“Killed?” said Timmy. “In a car?”
“He was murdered,” Hazel said in a shaking voice. “Gawill, it must have been. Gawill or one of his friends. That slimy bastard!” She banged her fist down on the arm of her chair.
Carter brought her a straight scotch.
She took the glass mechanically, but did not drink it. “They said just a couple of hours ago. He had a dinner date with the Laffertys, and they came to pick him up. They got into the house, and a neighbor said he’d heard a strange noise around six like a man falling. So Mr. Lafferty got the super to open the door and they found him.” Her voice grew tight with tears.
“How was he killed?” Carter asked.
“He was hit over the head with something. They think one of the Greek marble things,” Hazel said.
Carter cleared his throat. He was standing between Hazel and the kitchen. “Do they want you to go there?”
“No. They said they might talk to me tomorrow. The Laffertys told them to call me up. They’re calling all his friends, I suppose, but a lot of good that’ll do when they ought to be calling Gawill.” She reached for the telephone and started dialing a number.
“The police are at Sullivan’s?” Carter asked. For the first time, he thought of fingerprints. On the marble thing. Certainly on the doorknob.
Hazel didn’t answer him. “Hello, this is Mrs. Carter. I wanted to tell you—I happen to know David had an enemy. Gregory Gawill. He lives in Queens. I don’t know the address. Just a minute. Phil—what’s Gawill’s address?”
Carter had to think a second, but he knew it. “Seventeen eighty-eight One hundred and forty-seventh Street, Jackson Heights.”
“Seventeen eighty-eight One hundred and forty-seventh Street, Jackson Heights,” Hazel repeated carefully into the telephone.
Siccing them on to Gawill was siccing them right on to himself, Carter knew. The man coming down the stairs must have had a look at him. But Carter realized he wouldn’t be able to identify the man, if he had to. He hadn’t had that much of a look. He had been a little late getting home today. How was he going to explain that, 6:10 or so instead of 6? Anyway, he was going to stick to his story that he’d never been to Sullivan’s apartment, unless the fingerprints made that impossible.
“It’s very complicated,” Hazel was saying into the telephone. “David always knew he was crooked, and Gawill disliked him.” She broke off, listening. “All right . . . You’re very welcome. Can I call you again later tonight? Will somebody be there? . . . Oh . . . All right. You’re welcome. Good-bye.” She hung up. “They’re going directly over to Gawill’s. Not telephoning him.”
“When did it happen?”
“They think between five and seven. I said David usually wasn’t home until after five thirty. It sounds as if someone followed him into his house. I don’t think it’d be Gawill himself—would it?” She looked earnestly at Carter as if he would have the answer.
And she looked ravaged with grief already, Carter thought, in spite of her rather logical words. She wouldn’t have the same expression on her face if something had happened to him, something fatal. Carter shook his head quickly. “I don’t know. I suppose it could have been Gawill.” Fingerprints can settle that, he started to say.
Timmy stood dazedly staring at Hazel, his mouth slightly open. Like a child whose father has just been killed, Carter thought.
“You don’t seem at all shocked,” Hazel said to Carter.
“Shocked!” Carter opened his arms. “What am I supposed to do? Of course I’m shocked.— Are they going to call you again tonight?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She looked at her wristwatch. “I’ll call the Laffertys later tonight. I—” She got up slowly, one hand at her throat.
“Haze? Feeling faint?” Carter moved closer to her.
“No. Sickish. I think I’ll lie down. But if the telephone rings—”
Carter nodded. “How about some of that drink? It won’t hurt you.”
“No, thanks.” She went into the bathroom.
The telephone was going to ring again tonight, Carter felt sure. Carter started to put his hand on Timmy’s shoulder. Timmy was kneeling by the armchair now, staring at the empty place where Hazel had been. “Timmy, maybe you should think about going to bed, too.”
Timmy’s answer was a great snuffle, then a groan of tears. He put his head down on the seat of the chair. Then suddenly he stood up. “Turn on the radio! Maybe they’ll tell who did it. The TV!”
