Ed mcbain, p.10
Ed McBain, page 10
"Yes. So I figured there might be some connection. To Mr. Tse getting stabbed."
"I see."
"So I passed it on to Mrs. Tse. She said she was going to look up Charlie and get him to point out this Joey person to her. She said she wanted to ask him what he'd seen."
"When was this? That you told Mrs. Tse?"
"Yesterday, I think. I don't really remember. There's been so damned much confusion around here..."
She shook her head.
"You've been very helpful," I said.
"Yeah," she said, and went back to her typing.
I'd been walking for two blocks before I realized I was being followed. I quickened my pace, hurried down narrow twisting streets, ducked into an alley, and sprinted for the other end. My followers knew Chinatown better than I did. Lun Ching and his pal Tommy were waiting for me at the other end of the alley.
"You son of a bitch," Lun shouted.
The sap in his hand went up over his head and came down on the side of my neck, knocking me flat against one wall of the alley. I grabbed at the bricks for support, but the sap went up and down again, and this time it peeled back a half inch of flesh from my cheek.
"You're going to the morgue, you bastard," Lun said. He brought back the sap again, swung it at my head. I fell to my knees and Tommy kicked me quickly and expertly. Lun bent over me, the sap a sledgehammer now, up and down, hitting me everywhere, on my shoulders, my face, my upraised hands and arms.
"Break up the card game, will you? Come acting tough, huh?"
And always the sap, up and down, viciously pounding me closer and closer to the cement until my head was touching it and Tommy's kick to my temple made everything go black.
The brick wall was a mile high. It stretched out above me and leaned dangerously against the sky. I watched it, wondering when it would fall; and after a while I realized it wasn't going to fall at all.
I stumbled to my knees then and touched the raw pain that was my face. I ached everywhere, and I ached more when I remembered Tommy and Lun. But I wasn't angry at them. They'd given me a hell of a beating, but they'd also given me an idea, and it was an idea any stupid bastard should have got all by himself. So I filed them away under unfinished business and stumbled my way out of the alley.
Lun Ching had said I was going to the morgue, and he was right.
It was cool inside the morgue.
I thanked the respite from the heat and followed the attendant down the long, gloomy corridor.
"This is it," he said. He pulled out the drawer and I looked down into Joey's lifeless face, at the flabby whiskey-sodden features that even death could not hide.
"That's him," I said.
"Sure, I know it's him," the attendant answered, his voice echoing off the windowless walls.
"I was wondering about his personal effects," I said.
"You a relative?"
"No. I don't think he had any relatives. I was his friend."
The attendant considered this.
"Not a hell of a lot there," he said at last. "Sent all of it up to Homicide because they're still investigating this. Got a list, though, and I can tell you what was on him."
"I'd appreciate that."
"Sure. No trouble at all." I followed him to a desk at the end of the corridor. He sat down and picked up a clipboard, and then began flipping the pages. "Let's see. Yeah, here he is, Joseph H. Gunder."
I hadn't even known Joey's last name. The anonymity of the Bowery is almost complete.
"Yeah, he didn't have much," the attendant said. "Want me to read this off?"
"Yes, please."
"A dollar bill, and thirty-five cents in change. Want that broken down?"
"No, that's fine."
"Okay, let's see. Handkerchief, switchblade knife, pint of Carstairs, almost empty, some rubber bands, package of Camels, two butts in it. Wallet with identification. That's it."
"A pint of Carstairs?"
I was thinking of the fifth of Imperial Joey had brought to me and how we'd killed it.
"Yep, that's right."
"And ... a switchblade knife?"
"Yeah."
"And money, too?"
"Say, you want me to repeat the whole damn list?"
"No, that's fine. Thanks." I paused. "Did they decide what killed him?"
"Sure. Hole in the head. Want to see him again?"
"No. I meant, what caliber pistol?"
".22. Why?"
"Just curious. I'll be going."
