Ed McBain (22 page)

There was a strained, painful silence. "I think you can go, Mrs. Ferroni," I said. "We'll have one of our men drive you home. Thank you very much."

"You'll ... you'll find who did it, won't you?" she asked.

"We'll sure as hell try," I told her.

We picked up Richard Tocca, age twenty, as he was leaving for work. He stepped out of a two-story frame on Burke Avenue, looked up at the overcast sky, and then began walking quickly to a blue Nash parked at the curb. Johnny collared him as he was opening the door on the driver's side.

"Richard Tocca?" he asked.

The kid looked up suspiciously. "Yeah." He looked at Johnny's fist tightened in his coat sleeve and said, "What is this?"

I pulled up and flashed my buzzer. "Police officers, Tocca. Mind answering a few questions?"

"What's the matter?" he asked. "What did I do?"

"Routine," Johnny said. "Come on over to our car, won't you?"

"All right," Tocca said. He glanced at his watch. "I hope this won't take long. I got to be at work at nine."

"It may not take long," I said.

We walked over to the car and I held the door for him. He climbed in, and Johnny and I sat on either side of him. He was a thin-faced kid with straight blond hair and pale blue eyes. Clear complexioned, clean shaven. Slightly protruding teeth. Dressed neatly and conservatively, for a kid his age.

"Now what's this all about?" he asked.

"You date Jean Ferroni last night?" Johnny asked.

"Yes. Jesus, don't tell me she's in some kind of trouble."

"What time'd you pick her up?"

"About eight fifteen, I guess. Listen, is she..."

"Where'd you go?"

"Well, that's just it. We were supposed to have a date, and she told me it was off, just like that. She made me drive her to Gun Hill and then she got out of the car. If she's in any trouble, I didn't have anything to do with it."

"She's in big trouble," Johnny said. "The biggest trouble."

"Yeah, well, I didn't have..."

"She's dead," I said.

The kid stopped talking, and his jaw hung slack for a minute. He blinked his eyes rapidly two or three times and then said, "Jesus, Jesus."

"You date her often, Ricky?"

"Huh?" He still seemed shocked, which was just what we wanted.

"Yeah, yeah, pretty often."

"How often?"

"Two, three times a week. No, less."

"When'd you see her last?"

"Last night."

"Before that."

"Last ... Wednesday, I guess it was. Yeah."

"Why'd you date her?"

"I don't know. Why do you date girls?"

"We don't care why you date girls! Why'd you date
this
girl? Why'd you date Jean Ferroni?"

"I don't know. You know, she's ... she was a nice kid. That's all."

"You serious about her?" Johnny snapped.

"Well..."

"You sleeping with her?"

"What?"

"You heard me!"

"No. No. I mean ... well no, I wasn't."

"Yes or no, goddamn it!"

"No."

"Then why'd you date her? You planning on marrying her?"

"No."

"What time did you pick her up last night?"

"Eight fifteen. I told you..."

"Where'd you drop her off?"

"Gun Hill and White Plains."

"What time was this?"

"About eight thirty."

"Why'd you date her so much?"

"I heard she was ... hell, I don't like to say this. I mean, the girl's dead..."

"You heard what?"

"I heard she was ... hot stuff."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"Around. You know how the word spreads."

"Who'd you hear it from?"

"Just around, that's all."

"And you believed it?"

"Well, yeah. You see, I..." He stopped short, catching himself and his tongue.

"You what?"

"Nothing."

"Look, sonny," Johnny said. "The girl was raped and stabbed. That's murder. We'll get the truth if we have to..."

"I'm telling the truth!"

"But not all of it. Come on, sonny, give."

"All right, all right." He fell into a surly silence. Johnny and I waited. Finally, he said, "I saw pictures."

"What kind of pictures?"

"You know. Pictures. Her and a guy. You know."

"You mean pornographic pictures?"

"Yeah."

"Then say what you mean. Where'd you see these pictures?"

"A guy had them."

"Have you got any?"

"No."

"We can get a search warrant. We can take you with us and slap you in the cooler and..."

"I got one," the kid admitted. "Just one."

"Let's see it."

