'Til Death (87th Precinct) - By Ed McBain
This is for Margie and Fred
The city in these pages is imaginary.
The people, the places are all fictitious.
Only the police routine is based on established
investigatory technique.
Detective Steve Carella blinked at the early Sunday morning sunshine, cursed himself for not having closed the blinds the night before, and then rolled over onto his left side. Relentlessly, the sunlight followed him, throwing alternating bars of black and gold across the white sheet. Like the detention cells at the 87th, he thought. God, my bed has become a prison.
No, that isn’t fair, he thought. And besides, it’ll all be over soon—but Teddy, I wish to hell you’d hurry.
He propped himself on one elbow and looked at his sleeping wife. Teddy, he thought. Theodora. Whom I used to call my little Theodora. How you have changed, my love. He studied her face, framed with short black hair recklessly cushioned against the stark white pillow. Her eyes were closed, thick-fringed with long black lashes. There was a faint smile on the full pout of her lips. Her throat swept in an immaculate arc to breasts covered by the sheet—and then the mountain began.
Really, darling, he thought, you do look like a mountain.
It is amazing how much you resemble a mountain. A very beautiful mountain, to be sure, but a mountain nonetheless. I wish I were a mountain climber. I wish, honey, oh how I wish I could get near you! How long has it been now? Cut it out, Steve-o, he told himself. Just cut it out because this sort of erotic rambling doesn’t do anyone a damn bit of good, least of all me.
Steve Carella, the celebrated celibate.
Well, he thought, the baby is due at the end of the month, by God, that’s next week! Is it the end of June already? Sure it is, my how the time flies when you’ve got nothing to do in bed but sleep. I wonder if it’ll be a boy. Well, a girl would be nice, too, but oh would Papa raise a stink, he’d probably consider it a blot on Italy’s honor if his only son Steve had a girl child first time out.
What were those names we discussed?
Mark if it’s a boy and April if it’s a girl. And Papa will raise a stink about the names, too, because he’s probably got something like Rudolpho or Serafina in mind. Stefano Luigi Carella, that’s me, and thank you, Pop.
Today is the wedding, he thought suddenly, and that makes me the most inconsiderate big brother in the world because all I can think of is my own libido when my kid sister is about to take the plunge. Well, if I know Angela, the prime concern on her mind today is probably her libido, so we’re even.
The telephone rang.
It startled him for a moment, and he turned sharply toward Teddy, forgetting, thinking the sudden ringing would awaken her, and then remembering that his wife was a deaf-mute, immune to little civilized annoyances like the telephone.
“I’m coming,” he said to the persistent clamor. He swung his long legs over the side of the bed. He was a tall man with wide shoulders and narrow hips, his pajama trousers taut over a flat hard abdomen. Bare-chested and barefoot, he walked to the phone in nonchalant athletic ease, lifted the receiver, and hoped the call was not from the precinct. His mother would have a fit if he missed the wedding.
“Hello?” he said.
“Steve?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Tommy. Did I wake you?”
“No, no, I was awake.” He paused. “How’s the imminent bridegroom this morning?”
“I…Steve, I’m worried about something.”
“Uh-oh,” Carella said. “You’re not planning on leaving my sister waiting at the altar, are you?”
“No, nothing like that. Steve, could you come over here?”
“Before we go to the church, you mean?”
“No. No, I mean now.”
“Now?” Carella paused. A frown crossed his face. In his years with the police department, he had heard many anxious voices on the telephone. He had attributed the tone of Tommy’s voice to the normal pre-conjugal jitters at first, but he sensed now that this was something more. “What is this?” he asked. “What’s the matter?”
“I…I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Can you come over?”
“I’ll be right there,” he said. “As soon as I dress.”
“Thank you, Steve,” Tommy said, and he hung up.
Carella cradled the phone. He stared at it thoughtfully for a moment and then went into the bathroom to wash. When he came back into the bedroom, he tilted the blinds shut so that the sunshine would not disturb his sleeping wife. He dressed and wrote a note for her and then—just before he left—he caressed her breast with longing tenderness, sighed, and propped the note up against his pillow. She was still sleeping when he went out of the apartment.
Tommy Giordano lived alone in a private house in the suburb of Riverhead, not three miles from Carella’s home. He was a Korean War veteran who’d had a macabre switch pulled on him while he was overseas. At a time when every American parent with a soldier son was worrying about mud and bullets, and every soldier son was worrying about Mongolian cavalry charges accompanied by the pounding of drums and the bleating of bugles—at a time like that, it was unthinkable to suppose that everyday living in the United States held its own nightmarish dangers. Tommy came to the realization with shocking suddenness.
