Free Long Time No See by Ed McBain Page A

report, Jimmy Harris had been slain sometime between 6:30 and 7:30 P.M. He had been able to pinpoint the time so narrowly because the body was discovered almost immediately after the murder; rigor mortis, in fact, had not yet set in. With Isabel Harris, the latitude was wider; the coroner guessed she’d been killed sometime between 10:00 P.M. and 1:00 A.M. In order to have killed Jimmy in Hannon Square at 6:30, and then get uptown to the gym in Diamondback by 7:00, Charlie Clarke had to have moved faster than a speeding bullet. The logistics were impossible. Nor could he have got downtown again to the Harris apartment during the time span the coroner had estimated for Isabel’s murder.
    This meant nothing.
    In this city you could get somebody killed for $50. There was a possible $25,000 at stake here, and for a tenth of that you could hire a battalion of goons. They did not yet know whether the lab boys had lifted any good prints in the Harris apartment. In the meantime, and against that eventuality, they decided to request an I.D. run on Charles C. Clarke in the morning. It was almost 8:00 when they left Diamondback. Carella dropped Meyer at the nearest subway station, and then drove home to Riverhead.

The front door to the house was locked.
    Night like tonight, the goddamn door would be locked and he’d have to stand out there in the cold fumbling for keys. He rang the doorbell, and indeed began fumbling for keys, muttering under his breath. His fingers were stiff, they rummaged awkwardly through the loose change in his right-hand pocket. He took out his key ring. There were enough skeleton keys on it to have convicted a burglar of possession of tools. The house was a huge old rambling monster near Donnegan’s Bluff, purchased by the Carellas shortly after the twins were born, a house that had undoubtedly quartered a large family and an army of servants in the good old days. These were the bad new days, however. It was only Fanny who finally opened the door for him.
    “Well, well, it’s himself,” she said.
    Fanny was their housekeeper, a big woman in her late fifties, wearing a white blouse and bright-green slacks that spread wide over 140 pounds of girth, bleached red hair flaming like neon, mellow Irish brogue spilling from her lips like aged whiskey. “I thought you’d never get here, to tell the truth of it,” she said.
    “Fanny,” he said, “I’m cold and I’m hungry.”
    “Don’t be threatenin’ me, y’bully,” she said. “Theodora’s in the living room. Come in, you’ll catch your death.”
    “If you’ll step out of the doorway…”
    “Aye, I’ll step out of the doorway,” she said, and moved aside to let him in.
    She had come to the Carellas years ago, as a month-long gift from Teddy’s father, who’d felt his daughter needed at least that much time to recuperate after the birth of twins. In those days Fanny’s hair was blue, and she wore a pince-nez and weighed ten pounds less than she did now. The prepaid month had gone by all too quickly, and Carella had regretfully informed her that he could not afford a full-time housekeeper on his meager salary. But Fanny was an indomitable broad who had never had a family of her own, and who rather liked this one. So she told Carella he could pay her whatever he might scrape up for the time being, and she would supplement her income with night jobs, she being a trained nurse and a very healthy woman to boot. Carella had flatly refused. Fanny had put her hands on her hips and said, “Are you going to throw me out into the street, is that it?” and they’d argued back and forth, and Fanny had stayed. She was still with them.
    “Theodora’s in the living room,” she said again. “Shall I bring you a drink, or are you still on duty?”
    “I’d like a scotch and soda, please, very strong,” Carella said, and took off his coat and hung it on the hallway rack.
    “You should wear a hat, this weather,” Fanny said.
    “I don’t like