The following afternoon, as she wheeled her little cart of groceries around the corner, a pair of wiry hands seized her without ceremony and yanked her into the narrow passageway between a pair of brick buildings. A gloved hand covered her mouth, the fingers digging into her cheek.
She heard a voice at her ear: “Happy birthday to you, you old hairbag, happy birthday to you.” Then she felt a sharp pain in her chest, and then she felt nothing, ever.
“Retired schoolteacher,” Freitag said. “On her way home with her groceries. Hell of a thing, huh? Knifed for what she had in her purse, and what could she have, anyway? Livin’ on Social Security and a pension and the way inflation eats you up nowadays she wouldn’t of had much on her. Why stick a knife in a little old lady like her, huh? He didn’t have to kill her.”
“Maybe she screamed,” Ken Poolings suggested. “And he got panicky.”
“Nobody heard a scream. Not that it proves anything either way.” They were back at the station house and Jack Freitag was drinking lukewarm coffee out of a Styrofoam container. But for the Styrofoam the beverage would have been utterly tasteless. “Ackerman, Ackerman, Ackerman. It’s hell the way these parasites prey on old folks. It’s the judges who have to answer for it. They put the creeps back on the street. What they ought to do is kill the little bastards, but that’s not humane. Sticking a knife in a little old lady, that’s humane. Ackerman, Ackerman. Why does that name do something to me?”
“She was a teacher. Maybe you were in one of her classes.”
Freitag shook his head. “I grew up in Chelsea. West Twenty-fourth Street. Miss Ackerman taught all her life here in Washington Heights just three blocks from the place where she lived. And she didn’t even have to leave the neighborhood to get herself killed. Ackerman. Oh, I know what it was. Remember three or maybe it was four days ago, this faggot in the West Village? Brought some other faggot home with him and got hisself killed for his troubles? They found him all tied up with things carved in him. It was all over page three of the Daily News. Ritual murder, sadist cult, sex perversion, blah blah blah. His name was Ackerman.”
“Which one?”
“The dead one. They didn’t pick up the guy who did it yet. I don’t know if they got a make or not.”
“Does it make any difference?”
“Not to me it don’t.” Freitag finished his coffee, threw his empty container at the green metal wastebasket, then watched as it circled the rim and fell on the floor. “The Knicks stink this year,” he said. “But you don’t care about basketball, do you?”
“Hockey’s my game.”
“Hockey,” Freitag said. “Well, the Rangers stink, too. Only they stink on ice.” He leaned back in his chair and laughed at his own wit and stopped thinking of two murder victims who both happened to be named Ackerman.
Mildred Ackerman lay on her back. Her skin was slick with perspiration, her limbs heavy with spent passion. The man who was lying beside her stirred, placed a hand upon her flesh and began to stroke her. “Oh, Bill,” she said. “That feels so nice. I love the way you touch me.”
The man went on stroking her.
“You have the nicest touch. Firm but gentle. I sensed that about you when I saw you.” She opened her eyes, turned to face him. “Do you believe in intuition, Bill? I do. I think it’s possible to know a great deal about someone just on the basis of your intuitive feelings.”
“And what did you sense about me?”
“That you would be strong but gentle. That we’d be very good together. It was good for you, wasn’t it?”
“Couldn’t you tell?”
Millie giggled.
“So you’re divorced,” he said.
“Uh-huh. You? I’ll bet you’re married, aren’t you? It doesn’t bother me if you are.”
“I’m not. How long ago were you divorced?”
“It’s almost five years now. It’ll be exactly five years in January. That’s since we split, but then it was another six months before the divorce went through. Why?”
“And Ackerman was your husband’s name?”
“Yeah. Wallace Ackerman.”
“No kids?”
“No, I wanted to but he didn’t.”
“A lot of women take their maiden names back after a divorce.”
She laughed aloud. “They don’t have a maiden name like I did. You wouldn’t believe the name I was born with.”
“Try me.”
“Plonk. Millie Plonk. I think I married Wally just to get rid of it. I mean Mildred’s bad enough, but Plonk? Like forget it. I don’t think you even told me your last name.”
“Didn’t I?” The hand moved distractingly over Millie’s abdomen. “So you decided to go on being an Ackerman, huh?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Why not indeed.”
“It’s not a bad name.”
“Mmmm,” the man said. “This is a nice place you got here, incidentally. Been living here long?”
“Ever since the divorce. It’s a little small. Just a studio.”
“But it’s a good-sized studio, and you must have a terrific view. Your window looks out on the river, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, sure. And you know, eighteen flights up, it’s gotta be a pretty decent view.”
“It bothers some people to live that high up in the air.”
“Never bothered me.”
“Eighteen floors,” the man said. “If a person went out that window there wouldn’t be much left of her, would there?”
“Jeez, don’t even talk like that.”
“You couldn’t have an autopsy, could you? Couldn’t determine whether she was alive or dead when she went out the window.”
“Come on, Bill. That’s creepy.”
“Your ex-husband living in New York?”
“Wally? I think I heard something about him moving out to the West Coast, but to be honest I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”
“Hmmm.”
“And who cares? You ask the damnedest questions, Bill.”
“Do I?”
“Uh-huh. But you got the nicest hands in the world, I swear to God. You touch me so nice. And your eyes, you’ve got beautiful eyes. I guess you’ve heard that before?”
“Not really.”
“Well, how could anybody tell? Those crazy glasses you wear, a person tries to look into your eyes and she’s looking into a couple of mirrors. It’s a sin having such beautiful eyes and hiding them.”
“Eighteen floors, that’s quite a drop.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” he said, and smiled. “Just thinking out loud.”
Freitag looked up when his partner entered the room. “You look a little green in the face,” he said. “Something the matter?”
“Oh, I was just looking at the Post and there’s this story that’s enough to make you sick. This guy out in Sheepshead Bay, and he’s a policeman, too.”
“What are you talking about?”
Poolings shrugged. “It’s nothing that doesn’t happen every couple of months. This policeman, he was depressed or he had a fight with his wife or something, I don’t know what. So he shot her dead, and then he had two kids, a boy and a girl, and he shot them to death in their sleep and then he went and ate his gun. Blew his brains out.”