Carter turned on the television. But he knew nothing about it was going to be on the 10 o’clock news.
22
Carter answered the telephone when it rang at half past 10.
“Detective Ostreicher here. Is this Mr. Carter?”
“Yes.”
“We’d like to talk to you and your wife for a few minutes tonight, if that’s convenient?” said the pleasant, crisp voice.
“Yes, of course.”
“We’ll be over in ten minutes.”
Hazel was standing in the doorway in her nightdress.
“The police. They’re coming over to talk to us,” Carter said.
“Did they say anything else?”
“No.”
She went back into the bedroom. Her light had not been off.
Carter emptied an ashtray and straightened some newspapers on the sofa.
The police arrived in less than ten minutes. Detective Ost-reicher was a husky, blue-eyed young man who looked still in his twenties. With him was a dark-haired police officer, also rather young. Hazel came into the living room in her dark blue robe, and sat on the sofa. The two men sat down, after they had removed their overcoats, and each pulled out a tablet and ballpoint pen.
They asked first for Carter’s name, age, occupation, and place of work, then Hazel’s.
“Where were you today between five and seven o’clock, Mr. Carter?” Ostreicher asked calmly, his pen poised. “These are routine questions we’re asking all Mr. Sullivan’s friends.”
“I was at the office, then I came home,” Carter said. “I got home around six.”
“Can you tell us your exact movements? Your office is on Second and Forty-seventh, you said.”
“Yes. I took the Second Avenue bus down.”
“What time was that?”
“About—five thirty, I think.” It had been a couple of minutes earlier, Carter realized. “The bus was crowded. I had to wait a few minutes for it. Then I got off before my stop—at Thirty-fourth Street—and walked home. Bought a newspaper—”
“Why did you get off there?”
“The bus was crowded. I thought I’d walk the six blocks.”
“You were home when he got home, Mrs. Carter?”
“Yes.”
“Does that tally? He got home around six?”
Hazel nodded slowly. “Yes.”
She could have said it was 6:10, Carter thought, if she had noticed, but maybe she hadn’t noticed.
“When did you last see Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Carter?”
Carter turned automatically to Hazel. “Wasn’t it when he last came to dinner?”
“Yes. About ten days ago,” Hazel said.
Hazel had seen him since, and they were going to spring that business in another second, Carter thought. He rubbed his palms nervously and slowly together between his knees, his pinkish thumbs up. He sat on a straight chair.
“And you, Mrs. Carter?”
“I saw him—Tuesday.”
“Tuesday evening?” asked Ostreicher.
“Yes.”
“Uh—you were in the habit of seeing Mr. Sullivan when your husband was not present, Mrs. Carter?”
Hazel rolled her head against the back of the armchair. “I’m sure I know what Gawi
ll told you, so let’s not beat around the bush.”
“Is it true, Mrs. Carter?”
“Some of it’s true.”
“You were having an affair?”
“We were having an affair, yes.”
“With your husband’s consent?” Ostreicher looked at Carter.
Carter did not change his expression, or he didn’t think he did. He stared at some place in the middle of the coffeetable.
“Not entirely with my husband’s consent, no.”
“And you had some discussion about that—Tuesday night?”
“Yes. Late Tuesday night—when I came home.”
Another glance from Ostreicher to Carter. “Did your husband make any threats against Mr. Sullivan then or at any other time?”
“No,” Hazel said.
Ostreicher looked at Carter. “Mr. Carter, what was your honest attitude toward Mr. Sullivan? Your feeling toward him?”
Carter opened his hands. “I—” Suddenly he had no words at all. But Ostreicher was waiting. “I knew about a short affair they had years ago. I learned just this week that it was still more or less going on.” It sounded damning, but Carter was sure Gawill had already said it, filled in the dates and the times Carter had visited him, and told him about the tapes. “I mean—I’ve hardly had time to see how I feel—felt about him, have I?”
“You didn’t attempt to see him, talk to him since Tuesday night? Gawill told me about Tuesday,” Ostreicher added.
