55 Fiddlers by Ed McBain

Author:Ed McBain
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Police/Detective/Law Enforcement, Mystery/Suspense
ISBN: 9780786281015
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: 2005-09-01T05:00:00+00:00

It certainly had been very nice to fall into two gratuitous drug busts while investigating a pair of homicides. But these windfalls hadn't brought them any closer to learning who had killed the blind violinist, or the cosmetics sales rep, or even the university professor. Nor did it much endear them to Connors and Brancusi, the two Narcotics cops who now had Internal Affairs to deal with because some punk nightclub manager was making noises about having greased them for protection. The things a desperate ex-con would say to avoid taking another fall!

And now, to make matters worse, a dead priest had turned up last night in the Eight-Eight.

And guess who'd caught the case?

"Now the usual thing that would happen here," Ollie explained to the assembled detectives of the Eight-Seven that Friday morning, "would be if a person caught a body that he later learned had been shot with the same pistol used in three previous murders another squad had been investigating—fruitlessly, I might add—since the sixteenth of the month..."

This was now the twenty-fifth day of June. The clock on the squadroom wall read 9:10 A.M.

"The usual thing that would happen would be for the responding detective to cite FMU, and then run the paper over posthaste to the squad that originally caught the squeal, in this case yours precisely, the Famous Eighty-seventh."

He paused to have his droll sarcasm appreciated.

"But it so happens that my plate at the moment is both literally and figuratively empty..."

He did not expect any of the cops here in this room to understand or appreciate such literary terms, but the fact was that there'd been a dearth of murders in his own precinct and besides he was on a diet, hence the empty plates all around...

". .. and so I've decided to join forces with you, so to speak, and take upon myself the investigation of the priest's murder, whose name happens to be Father Michael Hopwell, should this be of any interest to you. And also to lend whatever assistance I may deem myself capable of, ah yes, in the ongoing investigations of the Geezer Murders you are already pursuing."

The Eight-Seven detectives did not know whether this was a blessing or a curse.

"Thank you," Ollie said, "don't bother standing, no applause necessary," and executed a slight but difficult bow with one hand on his still quite ample middle, empty plate or not.

Ollie's idle comment notwithstanding, the tabloids spread on Carella's desktop that Thursday morning were still calling the string of homicides "the Glock Murders." Now that Ollie was on the scene, would the murders be remembered from this day to the ending of the world as "the Geezer Murders"? Carella hoped not.

But look at the facts.

Four murders thus far, all committed with the same automatic pistol. Two of the vics in their fifties. One in her sixties. And now one in his seventies. These were not youngsters, Maude. These were people getting on in life, you might say. Given your average life span of

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