“Sort of.”
“Well,” Cavanaugh said, “there’s a lot of things I wouldn’t put past Siggie Reuhr, but murder ain’t one of them. How was the guy killed?”
“With an ax.”
“Blood, you mean?”
“What?”
“Was there lots of blood around?”
“Yes.”
“Then forget Siggie. If it was poison, well, maybe. That’s more Siggie’s speed. But an ax? Blood? Siggie would faint dead on the spot if he got a little cut on his finger from the edge of a ledger. No, sir. If someone got killed with an ax, it wasn’t Siggie Reuhr who killed him.”
One of the cops who visited the basement at 4111 South 5th that Tuesday morning was Steve Carella.
In the summertime a city street is a very public place. Most of the citizens are outdoors trying to catch a breath of fresh air, windows are wide open, sounds are magnified, there is a commerce between street and building that does not exist in the winter. Even the melting tar in the gutters seems to echo this pattern of merger, this blending anonymity that is truly the worst thing about slum dwelling; the person who lives in a tenement is denied many of the pleasures of life and most of its luxuries; he has never known complete privacy, the biggest luxury of them all, but in the summertime he is denied even a semblance of privacy.
Things are a little better in January.
There is privacy inherent in a heavy winter coat pulled up around the back of your neck, there is privacy in your pockets, deep and snug and warm with the heat of your hands. There is privacy in the vestibule of a building with a hissing radiator. There is privacy under the big dining room table that you bought when you first came from Puerto Rico. There is privacy somehow in the contained heat of a kitchen alive with cooking aromas. There is privacy in a hurried sidewalk conversation with someone you know, the words brisk and to the point, vapor pluming from swiftly moving lips, talk fast, honey, it’s goddamn cold out here.
Mrs. Whitson, the colored woman who did the windows and floors at 4111 South 5th, whose son, Sam Whitson, had chopped firewood for the late George Lasser at that same address, was standing on the sidewalk having a private, hurried conversation with an elderly man in blue overalls when Carella came down the street. Carella could not hear what they were saying, but he knew that Mrs. Whitson had recognized him because she gave a slight jerk of her head in his direction and the man she was talking to turned and looked at Carella and then went back to the conversation. As Carella approached, Mrs. Whitson said, “Hello, there. You’re the detective, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Whitson,” Carella said.
“Well, well, he remembers my name,” she said, again with that defiant thrust of jaw and chin, that challenging look in her eyes that said nobody was going to stop her from going to any damn school she wanted to.
“I never forget a lady’s name, Mrs. Whitson,” Carella said, and for a second only the fire left her eyes, for a second only she was simply a skinny, hard-working woman who’d had an honest compliment paid her by a good-looking young man.
“Thank you,” she said. Her eyes locked with Carella’s.
He smiled and said, “You’re welcome.”
“I was just talking to Mr. Iverson,” she said. Her eyes did not leave Carella’s face. A brooding suspicion had suddenly come into those eyes, almost against the old lady’s will, almost through force of habit—you’ve kicked my goddamn people around for a hundred years, my grandfather was a slave who got beaten regularly with a cat-o’-nine-tails, and now you call me a lady and come buttering me up. Who are you after now? My son? What are you going to take from me next, my son Sam, who never harmed a butterfly? “Do you know Mr. Iverson?”
“I don’t think so,” Carella said. “How do you do? I’m Detective Carella.”
“How do you do?” Iverson said, and he extended his hand.
“Mr. Iverson is the super of the building next door,” Mrs. Whitson said. “I was just talking to him about some work for Sam.”
“Mrs. Whitson thought maybe he could chop wood for me again now,” Iverson said.
“Did he used to chop wood for you?” Carella asked.
“Oh, sure, even before Lasser had the idea. I got tenants with fireplaces, too, you know.”
“Some fireplaces in these buildings,” Mrs. Whitson said. “They’re these old things, they fill the room up with smoke the minute they’re lit.”
“They keep the rooms warm, though,” Iverson said.
“Sure. But if you don’t die of the cold around here, you die from the smoke.”
She burst out laughing, and both Carella and Iverson laughed with her.
“Well, send him around to see me,” Iverson said when the laughter had subsided. “Maybe we work something out like before.”
“I’ll send him,” Mrs. Whitson said, and waved to him as he walked away. As soon as he was out of earshot, she lifted her face to Carella’s and looked directly into his eyes and asked, “You after my son?”
“No, Mrs. Whitson.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying to you. I don’t think your son had anything to do with the murder of George Lasser.”
Mrs. Whitson kept staring at Carella. Then she gave a quick simple nod and said, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Carella said.
“Then why you here?”
“I wanted to look at the basement again.”
“If you gonna look at it,” Mrs. Whitson said, “you better do it before we both freeze to death out here.” She smiled. “You know the way?”
“I know the way,” he said.
The man named Kaplowitz met him just outside the door to the basement.
“My name is Kaplowitz,” he said. “Who are you, and what do you want here?”
“My name is Carella,” Carella answered, showing his shield. “I want to go down to the basement and look around.”
Kaplowitz shook his head. “Impossible.”
“Why?”
“I just hosed the basement an hour ago.” Kaplowitz shook his head. “Dirty basements I seen. Believe me, dirty basements I seen plenty in my day. But a dirty basement like this? Never! Never in my whole life. Two days I’m working on this job now, two days since Mr. Gottlieb hired me. Two days I go down that basement, I live in that basement practically. I look around it, I say, ‘Kaplowitz, this is some dirty basement.’ Two days I stand it. But this morning, no more can I stand it. ‘Kaplowitz,’ I say, ‘are you a janitor or a schlub?’ I’m a janitor, that’s what I am. Kaplowitz the Janitor! And such a dirty basement I can’t stand. So I took out all the stuff from the tenants—it shouldn’t get wet—and I put over the coal some tarpaulin—it shouldn’t get wet—and then I connected the hose and pisssshhhhhhhh, all over the floor! I cleaned everything, everything! Under, over, on, up, down, everything! Pissshhhh behind the garbage cans, pissshhhh under the workbench, pissshhhh near the furnace, pissshhhh behind the wash machine and the sink, pissshhhh down the drain, everything cleaned up by Kaplowitz the Janitor! So you can’t go downstairs now.”
“Why not? If it’s all clean…”
“It’s still wet,” Kaplowitz said, “You want I should get footprints on the floor?”
“Did you spread newspapers?” Carella asked, smiling.
“Haha, very funny,” Kaplowitz said. “Newspapers I only spread on Shabbas.”
“How long will it take to dry?” Carella asked.
“Look, mister,” Kaplowitz said, “don’t rush it, huh? For a hundred years this basement wasn’t washed down. So it finally got cleaned. Let it take its time drying, okay? Give it a break, huh? Be a nice man—go take a walk around the block a few times. When you come back the basement will be nice and clean, you’ll hardly recognize it.”