His captain called him into the muddy command tent on a bleak rainy day. As gently as he knew how, he informed Tommy that both his parents had been killed in an automobile accident the day before, and that he was being flown home for the funeral. Tommy was an only child. He went home to watch them lower two people he had loved into the receptive earth, and then the Army flew him back to Korea again. He was despondent and uncommunicative throughout the remainder of the war. When he was finally discharged, he went back to the house he’d inherited from his parents. His only friend was a boy he’d known for years—until he met Angela Carella.
And one night, in Angela’s arms, he cried bitterly, releasing the tears to which he could not succumb while wearing the uniform of a soldier. And then he was all right. And now he was Tommy Giordano, a pleasant-faced kid of twenty-seven with a disarming grin and an easygoing manner.
He opened the door the moment Carella rang as if he’d been waiting behind it, listening for the bell.
“Gee, Steve,” he said, “I’m glad you came. Come on in. You want a drink or something?”
“At nine o’clock in the morning?” Carella asked.
“Is it that early? Gee, I must have got you out of bed. I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t mean to trouble you. A hell of a brother-in-law I’m going to make.”
“Why’d you call, Tommy?”
“Sit down, Steve. You want some coffee? Have you had breakfast?”
“I can use a cup of coffee.”
“Good. I’ll make some toast, too. Look, I’m sorry as hell I woke you. I’ve been tossing and turning all night long myself. I guess I didn’t realize how early it was. Man, this getting married is murder. I swear to God, I’d rather face a mortar attack.”
“But this isn’t why you called me.”
“No. No, it’s something else. I’m a little worried, to tell the truth, Steve. Not for myself, but for Angela. I mean, I just can’t make it out.”
“Make what out?”
“Well, like I said…Listen, can you come in the kitchen? So I can make the coffee and toast? Would that be okay with you?”
“Sure.”
They went into the kitchen. Carella sat at the table and lighted a cigarette. Tommy began measuring coffee into the percolator.
“I couldn’t sleep all night,” Tommy said. “I kept thinking of the honeymoon. When we’re alone. What the hell do I do, Steve? I mean, I know she’s your sister and all, but what do I do? How do I start? I love that girl. I don’t want to hurt her or anything!”
“You won’t. Just relax, Tommy. Just remember that you love her, and that you married her, and that you’re going to be together for the rest of your lives.”
“Gee, I’ll tell you the truth, Steve, even that scares me.”
“Don’t let it.” He paused. “Adam and Eve didn’t have an instruction booklet, Tommy. And they made out all right.”
“Yeah, well I hope so. I sure hope so. I just wish I knew what the hell to say to her.” A pained look crossed his face, and Carella was momentarily amused.
“Maybe you won’t have to say anything,” Carella said. “Maybe she’ll get the idea.”
“Boy, I hope so.” Tommy put the coffeepot on the stove and then slid two slices of bread into the toaster. “But I didn’t call you so you could hold my hand. There’s something else.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I told you I couldn’t sleep all night. So I guess I got up kind of early, and I went to take in the milk. They leave it right outside the door. When I first got out of the Army, I used to go down to the grocery store each morning. But now I have it delivered. It’s a little more expensive, but…”
“Go ahead, Tommy.”
“Yeah, well I was taking in the milk when I saw this little box resting on the floor, just outside the door.”
“What kind of a box?”
“A little tiny box. Like the boxes rings come in, you know? So I picked it up and looked at it and there was a note on it.”
“What did the note say?” Carella asked.
“Well, I’ll show it to you in a few minutes. I took in the milk, and I carried the box into the bedroom. It was very nicely wrapped, Steve, fancy paper and a big bow and the note sticking up out of the bow. I couldn’t figure out who’d left it. I thought it was probably a gag. One of the fellows. You know.”
“Did you open it?”
“Yes.”
“What was in it?”
“I’ll let you see for yourself, Steve.”
He walked out of the kitchen and through the apartment. Carella heard a drawer opening and then closing in the bedroom. Tommy came back into the kitchen. “Here’s the note,” he said.
Carella studied the handwritten message on the small rectangle:
“And the box?” he said.
“Here,” Tommy said. He extended the small box to Carella. Carella put it on the kitchen table and lifted the lid. Then, quickly, he snapped the lid into place again.
Crouched in one corner of the box was a black widow spider.
Carella shoved the box away from him instantly. A look of utter horror had crossed his face, and it lingered still in his eyes and around the corners of his mouth.
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “That’s just the way I felt.”
“You could have told me what was in the box,” Carella said, beginning to think his future brother-in-law was something of a sadist. He had never liked spiders. During the war, stationed on a Pacific island, he had fought as bitterly against crawling jungle arachnids as he had against the Japanese. “You think this is a gag somebody played?” he asked incredulously.
“I did before I opened the box. Now I don’t know. You’d have to have a pretty queer sense of humor to give somebody a black widow spider. Or any kind of a spider, for Christ’s sake!”
“Is that coffee ready?”
“Just about.”
“I’m really going to need a cup. Spiders have two effects on me. My mouth dries up, and I get itchy all over.”
