Lets hear it for the dea.., p.8
Let's Hear It For The Deaf Man (87th Precinct), page 8
“Oh, I don’t know. Four, five hours. Something like that.”
“What time did you leave?”
“Here? The city?”
“Yes.”
“In the morning.”
“What time in the morning?”
“Nine? Ten? I don’t remember.”
“Did you come back down that night?”
“No. We stayed a few days. In Boston.”
“Where?”
“One of Sandy’s friends.”
“And came back when?”
“Late Monday night.”
“And today you posed for Sandy again.”
“That’s right.”
“How much does he pay you?”
Mary Margaret hesitated.
“How much does he pay you?” Carella asked again.
“Sandy’s my boyfriend,” she said. “He doesn’t pay me anything.”
“Where do you pose?”
“In the back of his shop. He’s got his studio there. In the back.”
“Are you living with him, Mary Margaret?”
“I live here. But I spend most of my time with Sandy.”
“Would you know the name of the doctor who treated his foot?”
“No.”
“What happened to it, anyway?”
“He had an accident.”
“Fell, did he?”
“Yes.”
“And tore the Achilles’ tendon, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Mary Margaret, do you think Sandy might have known that man in the picture I showed you?”
“Go ask Sandy.”
“I did.”
“So what did he say?”
“He said no.”
“Then I guess he didn’t know him.”
“Did you know him?”
“No.”
“You want to know what I think, Mary Margaret?”
“What?”
“I think Sandy was lying.”
Mary Margaret shrugged.
“I think you’re lying, too.”
“Why would I lie?”
“I don’t know yet,” Carella said.
He had been inside the apartment for perhaps twenty minutes when he heard a key turning in the lock. He knew that the Ungermans would be gone until the end of the week, and at first he thought the building superintendent was making an inopportune, routine check, but then he heard a man say, “Good to be home, eh, Karin?” and realized the Ungermans were back, and he was in the bedroom, and there were no exterior fire escapes; the only way out was through the front door, the way he had come in. He decided immediately that there was no percentage in waiting, the thing to do was make his move at once. The Ungermans were a couple in their late sixties, he would have no trouble getting past them, the difficult thing would be getting out of the building. They were moving toward the bedroom, Harry Ungerman carrying a pair of suitcases, his wife a step behind him, reaching up to take off her hat, when he charged them. He knocked Ungerman flat on his back, and then shoved out at Mrs. Ungerman, who reached out toward him for support, clutching at his clothes to keep from falling over backward the way her husband had done not ten seconds before. They danced an awkward, silent little jig for perhaps four seconds, her hands grasping, he trying to shove her away, and finally he wrenched loose, slamming her against the wall, and racing for the front door. He got the door unlocked, opened it, and was running for the stairway at the far end of the hall when Mrs. Ungerman began screaming.
Instead of heading down for the street, he went up toward the roof of the twelve-story building. The metal door was locked when he reached it. He backed off several paces, sprang the lock with a flat-footed kick, and sprinted out onto the roof. He hesitated a moment in the star-drenched night, to get his bearings. Then he ran for the parapet, looked down at the roof of the adjacent building, and leaped.
By the time Harry Ungerman put in his call to the police, the man who had tried to burglarize his apartment was already four blocks away, entering his own automobile.
But it had been a close call.
If you are going to go tiptoeing into empty apartments, you had best make certain they are going to stay empty all the while you are illegally on the premises. If they suddenly become anything less than empty, it is best not to try pushing around an elderly lady with a bad back, since she just might possibly grab you to keep from falling on her coccyx, and in the ensuing gavotte might get a very good look at you, particularly if she is a sharp-eyed old bat.
Karin Ungerman was a very sharp-eyed old bat, and mad as a hornet besides. What annoyed her particularly was the kitten. The kitten was a fluffy little tan thing who had wet on the gold brocade chaise in the Ungerman bedroom. Mrs. Ungerman was certain the stain would not come out, despite liberal and repeated sprinklings of a highly touted spot remover. The first thing she asked Kling when he arrived that morning was whether or not her insurance company would pay damages for the kitten’s indiscretion. The kitten had, after all, been brought there by a burglar and she was covered for fire and theft, so why shouldn’t they pay? Kling did not know the answer. Kling—who had arrived at the squadroom at 8 A.M., and been promptly informed of last night’s events—had rushed over to 641 Richardson Drive immediately, and was interested only in getting a description of the man both Ungermans had seen.
The Ungermans informed him that the only thing missing was a gold and pearl pin but that perhaps Karin Ungerman had given that to her sister who lived in Florida, she wasn’t quite sure. The burglar had undoubtedly been in the apartment for only a very short while; only the top drawer of the dresser had been disturbed. Luckily, Mrs. Ungerman hid all her good jewelry in a galosh in the closet whenever she went on a trip. If you lived to be sixty-eight years old, and have been burglarized four times in the past seventeen years, you learn how to deal with the bastards. But bringing in a cat to pee all over your gold brocade chaise! Really!
“What did the man look like, can you tell me that?” Kling asked.
“He was a tall man,” Mrs. Ungerman said.
