The Best That Ever Did It - Ed Lacy

“Because we haven't got enough and what difference will it make? If they're on to us, they can extradite us from Europe. No, we keep on going as usual, like nothing happened. Sam, I've thought this out, racked my head till it hurts. How can they ever connect us with it? How can the police possibly stumble upon us? What can go wrong?”

Sam looked for an ashtray, finally thumbed his cigarette out the one window. “Marty, up to now it's been like a game— the whole works: outsmarting the army, the French cops, the stuff we've been doing here. It worked smooth because we never hurt nobody, worked our own angles... but now, a deliberate cold-blooded murder, I can't go that, I just can't!”

Pearson said coldly, “And I can't think of living without Therese. We've put in over five months on this, we already have about twenty-five grand set for sure, another fifteen thousand in the works. I'm not throwing all that over because this kid gets lucky. Get this through your dumb head—there's little risk—he himself won't have the slightest idea why we're killing him.”

“As you said, the cops can be lucky.”

“Luck has been riding with us, all down the line.” Pearson opened his camera bag and dropped two Lugers on the bed. “Look how lucky it was I never sold these, held on to them.”

Sam stared at the guns, his thin lips moving. Finally he pulled himself together, asked quietly, “Threatening me, Marty?”

“Killing you would be a wrong move, leave too many trails. But I want Therese so badly I considered it. Think it over, Sam. It's rough but we've been living on cream so far, can't complain. Get dressed, take a shower, take a walk and get the air... start thinking. Have a good breakfast. Think, then tell me what else we can do but kill him. Show me any other out, even a cockeyed one, and I'll be the first to take it. But you know killing is the only way. Think about it, Sam, think real hard... we have a couple of hours.”

CHAPTER 2

SHE HAD four very large rooms in one of these old, high-ceilinged apartment houses that never look like much on the outside. It was a front apartment overlooking the Hudson River, and full of severe modern furniture that looked uncomfortable —or maybe it was the violent colors. Everything was a patch-quilt of brash red and blinding yellows and mysterious purples. And somehow the effect didn't quite come off—it was as if she'd copied a room and overdone it. One wall was lined with books—in colorful jackets too—but they all looked too new, as if she joined every book club out and stacked the books away as they came.

Betsy Turner was wearing a Chinese-like outfit—tight red pants and a loose yellow house coat that should have given her an exotic look, but her kid's face was an almost comical contrast. Her face reminded me of the Kewpie dolls that used to be so popular—her nose and eyes and lips took up all her face, almost seemed to be overcrowding it.

Frankly I didn't get the play—the carefully made-up face, those tight pants showing off her strong legs, the teasing outline of firm breasts whenever the coat touched them. Either Mrs. Turner was expecting somebody after I left, or she wanted other kinds of work for her thirty a day.

To keep my eyes off her, I said “Hello” and glanced around at the several amateurish oils on the wall—like those pre-sketched canvas deals where you fill in the colors by number. In one corner of the living room there was an easel with a half-finished painting of a river scene—and without numbers. Near it was a large TV set, and near that one of these expensive record players. I said, “Nice place here. You paint much?”

“I play at it. I also decorated this apartment. Do you like it?”

From the tone of her voice it seemed important to her that I liked it. “Rather unusual. Yeah, I like it,” I said. And the canvases, the books, the stacks of records—they could mean a lot of things, including loneliness. But hell, the fine ebony wood cabinet of the TV was easily a cop's salary for a month, or two, and the high-fidelity record player wasn't anything you found in a box of Cracker Jacks.... No wonder Ed Turner walked around with his hand out. And considering the short time he'd been on the force, he was a joker with a talent for letting people see his palms.

“I made this Chinese house coat too,” she said, turning like a model for me to see it—and her. She sure packed a healthy figure. Only she still gave me this Kewpie-doll feeling—an expensive one.

“Looks wonderful. Very becoming.”

She smiled faintly, like a kid with a good report card. “Please sit down over there, Mr. Harris.” She pointed to a veneer bucket chair with dainty wrought-iron legs.

I sat down on a pigskin hassock, said, “Doubt if the chair is guaranteed to hold 248 pounds.”

She sat down on a banana-yellow contour couch.

