Jigsaw
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Серия: 87th Precinct #24
- Год: 1970
- Язык: английский
- Год: Doubleday
- ISBN: 978-999740791-7
- Жанр: Полицейские детективы
Электронная книга - «Jigsaw». Краткое содержание книги:
The cops of the 87th Precinct are really confused this time.
When Detective Arthur Brown finds two dead men, it looks like a nice simple double homicide — except for the piece of photograph clutched in one dead hand. The confusion doesn’t start until Irving Krutch, an insurance investigator, turns up at the squad room with another piece of the photograph.
Part of a homemade jigsaw puzzle, according to Krutch. The handiwork of the late Carmine Bonamico. When all the pieces, which had been passed around to friends and relatives of Bonamicos gang, were assembled, they would reveal the hiding place of the§ 750,000 the gang had stolen from a savings and loan association six years ago. Find the missing pieces, find the missing money. The search is on, and it involves Detectives Brown and Carella with people like an art gallery owner, a cheap hoodlum, a middle-aged floozy, a hot-dog vendor and an old Sicilian woman. Detective Meyer gets lucky. He visits a boutique where all the salesgirls wear see-through blouses.
Some of these people have another caller. It turns out that owning a piece of the photograph can be deadly, and it looks like a toss-up as to who will get the puzzle completed first — the police or a very determined murderer.
NOT NECESSARILY SIGNIFICANT.
(The “somebody,” it was decided after intensive questioning was definitely not Bramley Kahn, who had gone directly home to the arms of a forty-four-year-old closet queen after battering Brown senseless.)
Fact(s): There were seven names on the list in Carmine Bonamico’s handwriting. Carmine had skillfully dissected the list, giving one half of it to his late wife, Alice Bonamico, and the other half to his late mistress, Geraldine Ferguson. Thoughtful fellow he, sharing his bed, his board, and also his contemplated ill-gotten gains with the two fairest flowers in his life. More’s the pity the two broads could not have put their heads and their halves together and thereafter reaped the rewards of Carmine’s professional acumen. Crime does not pay if you’re fooling around with another woman.
Fact(s): There were eight pieces to the picture that revealed the location of the NSLA. loot. Carmine had given two pieces to each of his associates, and had presumably kept two pieces for himself, he being the founder and beloved leader of the doomed band of brigands.
Fact: Petey Ryan, a gun on the ill-fated caper, had given one of his pieces to Dorothea McNally, woman about town, and another to Robert Coombs, restaurateur extraordinaire.
Fact: Lou D’Amore, the second gun, had given one of his pieces to Geraldine Ferguson, art appreciator, and the other to Donald Renninger, ex-cellmate.
Fact: Carmine Bonamico, mastermind, had given one of his pieces to Alice, his aforementioned wife.
Theory: Was it possible that Jerry Stein, Jewish driver of the misbegotten getaway car, had given one of his pieces to Albert Weinberg, and another to Eugene Edward Ehrbach, both of them likewise Jewish, rather than handing them over, say, to some passing Arab?
NOT NECESSARILY SIGNIFICANT.
Question: To whom had Carmine Bonamico given the eighth piece of the picture, the piece for which no name had been listed?