Ladyfingers Read online

  Shepard Rifkin

  Ladyfingers

  ***

  A great story of crime and detection in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Alfred Hitchcock…

  The box was mailed to the Police Commissioner himself.

  The wrapping was ordinary brown paper.

  The box was five inches long, two inches wide, and one inch deep.

  It looked ideal for mailing a wristwatch.

  But there was no watch in it

  Just a finger.

  A lady's finger.

  The police lab turned up traces of anesthetic. So the lady was probably alive.

  Detective Sgt Pablo Sanchez was presented with a pretty problem: Where was the rest of the lady?

  ***

  Scanning by unknown hero.

  OCR, formatting & proofing by P.

  ***

  DEDICATION

  For Jamara

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  With special thanks to Deputy Inspector John Berryman, Commanding Officer, Bureau of Technical Services, and to the men of the Sixth Detective Squad.

  1

  WHEN I GOT TO THE POLICE LABORATORY WITH the eight pounds of heroin, there was a message for me: "Detective Sanchez: Report to the chief of detectives forthwith."

  I had just spent eighteen hours without sleep. I had made the buy and the pinch I had been working towards for three months-Tommy Lo Scalzo, the heroin wholesaler for East Harlem. I also got a sixteen-stitch knife-slash across my left palm from his bodyguard. But I got Lo Scalzo and his boy handcuffed. Now all I wanted was to sleep for twenty-four hours without interruption.

  But "forthwith" in police language means not in ten minutes, not in five minutes, not in one minute. It means forthwith.

  So I went downtown in my sharpie Italian silk suit and my pointed Italian shoes and my long sideburns. I looked like the kind of a guy who, if he married your daughter, would make you want to cut your throat. But I looked just fine for someone paying good money for heroin. I had gotten the money back, too. All twelve thousand bucks police money, which they are very finicky about. The fact that my name is Pablo Sanchez and I speak Spanish very well is also a help.

  I had some trouble driving my five-year-old Olds with one hand, but I made it without any need to exchange license numbers.

  I went up the big wide staircase with all the names of the cops killed on duty on those bronze tablets. I needed a shave and the brass in the hallways eyed me sharply. But I got to see the chief of detectives.

  The chief of detectives is two ranks below the commissioner. The only man above him is the chief inspector.

  The chiefs official rank is assistant chief inspector. His name is Hanrahan. When I got into Hanrahan's office he didn't say hello and neither did I.

  "Sit down," he said.

  I sat down while he pretended to be busy. Six years ago I was recruited into the Confidential Squad. I was still a cadet in the Police Academy. And who did I finger for taking graft from the East Harlem numbers racket? Hanrahan's nephew, a Vice Squad plainclothesman. He was dumped from the department and I was marked for promotion. But not by Hanrahan.

  Three months later, on foot patrol, I caught two stick-up men running out of a drugstore. They had just killed the owner. I killed one, shot the other, was wounded in the leg, and was cited and promoted to detective 3rd grade. They put me into Narcotics. I developed my stoolies, made detective 2nd grade in two more years, and here I was, four years later, detective 1st grade, sitting across from Hanrahan with my hand beginning to throb and no aspirin in sight.

  When Hanrahan figured he had me nervous enough, he put away some of his foolish papers and lit a cigar.

  "The lab just called," he said. He looked pleased, so I braced myself. "They did an analysis."

  "I bet I got the clap," I said.

  "In a way, in a way. That eight-pound buy you made of heroin." He lit his cigar again. He bought cheap cigars from the Italian stores on Baxter Street and they were always going out. He enjoyed the delay. I balanced my elbow on the arm of the chair, keeping my hand upright.

  "That heroin is milk sugar."

  So I had spent three months for nothing and all I would have to show for it would be a scar across my palm. Thank God I got back the buy money.

  "Great for coffee, I hear," I said.

  "Just thought you would like to be the first to know," Hanrahan said.

  "Appreciate it deeply," I said.