“I just get itchy,” Tommy said. “When I was in basic training in Texas, we had to shake our shoes out every morning before we put them on. To make sure no tarantulas had crawled into them during the—”
“Please!” Carella said.
“Yeah, it gives you the creeps, don’t it?”
“Do any of your friends have…odd senses of humor?” He swallowed hard. There seemed to be no saliva in his mouth.
“Well, I know some crazy people,” Tommy said, “but this is a little far out, don’t you think? I mean, this is slightly offbeat.”
“Slightly,” Carella said. “How’s the coffee?”
“In a minute.”
“Of course it may be a gag, who knows?” Carella said. “A sort of a wedding joke. After all, the spider is a classic symbol.”
“Of what?”
“Of the vagina,” Carella said.
Tommy blushed. A bright crimson smear started at his throat and quickly worked its way onto his face. If Carella had not seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it. He quickly changed the topic.
“Or maybe it’s just a feeble pun on marriage in general. You know. The female black widow is supposed to devour her mate.”
Again Tommy blushed, and Carella realized there was no safe ground with a prospective bridegroom. Besides, he felt itchy. And his throat was dry. And no future brother-in-law had the goddamn right to spring a spider on a man so early in the morning— especially on Sunday morning.
“And of course,” Carella went on, “there are more ominous overtones—if we’re looking for them.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said. He glanced at the stove. “Coffee’s ready.” He carried the pot to the table and began pouring. “A gag is a gag, but suppose I’d reached into that box and got bit? The black widow is poisonous.”
“Suppose I’d reached into it?” Carella asked.
“I wouldn’t have let you, don’t worry. But there was no one here when I opened it. I could’ve got bit.”
“I doubt if it would have killed you.”
“No, but it could have made me pretty sick.”
“Maybe somebody wants you to miss your own wedding,” Carella said.
“I thought of that. I also thought of something else.”
“What?”
“Why send a black widow? A widow, do you follow me? It’s almost as if…well…maybe it’s a hint that Angela’s gonna be a bride and a widow on the same day.”
“You’re talking like a man with a lot of enemies, Tommy.”
“No. But I thought it might be a hint.”
“A warning, you mean.”
“Yes. And I’ve been wracking my brain ever since I opened that box, trying to think of anybody who’d…who’d want me dead.”
“And who’d you come up with?”
“Only one guy. And he’s three thousand miles away from here.”
“Who?”
“A guy I knew in the Army. He said I was responsible for his buddy getting shot. I wasn’t, Steve. We were on patrol together when a sniper opened up. I ducked the minute I heard the shot, and this other guy got hit. So his buddy claimed I was responsible. Said I should have yelled there was a sniper. How the hell was I supposed to yell it? I didn’t even know it until I heard the shot— and then it was too late.”
“Was the man killed?”
Tommy hesitated. “Yeah,” he said at last.
“And his buddy threatened you?”
“He said he was gonna kill me one day.”
“What happened after that?”
“He got shipped back home. Frostbite or something. I don’t know. He lives in California.”
“Have you ever heard from him since?”
“No.”
“Was he the kind of a person who’d do a thing like this? Send a spider?”
“I didn’t know him very well. From what I did know, he seemed like the kind of guy who ate spiders for breakfast.”
Carella almost choked on his coffee. He put down his cup and said, “Tommy, I’m going to give you some advice. Angela is a very sensitive girl. I guess it runs in the Carella family. Unless you want to wind up getting a divorce real soon, I wouldn’t discuss hairy or crawly or…”
“I’m sorry, Steve,” Tommy said.
“Okay. What was this guy’s name? The one who threatened you?”
“Sokolin. Marty Sokolin.”
“Have any pictures of him?”
“No. What would I be doing with his picture?”
“Were you in the same company?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have one of these company group pictures where everybody’s grinning and wishing he was out of the Army?”
“No.”
“Can you describe him?”
“He was a very big, beefy guy with a broken nose. He looked like a wrestler. Black hair, very dark eyes. A small scar near his right eye. He was always smoking cigars.”
“Think he had a police record?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, we’ll check on it.” Carella was pensive for a moment. “It doesn’t seem like, though, that he’s the guy. I mean, what the hell, how would he know you were getting married today?” He shrugged. “Hell, this may just be a gag, anyway. Somebody with a warped sense of humor.”
“Maybe,” Tommy said, but he didn’t seem convinced.
“Where’s your phone?” Carella asked.
“In the bedroom.”
Carella started out of the kitchen. He paused. “Tommy, would you mind a few extra guests at your wedding?” he asked.
“No. Why?”
“Well, if this isn’t a gag—and it probably is—but if it isn’t, we don’t want anything happening to the groom, do we?” He grinned. “And the nice thing about having a cop for a brother-in-law is that he can get bodyguards whenever he needs them. Even on a Sunday.”