Give the Boys a Great Big Hand
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Серия: 87th Precinct #11
- Год: 1960
- Язык: английский
- Год: Simon & Schuster
- Жанр: Полицейские детективы
Электронная книга - «Give the Boys a Great Big Hand». Краткое содержание книги:
“Hey!” he yelled after the bus. “You forgot your bag!”
Genera picked up the bag — a small, blue overnight bag issued by an airline. He unzipped the bag and reached into it. Then he gripped the bus-stop sign for support.
The bag held... a severed human hand.
The police lab gave both bag and hand a thorough examination and discovered next to nothing. Steve Carella, Cotton Hawes, Meyer Meyer and the other 87th Precinct detectives had a murderer to find, and they had to begin without even knowing who the victim was.
The Missing Persons Bureau files supplied two leads, both of which led nowhere.
Everything that looked even faintly like a clue was checked and double-checked and they all led to the same place — a dead end.
Then, when the break finally came and several clues turned up at once, they neatly contradicted each other. It was the toughest case the 87th Precinct detectives had ever faced.
“Well, sure, but—”
“Come on, I’ve got to go. You can stay if you want to, just slam the door on the way out, it locks itself.”
“No, I’ll come with you.”
“Are you going uptown?”
“Yes.”
“Good, we can share a cab. Come on, hurry. Would you like to come to the sitting? No, don’t, I’ll get self-conscious. Come on, come on. Slam the door! Slam the door, Cotton!”
He slammed the door.
“I’m wearing this black stuff that’s supposed to be imported from France. The bra is practically nonexistent. These pictures ought to—”
“When did Androvich last call her?” Hawes asked.
“A few days before she took off,” Marla said. “There’s a cab. Can you whistle?”
“Yes, sure, but—”
“Whistle!”
Hawes whistled. They got into the cab together.
“Oh, where the hell did I put that address?” Marla said. “Just a minute,” she told the cabbie. “Start driving uptown on Hall, I’ll have the address for you in a minute. Do you think she ran off with Androvich? Is that possible, Cotton?”
“I doubt it. Androvich is home. Unless... ”
“Unless what?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to talk to Androvich.”
“Here’s the address,” Marla said to the cabbie, “695 Hall Avenue. Would you hurry, please? I’m terribly late.”
“Lady,” the cabbie answered. “I have never carried a passenger in this vehicle who wasn’t terribly late.”
12
At the squadroom, Hawes told Carella, “I found out the drummer’s name.”
“So did I. I got Chambers’s number from the union, and I called him. Drummer’s name is Mike Chirapadano. I called the union back and got an address and telephone number for him, too.”
“Call him yet?” Hawes asked.
“Yes. No answer. I’d like to stop by there later this afternoon. Have you had lunch yet?”
“No.”
“Let’s.”
“Okay. We’ve got another stop to make, too.”
“Where?”
“Androvich.”
“What for? Lover Boy is back, isn’t he?”
“Sure. But Bubbles’s roommate told me Androvich was in the habit of calling her.”
“The roommate?”
“No. Bubbles.”
“Androvich? Androvich was calling Bubbles Caesar?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So he’s back in it again, huh?”
“It looks that way. He called her a few days before she vanished, Steve.”
“Mmm. So what does that mean?”
“He’s the only guy who would know, it seems to me.”
“Yeah. Okay. Lunch first, then Chirapadano — Jesus, that is a tongue twister — and then our amorous sailor friend. Cotton, there are times when I get very very weary.”
“Have you ever tried running a footrace with a stripper?” Hawes asked.
Mike Chirapadano lived in a furnished room on North Sixth. He was not in when the detectives dropped by, and his landlady told them he had not been around for the past month.
The landlady was a thin bird of a woman in a flowered housedress. She kept dusting the hallway while they spoke to her.
“He owes me almost two months’ rent,” she said. “Is he in some trouble?”
“When did you last see him, Mrs. Marsten?” Hawes asked.
