Make Room! Make Room! (11 page)

“It needs trimming, Sol,” he told his image. “But the light is almost gone so it can wait until morning. Still, it wouldn’t hurt none to comb it before you dress for dinner.” He ran a comb through his beard a few times, then tossed the comb aside and went to dig a pair of shorts out of the wardrobe. They had started life many years earlier as a pair of Army suntan trousers, and since then had been cut down and patched until they bore little resemblance to the original garment. He was just pulling them on when someone knocked on the door. “Yeah,” he shouted, “who is it?”

“Alcover’s Electronics,” was the muffled answer.

“I thought you died or your place burned down,” Sol said, throwing the door open. “It’s only been two weeks since you said you would do a rush job on this set—which I paid for in advance.”

“That’s the way the electron hops,” the tall repairman said calmly, swinging his valise-sized toolbox onto the table. “You got a gassy tube, some tired components in that old set. So what can I do? They don’t make that tube any more, and if they did I couldn’t buy it, it would be on priority.” His hands were busy while he talked, hauling the TV down to the table and starting to unscrew the back. “So how do I fix the set? I have to go down to the radio breakers on Greenwich Street and spend a couple of hours shopping around. I can’t get the tube, so I get a couple of transistors and breadboard up a circuit that will do the same job. It’s not easy, I tell you.”

“My heart bleeds for you,” Sol said, watching suspiciously as the repairman took the back off the set and extracted a tube.

“Gassy,” the man said, looking sternly at the radio tube before he threw it into his toolbox. From the top tray he took a rectangle of thin plastic on which a number of small parts had been attached, and began to wire it into the TV circuit. “Everything’s makeshift,” he said. “I have to cannibalize old sets to keep older ones working. I even have to melt and draw my own solder. It’s a good thing that there must have been a couple of billion sets in this country, and a lot of the latest ones have solid state circuits.” He turned on the TV and music blared across the room. “That will be four D’s for labor.”

“Crook!” Sol said. “I already gave you thirty-five D’s….”

“That was for the parts, labor is extra. If you want the little luxuries of life you have to be prepared to pay for them.”

“The repairs I need,” Sol said, handing over the money. “The philosophy I do not. You’re a thief.”

“I prefer to think of myself as an electronic grave robber,” the man said, pocketing the bills. “If you want to see the thieves you should see what I pay to the radio breakers.” He shouldered his toolbox and left.

It was almost eight o’clock. Only a few minutes after the repairman had finished his job a key turned in the lock and Andy came in, tired and hot.

“Your chunk is really dragging,” Sol said.

“So would yours if you had a day like mine. Can’t you turn on a light, it’s black as soot in here.” He slumped to the chair by the window and dropped into it.

Sol switched on the small yellow bulb that hung in the middle of the room, then went to the refrigerator. “No Gibsons tonight, I’m rationing the vermouth until I can make some more. I got the coriander and orris root and the rest, but I have to dry some sage first, it’s no good without that.” He took out a frosted pitcher and closed the door. “But I put some water in to cool and cut it with some alky which will numb the tongue so you can’t taste the water, and will also help the nerves.”

“Lead me to it!” Andy sipped the drink and managed to produce a reluctant smile. “Sorry to take it out on you but I had one hell of a day and there’s more to come.” He sniffed the air. “What’s that cooking on the stove?”

“An experiment in home economics—and it was free for the taking on the Welfare cards. You may not have noticed but our
food budget is shot to pieces since the last price increase.” He opened a canister and showed Andy the granular brown substance inside. “It is a new miracle ingredient supplied by our benevolent government and called ener-G—and how’s
that
for a loathsomely cute name? It contains vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates….”

“Everything except flavor?”

“That’s about the size of it. I put it in with the oatmeal. I doubt if it can do any harm because at this moment I am beginning to hate oatmeal. This ener-G stuff is the product of the newest wonder of science, the plankton whale.”

“The
what?”

