So Long As You Both Shall Live (87th Precinct) (7 page)

She visualized a smile on his face. She hated him intensely, and could think only that Bert would kill him when he found them. Bert would draw his revolver and shoot the man dead. Lying on her back sightless and speechless, she drew strength from the knowledge that Bert would kill him. But she could not stop trembling because his unseen presence frightened her, and she did not know what he might do next, and she could remember the fanatic intensity in those blue eyes above the green surgical mask, and the speed with which he had crossed the room and put the scalpel to her throat. She kept listening for his breathing. His silence was almost supernatural, he appeared and disappeared as soundlessly as a vampire. Was he still there watching her? Or had he left the room again?

“Would you like to talk?” he said.

She was ready to shake her head; the last thing on earth she wanted was to
talk
to him. But she realized that he would have to remove the gag if he expected her to speak, and once her mouth was free…

She nodded.

“If you plan to scream…” he said, and let the warning dangle.

She shook her head in a vigorous lie; she planned to scream the moment he took off the gag.

“I still have the scalpel,” he said. “Feel?” he said and put the cold blade against her cheek. The touch was sudden and unexpected, and she twisted her head away sharply, but he followed her face with the blade, laying it flat against her cheek and saying again, “Feel?”

She nodded.

“I do not want to cut you, Augusta. It would be a pity to cut you.”

He knew her name.

“Do you understand, Augusta? I’m going to remove the tape from your mouth now, I’m going to allow you to speak. But if you scream, Augusta, I will use the scalpel not only on the tape, but on you as well. Is that clear?”

She nodded.

“I hope that is clear, Augusta. Sincerely, I do not want to cut you.”

She nodded again.

“Very well, then. But please remember, yes?”

She felt the scalpel sliding under the gag. He twisted the blade and she heard the tape tearing, and suddenly the pressure on her mouth was gone, the tape was cut through, he was ripping the ends of it loose. As he lifted her head and pulled the remainder of the tape free, she spat out the cotton wad that had been in her mouth.

“Now, do not scream,” he said. “Here. Feel the blade,” he said and put it against her throat. “That is so you will not scream, Augusta.”

“I won’t scream,” she said very softly.

“Ah,” he said. “That is the first time I heard your voice. It is a lovely voice, Augusta. As lovely as I knew it would be.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Ah,” he said.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “My husband’s a policeman, do you know that?”

“Yes, I know.”

“A detective.”

“I know.”

“Do you know what happens when a cop or his family are injured or threatened or…?”

“Yes, I can imagine. Augusta, you are raising your voice,” he chided, and she felt him increase the pressure against her throat, moving his hand so that
it
and not the scalpel exerted the force, but the gesture nonetheless threatening in that she
knew
what was in his hand, and knew how sharp the instrument was—it had sliced through the tape with a simple twist of the blade.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t realize…”

“Yes, you must be more calm.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” he said. “Augusta, I know your husband is a detective, that is what it said in the newspaper article announcing your wedding. Detective Third/Grade Bertram A. Kling. That is his name, is it not?”

“Yes,” Augusta said.

“Yes. Bertram A. Kling. I was very distressed when I read that in the newspaper, Augusta. That was in October, do you remember?”

“Yes,” she said.

“October the fifth. It said you were to be wed the following month. To this man Bertram A. Kling. This policeman. This detective. I was very distressed. I did not know what to do, Augusta. It took me a long while to understand what I must do. Even to yesterday morning, I was not sure I would do it. And then, at the church, I knew it was right what I wished to do. And now you are here. With me. Now you are going to be mine,” he said, and she suddenly realized he was insane.

Alexander Pike thought he had seen enough cops yesterday to last him an entire lifetime. But another cop was here in his studio now, and he wasn’t even one of the cops who’d been at the wedding and the reception, and he was asking Pike for the photographs he’d taken. Pike did not like his looks and he did not like his manner. He had been photographing beautiful people for more than four decades now, and Oliver Weeks was definitely not beautiful. Nor was he exactly what Pike might have called couth.

