Killers choice 87th prec.., p.4
Killer’s Choice (87th Precinct), page 4
“It’s perfectly clear,” Hawes said.
“Hardly any automatics have a left twist,” Kronig said.
“There are a few,” Hawes answered. “Spanish .25’s and .32’s have a left twist.”
“Yes. Yes. And the Bayard and Colt .25 have a left twist.”
“Why are you hitting .25’s so hard?” Carella asked.
“Because the sample bullet we examined had six lands. The twist was sixteen inches left. The groove diameter was point-two-five-one inches.”
“Get to it,” Hawes said.
“Well,” Kronig said, sighing, “we went to our charts. We looked up grooves, direction of twist, twist in inches, groove diameter, and we came up with the make and caliber of the gun that fired that bullet.”
“Which was?”
“A Colt .25 automatic.”
“Fill us in, Pete,” Carella said.
“Not much to tell. You know .25’s. A small gun. Weighs thirteen ounces and has an overall length of four and a half inches.
The barrel length is two inches. Magazine capacity, six cartridges. You find them in either blued or nickeled finishes. They’ve got pearl, ivory, or walnut stocks. They shoot like bastards, and they can kill as dead as a .45.”
“A small gun,” Carella said.
“And a light one,” Hawes added. “Light enough for a man to keep in his side pocket. Light enough for a woman to carry in her purse.”
“Not a woman’s gun especially, is it, Pete?” Carella asked.
“Not necessarily, Steve,” Kronig said. “It could be, but not necessarily. I’d say it’s six of one and a half-dozen of the other. Not like a .45. You know, not many women will lug a .45.”
“Either a man or a woman,” Carella said dismally.
“Mmm,” Kronig said, nodding. He grinned at Carella and added, “We’ve certainly narrowed it down for you, huh?”
In the street outside the headquarters building, Carella said, “Deal much with the lab before, Hawes?”
“A little,” Hawes said.
“What was it? Didn’t you take to Pete?”
“He was fine. Why?”
“You seemed p.o.’d about something.”
“Only his deadly lecture on elementary ballistics,” Hawes said.
“That’s his job.”
“His job was to tell us what make and caliber gun killed Anne Boone. I’m not interested in the processes which lead to his conclusions. Our job is to get a murderer, not listen to a glorified report on laboratory technique.”
“It doesn’t hurt to know these things,” Carella said.
“Why? Do you plan on becoming a lab cop?”
“Nope. But if you can appreciate another man’s job, you won’t ask the impossible of him.”
“That’s a generous attitude,” Hawes said. “I like to do things fast.”
“Sometimes you can’t handle homicides fast. We now know that a .25 was used. That’s not such a popular caliber. The thieves we deal with seem to favor .32’s and .38’s. Was it that way at the 30th?”
“Just about.”
“So we’ve got something to look for in the m.o. file. Maybe Pete gave you a lecture, but I didn’t mind it. I sort of enjoyed it.”
“To each his own,” Hawes said flatly.
“Sure. You handle many homicide cases before your transfer, Hawes?”
“Not many.”
“Not many?”
“We didn’t have many homicides at the 30th.”
“No?”
“No.”
“How many?”
“What are you getting at, Carella?”
“I’m just curious.”
“I’m ‘way ahead of you.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. You know damn well what kind of a precinct the 30th was. Rich people. Big, fancy apartment houses with doormen. Burglary was our most frequent crime. And street stickups. And attempted and realized suicides. And some highclass prostitution. But not many homicides.”
“How many?”
“I won’t count the ones where a burglar panicked and killed, and where we grabbed him almost at the scene. I’ll only count the real homicides. Where we had to work.”
“Sure,” Carella said. “How many?”
“Six.”
“A week?”
“No.”
“What then? A month?”
“I worked out of the 30th Squad for four years. We had six homicides in all that time.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“How many of those did you work on?”
“None.”
“Oh,” Carella said, smiling.
“Did you prove your point?”
“Which point?”
“That I don’t know my ass from my elbow?”
“I wasn’t trying to prove anything.”
“I don’t know homicide, that’s true. It was always my impression that killings were left to Homicide North or Homicide South.”
“If we gave all the 87th’s homicides to the Homicide Squads, they wouldn’t have enough dicks to go around.”
“Okay. I don’t know homicide. Are we agreed?”
“We’re agreed. What else don’t you know?”
“I don’t know the 87th Precinct.”
“Granted.”
“I don’t know you, either.”
“Stephen Louis Carella, detective second grade, thirty-four years old, been a cop since I was twenty-one. I’m married to a girl named Teddy who’s a deaf mute. We’re very happy. I like my job. I’ve worked on forty-one homicide cases and just about every other type of crime being committed in this city. I made two big mistakes in my lifetime. I jumped on a hand grenade in Italy, and I got myself shot last Christmas. I survived both times, and I won’t make the same mistakes again. End of deposition.”
“That’s it, huh?”
“In a nutshell.”
“You’re a college man, aren’t you?”
“Two and a half years. Chaucer finally threw me.”
“You were medically discharged from the Army, right?”
