X XXXXXX XXXXX XXX APRIL 13 GENERAL ALARM ALL PCTS BE ON LOCKOUT WOMAN BLONDE AGE 24 5 FEET 4 INCHES 110 LBS EXTREMELY ATTRACTIVE LAST SEEN WEARING BLUE S
POLICE DEPARTMENT
Police Headquarters Command
89 High Street, Isola
BY MESSENGER
TO: BY MESSENGER
Detective Stephen Louis Carella
87th Detective Squad
87th Precinct
711 Grover Avenue
Isola
Enclosed herewith is laboratory report received on the charred scraps of uniform garment taken from Bethtown incinerator, and forwarded as per your request received at 3:07 P.M. this afternoon.
Please note that report is preliminary and incomplete concerning matchbook discovered in pocket of uniform coat, but laboratory tests should be complete by tomorrow Tuesday April 14 and suggest you contact Lieutenant Samuel Grossman at that time should you desire further information in your case.
Sincerely,
Det/Lt. Albert N. Dougherty
Headquarters Command
AD/rl
cc: Lt. Samuel Grossman
9.
LIEUTENANT SAM GROSSMAN was one of those rare and vanishing individuals who take extreme pride in their work. As one of these, he was not the type of man who would wait for someone to call for information once that information was available. He had worked all day Monday on the matchbook remains which had been found with the charred uniform material in the incinerator. He was in receipt of a carbon copy of Dougherty’s letter, and so he knew that Steve Carella was interested in the case. But even if the interested party hadn’t been someone Grossman knew and liked, even if it had been an obscure patrolman pounding a beat on Majesta, Grossman’s attitude would have remained the same. He was now in possession of information which could prove extremely valuable to the man investigating the case. He’d be damned if he was going to wait for that man to call him.
Nor had Grossman come into possession of this possibly valuable information through a stroke of luck, or even through the performance of a few simple laboratory tests. There are, you know, some laboratory tests which are extremely simple and which require no patience or perseverance. The reconstruction of burnt paper, unfortunately, does not fall into this category.
To begin with, the matchbook found with the material was contained by what the lab assumed to be the breast pocket of the jacket. The presence of the matchbook would not have been suspected at all had not one of Grossman’s capable assistants noticed the glint of metal among the commingled ashes. Upon study, the metal turned out to be a tiny staple of the kind that holds matches to an outside cover. And once the presence of the remains of a matchbook had been determined, the real work lay just around the corner.
There were possibly four or five methods which could have been used to reconstruct the burnt matchbook, all of which required the patience of Job, the steadiness of Gibraltar, and the perseverance of Senator McCarthy. The method best suited to this particular document was discussed by Grossman and his assistants and, when they’d agreed on the proper approach, they rolled up their sleeves and got to work.
The first thing they did was to prepare a hot solution of one per cent gelatin in water. They then placed this solution in a flat developing pan. Then, with his assistant holding a glass plate as close to the ash as he could get, Grossman delicately and gingerly fanned the ash out onto the plate. No one breathed. Inching the plate toward the gelatin solution, the men slowly submerged it so that the solution just covered the surface of the plate. The ash had now been moistened, and the difficult and painstaking job of flattening it without destroying it remained to be done. Finally another glass plate was pressed into place above the first one, and both were squeezed together to dispel any air bubbles. The plates sandwiching the ash were then put into a printing frame and the suspect matchbook was photographed on an orthochromatic plate and printed on compression paper.
Simple.
It took five hours.
At the end of that time, the men went home.
On Tuesday morning, Sam Grossman called Steve Carella.
“Hello, Steve,” he said. “I hate to barge in, but I’ve got a report on that match folder, and I couldn’t see any good reason for waiting for you to call me. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all, Sam. How’ve you been?”
“Fine, thanks. I’m sorry that report on the uniform wasn’t more helpful, Steve.”
“It was a pretty good one.”
“Not really. What the hell good is a report on a uniform if we can’t tell you what kind of a uniform it was? Who cares whether it was nylon or wool or horse manure? You want to know whether it belonged to a bus driver or a mailman or whatever, am I right?”
“That’s right, Sam. But some of that other stuff in the report—”
“Side effects and not really important. The folder may be something else again, though.”
“Something good?”
“Considering what we had to work with, I think we did an amazing job.”
“What have you got, Sam?”
“Well, to begin with, your suspect is twenty-three years old and probably a college graduate.”
“Huh?”
“He has, at some time during the past year, smoked a marijuana cigarette and gone to bed with a blonde between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two.”
“What!” Carella said, astonished.
“Yes,” Grossman said. “And from this match folder ash, we were able to determine that our suspect served in the U.S. Cavalry as a gunner in a tank during the Korean War. In addition to that—”
“You got all this from that burnt matchbook?” Carella asked, and Grossman began laughing. The dawn broke slowly. Carella, holding the phone close to his violated ear, began to grin. “You bastard,” he said. “I believed you for a minute there. Whatdid you get from the matchbook?”
“The name of a hotel,” Grossman said.
“Here? This city?”
“Yep.”
“Shoot.”
“The Hotel Albion. It’s on Jefferson and South Third.”
“Thank you, Sam.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You can probably pick up these matches in any cigar store in the city.”
“Or maybe not, Sam. Maybe they’re private hotel stock. The Albion, the Albion. That’s not one of those big chain jobs like Hilton runs, is it?”
“No. It’s a small quiet place right on Jefferson.”
“That’s what I thought. So maybe thisis a break. In any case, I’ll check it out. Thanks again, Sam.”
“Right. How’s Teddy?”
“Fine.”
“And the twins?”
“Growing.”
“Good. I’ll be talking to you,” Grossman said, and he hung up.
Carella looked at the hotel name he’d jotted onto the pad on his desk. He nodded, pulled the phone to him, and dialed the number of his home in Riverhead.
“Hello?” a sprightly voice answered.
“Fanny, this is Steve,” he said. “Is Teddy still there, or did I miss her?”
“She’s upstairs taking a bath. What is it, Steve? I was just feeding the twins.”
“Fanny, I’m supposed to meet Teddy at three o’clock outside Bannerman’s and I thought I’d be able to make it, but it doesn’t look that way now. Would you just tell her I’ll meet her for dinner at six at the Green Door? Have you got that? Six o’clock at—”