“How tall?”
“Taller than you,” she said.
“Six feet two inches, around there,” Mr. Ungerman said.
“How was he dressed?”
“In dark clothes. Black, I think.”
“Blue,” Mr. Ungerman said.
“Dark, anyway,” Mrs. Ungerman said. “Trousers, jacket, shirt, all dark.”
“What kind of shirt?”
“A turtleneck,” Mrs. Ungerman said.
“Was he a white man or a black man?”
“White. The part of his face we could see.”
“What do you mean?”
“We only saw his eyes and forehead. He was wearing a mask.”
“What kind of a mask?”
“A handkerchief. Over the bridge of his nose, hanging down over his face.”
“You say you saw his eyes…”
“Yes, and his forehead.”
“And his hair, too,” Mr. Ungerman said. “He wasn’t wearing a hat.”
“What color were his eyes?” Kling asked.
“Brown.”
“And his hair?”
“Black.”
“Was it straight, wavy, curly?”
“Curly.”
“Long or close-cropped?”
“Just average length,” Mrs. Ungerman said.
“Anything else you may have noticed about him?”
“Nothing. Except that he moved very fast.”
“I’d move fast, too,” Mrs. Ungerman said, “if I’d just let a cat make a mess all over somebody’s gold brocade chaise.”
That morning Detective Steve Carella went down to the Criminal Courts Building and, being duly sworn, deposed and said in writing:
I am a detective in the Police Department assigned to the 87th Detective Squad.
I have information based upon my personal knowledge and belief and facts disclosed to me by the Medical Examiner that a murder has been committed. Investigation discloses the following:
On April 19th, at 10:15 A.M., George Mossler, a vagrant, discovered the body of an unidentified man in Apartment 51 of an abandoned tenement building at 433 North Harrison Street. The victim had been stabbed in the chest and nailed to the wall, a spike through each extended palm and a third spike through his crossed feet. Medical Examiner states cause of death to be cardiac hemorrhage due to penetrating knife wound; and sets time of death as sometime during the night of April 18th.
A search of the building at 433 North Harrison Street resulted in the finding of a size twelve, left-footed, white tennis sneaker in Apartment 52 which is down the hall from Apartment 51 where the body was discovered.
On April 22nd, while showing pictures of the body of the dead man to people in the neighborhood where the body was found, investigator entered the shop of Sanford Elliot, located at 1211 King’s Circle, approximately four blocks from the North Harrison Street address. Sanford Elliot was on crutches and his left foot was bandaged. On his right foot was a white tennis sneaker believed to be the mate to the left-footed sneaker found at the murder scene. When questioned, Sanford Elliot stated that he had been in Boston on the night of April 18th and did not know or recognize the picture of the man found murdered at the North Harrison Street address.
Based upon the foregoing reliable information and upon my personal knowledge, there is probable cause to believe that aforementioned tennis sneaker constitutes evidence in the crime of murder and may be found in the possession of Sanford Elliot or at premises 1211 King’s Circle, ground floor rear.
Wherefore, I respectfully request that the court issue a warrant and order of seizure, in the form annexed authorizing the search of Sanford Elliot and of premises 1211 King’s Circle, ground floor rear, and directing that if such property or evidence or any part thereof be found that it be seized and brought before the court, together with such other and further relief that the court may deem proper.
No previous application in this matter has been made in this or any other court or to any other judge, justice, or magistrate.
Carella realized that the application was weak in that there was no way of connecting Elliot with the murder except through the sneaker, and sneakers were, after all, fairly common wearing apparel. He knew, too, that a warrant issued on his application might possibly be later controverted on a motion to suppress the evidence seized under it. He was somewhat surprised, but nonetheless grateful, when a supreme court judge signed and dated the application, and issued the requested warrant.
Which meant that Carella now had the legal right to arrest an inanimate object, so to speak.
If Carella was getting a little help from the courts, Kling was simultaneously getting a little help from the Identification Section. As a matter of routine, he had asked them to run checks on both Fred Lipton and Nat Sulzbacher, the Calm’s Point real estate agents whose give-away pen had been found in Augusta Blair’s apartment. Much to his surprise, the I.S. had come back with a positive identification that immediately catapulted old Fred Lipton into the role of prime suspect in the burglary case. Kling had not yet eliminated Stanislaw Janik as a contender for best supporting player and possible supplier of kittens and keys, but the physical description given by Mrs. Ungerman ruled him out as the man actually entering the apartments. The burglar was tall, with black curly hair and brown eyes. Janik was short, almost totally bald, and his blue eyes were magnified by thick eyeglasses.
So Kling was pleased to learn that whereas Nat Sulzbacher had no criminal record (he could have obtained a license to sell real estate after having been convicted of a misdemeanor), his salesman, Frederick Horace Lipton, had been in trouble with the law on two previous occasions, having been arrested for Disorderly Conduct back in 1954 and for First-Degree Forgery in 1957. The disturbance in 1954 was only a misdemeanor, defined as any crime other than a felony, but it still might have netted Lipton as much as six months’ imprisonment in a county jail or workhouse. Instead, all he’d got was a $50 fine. The 1957 paper-hanging rap was a felony, of course, defined as a crime punishable by death or imprisonment in a state prison. Considering the offense, the court was equally charitable in sentencing Lipton this second time; he could have got twenty years, but he drew only ten.