He fished into his wallet and said, "I feel awful funny about this. You know, Jean is dead and all"

"Let's see the picture."

He handed a worn photograph to Johnny, and Johnny studied it briefly and passed it to me. It was Jean Ferroni, all right, and I couldn't very much blame the Tocca kid for his assumption about her.

"Know the guy in this picture?" I asked.

"No."

"Never seen him around?"

"No."

"All right, kid," Johnny said. "Go to work. And keep your nose clean because we may be back."

Richard Tocca looked at the picture in my hand longingly, reluctant to leave it. He glanced up at me hopefully, saw my eyes, and changed his mind about the question he was ready to ask. I got out of the car to let him out, and he walked to his Nash without looking back at us. The questioning had taken exactly seven minutes.

Johnny started the car, threw it into gear.

"Want me to drive?" I asked.

"No, that's okay." -

"This puts a different light on it, huh?"

Johnny nodded. "I'm sleepy as hell," he said.

We drove back to the precinct, checked out, and then walked to the subway together.

"This may be a tough one," he said.

"
May
be?"

Johnny yawned.

We staked out every candy store and ice cream parlor in the Gun Hill Road to 219th Street area, figuring we might pick up someone passing the pornos there. We also set up four policewomen in apartments, thinking there was an off chance someone might contact them for lewd posing. The policewomen circulated at the local dances, visited the local bars, bowling alleys, movies. We didn't get a rumble.

The Skipper kept us on the case, but it seemed to have bogged down temporarily.

We'd already gone over the dead girl's belongings at her home. She'd had an address book, but we'd checked on everyone in it, and they were all apparently only casual acquaintances with a few high school chums tossed in for flavoring. We'd checked the wallet the girl was carrying on the night of her murder. Aside from the in-case-of card, a Social Security card, and some pictures taken outside the high school with her girlfriends, there was nothing.

Under questioning, most of her high school friends said that Jean Ferroni didn't hang around with them much anymore. They said she'd gone snooty and was circulating with an older crowd. None of them knew who the people in the older crowd were.

Her teachers at school insisted she was a nice girl, a little subdued and quiet in class, but intelligent enough. Several of them complained that she'd been delinquent in homework assignments. None of them knew anything about her outside life.

We got our first real break when Mrs. Ferroni showed up with the key. She placed it on the desk in front of Johnny and said, "I was cleaning out her things. I found this. It doesn't fit any of the doors in the house. I don't know what it's for."

"Maybe her gym locker at school," I said.

"No. She had a combination lock. I remember she had to buy one when she first started high school."

Johnny took the key, looked at it, and passed it to me. "Post office box?" he asked.

"Maybe." I turned the key over in my hands. The numerals 894 were stamped into its head.

"Thanks, Mrs. Ferroni," Johnny said. "We'll look into it right away."

We started at the Williamsbridge Post Office right on Gun Hill Road. The mailmen were very cooperative, but the fact remained it wasn't a key to any of their boxes. In fact, it didn't look like a post office key at all. We tried the Wakefield Branch, up the line a bit, and got the same answer.

We started on the banks then.

Luckily, we hit it on the first try. The bank was on 220th Street, and the manager was cordial and helpful. He took one look at the key and said, "Yes, that's one of ours."

"Who owns the box?" we asked.

He looked at the key again. "Safety deposit 894. Just a moment, and I'll have that checked."

We stood on either side of his polished desk while he picked up a phone, asked for a Miss Delaney, and then questioned her about the key. "Yes," he said. "I see. Yes. Thank you." He cradled the phone, put the key on the desk and said, "Jo Ann Ferris. Does that help you, gentlemen?"

"Jo Ann Ferris," Johnny said. "Jean Ferroni. That's close enough." He looked directly at the manager. "We'll be back in a little while with a court order to open that box. We'll ask for you."

In a little over two hours, we were back, and we followed the manager past the barred gate at the rear of the bank, stepped into the vault, and walked back to the rows of safe deposit boxes.

"894," he said. "Yes, here it is."

He opened the box, pulled out a slab, and rested the box on it. Johnny lifted the lid.

"Anything?" I asked.