“We need the pictures you took yesterday, and that’s it,” Ollie said. “Now, Mr. Pike, I been here a half-hour already, arguing with you, and I’m trying to tell you this is important to us, and I would like to have the pictures now without further ado.”

“And I’m telling
you
, Mr. Weeks, that all I’ve got printed so far are contact sheets—”

“That’s fine, I’ll take the contact sheets.”

“I’d planned to look them over this afternoon,” Pike said. “Decide where to crop them…”

“Mr. Pike, you have the negatives, don’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“So make yourself another batch of contacts.”

“Do you know how many rolls of film I shot yesterday?” Pike asked.

“How many?”

“Thirty rolls of film. That’s more than a thousand photographs, Mr. Weeks. That’s exactly one thousand and eighty photographs, in fact. It was my plan to look over those pictures this afternoon…”

“Yeah, I know,” Ollie said, “and decide where to crop them.”

“That’s right.”

“That can wait, Mr. Pike. This is more important.”

“Why? You still haven’t told me what’s so important about these pictures.”

“Mr. Pike, I am not at liberty to divulge this information,” Ollie said. Carella had told him that they were trying to keep this whole case hush-hush, at least until they’d heard something from the kidnapper. He had instructed Ollie to get the photographs from Pike without telling Pike what this was all about, a mission Ollie was finding difficult to accomplish. Moreover, Carella’s instructions did not make much sense to Ollie. Pike was one of the men he hoped would help match the guest list against the photos. If he couldn’t tell Pike what this was all about, then how could he enlist Pike’s aid? Besides, Ollie was a detective 1st/grade and Carella was only a detective 2nd/grade, and that meant Ollie outranked him. Still, he didn’t like to fly in the face of Carella’s instructions, especially since the case was the Eight-Seven’s, and also the guys up there were personally involved in it—which was, in fact, a good enough reason for somebody with a clear head to step in here, somebody who didn’t know Kling from a hole in the wall, and couldn’t care less about anything but the puzzle of the thing. That was what made police work exciting to Ollie—the puzzle of it. He didn’t give a damn about people, dead or alive. All he cared about was the puzzle. He had just told Pike he was not at liberty to discuss why the police felt those photographs were important. He waited now for Pike’s answer.

“In that case,” Pike said, “I am not at liberty to give you these pictures.”

“Then I’ll just have to go downtown and get a search warrant, I suppose,” Ollie said, and sighed. He had no intention of going downtown to get a search warrant. He was, in fact, trying to figure how he could tell Pike that Augusta had been kidnapped without coming right out and telling him. He would like to be able to say, later, that he had never once mentioned the abduction, that Pike had simply deduced it all by himself. Toward that end, he said, “You want me to go downtown for a warrant, Mr. Pike?”

“Yes, go downtown for one.”

“Mr. Pike, I can get one, believe me. I’ve got pretty good reasonable cause to believe the pictures will constitute evidence of a crime…”

“What crime?” Pike asked at once.

“Never mind,” Ollie said.

“A crime that took place at Augusta’s wedding?”

“Let me put it this way,” Ollie said. “A crime has been committed, Mr. Pike.”

“Where? At the wedding?”

“No, not at the wedding, but shortly after the wedding, and it’s possible that the pictures you took yesterday may help us in identifying the person or persons responsible. Now, that’s all I can tell you at this time, Mr. Pike, without jeopardizing the victim.”

“Victim? Who?”

“Well, it doesn’t matter who. I don’t want to jeopardize her by—”

“Her?” Pike asked. “A woman? Is the victim a woman?”

“Mr. Pike, it doesn’t
matter
who the victim is. The point is—”

“But is it a woman?”

“Yes, it is a woman.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Pike, I’m going to ask you for the last time. If you won’t let me have those pictures, I’m just going to have to run downtown and get a warrant, and that’ll put a hair across my ass, Mr. Pike, it really will. So why don’t you cooperate with a hardworking person like yourself, huh, and let me have the fuckin’ pictures, okay?”

“I’ll give them to you if you tell me what happened. Was something stolen from one of Augusta’s guests?”

“No, nothing was stolen.”