“Yes. How’d—”
“If you’ve been a cop since you’re twenty-one, and if you went to college for two and a half years, that doesn’t leave much time for the Army. What’d you do? Graduate high school at seventeen, go to school for a year, get drafted, get wounded, get medically discharged, and then go back to school for a year and a half before you joined the force?”
“You’re reading it right down the line,” Carella said, somewhat amazed.
“Okay. I guess I now know Detective Steve Carella.”
“I guess so. How about Detective Cotton Hawes?”
“There’s not much to know,” Hawes said.
“Tell it.”
“It bores me.”
“The way Pete Kronig in the lab bored you.”
“In a way, yes.”
“I’ll give you some advice, Hawes.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not the best cop in the world,” Carella said. “I just try to do my job, that’s all. But I’ve worked on homicides, and I know my job is made a whole lot easier because of Sam Grossman and his technicians. Sometimes the lab isn’t worth a damn. Sometimes a case is all legwork and stool pigeons and personal mathematics. But there are times when the lab does everything but go out to make the pinch. When a lab cop talks, I listen. I listen hard.”
“You’re saying?” Hawes asked.
“I’m saying you’ve got ears, too,” Carella said. “Shall we go get some coffee?”
495 Hall Avenue was a sumptuous building with a wide entrance lobby and fourteen elevators. It rested in the heart of the publishing section, flanked on either side by the high-class department stores that lined the street.
Kling felt as if he’d died and gone to heaven.
It was a distinct pleasure to get away from the 87th. There was a nice feeling to midtown Isola, a feeling he had almost forgotten. He could remember Christmas shopping with Claire, his fiancée, but this was June, and Christmas seemed as if it had happened in 1776. It was good to be back on Hall Avenue, good to see men carrying briefcases and going about clean jobs, good to see girls in tailored suits or skirts and blouses, clean-scrubbed girls hurrying to their offices or hurrying to do their shopping. This was the nicest part of the city, he felt, the part that really felt like it, that really made you think you were in a giant metropolis.
The weather, too, was ideal. Summer had not yet begun its onslaught. Spring had not yet left the air. It was mild and balmy, a day for taking off your shoes and walking barefoot on wet grass. He regretted that he had a job to do. But his regret did not spread to include Hall Avenue.
He entered 495 and walked to the directory. Theodore Boone was listed as being in Room 1804. Kling looked at his watch. It was 2:50. He nodded slightly and walked toward the elevator banks. He wore gray slacks and a gray-striped seersucker jacket. He did not at all look like a cop. With his blond hair and wide shoulders, with his long purposeful strides, he looked like a Scandinavian in America to study investment banking.
The elevator banks were divided into several sections. He passed the Local 1–12 section and then stopped at the Express 14–22 section, amused at the idea of a modern office building in the heart of a modern city superstitiously eliminating the thirteenth floor.
He stepped into the closest car and said, “Eighteen, please.” The elevator operator stabbed a button.
“How’s it outside?” the elevator operator asked.
“Nice.”
“I never get out. I’m trapped in this building. From eight in the morning ‘til five at night, I’m a prisoner. I never see the light. I have my lunch right here in the building. I bring my lunch. I eat it downstairs in a little room we got. I’m a mole.”
Kling nodded sympathetically.
“This is a city of moles, you know that? I know people, they get off the subway; they walk underground to their office. At least I get the two-block walk to this building every morning and every night. Them, they get nothing. They walk underground to the office ‘cause it’s quicker, rain or shine. They eat their lunch in the arcade, underground. They go back to the subway underground when they leave the office at night. They never see the city. Me, I see two blocks of the city. How is it outside?”
“Nice,” Kling said.
The starter snapped his fingers. The elevator operator closed the doors. “Eighteen, right?” he asked.
“Right,” Kling said.
“Up and down all day long,” the elevator operator said. “Up and down, but I’m never going any place. I’m a vertical mole. I’d rather be a subway conductor. Then at least I’d be a horizontal mole. And they come up for air. When they reach Calm’s Point or Riverhead, the train comes up outta the ground. Me, up and down, up and down, all day long. It’s nice outside, huh?”
“Very nice,” Kling said.
“It seemed nice on the way to work this morning. You got an outside job, mister?”
“Part of the time,” Kling said.
“Listen, even a part-time outside job is good,” the elevator operator said. “I think I ought to get an outside job. Even maybe a street cleaner’s job. That’s outside.”
“It gets cold in the winter,” Kling said.
“Yeah?” This was a new idea to the elevator operator.
“Yeah, that’s right, ain’t it? Say, that’s right.” The car slid to a stop. “Eighteen,” he said.
The door slid open. “Thank you,” Kling said as he walked out of the car.
“Don’t mention it,” the elevator operator said. The door slid shut. Behind the door, the mechanism whirred and faded down the shaft. Kling smiled and looked for Room 1804. He followed the doors down the hallway and stopped before a set of double doors with frosted glass. He opened one of the doors and stepped into a small luxuriously furnished waiting room. A receptionist sat behind a desk at one end of the room. Kling walked directly to her.
“Mr. Boone,” he said.
“Who shall I say is calling, please?”