"Drop in again sometime," he said. I walked out into bright sunshine. For me, the beginning was in the morgue, after all, and I owed Lun Ching a debt. But the end was somewhere else, and I headed there now.
The door opened when I knocked and gave my name.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I just came across something."
"That's all right."
"May I come in?"
"Certainly."
I followed her into the living room again, and I sat down in the same easy chair. I didn't look at the floor or my clasped hands this time. I looked directly at her.
"Ever walk through the Bowery, Mrs. Tse?"
Her eyes were still troubled. "Yes?" she said.
"Often?"
"I know the neighborhood."
"Do you own a gun, Mrs. Tse?"
She hesitated. "Why ... yes. Yes, I do."
"A .22 maybe?"
She hesitated again, for a long time. She sighed deeply then and lifted her eyes to mine. There was no expression on her face, and her tone was flat.
"You know," she said.
"I know."
She nodded.
"He deserved what he got," she said.
"Joey?"
"Yes. Joey. He was your friend, wasn't he?"
"My drinking companion, Mrs. Tse. A man doesn't get to know much about anyone in the Bowery. Nor about what makes them tick."
"How did you know? How did you know I ... killed him?"
"A few things. A bottle of Imperial, for one. When Joey brought it to me, I never thought to ask where he'd got the money for it. That kind of money doesn't come easy to a bum. When I saw his stuff at the morgue, there was another pint there, and more money. I knew then that Joey had hit it rich recently and his switchblade knife told me how."
"Harry was stabbed," she said tonelessly.
"Sure. Joey didn't even know who his victim was. When Charlie mentioned it to him, Joey was probably drunk. He said, 'So that's who it was,' without even thinking. Charlie thought Joey had only seen your husband's murderer. He didn't know Joey was the murderer."
"And me? How did you come to me?"
"A guess, and a little figuring. A .22 is a woman's gun."
"I have a permit," she said. "I go through the Bowery often. Harry thought ... he thought I should have one."
"What happened, Mrs. Tse? Do you want to tell me?"
"All right," she said, and paused. "Charlie pointed out your ... friend to me. Joey. I followed him to Cooper Square. I asked him what he'd meant by 'So that's who it was.' He got terribly frightened. He said he hadn't meant to kill Harry. I think he was drunk, I don't know. He said he'd asked Harry for a dime and Harry refused. He pulled a knife and when Harry started to yell, he stabbed him. For a ... a dime. He stabbed him for a dime."
"He got more than just a dime, Mrs. Tse."
"I couldn't believe it, Mr. Cordell."
She still couldn't.
"For a dime" she said again, and shook her head. "I took the gun from my purse and shot him. I shot him only once. Just once. Because he'd stabbed Harry, you see."
"Yes, I understand."
"So I shot him," she repeated. Her voice was very small now. "Will you take me to the police?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"But..."
I got to my feet.
"Mrs. Tse," I said, "we've never even met."
I walked to the door, leaving her alone in the living room that faced a blank wall, leaving her alone because once upon a time I'd lost someone I loved, and I knew exactly how it felt.
It was hot in the street.
But it was hotter where Joey was.
This story was first published as "Ticket to Death" in the September 1954 issue of Argosy. It carried the Evan Hunter byline. I wrote it while I was still living in a development house in Hicksville, Long Island. I know this because the guy next door was a commercial airline pilot who provided much of the flight information in the story. "Death Flight"—my original title, and the one I'm using here—was an early shot at a more conventional p.i. story than the Matt Cordells. I later decided cops were the only people who had any right to be sticking their noses in murder investigations.
Death Flight
SQUAK MOUNTAIN WAS COLD AT THIS TIME OF THE YEAR.
