“Where?”
“Can I tell it in sequence?”
“Sure, go ahead,” Carella said.
“We don’t usually like to mess around with deduction here at the lab,” Grossman said. “We leave that to you masterminds who are out in the field. But—”
“Yeah, masterminds,” Carella said.
“Listen, would you mind not interrupting?”
“Go ahead, go ahead,” Carella said. “I’m sorry, sir, terribly sorry, believe me. I mean that sincerely, sir.”
“Yeah, up yours, too,” Grossman said. “I’m trying to tell you that Cotton’s call set off a train of thought down here, and I think it all adds up now.”
“Let’s hear it,” Carella said.
“Well, there’s a workbench near the furnace. I guess you saw that.”
“Over behind the coal bin?”
“I think so. You’d be better at locating it than I. All I’ve got is pictures. You were down there.”
“Well, go ahead, Sam.”
“Okay. There are three shelves over the workbench. They’re crammed with jars and tin cans, all of which are full of screws, nuts, bolts, nails, the usual junk you expect to find near a workbench. They’re also full of dust.”
“Cotton’s told me all this,” Carella said.
“Right. Then you also know that two shelves are covered with dust, but shelf number three, the middle one, has been wiped clean.”
“Why?”
“Well, what’s the obvious reason?”
“Fingerprints.”
“Sure. Every schoolboy knows that. So I send John Di Mezzo down for another look, with instructions to study each and every jar and can on that shelf. Johnny does. He’s a very good man.”
“And?”
“Why did I ask him to study those jars and cans?” Grossman asked.
“What is this? A police quiz?”
“I’m checking up,” Grossman said.
“Because you figured if somebody wiped that shelf, he must have been after something on the shelf and—once he got it—was afraid he’d left prints behind. Since the shelf contained only jars and cans, what he was after must have been in the jars or cans.”
“Brilliant,” Grossman said.
“Elementary,” Carella answered.
“In any case, Johnny goes over that middle shelf very carefully and discovers that most of the jars and cans on it are also covered with a layer of nice basement dust. Except one. This single can has been wiped clean, too, just like the shelf. Maxwell House.”
“What?”
“The can. It was a Maxwell House Coffee can.”
“Oh. Is that important?”
“No, but I thought you might be interested. In any case, Johnny figures maybe we’d better get that can down here and give it a once-over. So he wraps it carefully and lugs it downtown, and we’ve been going over it. It was full of nuts and bolts and screws and whatnot, you know, just like everything else on the shelf. But after examining it, we have reason to believe the nuts and bolts and junk were put into the can after it was wiped clean. Which brings up the possibility that the can contained something else before it was wiped.”
“Hold it, hold it. You’re losing me,” Carella said.
“I’ll start from the beginning,” Grossman said. “Middle shelf wiped clean of dust, got it?” “I’ve got it.”
“Maxwell House Coffee can wiped clean of dust, got it?”
“Got—”
“But full of nuts and bolts and junk.”
“Got it.”
“Okay. We empty the can of nuts, bolts, junk, and what do we find?”
“What?”
“The inside of the can is wiped spotlessly clean, too. Why bother wiping the inside of the can if the can is full of junk?”
“Why indeed?” Carella asked.
“Because it wasn’t full of junk. That was put in after the can was wiped.”
“What was it full of?”
“You want my guess? Money.”
“Anything to back that?”
“Not a thing. Except your own report on the deadman. You said he picked up extra money by selling firewood to some of the tenants in the building.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, it’s conceivable he kept his receipts in an old coffee can in the basement.”
“Come on, Sam. How much money could he have had in there? A couple of bucks?”
“I know I don’t have to remind you of the many murders that have been committed for a couple of cents in this fair city of ours.”
“No, you don’t have to remind me.”
“Okay. I’m suggesting to you, Steve, that somebody took something out of that can, and that most likely the something was money. Then, in all probability, the thief remembered all those movies he’d seen about leaving fingerprints behind, so he wiped off the can inside and out, and then figured an empty can would look pretty funny on a shelf with full cans. So he reached into all of the open cans on the other shelves, taking a few nuts from this one, a few bolts from that one, until he had enough to fill the coffee can. Then he wiped off the shelf for good measure.”
“Not too smart, is he?” Carella said.
“No, not too smart,” Grossman answered. “Who says murders have to be smart? That’s for the comic books. This particular murderer was pretty stupid, in fact. He wipes off one can and one shelf, leaving the others all covered with dust. He couldn’t have caught our attention more effectively if he’d erected a big neon arrow over the workbench.”
“Maybe he wanted to catch our attention,” Carella suggested.
“Uh-uh.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he made another mistake.”
“Which was?”
“After all his careful wiping and dusting, he left a goddamn fingerprint on the can.”
“What!”
“Yeah, how about that?”
“Where?”
“On the rim. Part of a thumbprint. He probably left it when he was putting the can back on the shelf.”
“Can you get it over to me right away?”
“I’ve already checked it through BCI, Steve. No make.”
“What about the FBI?”
“I can send it directly from here,” Grossman said. “Save a little time.”
“I’d appreciate it.” Carella paused. “Maybe I ought to go down and take a look at the basement again myself,” he said.
“You can’t lose anything,” Grossman said.
“What do you figure came first? The murder or the theft?”
“You’re buying my theory?”
“I’m buying anything anyone is selling these days,” Carella said, and smiled. “What do you think the chronology was?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the murder came first. That would explain the mistakes. Our man might not be so stupid after all. Maybe he simply panicked after the murder.”
“You think he knew where that money was kept?”
“No sign of any ransacking, so he must have known.”
“Mm.”
“What do you think, Steve?”
“I’ll tell you something,” Carella said. “For an eighty-seven-year-old cockuh…excuse me, do you understand Yiddish?”
“Yeah, yeah, I understand Yiddish,” Grossman said.
“For an eighty-seven-year-old cockuh, this Lasser character is sure turning out to be a mystery man.”
“Everybody’s a mystery man,” Grossman said philosophically. “It takes murder to bring out all the hidden elements, that’s all.”
“Well, thank you anyway for a nice alley to explore and a nice fingerprint to compare against a suspect, if we ever get a suspect. Thank you very much, Sam.”
“Don’t mention it,” Grossman said. “And don’t worry. You’ll crack this one, too.”