It took them an hour and a half, what with the various distractions provided by Margarita, to carry thirteen of the cartons upstairs. They were carrying the fourteenth and final carton into the loft when Dave Raskin arrived.

  “So what’s all this?” he asked.

  “Who are you?” the delivery man said. “Mr. Minsky?” He winked at Raskin. Raskin didn’t get the joke, so he didn’t wink back. Margarita had gone back to her pressing and was throwing herself into her work with wild abandon. The second delivery man was leaning against one of the cartons and wishing he had a better seat and a box of popcorn.

  “Who is Mr. Minsky?” Raskin said: “Who, in fact, areyou? And what is all these boxes, would you mind telling me?”

  “Are you David Raskin?”

  “I am he.”

  “Darask Frocks, Inc.?”

  “Yes?”

  “Then these are yours, mister.”

  “Whatis mine?”

  “Search me. We’re only truckers, mister. What does it say on the cartons?”

  Raskin studied the bold black lettering on the side of one of the cartons. “It says ‘Sandhurst Paper Company, New Bedford, Massachusetts’!” Raskin scratched his head. “I don’t know any Sandhurst Paper Company in New Bedford, Massachusetts. What is this?”

  The delivery men were in no hurry to leave. Margarita at the table was pressing up a storm, and it was a deli
ghtful storm indeed.

  “Why don’t you open one of the cartons?” the first man suggested.

  The second man nodded in vague abstraction and said, “Sure, why don’t you?”

  “Will that be all right?” Raskin asked.

  “Sure. It’s addressed to you, so open it.”

  “Sure,” the second man said.

  Raskin began struggling with the carton. The two delivery men sat on the edge of his desk and watched Margarita’s monumental bout with the steam iron. Finally, Raskin managed to pry loose two of the staples holding the carton closed. He tore the cardboard flap open, ripped the opening still larger and reached into the carton where he found a horde of smaller boxes resembling shoe boxes. He pulled one of these out, placed it on his desk top, and then lifted the lid.

  The box was full of envelopes.

  “Envelopes?” Raskin said.

  “That’s what they are,” the first man said.

  “That’s what they are, all right,” the second man said.

  “Envelopes? But who ordered…?” and Raskin suddenly stopped talking. He pulled one of the envelopes from the box and turned it over so that he could read the printing on the flap. It read:

  David Raskin

  The Vacant Loft, Inc.

  30 April Avenue

  Isola

  “Is that a new store you’re opening?” the first man asked.

  “Take these back,” Raskin said. “I didn’t order them.”

  “Hey, we can’t do that, mister. You already opened—”

  “Take them back,” Raskin said, and he pulled the telephone to him.

  “Who you calling?” the second man said. “The manufacturer?”

  “No,” Raskin answered. “The police.”

  TEDDY CARELLAwas in a robe when her husband came home from work that night. He kissed her as he crossed the threshold of the big monstrous house they lived in, and didn’t truly realize she was so attired until they’d gone into the kitchen together. Then, surprised because the house was so still at six-thirty in the evening, surprised that Teddy was wearing high-heeled bedroom slippers with the robe—hersilk robe, at that—he asked first, “Where are the children?”

  Teddy’s hands moved in silent answer.Asleep .

  “And Fanny?” he asked.

  Her fingers moved again.Thursday.

  “Oh yeah, her day off,” and suddenly it was all very clear to him. He did not acknowledge that he’d tipped to her plans or her preparations. He pretended he did not see the bottle of white wine resting on its side in the refrigerator when she opened the door to take out the melon. He pretended that he didn’t notice the exaggeratedly female way in which Teddy moved this evening, or the fact that she was wearing a subtly penetrating perfume, or that she had made up her eyes, startlingly wide and brown in her oval face, but that her lips carried not a trace of lipstick, her lips seemed more than anxious to be kissed—he pretended he noticed none of these things.

  He went into the bathroom to wash, and then he took off his holster and gun and put them into the top drawer of their dresser, and then he put on a tee shirt and threw his soiled white shirt into the hamper, and then he came downstairs. Teddy had set the table outdoors on the patio. A cool breeze rustled through the grape arbor, crossed the patio, lifted the skirt of her robe to reveal the long lissome curve of her leg. She did not move to flatten the skirt.

  “Guess who I ran into today?” Carella said, and then realized that Teddy’s back was to him, and that she could not hear him. He tapped her gently and she turned, her eyes moving instantly to his lips.

  “Guess who I ran into today” he repeated, and her eyes followed each muscular contraction and relaxation of his mouth so that—though she was born a deaf mute—she could almost hear each separate word as it rolled from his tongue. She raised her eyebrows in question. There were times when she used sign language to convey her thoughts to her husband; other times, when there was no real necessity for a formal language between them, when the simple cocking of an eye or nuance of mouth, sometimes a glint, sometimes the rarest of subtle expressions served to tell him what she was thinking. He loved her most during those times, he supposed. Her face was a beautiful thing, oval and pale, with large brown eyes and a full sensuous mouth. Black hair curled wildly about her head, echoing the color of her eyes, setting the theme for the rest of the woman who was Teddy Carella, a theme of savagery which sprang through the blatant curve of her breast and the ripe swelling of hip and thigh and splendid calf, narrow ankles, narrow waist, a woman with the body of a barbarian and the gentle tenderness of a slave. And never was she more lovely than when her face explained something to him, never more lovely than when her eyes “spoke.” She raised her eyebrows in question now, and fastened her eyes to his mouth again, waiting.

