'Til Death (87th Precinct) - By Ed McBain Page 0,3
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.”
There is no such day as Sunday in the police department. Sunday is exactly the same as Monday and Tuesday and all those other days. If you happen to have the duty on Sunday, that’s it. You don’t go to the commissioner or the chaplain or the mayor. You go to the squadroom. If Christmas happens to fall on one of your duty days, that’s extremely unfortunate, too, unless you can arrange a switch with a cop who isn’t celebrating Christmas. Life is just one merry round in the police department.
On Sunday morning, June 22, Detective/2nd Grade Meyer Meyer was catching in the squadroom of the 87th Precinct. It was not a bad day to be in charge of the six-man detective team that had begun its shift at 8:00 A.M. and that would work through until 6:00 P.M. that evening. There was a mild breeze on the air, and the sky was a cloudless blue, and sunlight was pouring through the meshed grill screening over the squadroom’s windows. The squadroom, shoddy with time and use, was quite comfortable on a day such as this. There were days when the city’s temperature soared into the nineties, and on those days the squadroom of the 87th Precinct resembled nothing so much as a big iron coffin.