  He opened a drawer and took out two plastic bags. One held a small box, the size that might hold a wristwatch. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. The other bag held the same size box, but opened. It also held wrapping paper, string, and some, stained cotton batting. Hanrahan stood up.

  "Come on," he said.

  I followed him down the hall to the police commissioner's office. I had never been inside. I had very little time to figure out what was lined up for me since the chiefs office is only thirty feet away. I wasn't feeling too good about the whole thing.

  We went through the anteroom and then into the conference room. It had an enormous mahogany table and a life-size portrait of Theodore Roosevelt, the only PC who made president. They still can't get over it.

  Hanrahan tapped on the last door. A very upper-class voice told us to come in.

  The PC, Andrew Hasketh Wilson, came from a very good old New York family. I come from a very new New York family, and the chip rests lightly on my shoulder. Wilson had the right political connections and he liked the window wide open, even on chilly days. He was practicing with a putter. He was a very good administrator. When we walked in, Hanrahan showed his gut instinct for politics- he said nothing until the PC had finished his swing. We watched the ball roll fifteen feet and up a little incline into the cup.

  "Detective Sanchez, sir," Hanrahan said. I would have spoken in the middle of the swing. Hanrahan put the two plastic bags on the desk. The PC lined up another ball and sank it.

  "Play golf?"

  Me, from 103rd Street and First Avenue? Me, my father dead when I was fourteen and my mother left with four kids, me the oldest? I quit school and worked five days a week as a delivery boy for a grocery store. I worked Saturday and Sunday at Coney Island selling hot dogs. I worked on furniture delivery trucks. That built me up physically. I had sense enough not to breakfast on soda pop and doughnuts.

  "No, sir," I said. "No golf."

  "Good game. Teaches you patience."

  Patience!

  It took me six years, but I managed to graduate high school by going nights. Then I went to CCNY nights. I wanted a law degree. After I'd been going for four years, my mother died. What the hell, she'd had warm clothes and the other kids had decent clothes too until they made it on their own.

  The steam went out of me. I quit school and went into the cops. I could have gone on with law school, but after ten years of working days and going to school nights I had had it.

  "Yes, sir."

  He packed up his grown-up Erector set and invited me and Hanrahan to sit down. He opened one of the plastic bags and shook out the contents. One box, one sheet of brown wrapping paper, one piece of string, one piece of blood-stained cotton batting.

  "This little box came in yesterday's morning mail," he said. If I had known what it contained I would have been much more careful opening it. For instance, I undid the knot. I can't stand cutting string of rope. Even though I'll throw them away, I just won't cut them. And sometimes I'll save a good piece of twine.

  "Well, when I opened it I found a woman's index finger inside. I called in Inspector Hanrahan. He thought it was probably some medical student's idea of a joke."

  "But why mailed to you?" I asked.

  "Yes, that's what I wondered, of course," he said. "And the finger se
emed so exceptionally well cared for- manicured. Hardly the finger of an indigent dying in a charity ward. So I don't see how a student would have had access to it." He paused. "And today, as you can see, I received another box. I decided not to touch it. I called Inspector Hanrahan, and he suggested you."

  Thanks loads.

  "Where's the finger now?" I wanted to know.

  "We sent it up to the morgue."

  He got up and walked to the window. From there he had a fine view of the Annex, where the Narcotics Squad had its offices. If he peered around the edge of the window he could look at a row of shop windows displaying industrial machinery. It was the kind of view that would make a man get to work out of sheer boredom.

  Hanrahan shook out the little package from the second plastic bag. It thudded onto the desk and sat there waiting for me, perfectly willing to screw up my life after last night's fake buy from Lo Scalzo. Two in a row. What the hell did I know about detective work? All I knew was how to make friends with junkies by getting them off easy on burglary or an armed robbery where no one got hurt. Then they owed me a nice tip and when they phoned me I would sit around somewhere drinking cheap wine or good scotch and then I would pull my .38 short-barreled Cobra and arrest someone. It was a very easy and uncomplicated life. And now Hanrahan had billed me as a revived Sherlock Holmes. I began to sweat just thinking about it.