“No.”
“Were you going to?”
Carter looked at him. “I hadn’t really finished talking with my wife. Finding out her intentions,” Carter said.
“I’m sorry to ask you these intimate questions, but what kind of talk did you have late Tuesday night?” Ostreicher looked from one to the other of them.
Carter was suddenly aware of Timmy standing in the hall doorway in his pajamas, and he stood up. “Timmy, you’d better go back to bed.” Carter walked toward him. “Come on. We’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”
“Do they know who killed David?” Timmy asked.
“We don’t know anything yet. See you later, chum.” He patted Timmy’s back and guided him, reluctantly, to his room and closed the door.
“What was the result of your conversation, Mr. Carter?” Ostreicher asked as Carter came back.
“That—my wife admitted the affair was still going on,” Carter said. “More or less.” He glanced at Hazel.
“And did you ask her to stop it?”
“Not exactly.”
“He asked me what I intended to do about it,” Hazel said, “and I told him I didn’t know—which was true.”
“You were in love with Mr. Sullivan, Mrs. Carter?” Ostreicher asked.
“I suppose so. Yes,” she said very softly.
“And you told your husband that?”
“More or less,” Hazel said.
“Had you any intention of dissolving your marriage?”
Hazel shook her head. “We have a child, you know.”
“Yes, I know— In that case, the situation this week was in a very unresolved state.”
“I suppose so.”
Ostreicher looked at Carter expectantly.
“Yes,” Carter said.
Ostreicher turned a page in his tablet, turned a few more, looking at his writing. Then he said briskly, “Mr. Carter, we’ll have to ask you for fingerprints.”
The officer in uniform was producing the proper materials from his briefcase.
Carter supposed this meant they had found fingerprints in Sullivan’s apartment that were good enough to be compared with something.
“You had an injury to your thumbs when you were in prison, Gawill said,” Ostreicher remarked as he was pressing Carter’s fingertips down.
“Yes.” His thumbs had hurt a lot since 6 o’clock, and Carter had taken a couple of Pananods before dinner. He dreaded Ost-reicher’s pressure.
“I’ll let you do the thumbs—if you can give them a firm roll,” Ostreicher said.
Carter did, very firmly, so he would not have to do it a second time.
“We have a print from Mr. Sullivan’s apartment, but unfortunately it’s not very good. It’s from the marble foot that we think killed him, and the marble has a rough surface—at least where the print is. The doorknobs were too smeared to be of any help. The print we got is a middle finger—this one,” he said, pointing to the print next to the index on Carter’s sheet of paper.
Carter said nothing. He knew he had struck Sullivan on the side of the neck—the first blow. Evidently no bruise had been visible, or it had been overlooked.
Ostreicher went back to Gawill. How long had Carter known him? What did he think of him? Did he think he might have been implicated in the fraud that got Carter into prison? Why had Carter gone to see Gawill on his own initiative Tuesday evening?
Carter explained that Gawill had been making accusations against his wife with regard to Sullivan, and that Carter had wanted to find out if Gawill had any proof.
“And had he?”
“Oh-h—some,” Carter said. “Not as much as he boasted of having. You probably gathered he’s a bit cracked.”
“Cracked how?”
“Paranoid. He hated Sullivan, magnified what Sullivan was doing against him—just as he tried to magnify the affair between Sullivan and my wife.” Carter felt a funny emotional rise as he said the words, and warned himself to be on his guard. How could an affair be magnified? It was either going on or it wasn’t going on. “My point is—Gawill was trying to whip me up to kill Sullivan. He was so transparent about it, he was funny. I said to him Tuesday night, ‘I’m not going to bother, You’ll beat me to it, because you hate him much more than I do.’”
Ostreicher listened attentively, so attentively he was forgetting to write, but the officer was writing. “You’re not going to bother, you said.”
“Something like that. I’m sure Gawill didn’t tell you that, did he? He wants to pin this on me, I’m sure.”
“Yes, he certainly does. Well, so do you want to pin it on him.” Ostreicher smiled very slightly.
