Paramount Sporting Goods was in the downtown section of Newfield, in a triangular-shaped business area bordered by Chinatown, the railroad marshaling yards, and an Italian ghetto. The owner of the shop was a pleasant moon-faced man named Abe Feldman. When they walked in, he was assembling an order for a high-school football team, assorting jerseys according to size, stacking shoulder pads and mouthpieces, his counter covered with all the plastic armor needed in that warlike game. Carella and Kling introduced themselves, and Feldman immediately looked worried.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “What happened?”
“This has nothing to do with you, Mr. Feldman. We’re investigating a murder, and—”
“Oh, my God!” Feldman said.
“... we have reason to believe the murder weapon was purchased in your store. I wonder—”
“Oh, my God!” he said again.
“... I wonder if you’d be able to dig out your sales slips—”
“When was it?” Feldman asked.
“Well, the gun was shipped to you on August fourth, so it would have to be anytime after that.”
“August?”
“Yes.”
“I already got my slips for August and September put away.”
“Would they be difficult to get at?”
“Well, I got them in the back. There’s such a chazerai back there, believe me, I hate to go in there sometimes.”
“Well, this—”
“Also, you caught me right in the middle. I got a whole football team here I’m trying to get ready.”
“Well, this is a murder case,” Kling said gently.
“This is murder right here,” Feldman said, indicating the equipment covering the counter top. “All right, come on. If you can stand it, I can stand it.”
The back of Feldman’s shop was a monument to disorder. Cartons were heaped haphazardly upon other cartons, hockey sticks were stacked in corners, ice skates and boxing gloves hung from nails and pegs, skis and poles leaned dangerously against the walls, fishing poles wobbled overhead on wooden slats, boxes of ping-pong balls and jackknives teetered menacingly, dust covered everything.
“Oh boy, what a mess,” Feldman said. “Every time I come back here, I get an ulcer. August, you said?”
“Or anytime since.”
“Oh boy,” Feldman said. “August, August, where the hell is August?”
He blew dust off a box of fishing flies, put it back on a shelf that contained athletic supporters, reached for another box, blew dust from it, shook his head, said, “No, that’s July,” and picked up yet another box. “What the hell is this?” he asked of no one, nodded, said, “BB pellets,” put the box back on the shelf alongside a box of hockey pucks, lifted another large box, and said, “September. You want to start with September?”
“Why not?” Carella said.
“Where the hell am I going to put this?” Feldman said, looking around. He found a large carton containing baseball bats, rested the box on it, and lifted the lid. The box was crammed full of sales slips, thirty or forty of which fell to the dusty floor when he raised the lid.
“There must be ten thousand slips in this box alone,” Feldman said.
“Well, not that many,” Carella said, and smiled.
“All right, five thousand, who’s counting?”
“Do you record serial numbers when you sell a gun?” Kling asked.
“Every time,” Feldman said. “That’s the law in this state.”
“For pistols, it is,” Carella said. “How about shotguns?”
“No, I don’t record no serial numbers on shotguns.” Feldman looked worried again. “I’m not required to do that, am I?”
“No, but—”
“No, I don’t do that,” Feldman said. “Why? You got a serial number?”
“Yes.”
“It won’t do you no good here,” Feldman said, and shook his head.
“How about the model number? Would you write that on your invoice?”
“Sure I write the model number. Besides, I won’t sell any kind of a gun to somebody I don’t know. Unless he gives me his name and address.”
Carella nodded. Kling gave Feldman the manufacturer’s name and the model number of the shotgun — 833K — and the three men began wading through the sales slips. There were exactly 527 slips in the box; Kling counted them. Not one of them recorded a sale for a model 833K shotgun.
“So it must have been August,” Carella said.
“Just our luck,” Feldman said. He was a determined little man, and he seemed to have entered into the spirit of the chase now, anxious to find the sales slip, anxious to be of assistance in bringing a murderer to justice. Busily, he searched the crowded, dusty backroom for the missing box of August sales slips. At last, he found it buried under six boxes of tennis balls on the bottom shelf against the far wall.
Kling began counting again as they went through the August slips. They reached 212 when Feldman said, “Here we go.”
They looked at the slip.
“See?” Feldman said. “There’s his name and address. I take everybody’s name and address when I don’t know who it is I’m selling a gun to. You never know when some nut is going to shoot the President, am I right?”
The name on the sales slip was Walter Damascus. The address listed was 234 South Second Street. The price of the gun was $74.95, plus the 5 percent sales tax, and the 2 percent city sales tax.
“Would you have sold more than one of these models?” Kling said.
“In August, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“No, how could I? I only got one in the shipment.”
“Then this is the man who bought it,” Carella said.
“Sure, it must be.”
“Sounds like a phony name,” Kling said. “Damascus.”
“Did you ask him for identification, Mr. Feldman?” Carella asked.
“Well, no, I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I never do.”
“When you sell a stranger a gun, you take his name and address—”
“Yes.”
“... but you don’t ask for identification?”
“No.”
“Well, what good is that?” Carella asked.
“I never thought of it,” Feldman said, and shrugged. “I’m not required to ask them for anything, you know. You can buy a rifle or a shotgun anywhere you want to in this state without a license, without nothing. I just ask them their name and address as a precaution, you understand me? Just in case some nut is buying the gun, you know what I mean?”
“Yes, we know what you mean,” Carella said.
4
234 South 2nd Street was a corner building, a red-brick tenement that at one time must have been very posh. Gargoyles still leered into the street from each floor, and even the entrance doorway was decorated with a sculpted keystone, a woman’s head with the nose gone and the word SUCK painted in blue across her mouth. Two men were standing on the front stoop when Carella and Kling entered the building. Instantly smelling fuzz, they watched as the two cops studied the mailboxes in the foyer. Neither of them said a word.