He pulled out what looked like several rolled sheets of stiff white paper. They were secured with rubber bands, and Johnny slid the bands off quickly. When he unrolled them, they turned out to be eight-by-ten glossy prints. I took one of the prints and looked at Jean Ferroni's contorted body. Beside me, the manager's mouth fell open and he began sputtering wildly.

"Well," I said, "this gives us something."

"We'll just take the contents of this box," Johnny said to the manager. "Make out a receipt for it, will you, Mike?"

I made out the receipt and we took the bundle of pornographic photos back to the lab with us. Whatever else Jean Ferroni had done, she had certainly posed in a variety of compromising positions. She'd owned a ripe young body, and the pictures left nothing whatever to the imagination. But we weren't looking for kicks. We were looking for clues.

Dave Alger, one of the lab men, didn't hold out much hope.

"Nothing," he said. "What did you expect? Ordinary print paper. You can get the same stuff in any home developing kit."

"What about fingerprints?"

"The girl's mostly. A few others, but all smeared. You want me to track down the rubber bands?"

"Comedian," Johnny said.

"You guys expect miracles, that's all. You forget this is science and not witchcraft."

I was looking at the pictures spread out on the lab counter. They were all apparently taken in the same room, on the same bed. The bed had brass posts and railings at the head and foot. Behind the bed was an open window, with a murky city display of buildings outside. The pictures had evidently been taken at night, and probably recently because the window was wide open. Alongside the window on the wall was a picture of an Indian sitting on a black horse. A wide strip of wallpaper had been torn almost from ceiling to floor, leaving a white path on the wall. The room did not have the feel of a private apartment. It looked like any third-rate hotel. I kept looking at the pictures and at the open window with the buildings beyond.

"Hey!" I said.

"...you think all we do is wave a rattle and shake some feathers and wham, we got your goddamned murderer. Well, it ain't that simple. We put in a lot of time on..."

"Shut the hell up, Dave!"

Dave sank into a frowning silence. I lifted one of the pictures and said, "Blow this one up, will you?"

"Why? You looking for tattoo marks?"

"No. I want to look through that window."

Dave suddenly brightened. "How big you want it, Mike?"

"Big enough to read those neon signs across the street."

"Can do," he said. He scooped up all the pictures and ran off, his heels clicking against the asphalt tile floor.

"Think we got something?" Johnny asked.

"Maybe. We sure as hell can't lose anything."

"Besides, you'll have something to hang over your couch," Johnny cracked.

"Another comedian," I said, but I was beginning to feel better already. I smoked three cigarettes down to butts, and then Dave came back.

"One Rheingold beer ad," he said.

"Yeah?"

"And one Hotel Mason. That help?"

I didn't answer. I was busy racing Johnny to the door.

The Hotel Mason was. a dingy, gray-faced building on West Forty-seventh. We weren't interested in it. We were interested in the building directly across the way, an equally dingy, gray-faced edifice that claimed the fancy title of Allistair Arms.

We walked directly to the desk and flashed our buzzers, and the desk clerk looked hastily to the elevator bank.

"Relax, buster," Johnny said.

He pulled one of the pictures from under his jacket. The lab had whitened out the figures of Jean Ferroni and her male companion, leaving only the bed, the picture on the wall, and the open window. Johnny showed the picture to the desk clerk.

"What room is this?"

"I ... I don't know."

"Look hard."

"I tell you I don't know. Maybe one of the bellhops."

He pounded a bell on the desk, and an old man in a bellhop's rig hobbled over. Johnny showed him the picture and repeated his question.

"Damned if I know," the old man said. "All these rooms look alike." He stared at the picture again, shaking his head. Then his eyes narrowed and he bent closer and looked harder. "Oh," he said, "that's 305. That picture of the Injun and the ripped wallpaper there. Yep, that's 305." He paused. "Why?"

I turned. "Who's in 305?"

The desk clerk made a show of looking at the register. "Mr. Adams. Harley Adams."

"Let's go, Johnny," I said.

We started up the steps, and I saw Johnny's hand flick to his shoulder holster. When it came out from under his coat, it was holding a cocked .38.1 took out my own gun and we padded up noiselessly.