'Til Death (87th Precinct) - By Ed McBain Page 0,8

a photostated copy of the file rested on Meyer’s desk, and he leafed through it leisurely.

Marty Sokolin was not a big-time thief. He wasn’t even, by any police standards, a small-time thief. He was a man who’d got into trouble once. His record happened to be in the IB’s files because he’d got into trouble in this city while on vacation from California.

It was perhaps significant that Marty Sokolin had not been discharged from the Army because of frostbite as Tommy Giordano had supposed. True enough, he had been medically discharged. But he’d been released to a mental hospital in Pasadena, California, as a neurasthenic patient.

Meyer Meyer knew nothing of Tommy’s frostbite supposition. He knew, however, that neurasthenia was the modern psychiatric term for what, during World War I, had been called plain and simple “shell shock.” A psychiatrist probably would have defined it as nervous debility or exhaustion, as from overwork or prolonged mental strain. Meyer simply called it “shell shock” and noted that Sokolin had been released from the hospital as fit to enter society in the summer of 1956.

He did not have his brush with the law until almost two years later in March of 1958. He’d been working, at the time, as a salesman for a paint company in San Francisco. He’d come East for a sales convention and had begun drinking with a stranger in a midtown bar. At some point during the evening, the conversation had swung around to the Korean War. The stranger had admitted that he’d been 4-F and rather glad of it. Because of his disability, a slight heart murmur, he’d been able to make fantastic advances in his company while men of his own age were away fighting.

Sokolin had at first reacted to the man’s confession with slightly drunken solemnity bordering on the maudlin. One of his best friends, he informed the stranger, had been killed in Korea because another soldier had failed to do his duty. The stranger sympathized, but his sympathy must have sounded hollow and insincere to Sokolin. Before the stranger fully realized what was happening, Sokolin was hurling curses at him for being a deserter and a shirker and another son of a bitch who didn’t do his duty when he saw it. The stranger tried to get away, but Sokolin’s ire mounted irrationally until finally he smashed a beer mug on the edge of the bar and came at the stranger with the broken shard clutched in his fist.

He did not kill the surprised 4-Fer, but he did manage to cut him badly. And perhaps the attack would have been considered second-degree assault had not Sokolin accompanied it with eight words spoken clearly and distinctly in the presence of the halfdozen witnesses lining the bar.

Those words were: “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!”

And so the assault had leaped into the rarefied atmosphere bounded by the words “with an intent to kill a human being,” and the indictment read first-degree, and the maximum penalty for violation of Section 240 of the Penal Law was ten years in prison as opposed to the maximum five years for the second-degree crime.

Sokolin had come off pretty well. He was a war veteran, and this was a first offense. It was, nonetheless, first-degree assault and the judge could not let him off with a fine and a fatherly pat on the head. He was found guilty and sentenced to two years in Castleview Prison upstate. He’d been an ideal prisoner. He’d applied for a parole after serving a year of his term, and the parole had been granted as soon as a firm job offer was presented to the board. He had been released from Castleview two months ago— on April 3.

Meyer Meyer pulled the phone to him and dialed Carella’s home number. Carella answered the phone on the third ring.

“I’ve got that stuff you wanted on Sokolin,” Meyer said. “Did that patrolman show up for the note yet?”

“About a half-hour ago,” Carella said.

“Well, he’s not back here yet. You’re leaving about noon, huh?”

“About one o’clock, actually.”

“Where can I reach you if the lab comes up with something?”

“The wedding’s at three at the Church of the Sacred Heart at the intersection of Gage and Ash in Riverhead. The reception starts at five at my mother’s house. It’s gonna be an outdoor thing.”

“What’s the address there?”

“831 Charles Avenue.”

“Okay. You want this stuff on Sokolin?”

“Give it to me.”

Meyer gave it to him.

When he’d finished talking, Carella said, “So he’s on