The Last Dance by Ed McBain Read Free Book Online

Besides, this had not been a case of someone choosing a random victim on the street and then popping him, something that happened all the time. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble here, first drugging the old man and next hanging him. The prize had to be worth the trouble.
    Carella pulled the car into a No Parking zone in front of the bank. He flipped down his visor to show the pink police paper that normally warned off any cop on the beat, and then stepped out of the car and dashed through the rain toward the front of the bank, Meyer pounding along behind him.
    Their court order opened the dead man’s safe deposit box, andsure enough, they found an insurance policy for $25,000, with Andrew Hale’s daughter and son-in-law listed as sole beneficiaries. The policy did, in fact, contain a suicide exclusion clause:
    Section 1.5 Suicide If the insured dies by suicide within one year from the Date of Issue, the amount payable by the Company will be limited to the premiums paid.
    But the policy had been issued almost ten years ago.
    Thursday night was the night in question.
    According to what Cynthia Keating had told them, she’d spoken to her father at nine that night, and had found him hanging dead at nine-thirty or so the next morning. A check with the telephone company confirmed that she had indeed called his number at 9:07 the night before, and had spent two minutes on the phone with him. This did not preclude her later taking the subway across the river and into the trees, going up to his apartment, dropping a few pills in his wine or his beer or his bottled water, and then hanging him over a hook.
    But
—
    Cynthia maintained that after having telephoned her father, she had gone to meet her girlfriend Josie at the movie theater a block from her apartment and together they had seen a movie that started around 9:15 and ended around 11:45, after which she and her friend Josie had gone for tea and scones at a little snack bar called Westmore’s. She had returned home at around twelve-thirty, and had not left the apartment again until the next morning at around twenty to nine, at which time she had taken the subway across the river, and walked to her father’s apartment, only to find Dad, poor Dad, hanging in the closet, and I’m feeling so bad. Themovie she’d seen was part of a Kurosawa retrospective. It was titled
High and Low,
and it was based on a novel by an American who wrote cheap mysteries. A call to the theater confirmed the title of the film and the start and finish times. A call to her girlfriend Josie Gallitano confirmed that she had accompanied Cynthia to the movie and had later enjoyed a cup of tea and a chocolate-covered scone with her. Cynthia’s husband, as was to be expected, confirmed that he had found her asleep in bed when he got home from a poker game at around one o’clock. She had not left the apartment again that night.
    There had been six other men in that poker game. Keating claimed that the game had started at eight o’clock and ended at around a quarter past midnight. The six other men confirmed that he had been there during the times he’d stated. His wife, as was to be expected, confirmed that he’d come home at around one A.M. , and had not left the apartment again that night.
    It appeared to the detectives that their two prime suspects had airtight alibis and that whoever had dropped Rohypnol into Andrew Hale’s drink and draped him over a closet hook was still out there boogying someplace.
    At Hale’s funeral on Sunday morning, they listened to a minister who had never met the man telling his sole remaining relatives what a fine and upstanding human being he’d been. Cynthia Keating and her husband Robert listened dry-eyed. It was still raining when the first shovelful of earth was dumped onto Hale’s simple wooden casket.
    It was as if he had never existed.
    From home that Sunday night, Carella called Danny