envelope because the yellow envelope contained sprightly photos in color of her off-color entertainments.
We raced through the halls, we were impatient in the elevator, and we caught a cab that was discharging passengers in front of the building. In the cab I looked at my watch as Willie urged speed and the driver grumbled about not being a magician. It was twenty-five minutes to twelve and the driver, grumbling, was not bumbling: he was accurately maneuvering along the shortest route. On Saturday before twelve New York traffic is not yet impossible glue and our pilot used the transverse through the park to Central Park West and in ten minutes he had us spilling out of the cab in front of the Brentwood Apartments.
There was no doorman in sight.
It was a fine tall rich house on the last of the rich boulevards on the West Side. The lobby was the usual three-story tomb of marble, and the gold carpet was thick and spread wall to wall, and the self-service elevators, all glinting gilt-and-mirror, were in the rear, and one was open and waiting, and Valerie tapped the top button, and during the swift noiseless upward journey, she developed a packet of keys from her handbag.
On the twenty-fourth floor she inserted key into lock but before she could turn it the door was pulled open from within.
By a uniformed policeman.
SEVEN
THERE WERE four cops, all alert and on their feet in the living room. The one who had opened the door was a big one but young and not yet harsh. He saw the key in her hand and he said quietly, “Mrs. Kiss?”
She looked about wildly.
“I’m Petrie,” he said. “Bill Petrie, ma’am.”
“Please. What’s wrong?”
“We’re here waiting, ma’am, just expecting if you’d come along.” Willie’s great bulk impressed him. He said to Willie, “Just waiting. We’re supposed to keep the lady here if she shows.”
“Who’s in charge?” Willie said.
“Detective-sergeant Wagner. We’re to keep her here and inform him. Have her sit down, huh? I mean till we get the information to the sergeant.”
It was bad, obviously. Cops do not stutter unless it is bad and Petrie was stuttering with all the marbles. Cops are big when it is little and little when it is big and four big brawny cops were pygmies in a spacious sumptuous living room. I could smell death and so could Willie. He moved toward Valerie and he mumbled to Valerie and he sat her down and Marla joined. I moved toward one of the other cops, another young one. I said, “Wagner is Lenny Wagner?”
“Yeah. You in the business?”
“Private. Lenny Wagner’s a friend of mine.”
“I’m Martino, Sal Martino.” He was tall and thin with a dark face and girl’s eyes.
“I’m Peter Chambers.”
“I never heard of you,” he said respectfully.
“What gives?”
“A jumper.”
“From here?”
“Yeah.”
“Bad?”
“Like disgusting.” He tugged at my wrist and I went with him to a window and I looked down into a back alley. Far down, twenty-four stories down, humans like ants were crawling. “The crumb jumped. From here, it figures.”
“When?”
“Eleven-twenty is the figure.”
“I’ll go down and talk to Wagner.”
“I ought to go myself, but I won’t fight you. There’s a lot of pieces like smashed with guts all over. Would you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Tell him you talked to Martino. Tell him Martino wanted to go but you insisted. And don’t forget to tell him the wife is here.”
I moved away from the window and Willie’s head turned and his eyes questioned me and I answered with a thumb-down motion of my right hand. Then I went out and rode down in the elevator and outside I went around to the back and there a burly cop spread a hand like a baseball mitt across my chest.
“Where the hell you think you’re going?” he inquired.
“Sergeant Wagner.”
“You got business?”
“I brought the wife home. Martino sent me.”
“Oh.” The mitt came off and he let me through.
They were scraping him together and collecting him in a canvas bag. There were six men working. The blood was all over, and the blobs of flesh, and the gleaming bone. I swallowed back gag and kept going. The sun was high in the sky, bubbling hot, but the workers looked cold. Everybody was pale.
Off to a side a couple of cops were working on a man, sick, flat on his back. I went near.
“Who is it?” I asked somebody.
“The doorman, the poor punk,” somebody said.
I pushed through and they let me. I pushed through with authority and I had no uniform. Detectives push with authority and have no uniform. Nobody stopped me. I squatted over the guy and I looked up. “What’s his name?” I said with authority.
“Nick,” said one of the cops.
I looked down to Nick. “How are you?”
“I’m fine.” His face was the color of dirty grey leather and white spit was hard at the corners of his mouth.
“What time did it happen?” I said.
“I told you guys already forty times.”
“Tell again.”
“Twenny after eleven. I hear this smack in back like an explosion. I run to see but before I run I look at my watch. Twenny after eleven.”
“Did you see Mr. Kiss go out this morning?”
He smiled as though happy a new question had been put. The smile was hideous inside caked dry lips.
“Sure I seen him. He went out bright and early. About nine bells.”
“When did he come back?”
“Around eleven. He says, ‘Hi, Nickie,’ and I says, ‘Hi, how-areya, Mr. Kiss.’ And he goes in and twenny minutes later—boff! I run back here but I can’t do nothing. I take one look at the mess, and I pass. I used to think I was a man but now I admit, no. I pass, and that’s all I been doing, passing. Every time I sit up and take a look, pass. I ought to be ashamed, no?”
“Feel better now, Nickie?”
“Yes
