“No, but...”
She waited.
“Actually, I live down near the bridge,” Kling said.
“The Calm’s Point Bridge?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, well, good! Do you know A View from the Bridge?”
“What?”
“It’s under the bridge, actually, right on the Dix. A little wine bar.”
“Oh.”
“It’s just... I don’t want to take you out of your way.”
“Well—”
“Does five sound okay?” Eileen asked.
“I was just leaving the office, I don’t know what time—”
“It’s just at the end of Lamb Street, under the bridge, right on the river, you can’t miss it. Five o’clock, okay? My treat, it’ll be a reward, sort of.”
“Well—”
“Or have you made other plans?” Eileen asked.
“No. No other plans.”
“Five o’clock then?”
“Okay,” he said.
“Good,” she said, and hung up.
Kling had a bewildered look on his face.
“What was that?” Brown asked.
“Eileen’s earring,” Kling said.
“What?” Brown said.
“Forget it,” Kling said.
By 3:00 that afternoon, they had been through Edelman’s small second-floor office a total of three times — four times, if you counted the extra half hour they’d spent going through his desk again. Brown wanted to call it quits. Kling pointed out that they hadn’t yet looked inside the safe. Brown mentioned that the safe was locked. Kling put in a call to the Safe, Loft & Truck Squad. A detective there told him they’d try to get somebody up there within the half hour. Brown lighted a cigarette, and they began going over the office yet another time.
The office was the first in the hallway at the top of the stairs, which probably accounted for the fact that Andrew Fleet had chosen it for his stickup last July, a junkie robber being interested only in expediency and opportunity. A frosted-glass panel on the front door was lettered in gold leaf with the words EDELMAN BROS. and beneath that PRECIOUS GEMS. Mrs. Edelman had told them her husband worked alone, so both Brown and Kling figured the firm had been named when there was a brother-partner, and that either the brother was now dead, or else no longer active in the business. They each made a note, in their separate pads, to call Mrs. Edelman and check on this.
Just inside the entrance doorway, there was a space some four feet wide, leading to a chest-high counter behind which was a grille fashioned of the same steel mesh as that on the squadroom’s detention cage. A glass-paneled door covered with the same protective mesh was to the left of the counter. A button on the other side of the counter, when pressed, released the lock on the door to the inner office. But the mesh, somewhat like what you might find in a cyclone fence around a school playground, could not have prevented an intruder from sticking a gun through any one of its diamond-shaped openings and demanding that the release button for the door be pressed. Presumably, this was what had happened on that night last July. Andrew Fleet had barged into the office, pointed his gun at Edelman, and ordered him to unlock the door. The steel mesh grille had been as helpful as a bathing suit in a blizzard.
The office side of the dividing counter resembled an apothecary chest, with dozens of little drawers set into it, each of them labeled with the names of the gems they presumably contained. No one had been in this office since the night of Edelman’s murder, but the drawers were surprisingly empty, which led both Kling and Brown to assume that Edelman had locked his stuff in the safe before heading home that night. The men were both wearing cotton gloves as they went through the office. It was unlikely that the murderer had been here before heading uptown to ambush Edelman in the garage under his building, but the Crime Unit boys had not yet been through the place, and they weren’t taking any chances. If they found a residue of anything that even remotely resembled cocaine, they would place a call downtown at once. They were working this by the book. You didn’t summon the harried Crime Unit to a place that wasn’t the scene of the crime, unless you had damn good reason to suspect this other place was somehow linked to the crime. They had no reason to suspect that as yet.
The detective from Safe, Loft & Truck arrived forty minutes later, which wasn’t bad considering the condition of the roads. He was wearing a sheepskin car coat, a cap with earflaps, fleece-lined gloves, heavy woolen trousers, a turtleneck shirt, and black rubbers. He was also carrying a black satchel. He put the satchel down on the floor, took off his gloves, rubbed his hands briskly together, said, “Some weather, huh?” and extended his right hand. “Turbo,” he said, and shook hands first with Brown and then with Kling, who introduced themselves in turn.
Turbo reminded Brown of the pictures of Santa Claus in the illustrated version of “The Night before Christmas,” which he ritually read to his kid every Christmas Eve. Turbo didn’t have a beard, but he was a roly-poly little man with bright red cheeks, no taller than Hal Willis, but at least a yard wider. He had retrieved his right hand, and was again rubbing both hands briskly together. Brown figured he was going to try the combination, the way Jimmy Valentine might have.
“So where is it?” Turbo said.
“Right there in the corner,” Kling said.
Turbo looked.
“I was hoping it’d be an old one,” he said. “That box looks brand new.”
He walked over to the safe.
“I coulda punched an old box in three seconds flat. This one’s gonna take time.”
He studied the safe.
“You know what I’m gonna find here, most likely?” he said. “A lead spindle shaft with the locknuts away from the shaft so I won’t be able to pound it through the gut box and break the nuts that way.”
Brown and Kling looked at each other. Turbo sounded as if he were speaking a foreign language.
“Well, let’s see,” Turbo said. “You think he may have left it on day combination, no such luck, huh?” He was reaching for the dial when his hand stopped. “The Crime Unit been in here?” he asked.
“No,” Kling said.
“Is that why you’re wearing the Mickey Mouse gloves?”
Both men looked at their hands. Neither of them had removed the cotton gloves when shaking hands with Turbo, a lack of etiquette he seemed not to have minded.
“What is this case, anyway?” he asked.
“Homicide,” Kling said.
“And no Crime Unit?”
“He was killed uptown.”
“So what’s this, his place of business?”
“Right,” Brown said.
“Whose authority do I have to open this thing?”
“It’s our case,” Kling said.
“So what does that mean?” Turbo asked.
“That’s your authority,” Brown said.
“Yeah? You go tell that to my lieutenant, that I busted open a safe on the authority of two flatfoots from the boonies,” Turbo said, and went to the phone. Mindful of the fact that the Crime Unit hadn’t yet been here, he opened his satchel, took out his own pair of white cotton gloves, and pulled them on. The three detectives now looked like waiters in a fancy restaurant. Brown expected one of them to start passing around the finger bowls. Turbo lifted the phone receiver, dialed a number, and waited.
“Yeah,” he said, “Turbo here. Let me talk to the Loot.” He waited again. “Mike,” he said, “it’s Dom. I’m here on North Greenfield, there’s two guys from uptown want me to open a safe for them.” He looked at Kling and Brown. “What’s your names again?” he asked.