Carter looked at Hazel. Her face was tense, but her head still rested against the chair back.
“Did you ever tell Gawill you—” Ostreicher started again. “According to Gawill, you threatened to kill Mr. Sullivan. You said Tuesday night that you were going to do it.”
“Well, that’s not true.” Carter took a breath. “I’m quite sure Gawill told you that. Quite sure he wants you to believe it.” Carter looked at Hazel. “Ask my wife—if I seemed that angry Tuesday night or if I made threats against him.” Carter got up and started for the kitchen. “Excuse me, I’m going to get a glass of water. Would anyone else like one?”
Nobody wanted any.
“My husband certainly made no threats,” Hazel said.
Carter heard her voice distinctly. When he came back into the room, Ostreicher said:
“Were you ever in prison before this trouble down south?”
“No,” Carter said.
“And you served six years, according to Gawill.”
“Gawill has that right,” Carter said. “Six years.”
Ostreicher glanced at the officer, who looked up. “We’ll see what the fingerprints can show us.”
The young officer nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”
They both stood up, Ostreicher smiled. “Good-bye, Mr. Carter.” He turned to Hazel. “Good night, Mrs. Carter.”
Hazel got up. “You’ll call us tomorrow? Or can we call you?”
Ostreicher nodded. “We’ll call you tomorrow, I’m sure.”
“You’ll check on Gawill’s friends?” Hazel asked.
“Oh, all of them, nev
er fear. Gawill’s got a pretty airtight alibi for tonight.”
“Yes, I was sure he would have,” Hazel said. “I didn’t bother asking about that.”
“Drinks and dinner with a couple of friends from six o’clock till ten. I spoke to them both by telephone tonight and also with the restaurant owner, but of course we’ll talk to them all personally.”
“I don’t think Gawill did it,” Hazel said with a bitter little smile, “but he has an awful lot of shady friends.”
“Yes, I’m getting the idea,” Ostreicher replied. He waved a hand, and he and the young officer went to the door.
Carter let them out.
Hazel paused on her way to the bedroom and glanced at Carter. “With the fingerprint—we might know by tomorrow, don’t you think?”
Carter nodded. “If it’s good enough.”
Carter emptied the ashtray, and washed his water glass and put it away. Everything depended on whether Gawill’s hired killer had spoken to Gawill this evening, Carter thought. But Gawill had probably told him not to telephone. Everything depended really, as usual, on money: if Gawill’s killer had not collected, he might tell Gawill he had killed Sullivan when the news came out in the papers tomorrow. But if he had been paid in advance, he might say, “I didn’t do it, but I saw Carter coming up the stairs.” The in-between was more likely: Gawill’s killer would collect his money for the killing (maybe five thousand dollars, maybe ten?) and then, if the police got on his trail and came to him, would come out with the real story: he hadn’t done the killing, but he had seen Carter entering the apartment. Carter reckoned that he had either borrowed time—or a slim chance of absolution.
23
“How stupid of us not to have asked the police what number we could call,” Hazel said fretfully at the breakfast table.
There wasn’t any jam on the table, and Carter didn’t get up to fetch it. Both of them left part of their scrambled eggs. Only Timmy slowly and solemnly plowed through his usual breakfast of Sugar Puffs, eggs, toast, and milk flavored with a dash of coffee. He had questioned them at length as soon as he woke up, and the answers had not satisfied him.
There was the usual Saturday shopping to do. Carter volunteered to do it, because Hazel obviously wanted to be near the telephone. She wouldn’t rest, Carter thought, until she had found out who killed Sullivan, and until the murderer was properly punished—put behind bars or executed. What had he possibly thought he could achieve by killing Sullivan? He simply hadn’t thought, of course. Carter started making up the shopping list on his own. No use asking Hazel what she wanted for the weekend. Hazel went into the living room to call the Laffertys. She had their number in her address book. While she was talking to them, Carter did the dishes. She talked a long while, and only finished as Carter was going out of the door with the wire shopping wagon.