“You’re sure about this?”
“Oh yes, sure. The boss didn’t know nothing about it, you know. Mr. Godrow. He don’t go for that junk. They always had their coffee before he come in in the morning.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Did Freddie come down for the coffee this morning?”
“Sure, every morning.”
We left the luncheonette and went upstairs. Freddie was working the addressing machine when we came in. The machine made a hell of a clatter as the metal address plates fed through it. We said hello to Mr. Godrow and then walked right to the machine. Freddie fed postcards and stepped on the foot lever and the address plates banged onto the cards and then dropped into the tray below.
“We’ve got an idea, Freddie,” I said.
He didn’t look up. He kept feeding postcards into the machine. The cards read MAINE LIVE LOBSTERS AT FANTASTIC PRICES!
“We figure a guy who kept asking Mary Chang out, Freddie. A guy who constantly got refused.”
Freddie said nothing.
“You ever ask her out, Freddie?”
“Yes,” he said under the roar of the machine.
“We figure she drove the guy nuts, sitting there in her tight dresses, drinking coffee with him, being friendly, but never anything more, never what he wanted. We figured he got sore at all the Chinese boys who could date her just because they were Chinese. We figure he decided to do something about it. Want to hear more, Freddie?”
“What is this?” Godrow asked. “This is a place of business, you know. Those cards have to...”
“You went down for your customary coffee this morning, Freddie.”
“Coffee?” Godrow asked. “What coffee? Have you been...”
“Only this time you dumped strychnine into Mary Chang’s. She took her coffee very sweet, and that probably helped to hide the bitter taste. Or maybe you made some comment about the coffee being very bitter this morning, anything to hide the fact that you were poisoning her.”
“No...” Freddie said.
“She drank her coffee and ate her English muffin, and then — the way you did every morning — you gathered up the cups and the napkins and the crumbs and whatever, and you rushed out with them before Mr. Godrow arrived. Only this time, you were disposing of evidence. Where’d you take them? The garbage cans on Columbus Avenue? Do they collect the garbage early, Freddie?”
“I... I...”
“You knew the symptoms. You watched, and when you thought the time was ripe, you couldn’t resist boasting about what you’d done. Mary was making a call. You also knew how these calls worked because you made them yourself. There was usually a pause in the conversation while someone checked with the chef. You waited for that pause, and then you asked Mary if she knew why she was feeling so ill. You asked her because you weren’t making a call, Freddie, you were plugged in on her extension, listening to her conversation. She recognized your voice, and so she answered you in English. You told her then, and she jumped up, but it was too late, the convulsion came. Am I right, Freddie?”
Freddie nodded.
“You’d better come with us,” I said.
“I... I still have to stamp the quotations on these,” Freddie said.
“Mr. Godrow will get along without you, Freddie,” I said. “He’ll get himself a new boy.”
“I... I’m sorry,” Freddie said.
“This is terrible,” Godrow said.
“Think how Mary Chang must have felt,” I told him, and we left.
The Big Day
A continuing character in the 87th Precinct novels is a villain known as the Deaf Man, Carella’s nemesis, even as Moriarty was Sherlock Holmes’s. Whenever the Deaf Man is on the scene, the cops of the 87th behave like Keystone Kops. He made his first appearance in 1960, in a novel titled The Heckler. Since then, there have been five other novels in which the Deaf Man has wreaked havoc in the old Eight-Seven, the most recent of which was Hark! Traditionally, the Deaf Man will concoct a brilliant caper that is foiled not by any clever deduction on the part of the Eight-Seven’s stalwarts, but instead by pure chance or misfortune.
But think about this:
Five years before the Deaf Man made his first appearance, I wrote the following story about some guys planning to rob a bank. It appeared under the Richard Marsten byline, in the September 1955 issue of Manhunt.
“Friday is our big day,” the girl said.
She drained the remains of her Manhattan, and then fished for the cherry at the bottom of the glass. Anson Grubb watched her, no sign of interest on his face.
The girl popped the cherry into her mouth and then touched her fingers lightly to the napkin in her lap. The gesture was a completely feminine one, turned gross and somehow ugly by the girl herself. She was a big girl, her hair inexpertly tinted blonde, her lipstick badly applied. Anson had never liked cheap merchandise, and he winced inwardly as the girl munched on the cherry, her mouth working like a garbage disposal unit.
“The first and the fifteenth,” the girl said around the shredded remnants of the cherry, “and Friday is the fifteenth.”
“Payday, huh?” Anson asked, sipping at his scotch, apparently bored with all this shoptalk, but with his ears keyed to every syllable that came from her mouth.
“The steel mill and the airplane factory both,” she said, nodding. “Can’t we have another round, Anse?”
“Sure,” Anson said. He signaled the waiter and then added, “Well, it’s only twice a month, so that isn’t too bad.”
“That twice a month is enough to break our backs, Anse,” the girl said, impatiently looking over her shoulder for the waiter. “On those paydays, we must handle close to $500,000, cashing checks for the plants.”
“That right?” Anson said.
“Sure. You’d never think our little bank handled so much money, would you?” The girl gave a pleased little wiggle. “We don’t, usually, except on the first and the fifteenth.”
“That’s when the plants send over their payrolls, huh?” Anson asked. The waiter appeared at his elbow. “Two of the same, please,” he said. The waiter nodded and silently vanished.
“This is a nice place,” the girl said.
“I figured you needed a little relaxation,” Anson said. “Enjoy yourself before the mad rush on Friday, you know...”
“God, when I think of it,” the girl said. “It’s enough to drive you nuts.”
“I can imagine,” Anson said. “First those payrolls arriving early in the morning, and then the employees coming to cash their checks later in the day. That must be very trying.”
“Well, the payrolls don’t come on Friday,” the girl said. The waiter reappeared, depositing their drinks on the table. The girl lifted her Manhattan, said, “Here’s how,” and drank.
“Oh, they don’t come on Friday?” Anson said.
“No, they’ll reach us Thursday afternoon.”
“Well, that’s sensible, at least,” Anson said. He paused and lifted his drink. “Probably after you close those big bronze doors to the public, huh?”
“No, we don’t close until three. The payrolls get there at about two.”
“Oh, that’s good. Then the payrolls are safe in the vault before three.”
“Oh, sure. We’ve got a good vault.”
“I’ll bet you do. Do you want to dance, honey?”
“I’d love to,” the girl said. She shoved her chair back with all the grace of a bus laboring uphill. She went into Anson’s arms, and he maneuvered her onto the floor skillfully, feeling the roll of fat under his fingers, his mouth curled into a distasteful smile over her shoulder.