The wind groaned around Davis, and the trees trembled bare limbs, and even at this distance he could hear the low rumble of planes letting down at Boeing and Renton. He found the tree about a half mile east of the summit. The DC-4 had struck the tree and then continued flying. He looked at the jagged, splintered wood and then his eyes covered the surrounding terrain. Parts of the DC-4 were scattered all over the ridge in a fifteen-hundred-foot radius. He saw the upper portion of the plane's vertical fin, the number-two propeller, and a major portion of the rudder. He examined these very briefly, and then he began walking toward the canyon into which the plane had finally dropped.
Davis turned his head sharply once, thinking he'd heard a sound. He stood stock-still, listening, but the only sounds that came to him were the sullen moan of the wind and the muted hum of aircraft in the distant sky.
He continued walking. When he found the plane, it made him a little sick. The Civil Aeronautics Board report had told him that the plane was demolished by fire. The crash was what had obviously caused the real demolition. But the report had only been typed words. He saw "impact" now, and "causing fire," and even though the plane had been moved by the investigating board, he could imagine something of what had happened. It had been in nearly vertical position when it struck the ground, and the engines and cockpit had bedded deep in soft, muddy loam. Wreckage had been scattered like shrapnel from a hand grenade burst, and fire had consumed most of the plane, leaving a ghostlike skeleton that confronted him mutely. He stood looking at it for a time, then made his way down to the charred ruins.
The landing gear was fully retracted, as the report had said. The wing flaps were in the twenty-five-degree down position.
He studied these briefly and then climbed up to the cockpit. The plane still stank of scorched skin and blistered paint. When he entered the cockpit, he was faced with complete havoc. It was impossible to obtain a control setting or an instrument reading from the demolished instrument panel. The seats were twisted and tangled. Metal jutted into the cockpit and cabin at grotesque angles. The windshield had shattered into a million jagged shards.
He shook his head and continued looking through the plane, the stench becoming more overpowering. He was silently grateful that he had not been here when the bodies were still in the plane, and he still wondered what he was doing here anyway, even now.
He knew that the report had proved indication of an explosion prior to the crash. There had been no structural failure or malfunctioning of the aircraft itself. The explosion had occurred in the cabin, and the remnants of the bomb had shown it to be a homemade job. He'd learned all this in the past few days, with the cooperation of the CAB. He also knew that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military police were investigating the accident, and the knowledge had convinced him that this was not a job for him. Yet here he was.
Five people had been killed. Three pilots, the stewardess, and Janet Carruthers, the married daughter of his client, George Ellison. It could not have been a pleasant death.
Davis climbed out of the plane and started toward the ridge. The sun was high on the mountain, and it cast a feeble, pale yellow tint on the white pine and spruce. There was a hard gray winter sky overhead. He walked swiftly, with his head bent against the wind.
When the shots came, they were hard and brittle, shattering the stillness as effectively as twin-mortar explosions.
He dropped to the ground, wriggling sideways toward a high outcropping of quartz. The echo of the shots hung on the air and then the wind carried it toward the canyon and he waited and listened, with his own breathing the loudest sound on the mountain.
I'm out of my league, he thought. I'm way out of my league. I'm just a small-time detective, and this is something big...
The third shot came abruptly.
It came from some high-powered rifle, and he heard the sharp twang of the bullet when it struck the quartz and ricocheted into the trees. He pressed his cheek to the ground, and he kept very still, and he could feel the hammering of his heart against the hard earth. His hands trembled and he waited for the next shot.
The next shot never came.
He waited for a half hour, and then he bundled his coat and thrust it up over the rock, hoping to draw fire if the sniper was still with him. He waited for several minutes after that, and then he backed away from the rock on his belly, not venturing to get to his feet until he was well into the trees.
Slowly, he made his way down the mountain.
"You say you want to know more about the accident?" Arthur Porchek said. "I thought it was all covered in the CAB report."
"It was," Davis said. "I'm checking further. I'm trying to find out who set that bomb."
Porchek drew in on his cigarette, and leaned against the wall. The busy hum of radios in Seattle Approach Control was loud around them. "I've only told this story a dozen times already," he said.
