“Jesus.”
“You just wonder what goes through a guy’s mind that he does something like that. Does he just go completely crazy or what? I can’t understand a person who does something like that.”
“I can’t understand people, period. Was this somebody you knew?”
“No, he lives in Sheepshead Bay. Lived in Sheepshead Bay. Anyway, he wasn’t with the department. He was a Transit Authority cop.”
“Anybody spends all his time in the subways, it’s got to take its toll. Has to drive you crazy sooner or later.”
“I guess.”
Freitag plucked a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket, tapped it on the top of his desk, held it between his thumb and forefinger, frowned at it, and returned it to the pack. He was trying to cut back to a pack a day and was not having much success. “Maybe he was trying to quit smoking,” he suggested. “Maybe it was making him nervous and he just couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“That seems a little far-fetched, doesn’t it?”
“Does it? Does it really?” Freitag got the cigarette out again, put it in his mouth, lit it. “It don’t sound all that far-fetched to me. What was this guy’s name, anyway?”
“The TA cop? Hell, I don’t know. Why?”
“I might know him. I know a lot of transit cops.”
“It’s in the Post. Bluestein’s reading it.”
“I don’t suppose it matters, anyway. There’s a ton of transit cops and I don’t know that many of them. Anyway, the ones I know aren’t crazy.”
“I didn’t even notice his name,” Poolings said. “Let me just go take a look. Maybe I know him, as far as that goes.”
Poolings went out, returning moments later with a troubled look on his face. Freitag looked questioningly at him.
“Rudy Ackerman,” he said.
“Nobody I know. Hey.”
“Yeah, right. Another Ackerman.”
“That’s three Ackermans, Ken.”
“It’s six Ackermans if you count the wife and kids.”
“Yeah, but three incidents. I mean it’s no coincidence that this TA cop and his wife and kids all had the same last name, but when you add in the schoolteacher and the faggot, then you got a coincidence.”
“It’s a common name.”
“Is it? How common, Ken?” Freitag leaned forward, stubbed out his cigarette, picked up a Manhattan telephone directory and flipped it open. “Ackerman, Ackerman,” he said, turning pages. “Here we are. Yeah, it’s common. There’s close to two columns of Ackermans in Manhattan alone. And then there’s some that spell it with two n’s. I wonder.”
“You wonder what?”
“If there’s a connection.”
Poolings sat on the edge of Freitag’s desk. “How could there be a connection?”
“Damned if I know.”
“There couldn’t, Jack.”
“An old schoolteacher gets stabbed by a mugger in Washington Heights. A faggot picks up the wrong kind of rough trade and gets tied up and tortured to death. And a TA cop goes berserk and kills his wife and kids and himself. No connection.”
“Except for them all having the same last name.”
“Yeah. And the two of us just happened to notice that because we investigated the one killing and read about the other two.”
“Right.”
“So maybe nobody else even knows that there were three homicides involving Ackermans. Maybe you and me are the only people in the city who happened to notice this little coincidence.”
“So?”
“So maybe there’s something we didn’t notice,” Freitag said. He got to his feet. “Maybe there have been more than three. Maybe if we pull a printout of deaths over the past few weeks we’re going to find Ackermans scattered all over it.”
“Are you serious, Jack?”
“Sounds crazy, don’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s how it sounds, all right.”
“If there’s just the three it don’t prove a thing, right? I mean, it’s a common name and you got lots of people dying violently in New York City. When you have eight million people in a city it’s no big surprise that you average three or four murders a day. The rate’s not even so high compared to other cities. With three or four homicides a day, well, when you got three Ackermans over a couple of weeks, that’s not too crazy all by itself to be pure coincidence, right?”
“Right.”
“Suppose it turns out there’s more than the three.”
“You’ve got a hunch, Jack. Haven’t you?”
Freitag nodded. “That’s what I got, all right. A hunch. Let’s just see if I’m nuts or not. Let’s find out.”
“A fifth of Courvoisier, V.S.O.P.” Mel Ackerman used a stepladder to reach the bottle. “Here we are, sir. Now will there be anything else?”
“All the money in the register,” the man said.
Ackerman’s heart turned over. He saw the gun in the man’s hand and his own hands trembled so violently that he almost dropped the bottle of cognac. “Jesus,” he said. “Could you point that somewhere else? I get very nervous.”
“The money,” the man said.
“Yeah, right. I wish you guys would pick on somebody else once in a while. This makes the fourth time I been held up in the past two years. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, wouldn’t you? Listen, I’m insured, I don’t care about the money, just be careful with the gun, huh? There’s not much money in the register but you’re welcome to every penny I got.” He punched the No Sale key and scooped up bills, emptying all of the compartments. Beneath the removable tray he had several hundred dollars in large bills, but he didn’t intend to call them to the robber’s attention. Sometimes a gunman made you take out the tray and hand over everything. Other times the man would take what you gave him and be anxious to get the hell out. Mel Ackerman didn’t much care either way. Just so he got out of this alive, just so the maniac would take the money and leave without firing his gun.
“Four times in two years,” Ackerman said, talking as he emptied the register, taking note of the holdup man’s physical appearance as he did so. Tall but not too tall, young, probably still in his twenties. White. Good build. No beard, no mustache. Big mirrored sunglasses that hid a lot of his face.
“Here we go,” Ackerman said, handing over the bills. “No muss, no fuss. You want me to lie down behind the counter while you go on your way?”
“What for?”
“Beats me. The last guy that held me up, he told me so I did it. Maybe he got the idea from a television program or something. Don’t forget the brandy.”
“I don’t drink.”
“You just come to liquor stores to rob ’em, huh?” Mel was beginning to relax now. “This is the only way we get your business, is that right?”
“I’ve never held up a liquor store before.”
“So you had to start with me? To what do I owe the honor?”
“Your name.”
“My name?”
“You’re Melvin Ackerman, aren’t you?”
“So?”
“So this is what you get,” the man said, and shot Mel Ackerman three times in the chest.
“It’s crazy,” Freitag said. “What it is is crazy. Twenty-two people named Ackerman died in the past month. Listen to this. Arnold Ackerman, fifty-six years of age, lived in Flushing. Jumped or fell in front of the E train.”
“Or was pushed.”
“Or was pushed,” Freitag agreed. “Wilma Ackerman, sixty-two years old, lived in Flatbush. Heart attack. Mildred Ackerman, thirty-six, East Eighty-seventh Street, fell from an eighteenth-story window. Rudolph Ackerman, that’s the Transit Authority cop, killed his wife and kids and shot himself. Florence Ackerman was stabbed, Samuel Ackerman fell down a flight of stairs, Lucy Ackerman took an overdose of sleeping pills, Walter P. Ackerman was electrocuted when a radio fell in the bathtub with him, Melvin Ackerman’s the one who just got shot in a holdup—” Freitag spread his hands. “It’s unbelievable. And it’s completely crazy.”