There was a moment of silence and I studied her legs, which were worth studying. She motioned toward a bottle and several glasses on a marble table with driftwood legs. “Noilly Prat, Mr. Harris?”

“No thanks, Mrs. Turner. And what is it?” We sounded like a soap opera.

She smiled and her lips were thick and red and girlish, and my temperature shot up. “Vermouth—French. I'm not much of a drinker, but this place has been giving me the jitters ever since Ed... died. It's a jinx apartment, and it caused our first real fight.”

“That so?” I said politely. People who always brag how little they drink are usually in the lush class.

“Yes, I never really enjoyed this place,” she went on. “After Ed passed the police exam, but before he was called, he was head of the shipping department and I was a steno in the front office—that's how we met. After we married we couldn't find an apartment and lived in a room for several months. Then Ed found this apartment and insisted we take it, even though the rent was more than our combined weekly salaries. I didn't mind scrimping because I wanted a place of our own, and this even had furniture—not this stuff—and we didn't have to pay anything under the table. Then I found out why it was vacant —a man had hung himself with a tie from the bathroom door.”

Following her over-red fingernail I saw a white door off the cocoa-colored foyer. “Must have been a small man to do it with a tie,” I said brightly.

She hesitated, not sure if I was kidding her, then decided I wasn't, said, “I didn't want the place then, it gave me the creeps. And using his furniture too. But Ed insisted. I didn't know till then how unhappy he'd been in our room, making coffee on a hot plate, using the window sill for an icebox. Oh, Ed always liked to live so big. He even hinted we'd part if I didn't take the apartment. I nearly had a fit when we moved in. Ed had to stay with me while I took a bath or I'd get to staring at the door till I saw a body swinging there. Ed said I was a baby but I couldn't help it.”

“Able to go to the bathroom alone now?” She sat up, face flushed. “Mr. Harris! Don't get fresh!” I almost slipped off the hassock—Mrs. Turner was out of this planet—I hadn't been called “fresh” since I was in knickers. “It may look... odd, asking you to my apartment, but don't get any ideas, Mr. Harris. Nor do I like you making fun of me.”

“Merely asked a question, Mrs. Turner,” I said, afraid I'd smile myself out of a job. “Only wondering if the place still spooks you.”

She sort of pulled herself together, leaned back on the couch. “It was bad till... One morning several weeks after we moved in I was feeling... uh... unwell... had to stay home. Ed couldn't be with me, we'd have both lost our jobs. I was going crazy, imagining all sorts of things when a woman came to the door, said she had worked as a maid for the suicide and did I want to hire her? Of course we couldn't afford that but I was so happy to see anyone I asked her in for coffee and we talked about the dead man. When she told me he'd been a pansy, I don't know why, I was no longer afraid. Till now. With Ed a suicide everything scares me. But that's enough about me. What have you been doing, Mr. Harris?”

“Checked with Lieutenant Swan on the details of the case. By the way, Mr. Turner ever mention a man named Brown?”

“No. And we haven't any friends by that name, or...”

“Have many friends?”

She popped her eyes open like I'd jabbed her in the belly. “Why do you ask that? As a matter of fact, we didn't. I'm not the outgoing type and Ed—he liked to roam around alone, always looking for what he called suspects. As for his friends on the force, frankly I hated his being a policeman. It changed Ed. When a man makes his work hunting down other men, that's not good.”

“I suppose cops are necessary.”

“Mr. Harris, doctors are necessary too, but suppose a doctor limited himself to handling cancer cases all day, day after day— in time he'd probably become infected himself. A cop, always working with criminals, I think he becomes infected too. After a time the cop and the criminal blend, the hunter and the hunted become one.” Her voice, which had been full and strong, went small again as she slipped me a smile, added, “No offense, Mr. Harris. Oh, I can't keep calling you Mister Harris. I'll call you Barney and you may call me Betsy.”

“You call me what you wish, I'll keep using Mrs. Turner,” I said, annoyed at her ”... you may call me ...” I was really annoyed because whatever there was about her that troubled me... still troubled me.

She shrugged—a very sexy movement. “As you like. But I didn't mean to be personal when I said police work was a dirty profession.”