  “Cliff Savage,” he said.

  She tilted her head to one side, puzzled. She shrugged. Then she shook her head.

  “Savage. The reporter. Remember?”

  And then she remembered all at once, and the light broke over her face and her hands moved quickly, bursting with questions.What did he want? My God, how many years has it been? Do you remember what that fool did? We weren’t even married then, Steve. Do you remember? We were so young.

  “One at a time, will you?” Carella said. “He was beefing because I’d sent that I.D. photo to every newspaper but his.” Carella chuckled. “I thought that’d get a rise out of the bastard. And it did. Man, was he steaming! Do you know something honey? I don’t think he even realizes what he did. He doesn’t even know he could have got you killed.”

  Carella shook his head.

  What Savage had done, actually, was run a story in his newspaper several years back, a story which had strongly hinted that a detective named Steve Carella had confided to his fiancée, a girl named Theodora Franklin, some suspicions he had about a series of cop killings. In addition, Savage had also listed Teddy’s address in the newspaper, and he could not have fingered her more effectively than if he’d led the killer to her apartment in person. The news story had indeed smoked out the killer. It had also damn near got Teddy killed.

  Do you remember?she said with her hands again, and an expression of total sadness crossed her face and Carella remembered what she had said to him not a moment ago,We were so young, and he wondered what she’d really meant and suddenly he took her into his arms.

  She came to him desperately, as if she had been waiting for his arms all day long. She clung to him, and he was not surprised to find her hot tears on the side of his neck.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?” he said. Weeping, she kept her face buried against the side of his neck so that she could not “hear” him. He twisted his right hand in her hair and pulled back her head. “What’s the matter?”

  She shook her head.

  “Tired of your humdrum existence?” he asked.

  She did not answer.

  “Bored by the four walls?”

  Still she would not answer.

  “Long for a life of romantic adventure?” Carella paused. “What’s the matter, honey? Look, your eyes are running all over your face, and after you spent so much time making them up.”

  Teddy sat bolt upright in his lap, an expression of shocked outrage on her face. Her black brows swooped down. Her right hand darted up in front of his face. Rapidly the fingers spelled out their message.

  My eyes!

  “Well, honey—”

  Then youdidnotice! And you probably noticed everything else, too! The—

  “Honey, what are you getting all—?”

  Shut up! Get away from me!

  She tried to get off his lap, but his hands slid up under the robe, and though she struggled to free herself, his hands were strong upon her and at last she relaxed in his arms, and his hands roamed beneath the loose gown, touching her belly and her smooth flanks, stroking her gently as he spoke, his lips moving beneath her listening fingers.

  “So sometimes you feel like an old matron,”
he said. “Sometimes you roam this big shell of a house in your dirty dungarees and you wipe runny noses all day long and keep cigarette butts out of the twins’ mouths, and wonder when the hell your adventuresome husband is coming home. And sometimes you long for it to be the way it used to be, Teddy, before we were married, when every time was like the first time and the last time rolled into one, when my eyes went up like butane every time I saw you, when it was young, Teddy, when it was new and shining and young.”

  She stared at her husband in solemn wonder because there were times when he seemed to be such an insensitive lout, times when he seemed to be only the uncouth slob who told dirty jokes in a detective squadroom and who brought all of his grubbiness home with him, times when she felt alone in her silent world without even the comfort of the person who had been to her the one shining spark in her life, and then suddenly—suddenly there he was again, the person she had known all along, her Steve, the person who knew the things she was feeling, who had felt them himself, and who could talk about them until, until….

  “And you want it to be that way again, honey, that wild crazy young flying way that was for kids, Teddy, but we’re not kids, anymore. So you dressed yourself up for me tonight. It’s Fanny’s day off, so you rushed the kids into their beds, and you put on your black shorty nightgown—I saw it when the wind caught your robe—and your good silk robe and your fancy high-heeled slippers, and you put that shadow all round your eyes, and you left your lips naked and Teddy, Teddy baby, I love you anywhich way you are, in a potato sack, or digging in the back yard, or right after you had the babies and they rolled you in all sweaty and stinking on the maternity table, or taking a bath, or cooking, or swimming, dressed, naked, reading, weeping, baby, baby I love you and it only gets better all the time and I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to cater to your silly back-to-seventeen movement and get all excited because you’re in a nightgown and high-heeled pumps, especially, especially when I’ve been planning onexactly this all day long, all goddam day long! Take your fingers off my mouth, I want to kiss you.”

  He kissed her, and he didn’t ask her afterward whether or not there was any of that flying jazz they had known as kids, or whether or not the world went up in neon, and whether or not Mongolian gongs and bugles went off—he didn’t ask her. Instead he slipped the robe from her shoulders, lowered it to her waist, kissed the full rich globes of her breasts, felt her trembling beneath his fingers, and carried her to the new grass lining the patio. And then he held her to him naked, and he didn’t ask her anything, and she didn’t say anything, and whereas neither of them flew and whereas there was no flash of neon and no crashing of gongs or bleating of bugles, he had the distinct impression that the sky was crumbling and that he was about to fall off the edge of the earth. And, from the way she clung to him so desperately, he knew she was experiencing the same odd sensation.