“So he paid Lasser whatever he asked for.”
“Yes.”
“And that was how much?”
“Well, Burke had stolen forty grand that year from the company. Lasser and I figured he’d be stealing at least that, if not more, each and every year we kept quiet about it.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Lasser asked him for half of it.”
“Or else.”
“Yeah. Or else he’d go straight to the board of directors.”
“So Burke paid.”
“Yes.”
“And you and Lasser split twenty grand.”
“That’s right. Ten grand each.”
“And you continued to get it each year. That can come to a lot of money,” Carella said. “So it’s entirely possible that Burke finally got fed up with being bled. He went to that basement on South Fifth and killed Lasser in an attempt to free himself of—”
“No,” Reuhr said.
“Why not?”
“The golden eggs stopped coming in 1945.”
“What do you mean?”
“No more after 1945,” Reuhr said. “No more money after then.”
“Burke stopped paying you in 1945? Is that it?”
Reuhr smiled. “That’s right,” he said.
“He still might have been sore about what he’d paid out up to that time. He may have finally decided to do something about it.”
“Uh-uh,” Reuhr said, and there was something maliciously gleeful about his smile now.
“Why not?” Carella asked.
“Anson Burke couldn’t have killed Lasser.”
“Why not?”
“I just told you. He stopped paying us.”
“So?”
“The reason he stopped paying was that he dropped dead of a heart attack in 1945.”
“What?” Carella said.
Reuhr nodded gleefully. “Yeah.” Still grinning, he said, “There goes your ball game, huh?”
January is a lousy month for ball games.
They didn’t pinch Sigmund Reuhr because they doubted if they had a real case, and besides—to tell the truth—it was too damn much trouble. Reuhr’s victim and Reuhr’s partner were both dead, and for the previous blackmail attempt they had only Cavanaugh’s word, which might be considered hearsay in court without the corroborating evidence of the intended 1937 victim. The possibility of getting that intended victim to incriminate himself by incriminating Reuhr was exceptionally slim, and anyway, the whole mess seemed like very small potatoes when there was a homicide kicking around.
January is just a lousy month for ball games, that’s all.
When they got back to the squadroom, Detective Meyer Meyer met them at the slatted wood railing and said, “Where you guys been?”
“Why?” Carella asked.
“We got a call a few minutes ago. From Murphy on the beat.”
“Yeah?”
“A colored handyman just tried to kill the super of a building.”
“Where?”
“At 4113 South 5th,” Meyer said. “His name’s Sam Whitson.”
10
There were two patrolmen sitting on Sam Whitson’s legs when Carella and Hawes arrived. Another two had pinned down his huge outstretched arms, and yet another cop straddled his chest. The immense Negro gave a sudden lurch into the air, his midsection bucking, as the detectives came closer to where he was pinned to the basement floor. The cop sitting on his chest flew into the air and then grabbed for the lapels of Whitson’s Eisenhower jacket and landed again on his chest with a heavy thud.
“You son of a bitch,” Whitson said, and a patrolman standing by and watching the others struggling with their prisoner suddenly hit Whitson on the sole of his right foot with his nightstick. At one side of the basement, his head bleeding from a cut across the scalp and forehead, sat John Iverson, the superintendent of the building at 4113 South 5th, next door to 4111 where George Lasser had worked. The buildings were side by side and attached, like two halves of the same embryo. Iverson’s basement was a mirror image of Lasser’s, except for its contents. He sat now on an empty milk crate and nursed his broken head while the patrolmen struggled with Whitson who kept trying to shake them off at regular intervals. The one patrolman who was not engaged in the struggle kept hitting Whitson with his nightstick at regular intervals, too, until finally one of the other cops yelled, “For Christ’s sake, Charlie, will you cut it out? Every time you hit the bastard he jumps in the air.”
“I’m trying to calm him,” Charlie said, and hit Whitson’s shoe sole again.
“Lay off,” Carella said, and he walked to where the cops swarmed over the fallen Negro. “Let him up.”
“He’s pretty dangerous, sir,” one of the policemen said.
“Let him up,” Carella repeated.
“Okay, sir,” the spokesman for the patrolmen said, and then they all jumped off Whitson at precisely the same moment, as though by prearranged signal, and backed far away from him as Whitson sprang to his feet with his fists clenched and murder in his eyes.
“It’s okay, Sam,” Carella said gently.
“Who says so?” Whitson wanted to know. “I’m goan kill that son of a bitch.”
“You’re not going to kill anybody, Sam. Sit down and cool off. I want to know what happened here.”
“Get outa my way,” Whitson said. “This ain’t none of your affair.”
“Sam, I’m a police officer,” Carella said.
“I know what you is,” Whitson said.
“Okay. I got a call saying you tried to kill the super. Is that right?”
“You goan get another call in jus’ a few minutes,” Whitson said. “It’s goan tell you I did kill the super.”
Carella, in spite of himself, burst out laughing. The laughter surprised Whitson, who unclenched his fists for a moment and stared at Carella with a dumfounded expression on his face.
“It ain’t funny,” Whitson said.
“I know it’s not, Sam,” Carella answered. “Let’s sit down and talk it over.”
“He came at me with a goddamn ax,” Whitson said, pointing to Iverson.
For the first time since they had come into that basement, Carella and Hawes were fully aware of Iverson as something more than an innocent assault victim. If Whitson was immense, Iverson was just as large. If Whitson was capable of wreaking havoc, Iverson could easily have caused much the same destruction. He sat on the milk crate with his forehead and scalp bleeding, but the cut did nothing to diminish the feeling of power and strength that emanated from him like the smell of a jungle beast. As Whitson pointed to him, he lifted his eyes, and the detectives suddenly sensed his alert tension, a nervous energy that transmitted itself as surely as did his stench of power, so that they themselves approached him with a wariness they would not ordinarily have exercised on a bleeding man.
“What does he mean, Iverson?” Carella asked.
“He’s crazy,” Iverson said.
“He just said you came at him with an ax.”
“He’s crazy.”
“What’s this?” Hawes asked, and he bent to pick up an ax that was lying on the basement floor some ten feet from where Iverson was sitting. “This looks like an ax to me, Iverson.”
“It is an ax,” Iverson said. “I keep it down here in the basement. I use it for chopping up things.”
“What’s it doing on the floor?”