“Then was someone hurt?”

“No. Nobody was hurt. Not that we know of, anyway.”

“Then
what?
” Pike asked. “Does Augusta know about this? Does she know you want the pictures?”

“No, she doesn’t know we want the pictures.”

“Does she know a crime was committed?”

“Yes. She knows.”

There was something about the way Ollie said, “Yes,” and paused significantly, and then added, “She knows,” that immediately told Pike all he had to know.

“Something’s happened to Augusta,” Pike said.

“I am not saying anything happened to Augusta,” Ollie said. “I am not saying anything happened to
anybody.
All I am saying is that a serious crime has been committed, and you can help us a lot by letting us have the contact sheets, and by coming along with me to the hotel, where we can go over them together with Kling and a man you may know named Arthur Cutler, who is probably being telephoned right this minute and being asked to go on down there. What do you say, Mr. Pike?”

“If Augusta’s in trouble…”

“Yes or no, Mr. Pike?”

“Yes. Of course,” Pike said.

There were, as Pike had promised, exactly 1,080 prints on the black-and-white contact sheets. Moreover, the guest list for the wedding and reception totaled not 200 people, as Kling had estimated, but exactly 212 people. Carella had phoned Cutler and asked him to meet him at the hotel, and then he had called Kling to tell him what he could expect. Kling, who had never met Fat Ollie Weeks, but who had heard a lot about him from Cotton Hawes, immediately asked why he was sticking his two cents into the case. Carella told him that Ollie had come up with a good idea; he added weakly that Ollie was a very good cop, and that they could use all the help they could get. Kling said that according to Hawes, Ollie was a bigoted asshole. Carella told him that was true.

“Then why do we need him?” Kling asked.

“I think he can help us,” Carella said. “He’s got a good head, Bert. He’s apt to run things by the book, but occasionally he’ll come up with an idea that nobody else thought of. As, for example, the pictures Pike took.”

“Well, okay,” Kling said reluctantly.

“Give him a chance,” Carella said.

“Yeah,” Kling said.

Carella had forgotten to prepare Kling for Ollie’s famous W. C. Fields imitation. There were six men in the hotel room now, including Bob O’Brien, who had relieved Meyer and who was monitoring a telephone that defiantly refused to ring. The one time it had rung all afternoon, in fact, had been when Carella phoned not a half-hour ago, to tell Kling they’d be coming over with the photographs and the guest list. It had been silent up to that time, and it had been silent since. O’Brien, sitting on the bed with a pair of pillows propped up behind him, his long legs stretched out, had both earphones on his ears and was reading a paperback book.

The other five men sat on folding chairs the hotel manager had generously provided, around a card table he had also provided. The containers of coffee and the doughnuts on the table had been paid for by the cops. The photographs had been taken, developed, and printed by Alexander Pike. The guest list had been typed four weeks ago by Alf Miscolo in the Clerical Office of the 87th Precinct, as a favor to Kling. The magnifying glass was the property of the 87th Squad, and had been brought to the hotel room by Detective Steve Carella. Art Cutler’s clothes were by Cardin, and his hair styling was by Monsieur Henri. That took care of the credits.

As for the photographs, Cutler praised Pike extravagantly for his artistry and sensitivity, and Pike thanked him profusely, and then one or another of the men called off the names of anyone whose picture Carella or Kling did not recognize. Ollie Weeks kept the tally, crossing a name off the guest list whenever someone was identified. By the time they’d looked at all the pictures, they had also crossed off all the names on the list—but they still had pictures of sixteen people who could not be identified by any of them. Ollie insisted that they look at those photographs again. Again, they could not identify them. Ten of the people were men, six were women. It was assumed that some of the unidentified women were wives or girlfriends of art directors or photographers who’d been invited by Augusta, and it was similarly assumed that some of the unidentified men were escorts brought along by some of the girls. “Ah, yes,” Ollie said, using his W. C. Fields voice for the first time and surprising everyone in the room, with the exception of Bob O’Brien, who couldn’t hear because of the earphones on his head, and Carella, who’d heard the priceless imitation before.