He had served three and a half of those at Castleview State Prison, and had been released on parole in 1961. As far as society was concerned, he had paid his debt and was now a hard-working real estate salesman in Calm’s Point. But one of his employer’s give-away pens had been found at the scene of a burglary. Nat Sulzbacher did not have a criminal record; he was therefore an ordinary respectable everyday citizen. But Fred Lipton was an ex-con. So Kling naturally asked Lieutenant Byrnes for permission to begin surveillance of him as a suspect, and Byrnes naturally granted permission, and the tailing began that afternoon.
Never let it be said that policemen look with prejudice upon citizens who have previously been convicted of a crime.
Of the four guests in the Deaf Man’s room at the Devon Hotel, three had previously been convicted of crimes. The fourth was a plain-looking woman in her late thirties, and she had never so much as received a parking ticket. The hotel was one of the city’s lesser-known dumps, furnished economically and without imagination. There was only one easy chair in the room, and the men had graciously allowed the lady to claim it. They themselves sat on straight-backed wooden chairs facing a small end table that had been pulled up and placed within the semicircle they formed. A child’s slate was propped up on the end table. The Deaf Man had served drinks (the lady had politely declined), and they sat sipping them thoughtfully as they examined the chalked diagram on the slate.
“Any questions?” the Deaf Man said.
“I’ve got one.”
“Let’s hear it, John.”
John Preiss was a tall slender man with a pock-marked face. He was the only man in the room who had not dressed for the occasion. The others, as though attending a church social, were all wearing jackets and ties. John was wearing a cardigan sweater over an open-throated sports shirt. “Where’s the alarm box?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the Deaf Man answered. “It’s not important. As I’ve told you before, I expect the alarm to be sounded.”
“I don’t like it,” John said.
“Then this is the time to get out. None of you yet know where the bank is, or when we’re going to hit. If anything about the job doesn’t appeal to you, you’re free to pass.”
“I mean,” John said, “if the damn alarm goes off…”
“It will go off, it has to go off. That’s the least of our worries.”
“Maybe you’d better explain it again, Mr. Taubman,” the woman said.
“I’d be happy to, Angela,” the Deaf Man replied. “Where shall I begin?”
“The beginning might be a good place,” one of the other men said. He was portly, partially balding, chewing on a dead cigar. His name was Kerry Donovan.
“Very well,” the Deaf Man said, and picked up a pointer from the end table. “This is the vault. Forget about getting into it any other way than through the door. The door is opened at eight-thirty every morning, and is not closed until the employees leave at close to five in the evening.”
“What time do we hit?” Rudy Manello asked. He was younger than any of the others, a narrow-faced man, with brown hair combed straight back without a part. He was smoking a cigarette, the ash dangerously close to spilling all over the floor.
“I’ll let you know the time and place as soon as we’re all committed, Rudy.”
“Why all the secrecy?” Rudy asked.
“I do not intend spending any amount of time in prison,” the Deaf Man said, and smiled. “Whereas I trust you all implicitly, I must take certain precautions at this stage of the planning.”
“So let’s hear the plan again,” Angela said, and crossed her legs, a move that had no visible effect on any of the men in the room. Angela Gould was perhaps the least attractive woman the Deaf Man had ever met. Long-nosed, thin-lipped, bespectacled, blessed with curly hair in an age that demanded sleekness, dumpy, with an irritating, whiny voice—impossible, utterly impossible. And yet perfect for the part she would play on the last day of April.
“Here is the plan again,” the Deaf Man said, and smiled graciously. He did not much like any of the people he was forced to deal with, but even the best football coach needs a team to execute the plays. “On the day of the robbery, Kerry will enter the bank, carrying a rather large case in which there will be architectural plans and a scale model of a housing development for which he needs financing. He will previously have made an appointment with the manager, and he will be there ostensibly to show him the plans and the model.”
“Where do we get this stuff?” Kerry asked.
“It is being prepared for us now. By a legitimate architectural firm that believes it to be a bona-fide land-development project.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
“Once inside the manager’s office, you will explain your project and then put your plans and your model on his desk, asking him to come around to your side of the desk so that he can read the plans better. You will do this in order to get him away from the alarm button, which is on the floor under his desk, and which he will be unable to reach from your side.”
“I thought you expected the alarm to go off,” John said.
“Yes, but not until we have the money.”
“The money that’s in the vault.”
“Yes. As I’ve already told you, there will be five hundred thousand dollars in payroll money in the bank’s vault. It will be necessary for Kerry to get into the vault…”
“That’s the part I don’t like,” Kerry said.
“There will be no problem about getting into the vault, Kerry. The moment the manager comes around to your side of the desk, you will put a gun in his back and inform him that a holdup is in progress. You will also tell him that, unless he escorts you to the vault immediately, you will blow his brains out.”
