The Empty Hours by Ed McBain Read Free Book Online Page A

none of the tenants were guilty of homicide. As far
as he was concerned, they were all clean.
     
    Meyer
Meyer attacked the 87th’s stool pigeons. There were money-changers galore in
the precinct and the city, men who turned hot loot into cold cash — for a
price. If someone had cashed a $25,000 check for Claudia and kept $5,000 of it
during the process, couldn’t that person conceivably be one of the moneychangers?
He put the precinct stoolies on the ear, asked them to sound around the word of
a Security Insurance Corporation check. The stoolies came up with nothing.
     
    Detective
Lieutenant Sam Grossman took his laboratory boys to the murder room and went
over it again. And again. And again. He reported that the lock on the door was
a snap lock, the kind that clicks shut automatically when the door is slammed.
Whoever killed Claudia Davis could have done so without performing any
locked-room gymnastics. All he had to do was close the door behind him when he
left. Grossman also reported that Claudia’s bed had apparently not been slept
in on the night of the murder. A pair of shoes had been found at the foot of a
large easy chair in the bedroom and a novel was wedged open on the arm of the
chair. He suggested that Claudia had fallen asleep while readings had awakened,
and gone into the other room where she had met her murderer and her death. He
had no suggestions as to just who that murderer might have been.
     
    Steve
Carella was hot and impatient and overloaded. There were other things happening
in the precinct, things like burglaries and muggings and knifings and assaults
and kids with summertime on their hands hitting other kids with ball bats
because they didn’t like the way they pronounced the word “señor.” There
were telephones jangling., and reports to be typed in triplicate, and people
filing into the squadroom day and night with complaints against the citizenry
of that fair city, and the Claudia Davis case was beginning to be a big fat
pain in the keester. Carella wondered what it was like to be a shoemaker. And
while he was wondering, he began to chase down the checks made out to George
Badueck, David Oblinsky, and Martha Feldelson.
     
    Happily,
Bert Kling had nothing whatsoever to do with the Claudia Davis case. He hadn’t
even discussed it with any of the men on the squad. He was a young detective
and a new detective, and the things that happened in that precinct were enough
to drive a guy nuts and keep him busy forty-eight hours every day, so he didn’t
go around sticking his nose into other people’s cases. He had enough troubles
of his own. One of those troubles was the line-up.
     
    On
Wednesday morning Bert Kling’s name appeared on the line-up duty chart.
     
    * * * *

 
     
    10
     
     
    The line-up was held in the gym
downtown at Headquarters on High Street. It was held four days a week, Monday
to Thursday, and the purpose of the parade was to acquaint the city’s
detectives with the people who were committing crime, the premise being that
crime is a repetitive profession and that a crook will always be a crook, and
it’s good to know who your adversaries are should you happen to come face to
face with them on the street. Timely recognition of a thief had helped crack
many a case and had, on some occasions, even saved a detective’s life. So the
line-up was a pretty valuable in-group custom. This didn’t mean that
detectives enjoyed the trip downtown. They drew line-up perhaps once every two
weeks and, often as not, line-up duty fell on their day off, and nobody
appreciated rubbing elbows with criminals on his day off.
     
    The
line-up that Wednesday morning followed the classic pattern of all line-ups.
The detectives sat in the gymnasium on folding chairs, and the chief of
detectives sat behind a high podium at the back of the gym. The green shades
were drawn, and the stage illuminated, and the offenders who’d been arrested
the day before were marched before the assembled bulls