“Detective Kling.”
The girl looked up suddenly. “Are you a detective?”
“Yes,” Kling said.
“Just a moment, sir.”
She kept watching him as she pushed a toggle on her intercom.
“Yes?” a voice asked. Kling recognized it as Boone’s.
“Detective Kling to see you, sir,” the girl said, her eyes on Kling.
“Send him right in,” Boone said. “I’m in the studio.”
“Yes, sir.” She flipped up her toggle and said, “Would you go in please, Mr. Kling? Through that door and then down the corridor. It’s the last door.”
“Thank you,” Kling said. He opened the door, hesitated, and said, “Right or left?”
“What?”
“The corridor.”
“Oh.” The girl smiled. “Left down the corridor.”
“Thank you,” Kling said again. He closed the door behind him and turned left, walking past a series of doors. There was a door at the end of the corridor. He opened it and walked into a huge room that ran at a right angle to the corridor. A platform was set up at the far end of the room. A girl in a leopard skin was lying on a piece of black velvet that had been draped over the platform. Six lights were trained on the girl. A camera was trained on the girl. A man was behind the camera. Another man was arranging the folds in the velvet draped over the platform. A third man stood with his arms folded, slightly to the left of the camera.
“I’d like to shoot up at her, Ted,” the man with the folded arms said.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” Boone answered. “It’s your ad.”
“Well, that’s what I’d like. I want to get the feeling she’s looking down at us.”
“What for?”
“It’s what I want.”
“But your copy reads, ‘Women look up to men who use Leopard Aftershave,’” Boone said.
“That’s right,” the man with the folded arms said.
“So why can’t I look up?” the model in the leopard skin asked. “I photograph better looking up, anyway.”
“I want you looking down.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” the model said.
“Honey,” the man with the folded arms said, “you’re getting paid forty dollars an hour to pose, not to be an art director. When I want you to look up, I’ll ask you to look up. Right now, I’d like you to look down, and I’d like our friend Mr. Boone to shoot from the floor to exaggerate this feeling of your looking down.”
“Well, that’s certainly a mystery to me,” the girl said. “The copy says ‘look up’ and you want look down. That’s certainly the mystery of the decade. That’s certainly the inscrutable mystery of the Orient.”
Kling cleared his throat.
Boone turned from the camera.
He was not a good-looking man, and yet he was a good-looking man. He was a trifle short perhaps, with thick black hair, and with the irregular features of a boxer. But he was narrow-waisted and wide-shouldered, and he turned with an economy of movement that told Kling he was quick on his feet and probably as sharply trained as a commando. He had bright brown eyes, and they focused instantly on Kling, and he moved away from the camera just as instantly and walked to Kling with his hand extended.
“Detective Kling?” he asked.
“Yes,” Kling said. “I hope I’m not intruding.”
“Not at all.” Boone turned and said, “Karl, mind if we take a short break?”
“I’m only paying the jungle queen forty dollars an hour,” the man with the folded arms said.
“I can use a break,” the model said. “This looking down bit can get strenuous.”
“Go ahead,” Karl said, unfolding his arms. “Take a break. Practice looking down. Practice looking down and giving the feeling that you’re looking up at the same time.”
“For that, you’ve got to be double-jointed,” the model said. “You should have hired a circus performer.”
“Sometimes I get the feeling I have,” Karl said.
Kling followed Boone to the side of the room. He took a package of cigarettes from his pocket and extended it to Kling.
“Smoke?”
“Thanks, no,” Kling said.
Boone shook a cigarette free and lighted it. He blew out a stream of smoke, sighed, and said, “Who killed her?”
“We don’t know,” Kling said.
“How can I help?”
“By answering some questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” Boone sucked in on his cigarette. “Shoot,” he said.
“You were married how long?”
Boone did not stop to calculate. Quickly, he said, “Five years, two months, and eleven days.”
“You remember that closely?”
“It was the happiest time of my life,” Boone said.
“It was?” Kling said. His face was expressionless. He was remembering all that Mrs. Travail had told him, but his face remained expressionless.
“Yes,” Boone said.
“Why’d you get divorced?”
“She didn’t want me anymore.”
“Let me get this straight,” Kling said. “She asked for the divorce?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did know. I thought everything was going along fine. Christ knows, I loved her.”
“We’d better start from the beginning,” Kling said.
“All right. Where do you want me to start?”
“Where’d you meet?”
“At the public library.”
“When was this?”
“Eight years ago. 1949?”
“Good enough. Remember the month?”
“June.”
“What were you doing at the library?”
“I was freelancing at the time. I’d had a job possibility, some industrial stuff, but I couldn’t find any samples to clinch the deal. I’d had some stuff in one of the photography magazines, and I went to the library to locate the back issue.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. I also met Annie.”
“How?”
“It was strange. I guess I’m a nervous type. I was drumming my fingers on the table. I’d taken the…what do you call it…reader’s guide to magazines or something, because I couldn’t remember the issue the stuff had been in, and I was thumbing through it at the table and drumming my fingers. I’m a nervous type. Lots of nervous energy. I always tap a foot or drum my fingers or something. You know?”