“I know you never open a book—but don’t you ever watch TV? They had an hour program on the thing. A conversion of an atomic submarine, cruises along just like a whale and sucks in plankton, all the microscopic sea things that you will be very surprised to find out the mighty whales live on. All three whales that’re left. The smallest life forms supporting the biggest, there’s a moral there someplace. Anyway—the plankton gets sucked in and hits a sieve and the water gets spit out and the plankton gets pressed into little dry bricks and stored in the sub until it is full up and can come back and unload. Then they futz around with the bricks of plankton and come up with ener-G.”

“Oh, Christ, I bet it tastes fishy.”

“No takers,” Sol sighed, then served up the oatmeal.

They ate in silence. The ener-G oatmeal wasn’t so bad as they had expected, but it wasn’t very good, either. As soon as he was finished Sol washed the taste of it out of his mouth with the alcohol-and-water mixture.

“What’s this you said about more work to come?” he asked. “They have you doing a double shift today?”

Andy went back to the window, there was a bit of air stirring the damp heat now that the sun had set. “Just about, I’m going on special duty for a while. You remember the murder case I told you about?”

“Big Mike, the gonif? Whoever chopped him did a service to the human race.”

“My feelings exactly. But he’s got political friends who are more interested in the case than we are. They have some connections, they pulled a few strings and the commissioner himself called the lieutenant and told him to get a man on the investigation
full time and find the killer. It was my name on the report so I caught the assignment. And Grassy oh, he is a sweet bastard, he didn’t tell me about it until I was signing out. He gave me the job then and a strong suggestion that I get on to it tonight. Like now,” he said, standing and stretching.

“It’ll be a good deal, won’t it?” Sol asked, stroking his beard. “An independent position, your own boss, working your own hours, being covered with glory.”

“That isn’t what I’ll be covered with unless I come up with an answer pretty fast. Everyone is watching and they are putting on the pressure. Grassy told me I had to find the killer soonest or I would be back in uniform on a beat in Shiptown.”

Andy went into his room and unlocked the padlock on the bottom drawer of the dresser. He had extra rounds of ammunition here, some private papers and equipment, including his issue flashlight. It was the squeeze-generator type and it worked up a good beam when he tested it.

“Where to now?” Sol asked when he came out. “Going to stake out the joint?”

“It’s a good thing you’re not a cop, Sol. With your knowledge of criminal investigation crime would run rampant in the city—”

“It’s not doing so bad, even without my help.”

“—and we’d all be murdered in our beds. No stake out. I’m going to talk to the girl.”

“Now the case gets interesting. Am I allowed to ask what girl?”

“Kid name of Shirl. Really built. She was Big Mike’s girl friend, living with him, but she was out of the apartment when he got bumped.”

“Do you maybe need an assistant? I’m good at night work.”

“Cool off, Sol, you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it. She plays out of our league. Put some cold water on your wrists and get some sleep.”

Using the flashlight, Andy avoided the refuse and other pitfalls of the dark stairwell. Outside, the crowds and the heat were unchanged, timeless, filling the street by day and by night. He wished for a rain that would clear them both away, but the weather report hadn’t offered any hope.
Continued no change
.

Charlie opened the door at Chelsea Park with a polite “Good evening, sir.” Andy started toward the elevator, then changed his mind and walked on past it to the stairs. He wanted to have a
look at the window and the cellar after dark, to see it the way it had been when the burglar came in.
If
he had entered the building that way. Now that he had been assigned to actually try and find the killer he had to go into all the details of the case in greater depth, to try to reconstruct the whole thing. Was it possible to get to the window from outside without being seen? If it wasn’t then it might be an inside job and he would have to go through the staff and the tenants of the building.

He stopped, silently, and took out his gun. Through the half-open door of the cellar ahead he saw the flickering beam of a flashlight. This was the room where the jimmied window was. He walked forward slowly, putting his feet down on the gritty concrete floor with care so that they made no noise. When he entered he saw that someone was against the far wall, playing flashlight along the row of windows. A dark figure outlined against the yellow blob of light. The light moved to the next window, hesitated and stopped on the heart that had been traced in the dirt there. The man leaned over and examined the window, so intent in his study that he did not hear Andy cross the floor and come up behind him.

