We knocked off once for sandwiches and coffee, and once again, along about three A.M., for a few hours’ sleep — and at ten o’clock the next day we were still nowhere. The autopsy had established positively that the girl had died from the bullet wound, and that was it. The tech crew had checked out every fingerprint, but they’d come up with nothing except the girl’s. A set of her prints had been fed through the IBM machines at Headquarters, but the result had been negative. Another set had been sent to the FBI in Washington, with the request for a teletype reply. The reply had just come in. Like our own check, it was negative. Which meant that if our girl had ever been in trouble, she’d somehow avoided arrest.
Fred and I sat in the squad room, drinking coffee, and trying to think up a new angle.
The phone rang and I lifted it.
“This is Barney Coe, in Lost Property, Sarge.”
“Hi, Barney. What’ve you got?”
“You called us and asked us to be on the lookout for a ring with red stones. Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, we’ve been going through this morning’s DB 60’s, and I think maybe we’ve come up with something.”
“What’s the description?”
“Wait a minute... Okay. It reads, ‘One three-eighths inch fourteen carat yellow gold band with seven garnet stones.’ ”
I was on my feet before I’d hung up the phone. “What pawnbroker?” I asked.
“DeLima’s, on Eighth Avenue. You know where it is?”
“Yeah, I know. Thanks, Barney.”
“No trouble, Sarge. I hope you make out.”
7
“What’s up?” Fred asked.
“Lost Prop’s got a DB 60 on a ring. It looks like it might be the one I told you about, the one Jeffrey Stone gave our girl.”
“Maybe this is the break.”
“Maybe.” I called Stone and arranged to pick him up in fifteen minutes for a trip to the pawnbroker’s. Then Fred and I told the lieutenant where we were going, and went downstairs to check out an RMP car.
“Sounds good, you say?” Fred asked.
“Couldn’t sound better.”
The DB 60 card, from which Barney Coe had read, is the form furnished by the police to every pawnbroker in the city. Pawnbrokers are required to fill out one of these forms for every item they receive, and they must do it the same day of receipt. At the close of business each day, they mail these forms to Headquarters. There the forms are checked against lists of lost and stolen property. In case of a match-up, the police call the person whose property has been lost or stolen and arrange to take him to the pawnbroker for identification and recovery.
At the pawn shop, Jeff Stone identified the ring at once, but we couldn’t return it to him. It was our one and only piece of evidence.
The pawn record showed the ring had been hocked by a woman named Ann Hutchins, and listed an Eighth Avenue address not far from the pawn shop.
8
Ann Hutchins was, at the most, about seventeen. I hadn’t known her by name, but I recognized her immediately as one of the Eighth Avenue B-girls. But she was smarter than most. She didn’t try to be coy. She told us the ring had been given to her by a boy named Frank Rogers. She said he had given it to her yesterday afternoon, and that, as soon as Frank left her room, she had gone straight to the hock shop. She had, she said, planned to tell Frank she’d lost the ring. She volunteered the name of a run-down hotel on Ninth Avenue, where she told us Frank lived and where we could probably find him at this hour. We asked her if she had a picture of Rogers. She did, and showed it to us. He didn’t look much older than she was, a thin, hawk-faced youth with hardly any shoulders at all.
We went back out to the RMP and drove over to the hotel on Ninth. Just as we started across the sidewalk, a young man came out of the hotel. He took one look at us, and then whirled and ran back inside, with Fred and me right behind him.
As he came abreast of the desk, he skidded to a stop and turned to face us, one hand at his pocket.
But Fred Spence’s gun was already out. “Don’t try it, Rogers!” he said.
Fred Spence had guessed right. Rogers was a loid-worker, as well as a heroin addict. Once he realized we had him cold — what with proof that the fatal bullet had come from his gun, the garnet ring, and teeth marks in his left forearm — he seemed to take pleasure in telling us about it. The girl had come in a minute or so after he’d let himself into her apartment with his strip of celluloid. He’d jumped her, and tried to choke her, but she’d been stronger than he’d thought. When she’d sunk her teeth into his arm, he’d decided to kill her. He’d then stripped the ring off her finger, dug the wallet out of her purse, and gotten away down the fire stairs.
When Rogers finished with his admission, he mopped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and sneered at me.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Can’t you cheap cops even afford air-conditioning?”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t remind him how much hotter it was in that little chair up at Sing Sing.
To a Wax Doll
by Arnold Marmor
There wasn’t any difficulty about finding the dope peddler. It was just a matter of applying a little pressure...
Barbara lay on her side, facing me, beautiful with the relaxed softness of sleep. My wife was thirty-two, but in sleep she looked no more than twenty. I studied her face a moment, and then, knowing how little it took to wake her, I got out of bed carefully and walked on bare feet to the bathroom. She was still asleep when I finished dressing and left for the station house.
In the squad room, I lifted a container of coffee from Joe Hayes’ desk, and drank half of it.
“Don’t drink it all, Walt,” he said.
“I’m tired of waiting,” I said.
“You talking about Liddie White again?”
“That’s right.”
He frowned. “Don’t get any crazy ideas, Walt. The lieutenant won’t like it.”
“To hell with him.”
“Why don’t you wait a couple of days? Hell, Tim Casey is one of the best men on the force. Liddie wouldn’t be getting dope without his seeing it.”
“She’s getting it somewhere,” I said.
“Maybe she’d stocked up on the stuff. You ever figure that?”
“Sure, I figured it. And I’m still tired of waiting.” I handed the coffee back to him. “I’m going over there.”
Tim Casey was on his way toward my car even before I’d cut the motor. He saluted, grinning at me. “Hello, Sergeant.”
“Hello, Tim. Any action?”
“Not a damn bit. She hasn’t been out at all.”
“Okay. Well, as long as I’m here, we might as well make the most of it. Why don’t you go down the street and have some breakfast? I’ll spell you a while.”
“That’s a hell of a good idea, Sergeant. I’ll make it fast.” He turned and walked off toward the diner at the corner.
I left the car and headed for the brownstone where Liddie White lived. The building was near the middle of the block, flanked by a cut-rate drugstore and a grimy-windowed bar. I climbed three flights of sagging stairs, walked along a dark corridor, and knocked on Liddie’s door.
The door opened a little, showing one gray eye and part of an unnaturally white face. The eye narrowed, and Liddie started to close the door. I got my foot in it.