Jigsaw by Ed McBain

Author:Ed McBain [McBain, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612181684
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2011-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

The best burglars in the world are cops.

There are three types of alarm systems in general use, and the one on the back door of the Ferguson Gallery was a closed-circuit system, which meant that it could not be put out of commission merely by cutting the wires, as could be done with the cheapest kind. A weak current ran constantly through the wires of the closed-circuit system; if you cut them, breaking the current, the alarm would sound. So Brown cross-contacted the wires, and then opened the door with a celluloid strip. It was as simple as that, and it took him no longer than ten minutes. In broad daylight.

The gallery was empty and still.

Sunshine slanted silently through the wide plate-glass windows fronting Jefferson Avenue. The white walls were pristine and mute. The only screaming in the place came from the colorful paintings on the walls. Brown went immediately to the blue door on the far wall, opened it, and stepped into Bramley Kahn’s office.

He started with Kahn’s desk. He found letters to and from artists, letters to patrons, a rough mock-up of a brochure announcing the gallery’s one-man show to come in August, memos from Kahn to himself, a letter from a museum in Philadelphia, another from the Guggenheim in New York, a hardbound copy of Story of O (the first few pages of which Brown scanned, almost getting hooked, almost forgetting why he had come here), a trayful of red pencils and blue pencils, and in the bottom drawer a locked metal cash box—and a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson. Brown tented his handkerchief over the revolver, picked it up by the butt, and sniffed the barrel. Despite the fact that Albert Weinberg, his late partner, had been slain with a .32-caliber weapon, this gun did not seem to have been fired lately. Brown rolled out the cylinder. There were six cartridges in the pistol, one in each chamber. He closed the gun, put it back into the drawer, and was reaching for the cash box when the telephone rang. He almost leaped out of Steve Carella’s borrowed trousers. The phone rang once, twice, again, again, again. It stopped suddenly.

Brown kept watching the instrument.

It began ringing again. It rang eight times. Then it stopped

Brown waited.

The phone did not ring again.

He lifted the gray metal cash box from the bottom drawer. The lock on it was a simple one; he opened the cash box in thirty seconds. It contained anything but cash. He found a partnership agreement between Kahn and Geraldine Ferguson, a certificate for 200 shares of IBM stock, Kahn’s last will and testament, three United States Savings Bonds in fifty-dollar denominations, and a small, white, unmarked, unsealed envelope.

Brown opened the envelope. There was a slip of white paper in it:

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