"I'd appreciate it if you could tell it once more," Davis said.
"Well," Porchek said heavily, "it was about 2036 or so..." He paused. "All our time is based on a twenty-four-hour clock, like the Army."
"Go ahead."
"The flight had been cleared to maintain seven thousand feet. When they contacted us, we told them to make a standard range approach to Boeing Field and requested that they report leaving each thousand-foot level during the descent. That's standard, you know."
"Were you doing all the talking to the plane?" Davis asked.
"Yes."
"All right, what happened?"
"First I gave them the weather."
"And what was that?"
Porchek shrugged, a man weary of repeating information over and over again. "Boeing Field," he said by rote. "Eighteen hundred scattered, twenty-two hundred overcast, eight miles, wind south-southeast, gusts to thirty, altimeter twenty-nine, twenty-five. Seattle-Tacoma, measured nineteen hundred broken, with thirty-one hundred overcast."
"Did the flight acknowledge?"
"Yes, it did. And it reported leaving seven thousand feet at 2040. About two minutes later, it reported being over the outer markers and leaving the six-thousand-foot level."
"Go on," Davis said.
"Well, it didn't report leaving five thousand and then at 2045, it reported leaving four thousand feet. I acknowledged this and told them what to do. I said, 'If you're not VFR by the time you reach the range you can shuttle on the northwest course at two thousand feet. It's possible you'll break out in the vicinity of Boeing Field for a south landing.'"
"What's VFR?" Davis asked, once again feeling his inadequacy to cope with the job.
"Visual Flight Rules. You see, it was overcast at twenty-two hundred feet. The flight was on instruments above that. They've got to report to us whether they're on IFR or VFR."
"I see. What happened next?"
"The aircraft reported at 2050 that it was leaving three thousand feet, and I told them they were to contact Boeing Tower on 118.3 for landing instructions. They acknowledged with 'Roger,' and that's the last I heard of them."
"Did you hear the explosion?"
"I heard something, but I figured it for static. Ground witnesses heard it, though."
"But everything was normal and routine before the explosion, that right?"
Porchek nodded his head emphatically. "Yes, sir. A routine letdown."
"Almost," Davis said.
He called George Ellison from a pay phone. When the old man came on the line, Davis said, "This is Milt Davis, Mr. Ellison."
Ellison's voice sounded gruff and heavy, even over the phone. "Hello, Davis," he said. "How are you doing?"
"I'll be honest with you, Mr. Ellison. I'd like out."
"Why?" He could feel the old man's hackles rising.
"Because the FBI and the MPs are already on this one. They'll crack it for you, and it'll probably turn out to be some nut with a grudge against the government. Either that, or a plain case of sabotage. This really doesn't call for a private investigation."
"Look, Davis," Ellison said, "I'll decide whether this calls for..."
"All right, you'll decide. I'm just trying to be frank with you. This kind of stuff is way out of my line. I'm used to trailing wayward husbands, or skip-tracing, or an occasional bodyguard stint. When you drag in bombed planes, I'm in over my head."
"I heard you were a good man," Ellison said. "You stick with it. I'm satisfied you'll do a good job."
"Whatever you say," Davis said, and sighed. "Incidentally, did you tell anyone you'd hired me?"
"Yes, I did. As a matter of fact..."
"Who'd you tell?"
"Several of my employees. The word got to a local reporter somehow, though, and he came to my home yesterday. I gave him the story. I didn't think it would do any harm."
"Has it reached print yet?"
"Yes," Ellison said. "It was in this morning's paper. A small item. Why?"
"I was shot at today, Mr. Ellison. At the scene of the crash. Three times."
There was a dead silence on the line.
Then Ellison said, "I'm sorry, Davis, I should have realized."
It was a hard thing for a man like Ellison to say.
"That's all right," Davis assured him. "They missed."
"Do you think—do you think whoever set the bomb shot at you?"
"Possibly. I'm not going to start worrying about it now."