  The PC opened a drawer and took out a pair of thin cotton gloves. "I sent out for these," he said. I put them on feeling even more respectful towards the upper classes.

  We all looked at the little box. I postponed the moment for a while by putting on the gloves carefully, banging them in between the fingers. I would have given a lot then to be back in law school with nothing on my mind but the principles of Roman law.

  Hanrahan cleared his throat and said, with pure joy, "It's all yours."

  2

  THE BOX WAS FIVE INCHES LONG, TWO INCHES wide, and one inch deep. The words "Police Commissioner" had been cut out of a New York Times headline. It was postmarked the day before, 5 p.m., Grand Central.

  The wrapping was plain brown paper. It was tied with ordinary white twine. I looked at the knot carefully. It looked familiar but I couldn't place it.

  "The commissioner hasn't got all day," Hanrahan said. "What are you looking for?"

  "The return address," I said.

  "I think," said the commissioner, "that if Detective Sanchez is in charge, he should be in charge."

  I felt better.

  I remembered where I had once seen that knot. When I was twelve I wanted to join the Boy Scouts. Boy, had I wanted to join! I went to their meetings for a while. But my father couldn't afford the money for the uniform. A uniform wasn't necessary, the scoutmaster told me. But all the other kids had them. In the three meetings I attended at the church I learned to make three knots: the square knot, the half-hitch, and the bowline. I was pretty sure that the knot was the bowline.

  "Sir," I asked, "was the knot on the other package like this one?"

  The PC wasn't sure. He added he knew very little about knots.

  The bowline has the peculiarity that the more pressure placed upon it the tighter it becomes-but it never jams. The second point about the bowline is that it comes apart, no matter how much tension it has undergone, with the slightest pull. I broke the knot now with a very gentle pressure.

  I put the string aside. The package had been wrapped very neatly. The ends of the paper had been folded over with the precision of a skillful shipping clerk. There was just enough paper to make a neat tuck. None had been uselessly wasted. The paper had been cut from a larger piece with scissors.

  Whoever had done it was a very neat fellow.

  I took a deep breath and lifted the box top.

  Embedded on some bloody cotton batting was a woman's ring finger. A wide gold band encircled its base.

  "Well, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," said Hanrahan.

  The PC got a little white. He turned his head aside and looked out the window, demonstrating one of the few disadvantages of starting at the top.

  When you start at the bottom you get it full in the face. Hal Green gave it to me when I was a rookie on patrol with him in the 23rd precinct. We got an injury call on the radio but when we got into the basement apartment it was a DOA. A five-year-old girl whose junkie mother had beaten her to death.

  The kid was lying on her right side on the filthy bed. I could see a tiny gold earring and a bruised face. The mother kept saying the kid was bad and wouldn't stop crying. Hal told me to call in a DOA on the radio and then he saw my face. He kicked the body.

  "It's a dead body, kid," he said. "It's nothin'. It's thirty-eight pounds of dead meat and it can't feel anything anymore. Get used to it, or you won't last. Now go down and call in."

  He looked at me again. "Go ahead and throw up if you want to," he said. "I'll keep my trap shut." I went into the hall toilet.

  The PC was still looking out the window. He was looking at those criss-crossed streets where he could move us cops around like chessmen. He wore a three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit and maybe seventy-five-dollar handmade English shoes and he couldn't stand to look at a finger. The thought made me feel better.

  "I don't want any of this in the papers yet," the PC said. "You still think it's a joke?"

  "No," Hanrahan said.

  "Detective Sanchez."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I have an assumption. It's the only one that's safe to assume."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I assume the woman is alive. I assume that one finger will be cut off each day and-and mailed to me. I assume you will find her, based on what Inspector Hanrahan tells me of your abilities. Good luck."

