He would never understand the criminal mind.
He could not, for example, understand the deaf man at all.
There seemed to be something absolutely lunatic about the enormous risk he had taken, a gamble pitting fifty thousand dollars against possible life imprisonment. Now surely a man of his intelligence and capabilities must have known that the city wasn’t going to reach into its treasury and plunk down fifty thousand dollars solely because someone threatened murder. The odds against such a payoff were staggering, and any shrewd manipulator of odds would have realized this. The deaf man, then, had not expected to be paid, he had wanted to kill the deputy mayor, as he had earlier killed the parks commissioner. But why? Whatever else the deaf man happened to be, Carella did not figure him for a thrill killer. No, he was a hardheaded businessman taking a calculated risk. And businessmen don’t take risks unless there’s at least some hope of a payoff. The deaf man had asked for five grand at first, and been refused, and committed murder. He had next asked for fifty grand, knowing full well he’d be refused again, and had again committed murder. He had then advised the newspapers of his unsuccessful extortion attempts, and had since remained silent.
So where was the payoff?
It was coming, baby, of that Carella was sure.
In the meantime, he sat in the back of John the Tailor’s shop and wondered how much a good pressing machine operator earned.
Chapter 12
Mr. Carl Wahler
1121 Marshall Avenue
Isola
Dear Mr. Wahler:
If you treat this letter as a joke, you will die.
These are the facts. Read them carefully. They can save your life.
1) Parks Commissioner Cowper ignored a warning and was killed.
2) Deputy Mayor Scanlon ignored a warning and was killed.
3) JMV is next. He will be killed this Friday night.
What does all this have to do with you?
1) This is your warning. It is your only warning. There will be no further warnings. Remember that.
2) You are to withdraw five thousand dollars in small, unmarked bills from your account.
3) You will be contacted by telephone sometime within the next week. The man you speak to will tell you how and when and where the money is to be delivered.
4) If you fail to meet this demand, you too will be killed. Without warning.
Do not entertain false hopes!
The police could not save Cowper or Scanlon, although sufficiently forewarned. They will not be able to save JMV, either. What chance will you have unless you pay? What chance will you have when we strike without warning?
Get the money. You will hear from us again. Soon.
The letters were delivered to a hundred homes on Thursday. The deaf man was very cheerful that morning. He went whistling about his apartment, contemplating his scheme again and again, savoring its more refined aspects, relishing the thought that one hundred very wealthy individuals would suddenly be struck with panic come Saturday morning.
By five o’clock tonight, he could reasonably assume that most of the men receiving his letter would have read it and formed at least some tentative opinion about it. He fully expected some of them to glance cursorily at it, crumple it into a ball, and immediately throw it into the garbage. He also expected a handful, the paranoid fringe, to call the police at once, or perhaps even visit their local precinct, letter in hand, indignantly demanding protection. That part of his plan was particularly beautiful, he felt. The mayor was being warned, yes, but oh so indirectly. He would learn about the threat on his life only because some frightened citizens would notify the police.
And tomorrow night, forewarned, the mayor would nonetheless die.
Six months ago when the deaf man had begun the preliminary work on his scheme, several rather interesting pieces of information had come to light. To begin with, he had learned that anyone desiring to know the exact location of the city’s underground water pipes need only apply to the Department of Water Supply in Room 1720 of the Municipal Building, where the maps were available for public scrutiny. Similarly, maps of the city’s underground sewer system were obtainable at the Department of Public Works in the main office of that same building. The deaf man, unfortunately, was not interested in either water pipes or sewers. He was interested in electricity. And he quickly learned that detailed maps of the underground power lines were not, for obvious reasons, open to the public for inspection. Those maps were kept in the Maps and Records Bureau of the Metropolitan Light & Power Company, worked on by an office staffed largely by draftsmen. Ahmad had been one of those draftsmen.
The first map he delivered to the deaf man was titled “60 Cycle Network Area Designations and Boundaries Lower Isola,” and it showed the locations of all the area substations in that section of the city. The area that specifically interested the deaf man was the one labeled “Cameron Flats.” The mayor’s house was on the corner of South Meridian and Vanderhof, in Cameron Flats. The substation serving South Meridian and Vanderhof was marked with a cross in a circle, and was designated “No. 3 South Meridian.” Into this substation ran high-voltage supply cables. (They’re called feeders,” Ahmad said) from a switching station elsewhere on the transmission system. It would be necessary to destroy those supply cables if the mayor’s house was to be thrown into darkness on the night of his murder.
The second map Ahmad delivered was titled “System Ties” and was a detailed enlargement of the feeder systems supplying any given substation. The substation on the first map had been labeled “No. 3 South Meridian.” By locating this on the more detailed map, the deaf man was able to identify the number designation of the feeder: 65CA3. Which brought him to the third pilfered map, simply and modestly titled “65CA3,” and subtitled “Location South Meridian Substation.” This was a rather long, narrow diagram of the route the feeder traveled below the city’s streets, with numbers indicating the manholes that provided access to the cables. 65CA3 passed through eleven manholes on its meandering underground travels from the switching station to the substation. The deaf man chose a manhole approximately a half-mile from the mayor’s house and wrote down its number: M3860-120’SSC-CENT.
The last map, the crucial one, was titled “Composite Feeder Plate” and it pinpointed the manhole exactly. M3860 was located on Faxon Drive, a hundred and twenty feet south of the southern curb of Harris, in the center of the street — hence the 120’SSC-CENT. The high-voltage cables passing through that concrete manhole were five feet below the surface of the street protected by a three-hundred pound manhole cover.
Tomorrow night, Ahmad, Buck, and the deaf man would lift that cover, and one of Buck’s bombs would effectively take care of the cables.
And then …
Ahhh, then …
The really beautiful part was still ahead, and the deaf man smiled as he contemplated it.
He could visualize the mayor’s house at 10 A.M. tomorrow night, surrounded by policemen and detectives on special assignment, all there to protect the honorable JMV from harm. He could see himself driving a black sedan directly to the curb in front of the darkened brick structure, a police flashlight picking out the gold lettering on the front door, Metropolitan Light & Power Company (pressure-sensitive letters expertly applied by Ahmad to both front doors of the car, cost eight cents per letter at Studio Art Supply, total expenditure $4.80). He could see the car doors opening. Three men step out of it. Two of them are wearing workmen’s coveralls (Sears, Roebuck, $6.95 a pair). The third is wearing the uniform of a police sergeant, complete with a citation ribbon pinned over the shield on the left breast (Theatrical Arts Rentals, $10.00 per day, plus a $75.00 deposit) and the yellow sleeve patch of the Police Department’s Emergency Service ($1.25 at the Civic Equipment Company, across the street from Headquarters).