“Just don’t move—that’s a gun in your back,” Andy said as he jabbed the man with his revolver. The flashlight dropped and broke; and Andy cursed and pulled out his own light and squeezed it to life. The beam hit full on an old man’s face, his mouth open in terror, his skin suddenly as pale as his long silvery hair. The man sagged against the wall, gasping for air, and Andy put his gun back into the holster, then held the other’s arm as he slid slowly down the wall to a sitting position on the floor.

“The shock … suddenly …” he muttered. “You shouldn’t do that … who are you?”

“I’m a police officer. What’s your name—and what were you doing down here?” Andy frisked him quickly: he wasn’t armed.

“I’m a … civil officer … my identification is here.” He struggled to produce his wallet and Andy took it from him and opened it.

“Judge Santini,” he said, flashing the light from the identification card to the man’s face. “Yes, I’ve seen you in court. But isn’t this a funny place for a judge to be?”

“Please, no impertinence, young man.” The first reaction had passed and Santini was in control again. “I consider myself knowledgeable in the laws of this sovereign state, and I cannot
recall any that apply to this particular situation. I suggest that you do not exceed your authority….”

“This is a murder investigation and you may have been tampering with evidence, Judge. That’s authority enough to run you in.”

Santini blinked into the glare of the flashlight and could just make out his captor’s legs; they were in tan pants, not a blue uniform. “You are Detective Rusch?” he asked.

“Yes, I am,” Andy said, surprised. He lowered the light so that it was no longer shining in the judge’s face. “What do you know about this?”

“I shall be happy to tell you, my boy, if you will allow me off the floor and if we could find a more comfortable spot for our chat. Why don’t we visit Shirl—you must have made Miss Greene’s acquaintance? It will be a bit cooler there, and once arrived I will be happy to tell you all that I know.”

“Why don’t we do that?” Andy said, helping the old man to his feet. The judge wasn’t going to run away—and he might have some official connection with the case. How else had he known that Andy was the detective who had been assigned to the investigation? This looked more like political interest than police interest and he knew enough to tread warily here.

They took the elevator up from the basement and Andy’s scowl wiped the curious look from the operator’s face. The judge seemed to be feeling better, though he leaned on Andy’s arm down the length of the hall.

Shirl opened the door for them. “Judge—is something wrong?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“Nothing, my dear, just a touch of the heat, fatigue. I’m not getting any younger, not at all.” He straightened up, concealing well the effort this required, and moved away from Andy to lightly take her arm. “I met Detective Rusch outside, he was good enough to come up with me. Now, if I could be allowed a little closer to the cool breath of that air-conditioner and permitted to rest a moment …” They went down the hall and Andy followed.

The girl was really good to look at, dressed like something out of a TV spectacular. Her dress was made of a fabric that shone like woven silver—yet appeared to be soft at the same time. It was sleeveless, cut low in the front and even lower in the back, all the way down to her waist, Andy saw. Her hair was
brushed straight to her shoulders in a shining russet wave. The judge looked at her too, out of the corner of his eye, as she guided him to the sofa.

“We’re not disturbing you, are we, Shirl?” he asked. “You’re dressed up tonight. Going out?”

“No,” she said, “I was just staying home by myself. If you want the truth—I’m just building up my own morale. I’ve never worn this dress before, it’s something new, nylon, I think, with little specks of metal in it.” She plumped a pillow and pushed it behind Judge Santini’s head. “Can’t I get something cool for you to drink? And you too, Mr. Rusch?” It was the first time she had appeared to notice him, and he nodded silently.

“A wonderful suggestion.” The judge sighed and settled back. “Something alcoholic if possible.”

“Oh, yes—there are all kinds of things in the bar, I don’t drink them.” When she went to the kitchen Andy sat close to Santini and spoke in a quiet voice.

“You were going to tell me what you were doing in the cellar—and how you know my name.”

“Simplicity itself—” Santini glanced toward the kitchen, but Shirl was busy and couldn’t hear them. “O’Brien’s death has certain, shall we say, political ramifications and I have been asked to follow the progress being made. Naturally I learned that you had been assigned to the case.” He relaxed and folded his hands over his round belly.