“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s supposed to mean that this can take ten minutes or ten hours. We can do it right here in your backyard, or I can request that your husband accompany me...”
“You’re going to arrest him?”
“No, ma’am, I’m only going to ask him some questions.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Carella was silent for a moment. Then he said only, “Yes, ma’am,” and fell silent again. He had forgotten for a moment just what it was he wanted to ask Coombs. He kept thinking of Teddy and wishing he were home in bed with her. “Well,” he said, “Mr. Coombs, would you have any knowledge of a robbery that took place...?”
“I thought you said there wasn’t any crime being investigated,” Isabel said.
“I didn’t say that. I said we had no intention of charging your husband with any crime.”
“You just now mentioned a robbery.”
“Yes, six years ago.” He turned to Robert and said, “Would you know anything about such a robbery, Mr. Coombs?”
“I don’t know,” Robert said. “Who was robbed?”
“The National Savings and Loan Association.”
“What’s that?”
“A bank.”
“Where?”
“In this city,” Carella said. “Downtown.”
“Six years ago,” Isabel said flatly, “we were living in Detroit.”
“I see,” Carella said. “And when did you move here?”
“Just before Christmas,” Robert said.
“That’d be... about six months ago.”
“Almost six months ago exactly,” Robert said.
“Mr. Coombs, did anyone ever give you, or did you ever come into possession in any way whatsoever...”
“This has to do with the robbery, doesn’t it?” Isabel said shrewdly.
“...a piece of a photograph?” Carella continued, ignoring her.
“What do you mean?” Robert asked.
“A section of a picture.”
“A picture of what?” Isabel asked.
“We don’t know. That is, we’re not sure.”
“Then how would my husband know whether or not he has it?”
“If he has it, I guess he would know he has it,” Carella said. “Do you have it?”
“No,” Robert said.
“Do any of these names mean anything to you? Carmine Bonamico, Louis D’Amore...”
“No.”
“Jerry Stein...”
“No.”
“Pete Ryan?”
“No.”
“Never heard of any of them?”
“No. Who are they?”
“How about these names? Albert Weinberg, Donald Renninger, Alice Bonamico...”
“No, none of them.”
“Dorothea McNally? Geraldine Ferguson?”
Robert shook his head.
“Eugene Ehrbach?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Well, then,” Carella said, “I guess that’s it. Thank you very much for your time.” He rose, nodded briefly at Isabel Coombs, and started out of the yard.
Behind him, Isabel said, “Is that all?”
She sounded disappointed.
Carella did not get home until 8:00 that night.
His wife Teddy was sitting at the kitchen table with Arthur Brown. She smiled as he entered, brown eyes engulfing him, one delicate hand brushing a strand of black hair away from her face.
“Hey, this is a surprise,” he said to Brown.”Hello, honey,” he said to Teddy, and bent to kiss her.
“How’d you make out?” Brown asked.
“He’s not our man. Moved here from Detroit six months ago, doesn’t know a thing about the photograph, and never even heard of National Savings and Loan.” Carella suddenly turned to his wife. “I’m sorry, honey,” he said, “I didn’t realize my back was turned.” He repeated what he had just told Brown, watching Teddy’s eyes for confirmation that she was reading his lips. She nodded when he finished, and then rapidly moved her fingers in the hand alphabet he understood, telling him that Arthur had found another section of the photograph.
“Is that right?” Carella said, turning to Brown. “You’ve got another piece?”
“That’s why I’m here, baby,” Brown said. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a glassine envelope, opened it, and emptied five pieces of the snapshot onto the tabletop. The men stared blankly at the collection. Teddy Carella — who lived in a soundless, speechless, largely visual and tactile universe — studied the twisted shapes on the tabletop. Her hands moved out swiftly. In less time than it had taken Carella to assemble the four pieces that had been in their possession yesterday, she now put together the five pieces before her:
“Hey!” Brown said. “Now we’re getting there!”
“Yeah,” Carella said, “but where?”
9
Never let it be bruited about that just because a homicide victim also happens to be an ex-con, the police will devote less time and energy to finding out who has done him in. Perish the thought! In this fair and democratic land of ours, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the meek, the honest citizen and the wrongdoer are all afforded equal protection under the law, even after they’re dead. So, boy oh boy, did those guys work hard trying to find out who had left the hole in Albert Weinberg’s chest!
To begin with, there are a lot of people who have to be informed when someone inconsiderately gets himself knocked off. Just informing all these different people takes a lot of time. Imagine having to call the Police Commissioner, and the Chief of Detectives, and the District Commander of the Detective Division, and Homicide, and the Squad and Precinct Commanding Officers of the precinct where the body was found, and the Medical Examiner, and the District Attorney, and the Telegraph, Telephone and Teletype Bureau at Headquarters, and the Police Laboratory, not to mention the police photographers and stenographers — the list alone is longer than the average laundry list, and just try phoning in a dirty shirt to the local laundryman. All that vast machinery of law enforcement ground into immediate action the moment it was discovered that Albert Weinberg had a hole in his chest; all those oiled gears smoothly meshed and rotated in the cause of justice; all those relentless preventers of crime and pursuers of criminals called upon their enormous reservoir of physical courage and stamina, their mental acumen, their experience, intelligence, their brilliance even — and all in an attempt to discover who had shot and killed the man who once upon a time had beat up a little old lady for the sum of seventeen dollars and thirty-four cents.
Actually, most of the physical courage and stamina, the mental acumen, the experience, intelligence and brilliance was being expended by Detectives Meyer Meyer and Cotton Hawes of the 87th Squad; Carella (who had discovered the corpse) being elsewhere occupied. Meyer and Hawes did not have much trouble taking apart the apartment; whoever killed Weinberg had already done a very good job of that. They decided after a thorough search of the place that Brown’s surmise was a correct one. The killer had been after Weinberg’s pieces of the photograph, and had apparently been successful in finding them. Meyer and Hawes questioned all of the tenants in the building and discovered that three of them had heard a very loud noise shortly after midnight. None of these people thought it either necessary or advisable to call the police. In this neighborhood, policemen were not exactly looked upon as benefactors of the people, and besides the sounds of gunfire were somewhat commonplace, day or night. So both detectives went back to the squadroom to consult the timetable Irving Krutch had so thoughtfully typed up for Steve Carella: