They continued uptown, turned left at Seventy Second, over to Ninth Avenue, turned downtown.
Phil watched the other traffic. His face was tired, lonely, wistful. He watched the pedestrians hurrying along the sidewalk, bumping into one another, cursing one another, straining to be first to the corner.
They crossed Fifty Ninth Street just after the light changed. A cab slammed on its brakes. Phil looked in the rear view mirror, watched the cab cross the intersection. He smiled, faintly. He said, “Do you suppose we’ll ever be able to get out of the car?”
But Roger didn’t answer. He was asleep.
Anatomy of an Anatomy
It was on a Thursday, just at four in the afternoon, when Mrs. Aileen Kelly saw the arm in the incinerator. As she told the detective who came in answer to her frantic phone call, “I opened the ramp, to put my dag of rubbish in, and plop it fell on the ramp.”
“An arm,” said the detective, who had introduced himself as Sean Ryan.
Mrs. Kelly nodded emphatically. “I saw the fingers,” she said. “Curved, like they was beckoning to me.”
“I see.” Detective Ryan made a mark or two in his notebook. “And then what?” he asked.
“Well, I jumped with fright. Anybody would, seeing a thing like that. And the ramp door shut, and when I opened it to look in again, the arm had fallen on down to the incinerator.”
“I see,” said Ryan again. He heaved himself to his feet, a short and stocky man with a lined face and thinning gray hair. “Maybe we ought to take a look at this incinerator,” he said.
“It’s just out in the hall.”
Mrs. Kelly led the way. She was a short and slightly stout lady of fifty-six, five years a widow. Her late Bertram’s tavern, half a block away at the corner of 46th Street and 9th Avenue, now belonged to her. After Bertram’s passing, she had hired a bartender-manager, and for the last five years had continued to live on in this four-room apartment on 46th Street, where she had spent most of her married life with Bertram.
The incinerator door was across the hall from Mrs. Kelly’s apartment. She opened this door and pointed to the foot-square inner ramp door. “That’s it,” she told the detective.
Ryan opened the ramp door and peered inside. “Pretty dark in there,” he commented.
“Yes, it is.”
“How tail’s this building, Mrs. Kelly?”
“Ten stories.”
“And we’re on the sixth,” he said. “Four stories up to the roof, and the chimney up there is your only source of light.”
“Well,” she said, a trifle defensively, “there’s the hall light, too.”
“Not when you’re in front of it like this.” He stooped to peer inside the ramp door again. “Don’t see any stains on the bricks,” he said.
“Well, it was only stuck for just a second.”
Ryan frowned and closed the ramp door. “You only saw this arm for a second,” he said, and it was plain he was doubting Mrs. Kelly’s story.
“That was enough, believe you me,” she told him.
“Mmmm. May I ask, do you wear glasses?”
“Just for reading.”
“So you didn’t have them on when you saw this arm.”
“I did see it. Mister Detective Ryan,” she snapped, “and it was an arm.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He opened the ramp door again, stuck his arm in. “Incinerator’s on,” he said. “I can feel the heat.”
“It’s always on in the afternoon, three till six.”
Ryan dragged an old turnip watch from his change pocket. “Quarter after five,” he said.
“Took you an hour or more to come here,” she reminded him. She didn’t like this Detective Ryan, who so obviously didn’t believe a word she was saying. For one thing, his hat needed blocking. For another, the sleeves of his gray topcoat were frayed. And for a third thing, he was wearing the most horrible orange necktie Mrs. Kelly had ever seen.
“Arm’d be all burned up by now,” he said, musingly, “if it was an arm.”
“It was an arm,” she said dangerously.
“Mmmm.” He had the most infuriating habit of neither agreeing nor disagreeing, just saying, “Mmmmm.” To which he added, “Shall we go on back to your living room?”
Furious, Mrs. Kelly marched back into her apartment and sat on the flower-pattern sofa, while Detective Ryan settled himself in Bertram’s old chair, across the room.
“Now, Mrs. Kelly,” he said, once he was seated, “I’m not doubting your sincerity for a minute, believe me. I’m sure you saw what you thought was an arm.”
“It was an arm.”
“Ail right,” he said. “It was an arm. Now, that would mean somebody upstairs had murdered somebody else, chopped the body up, and was getting rid of the pieces into the incinerator. Right?”
“Well, of course. That’s obviously what’s happening. And instead of doing something about it, you’re sitting here—”
“Now,” he said interrupting her smoothly, “you told me you were so startled by the arm you dropped your bag of rubbish, and had to pick it all up again. So you stayed at the incinerator door a couple minutes after you saw the arm. And you opened the door twice more. Once to see if the arm was still there, and once to throw your own bag of rubbish away.”
“And so?” she demanded.
“Did you see or hear any more pieces going by?”
She frowned. “No. Just the arm.” At the expression on his face, she added, “Well, isn’t that enough?”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am. What’s our murderer planning to do with the rest of the body?”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know. Could — could be that that arm was the last part to go down. He’d thrown down all the rest of it earlier.”
“Could be, Mrs. Kelly,” Ryan said. “But frankly, I think you made an honest mistake. What you thought was an arm was really something else. Maybe a rolled-up newspaper.”
“I tell you, I saw the fingers!”
Ryan sighed, and got to his feet. “I tell you what, Mrs. Kelly,” he said. “What you got here isn’t enough for us to go on. But if a report comes in on somebody being missing in this building, that would kind of corroborate your story. If somebody’s been murdered, he or she will be reported missing before long, and—”
“It was a woman,” said Mrs. Kelly. “I saw the long fingernails.”
Ryan frowned again. “You saw long fingernails,” he asked, “in just a couple of seconds, in that dim incinerator shaft and without your glasses on?”
“I saw what I saw,” she insisted, “and I only need my glasses for reading.”
“Well,” said Ryan. He stood there, fidgeting with that awful crushed hat, obviously wanting to be done and away. “If we get word on anybody missing,” he said again.
Mrs. Kelly glared at him as he left. He didn’t believe her; he thought she was nothing but a foolish old woman with bad eyes. She could hear him now, once he got back to his precinct house: “Nothing to it, just an old crank not wearing her glasses.”
And then he was gone, and she was alone. And her irritated anger gradually gave way to something very close to fear. She looked up at the ceiling. Somewhere on the four floors above, someone had murdered a woman, and chopped her up, and thrown her forearm down the incinerator shaft. Mrs. Kelly looked up, realizing how close that terrible murderer was, and that there was to be no help from the police, and she shivered.
The next afternoon, that was a Friday, at just around four o’clock, Mrs. Kelly once more brought her rubbish bag to the incinerator. This wasn’t a coincidence. Having lived alone for five years, Mrs. Kelly had developed routines and habits of living that carried her smoothly through her solitary days. And at four o’clock each afternoon, she threw the rubbish away.