  "I'll be leaving, sir," Hanrahan said. He went out, fishing for a cigar.

  I stayed behind to gather up all my little treasures. The index finger was at the morgue. That's something else about death in New York. It's very well organized. You lose a finger, say, in the street. If someone turns it in, it goes to the morgue. They print it and then they bury it in a little box in Potter's Field.

  Even fingers that get mailed to the PC go the same route. New York has a working democracy.

  I walked out and down the hall. Hanrahan was there sitting on an old red leather couch talking to three reporters. They were getting red in the face. Hanrahan leaned back and said, "Now, boys."

  "Aw, come on, Inspector," the man from the News growled.

  "Where did you get the notion there's a story about a finger in the mail?"

  "People tell me," the News said.

  "Let them tell me," Hanrahan said pleasantly. "Good afternoon."

  The reporters took the elevator down. Hanrahan's cigar had gone out, as usual. He lit a match. When he saw me, he shook it out and tossed it on the floor. There was an ash tray at the end of the couch. That was Hanrahan for you. Considerate.

  He held the cigar towards me. I fished for my old lighter with my good hand. The flame almost burned the black hairs off his knuckles. His eyes lifted and met mine.

  "Thanks."

  "Any time," I said.

  "I'll bet."

  The elevator came. As I got in he said, "The best of luck on your death-defying mission." My hand was throbbing like a bass drum; I needed sleep and a shave and a bath. I said warmly, "Thank you, sir."

  I drove with one hand to the morgue.

  What was on his mind? I couldn't figure him out. He wanted revenge? Great. Who doesn't? Clap, clap. But was Hanrahan dumb enough to screw up his job by recommending me? Me, Pablo? Me, whose laboriously built-up skills were as much use in a case like this as a gorilla given a watchmaker's loupe and a tiny screwdriver and told to assemble an expensive wristwatch? Tell me to tear apart a bunch of bananas and I'd wow 'em in Dakar, or wherever gorillas come from.

  If I muffed the case, and the chances were very good that I would, I wouldn't be bounced, but it wouldn't look good on my record. And the PC would remember that his chief of detectives had recommended a stup
id ape named Sanchez. That didn't sound like. Hanrahan. Either he didn't give a damn about the PC's annoyance or he figured he had built up enough credit to take a small fall. Or maybe he had something else going for him.

  Ah, the hell with it. I had enough to keep my little cunning mind busy without adding this problem. With my bad hand, my lack of sleep, and my stomach squeezing out gastric juices against my will, I had enough to brood over without trying to work out the machinations of that Irish Machiavelli. I gave a little laugh at the thought. What the hell, ten years of night school had introduced me to a lot of books I never could have heard of if I had been pushing a garment rack on Seventh Avenue. The picture of Hanrahan lumbering through the streets of 15th-century Italy in doublet and velvet hose, with a cheap Italian cigar, put me in a good mood. I needed good moods. I clung to mine until I pulled up in front of the morgue.

  The morgue is an attractive building right next to Bellevue. Lots "of glass, lots of rubber plants, lots of pretty pictures of flowers above the benches where the women of the poor cry quietly as they wait for identification. Across the tiled wall next to the receptionist's desk is a Latin sentence in stainless steel letters six inches high. It runs about eight feet long. The architect had sense enough to leave it in Latin, and my ten years of hanging around night school enabled me to translate it. It runs: "Let all conversation cease. Dismiss the smile from your face, for here is the place where death delights to come to the assistance of life."

  I went into the Missing Persons office. It's a little room off the main entrance. It's got a fine view of Bellevue Psychiatric. But if you scrunch in a corner next to the filing cabinet and almost twist your neck off, you can see the river traffic.

  Tully was doing just that. His family was on tugs, but he couldn't stand cold weather, so he chose the cops.

  He had printed the index finger, taken photographs, and done all the necessary. I gave him the second box and its contents for the same treatment and told him I'd be back to pick it all up as soon as I saw Dr. Altman.