“What we must do then, m’friends,” he said, continuing with the imitation, “is go over the list, matching
couples
this time, man and wife, sweethearts and lovers, and so on. Then, whoever’s left without a mate, I’ll go see them personally and ask them if they know any of these unidentified people. Ah, yes.”

“Ollie, that’ll take forever,” Carella said.

“Have we got anything better to do with our time?” Ollie asked in his natural voice, and Kling looked at the silent phone, and then they began going over the list and the photographs yet another time.

The call from Fats Donner was clocked in at the precinct switchboard at precisely ten minutes past 4:00. Hal Willis took the call in the squadroom upstairs.

“Yeah,” he said, “what’ve you got?”

“On this Al Brice.”

“Yeah.”

“I know where he is.”

“Where?” Willis asked, and picked up a pencil.

“How much is this worth?”

“How much do you want?” Willis asked.

“I could use a C-note.”

“You’ve got it,” Willis said.

“I should’ve asked for more, I got the century so easy,” Donner said.

“Don’t press your luck, Fats,” Willis said. “Where is he?”

“In a fleabag on Fifty-sixth and Hopkins. You want to die laughing? The name of the place is the Royal Arms, how about that?”

“The Royal Arms on Fifty-sixth and Hopkins,” Willis said. “Is he registered under his own name?”

“Arthur Bradley.”

“You sure it’s him?”

“The night clerk knows him. It’s Brice, all right. Incidentally, about the night clerk…”

“Yeah?”

“He don’t want trouble later, dig? He done me a favor passing this on.”

“Nobody’ll know about it, don’t worry.”

“What I’m saying, I don’t want Brice to know it was the night clerk fingered him, dig?”

“I’ve got it. When did he check in?”

“Late last night.”

“What time?”

“Close to midnight, must’ve been.”

“Was he alone?”

“No. He was with a broad.”

“Did she walk in under her own steam?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was she ambulatory?”

“I still don’t get you,” Donner said.

“Did she walk in, or was he carrying her?”

“Carrying her? Why would he be carrying her?”

“Forget it. What’s the night clerk’s name?”

“Harry Dennis.”

“What time does he go on?”

“He works from eight at night till eight in the morning.”

“Then he wouldn’t be there now,” Willis said, looking up at the clock.

“No. You plan to go there now?”

“I think I’ll pay the man a visit, yes,” Willis said.

“He’s heeled,” Donner said. “He’s heeled very heavy.”

“How heavy?”

“My man saw a .38 in a shoulder holster, and he thinks he spotted a Magnum tucked in Brice’s belt.”

“That’s heavy, all right,” Willis said appreciatively.

“So that’s it,” Donner said. “About the money…”

“You’ll get it.”

“I’m a little short this week. You think you can send somebody by with it? Like you done before?”

Willis looked up at the clock again. “It’ll have to be when the shift changes,” he said.

“When’s that?”

“Midnight.”

“That’ll be fine, if you can do it.”

“Sure. I’ll have a patrolman drop it in your mailbox.”

“Thanks,” Donner said. “Listen, this is none of my business, but I wouldn’t go calling on Brice all by myself, I was you. From what I hear about him, he’s got a very short fuse, and also he’d as soon shoot you as spit on you. Dig?”

“I won’t go there alone,” Willis said.

“Not that it’s any of my business,” Donner said, and hung up.

Willis went into the lieutenant’s office to get the hundred for Donner, and then he typed up an envelope with Donner’s name and address on it, and put the money in it, and sealed the envelope. Carella walked in just then, and told him they’d checked and double-checked all the pictures taken at the wedding and reception, and Ollie Weeks was now out trying to run down any strangers in the batch. Willis filled him in on the call from Donner and asked if he wanted to come along when he questioned Brice. Both men went downstairs to the muster room.

At the desk, Willis handed Sergeant Murchison the sealed envelope and asked that a patrolman drop it in Donner’s mailbox when the graveyard shift went out. Murchison took the envelope, looked up at the clock, and then asked them where they were going. They told him, and he jotted down the address on a pad alongside the switchboard.