Ed McBain
Reruns
Ed McBain has been chronicling the exploits of the cops of the fictional 87th Precinct since 1956. Forty-five novels later, Detectives Carella, Meyer, and the rest of the squad are still going strong, both in a new NBC movie, Heatwave, and in this short story written exclusively for TV Guide.
Reruns by Ed McBain.
The place was a shambles.
Apartment burglaries always leave the victims with a sense of violation, but this one seemed designed to devastate the occupant. His name was David Haskins, and he told the detectives he was an actor.
"Oh?" Meyer said. "Have I seen you in anything?"
"Well, I did an automobile commercial a year or so ago," Haskins said. "In fact, the spot is still running. I'm the guy who walks in the showroom, kicks the tires? Maybe you saw it."
"I must have missed it," Meyer said.
"I still get resids," Haskins said.
"Resids?" Carella said.
"Residuals. You do a commercial, you get paid for every 13-week run. Last check I got was in October. I catch the spot every now and then, but I have no idea when the next check's coming, or for how much it'll be."
The detectives were dressed for the severe weather outside. This was a cold Monday morning in the middle of January, the bleakest month here in the big bad city. They both stood some six feet tall in long, bulky coats, flanking Haskins, dwarfing him. A pale, slender man in his early 30s, he had come home about an hour ago and immediately called the police. A brown overcoat was still draped over the arm of the sofa where he'd tossed it. He was wearing a cream-colored turtleneck sweater and a tweed sports jacket that had seen better days. A long purple muffler was draped over his shoulders, trailing to his waist. He kept staring around the devastated apartment. Carella expected him to burst into tears at any moment.
"I was visiting my sister upstate," Haskins said, "got back this morning to find this."
"How long were you gone?" Meyer asked.
"Just over the weekend. I left Thursday afternoon. We visit each other often. She keeps some clothes here, I keep some there."
"Any idea how he got in?"
"The bedroom window was smashed," Haskins said. "There's a fire escape outside it."
All three men looked around again: glass shards under the bedroom window, dresser drawers emptied on the floor, clothes and belongings strewn everywhere.
"He took anything of value," Haskins said. "Except the TV set."
Carella wondered why he'd left behind something he could have fenced in a minute. The set looked new, one of those 13-inch models, white, with a built-in VCR. Probably had cost Haskins five, six bills new. Burglar could get at least a hundred for it on the street.
"We'll need a list," he said.
"I'll get you the one I gave the insurance company."
"Was everything covered?"
"Except the pain of loss," Haskins said, and sighed dramatically.
No wonder he's unemployed, Carella thought.
None of the neighbors had seen anyone climbing up the fire-escape ladders to Haskins' window. Then again, not many of them had been staring out at the bleak wintry backyard with its stiff empty clotheslines. Five of the neighbors had seen Haskins leaving for his trip upstate, carrying down a big suitcase. None of them could agree on exactly when this was. Two of them said it was on Thursday. One of them said, No, it was Friday. Two others said it was Saturday.
"The reliability of eyewitnesses," Meyer commented dryly.
"Yeah," Carella agreed.
All the neighbors said it was a shame such a nice young man had been robbed.
They meant burglarized.
The insurance company list went out to every pawnshop in the city that Monday afternoon. The first response came on Tuesday morning. The pawnbroker was a man named Herman Ulrich, and his shop was on Third and Castle. Carella and Meyer checked out a squad car and drove out to the Calm's Point section of the city.
The plows had been through. Snow crusted with black soot was banked high on both sides of the road. Meyer was driving. Carella kept banging the car heater with the heel of his gloved hand, trying to get it to quit rattling. They found a parking spot under the elevated train tracks. As they walked to Ulrich's shop, white plumes of vapor feathered from their mouths, whipped away by a fierce wind. They were both red-faced when they entered the shop.
The place was hung with trumpets and trombones, accordions, and snare drums. Glass cases brimmed with rings set with diamonds, rubies, and pearls. A moose's head hung on the wall behind the counter. There were cameras and suitcases, silverware and clocks, dinnerware and skis. Ulrich was as round and as cheery as a potbellied stove. He offered them hot chocolate and then took them to the back of the shop where he showed them one of the items listed from the burglary: a state-of-the-art stereo system with a tuner, a tape deck, a CD player, and two small speakers.
"Man brought it in last Thursday."
"What time?"
"Just before closing. Around six o'clock."
"What'd he look like?"
"Old guy. Listen to me, will you? He was about my age, is that old? Sixty, sixty-five? But he looked old, you know what I mean?"
"Can you describe him?" Carella asked.
He was thinking, the guy takes a stereo system, but he leaves behind a TV set.
"He was bald," Ulrich said. "Well, not entirely bald. There was like a fringe of white hair above his ears and around the back of his head."
"Clean shaven?"
"No. Shaggy white mustache."
"Any visible scars, tattoos, birthmarks?"
"No. He was wearing glasses. Big horn-rimmed glasses. Skinny old man with big eyeglasses. Frail, you know? All stooped over. Wearing a shabby brown overcoat. No gloves."
"Did he give you a name?" Carella asked.
"Oh, yes," Ulrich said.
But it wasn't listed in any of the city's telephone directories.
Carella and Meyer were wondering how a frail, 65-year-old man had managed to climb a fire escape to the fifth floor of a building when a call came in from another pawnshop, this one in Riverhead, half an hour's drive from the station house.
The pawnbroker was a tall, thin, redheaded, freckle-faced man, in his late forties perhaps, wearing a navy blue wool cardigan sweater over a lighter blue sports shirt. A hanging lamp illuminated the countertop behind which he sat, a green eyeshade on his forehead, a jeweler's loupe to his eye. He looked up as the bell over the door sounded and then got off his stool to greet the detectives.
"Young Hispanic guy came in the shop last Friday morning," he said, "carrying..."
"How young?" Meyer asked.
"He looked in his 20s. Had a suitcase full of sterling-silver flatware he said used to belong to his grandmother in Puerto Rico. Service for 12."
This was the Reed & Barton silver Haskins' mother had left to him when she died. In his insurance policy, he'd valued it at $3,000.
"What'd he look like?" Meyer asked.
"Dark complexion, thin black mustache, long sideburns. A heavy Spanish accent."
"What was his name?"
"Juan Gomez."
Of which there were probably only ten thousand in this fair city.
By noon Wednesday, it began to look as if a gang had burglarized Haskins' apartment. A pawnshop downtown in the Quarter reported that a very fat bearded man with a tattoo on his right hand came into his shop on Saturday morning to hock an acoustic guitar Haskins had valued at $500. The man had given a name they could not find in any of the city's directories. That same Wednesday, they visited a pawnshop in Majesta where the owner reported that a busty blond woman in her mid-30s had come in on Saturday afternoon to pawn a sapphire pendant on a platinum chain. Haskins had valued it at $15,000. After much haggling, the pawnbroker gave the blond $3,000 for it.