“Can't offend me. I only stumbled into the... eh... profession myself. I'm an auto mechanic. My wife was in the insurance business and she got me a job checking on stolen cars for insurance companies. Usually the engine numbers are filed, other changes made to disguise the heap. It was my job to identify the cars, also check into phony auto accidents, and the title of private detective went with the job. I did that for five or six years and when my wife died I went into the private-eye business because of the irregular hours—gives me a chance to call for my daughter in school, be around the neighborhood.”

“I'm sorry to hear about your wife,” she said, in the proper sad tone. “Did you raise the girl by yourself?”

“Yes, and quite well, too.”

“How old is she?”

“Ruthie will be six in two months from the twenty-fifth.”

“Barney, I don't mean to be personal, but did your wife die in childbirth?”

“No, we adopted Ruthie. My wife was too old to have kids.” I saw the puzzled look come into her eyes and wondered if she'd come out and ask me. She did.

“But you don't look more than thirty-four.”

“I'm thirty-seven, Mrs. Turner. I was thirty-two when I married my wife and she was forty-one. I was her second husband, and I was infatuated with her beauty. You see she never tried to look younger than she was, rather she was always a beautiful forty-one-year-old woman. Maybe that's a beauty secret. Now let's get back to Ed.”

Betsy nodded. “I'm crazy about children. Ed was too, till he became a cop... then he always wanted to wait.”

“How long have you been married?”

“About four years,” she said, pouring herself a taste of vermouth, sipping it as though it was hard stuff. “I'm from a small town way out on Long Island. I had always looked forward to New York City, but I found it such a lonely place. I met Ed on the job, my first real beau, and after a month we were married. It was like a dream, we were so happy, so much in love. Ed was tender and considerate, full of laughs. But he changed from the moment he entered the Police Academy. He became ambitious.”

“Most wives like that. My wife tried to inject some ambition into me, but it didn't take,” I said, wondering why her words sounded false although she said them straight, as if she meant them.

“Ambition made Ed tough and cruel. A few days after he was appointed to the force, we were in the subway, going to a movie downtown. Ed kept staring at a man across the aisle, told me, 'He looks like a guy I saw on a Fed-wanted flier. Dope case. Except his hair is black and this fellow was a blond.'

“I told him to forget it but Ed was always talking about making a 'good' pinch, jumping to a detective. All he did at night was to read those wanted circulars. Well, he kept studying this man, going over his face feature by feature, the way he'd been trained. Finally he said, 'That's him!' and went over and showed his badge—made a scene. The man denied he was the criminal but Ed yanked out a fistful of his hair, waved the bloody hair at me and shouted, 'The roots are blond!' Then he punched the man in the face and he was all blood.”

“Was the man the one wanted?”

She nodded. “But how I hated that badge, the gun, the handcuffs, the blackjack!”

“Mrs. Turner, a rough world makes for rough people. The worst cop hater squeals the loudest for the police when he's in a jam. True, there are incompetent cops, nightstick happy. Also, in this corrupt world, if crime doesn't pay—being a cop doesn't pay much either. Now that I've finished my sermon for the day, let's get down to cases—this case. You have any boy friends, past or present?”

She jumped to her feet with cat speed. “How dare you say that?” Her big soft eyes were big and mad now.

“Take it slow, Mrs. Turner,” I said calmly. “I'm working for you, remember? I have to sift through everything. A jealous boy friend could cause murder, or suicide.”

“How dare you... I never looked at another man! I never... what sort of a mind have you?”

“A detective's mind—maybe. Look, stop the how-dare-you line. Mrs. Turner, you asked me up here. I don't mind a lot of social chatter, but at the moment I feel ill at ease, a bit like the rear end of a horse. I don't mean to be crude, or maybe I do, but the point is, I have to ask questions and I'd like some answers—without frills, if possible.”

“You're crude, rude, and... and...!”

“Let's start over again,” I cut in. “How about Ed, any other woman on his mind?”

“No! No!” Her face got so red I thought she was going to scream.

“Mrs. Turner, being a busybody is my job. You said in my office that you and Ed were very happy, yet all you've done tonight is carp about his job, his...”

“We were very much in love and happy! Get that through your thick head, you lummox!” she shouted in my face. Then she caught herself, sat down on the couch again, said in a normal voice, “I didn't like what his job was doing to him, but that doesn't make us unhappy.”