“In Feb-uary,” she answered. “He owes me for Feb-uary, and he also owes me for March, if he’s still living here. The way it looks to me, he ain’t living here no more. Don’t it look that way to you?”
“Well, I don’t know. I wonder if we could take a look at his room.”
“Sure. Don’t make no nevermind to me. What’s he done? He a dope fiend? All these musicians are dope fiends, you know.”
“Is that right?” Carella asked as they walked upstairs.
“Sure. Main-liners. That means they shoot it right into their veins.”
“Is that right?”
“Sure. It’s poison, you know. That heroin they shoot into their veins. That stuff. It’s poison. His room is on the third floor. I was up there cleaning only yesterday.”
“Is his stuff still up there?”
“Yep, his clothes and his drums, too. Now why would a man take off like that and leave his belongs behind? He must be a dope fiend is the only way I can figure it. Here, it’s down the end of the hall. What did you say he done?”
“Would you know exactly when in February he left, Mrs. Marsten?”
“I would know exactly to the day,” the landlady said, but she did not offer the information.
“Well, when?” Hawes asked.
“February twelfth. It was the day before Friday the thirteenth, and that’s how I remember. Friday the thirteenth, that’s a hoodoo day if ever there was one. Here’s his room. Just a second now, while I unlock the door.”
She took a key from the pocket of her dress and fitted it into the keyhole. “There’s something wrong with this lock; I have to get it fixed. There, that does it.” She threw open the door. “Spic and span; I just cleaned it yesterday. Even picked up his socks and underwear from all over the floor. One thing I can’t stand it’s a sloppy-looking room.”
They went into the room together.
“There’s his drums over there by the window. The big one is the bass drum, and that round black case is what they call the snare. The other thing there is the high hat. All his clothes is still in the closet and his shaving stuff is in the bathroom, just the way he left them. I can’t figure it, can you? What’d you say it was that he done?”
“Did you see him when he left, Mrs. Marsten?”
“No.”
“How old a man is he?”
“He’s just a young fellow, it’s a shame the way these young fellows get to be main-liners and dope fiends, shooting all that there heroin poison into their systems.”
“How young, Mrs. Marten?”
“Twenty-four, twenty-five, no older than that.”
“A big man?”
“More than six feet, I guess.”
“Big hands?”
“What?”
“His hands. Were they big, did you notice?”
“I never noticed. Who looks at a man’s hands?”
“Well, some women do,” Carella said.
“All I know is he owes me almost two months’ rent,” Mrs. Marsten said, shrugging.
“Would you know whether or not he had a lot of girl friends, Mrs. Marsten? Did he ever bring a girl here?”
“Not to my house,” the landlady said. “Not to my house, mister! I don’t allow any of that kind of stuff here. No, sir. If he had girl friends, he wasn’t fooling around with them under my roof. I keep a clean house. Both the rooms and the roomers.”
“I see,” Carella said. “You mind if we look around a little?”
“Go right ahead. Call me when you’re done, and I’ll lock the room. Don’t make a mess. I just cleaned it yesterday.”
She went out. Carella and Hawes stared at each other.
“Do you suppose they went to Kansas City, maybe?” Hawes asked.
“I don’t know. I’m beginning to wish both of them went to hell. Let’s shake down the room. Maybe he left a clue.”
He hadn’t.
Karl Androvich was a mustached giant who could have been a breathing endorsement for Marlboro cigarettes. He sat in a T-shirt at the kitchen table, his muscles bulging bronze against the clean white, the tattoo showing on his left biceps, “Meg” in a heart. His hair was a reddish brown, and his mustache was a curious mixture of red, brown, and blond hairs, a carefully trimmed, very elegant mustache that — reflecting its owner’s pride — was constantly touched by Androvich during the course of the conversation. His hands were immense. Every time they moved up to stroke the mustache, Carella flinched as if he were about to be hit. Meg Androvich hovered about the kitchen, preparing dinner, her ears glued to the conversation.