by Ed McBain
“The detective,” he said.
Another silence.
“The Valparaiso case. We watched the video…”
“Oh yes.”
“…together.”
“Yes, I remember now,” she said. “How are you?”
“Fine, thanks. And you?”
“Busy,” she said.
There was a silence on the line.
“Did you catch them yet?” she asked.
“Well, no. Not yet.”
“I thought that’s why you might be calling.”
“Well, no,” he said.
“Ah,” she said, and fell silent again.
He hesitated. Hang up, he thought. She hasn’t the faintest idea why you’re on the phone. She’s not expecting…
“Uh, Honey,” he said, “I was wondering…”
Silence.
“I don’t know what time you might be free tonight…”
The silence persisted.
“But I just got sprung here myself, and I don’t have to be back till tomorrow morning, so I was wondering…”
“I’ve got to talk to a Russian dancer in Calm’s Point,” she said.
“Oh,” he said.
“At the Academy of Music,” she said. “I should be through before eight.”
He waited.
“I can meet you after that,” she said.
“Well, good,” he said. And then, not to sound too eager, he immediately asked, “Where?”
SHE WAS STILL wearing the on-camera outfit she’d worn while interviewing the dancer at the Calm’s Point Academy of Music. An olive green woolen skirt, the same boots she’d worn on the night of the kidnapping, and a brown turtleneck with a collar as thick as chain mail. Tonight was the opening of the Kirov Ballet, she explained. Her interview with the prima ballerina would be shown on tonight’s Eleven O’Clock News.
“So,” she said, “do you get over to Calm’s Point often?”
“Every now and then,” he said.
They had walked over to a very good steak joint she knew near the Academy. Neither of them had had dinner yet, and it was now only eight-fifteen on a slow Monday, so they had the place almost all to themselves. The maître d’ recognized Honey when she came in, and led them to a choice table near a stained glass window artificially lighted from behind. Hawes was thinking if he’d been here on his own, they’d have seated him either near the men’s room or the telephone booths. He was wondering how much a steak would cost in this place. White linen tablecloths and all.
Honey ordered a Beefeater martini, straight up and very dry, with a couple of olives. Hawes ordered a Johnny Black on the rocks. She made the toast.
“To your case,” she said.
“To your interview,” he said, and they clinked glasses and drank.
“Mmm,” she said.
“Indeed,” he said.
“I’m famished,” she said. “Do you think we could see menus right away?”
Hawes signaled to the waiter.
Honey ordered the filet mignon with a salad and a baked potato. Hawes ordered a sirloin with fries and a side of steamed spinach.
“So where’d you get the white streak?” she asked.
He reached up to touch his temple. They always asked about the white streak. They always told him the white streak was attractive.
“I was investigating a burglary,” he said. “The vic was telling me what happened when all of a sudden she got hysterical and began screaming. The super ran upstairs with a knife in his hand…”
“Uh-oh,” Honey said.
“Yeah,” Hawes said, “and mistook me for a burglar or something.” He took another sip of his scotch. “Bottom line, he came at me with the knife and put a gash in my left temple.”
“Ouch,” Honey said, and plucked an olive from her martini and popped it into her mouth.
“Yeah. The doctors shaved the hair off so they could stitch the cut. The hair grew back white.”
“It’s attractive,” she said, studying it.
He was beginning to believe it.
“You think so?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, “I actually do,” and sipped again at her martini.
“So what’d you learn tonight?” he asked.
“From the dancer?”
“Prima ballerina, my my.”
“Who couldn’t speak a word of English,” Honey said, and pulled a face. “One of my crew finally translated. His mother was Russian. Stood off camera while I fumbled my way through. Great interview, right?”
“His mother stood off camera?”
“Sure, his mother,” Honey said, grinning.
“But you know,” Hawes said, returning the grin, “that might come off kind of cute.”
“You think so?” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “I actually do,” and sipped again at his scotch.
“Come to think of it,” she said, “Tamar’s mother is Russian, isn’t she?”
“Russian mother, Mexican father,” Hawes said, nodding.
“They did an interview together on ABC last night. Split screen, him in Mexico, her in Paris. Their five minutes of fame. Did you see them?”
“No.”
“They both speak perfect English. All they did was bitch about how everyone was paying so much attention to everything but the fact that their daughter was still missing.”
“Well, there may be some truth to that,” Hawes said. “All this stuff about racism, and homosexuality…”
“Hasn’t hurt the album any. It’s already number one on all the charts.”
“That’s just the point. With all the hype, people tend to forget there’s a victim out there.”
“I’ll bet you haven’t forgotten, though, have you?”
“Ahh, here’re the steaks,” Hawes said. “Would you like a beer?”
“I’d love a beer.”
“Heineken okay?”
“Heineken’s good,” Honey said.
She ate like a truck driver.
It must’ve been at least five full minutes before she uttered another word.
“Where’d you learn to eat that way?” he asked.
“With a knife and fork you mean?”
“That, too. But I meant so heartily.”
“In Iowa, when we’re hungry, we go out back and kill a cow.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
“Sioux City, Iowa, yep.”
“There’s no such place.”
“Wanna bet?”
“How’d you end up here?”
“I was a roving reporter for KTIV, the local television channel. Ran around covering murders hither and yon. Believe it or not, we’ve got murders in Sioux City, too. Bottom line, I got spotted by Channel Four here, and they invited me east. Better pay, big bad city, how could a girl refuse?”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Hawes said.
“I’m kind of glad, too,” she said. “Now,” she added.
For an instant, their eyes met over the table.
She went back to her filet mignon.
He went back to his sirloin.
They ate in silence.
“Good steak,” he said at last.
“My favorite joint in the entire city,” she said. “I cover a lot of events at CP-AM. I always come here afterwards.”
“We’ll have to come here again,” he ventured.
“Whenever,” she said.
Their eyes met again.
“So…uh…what is this?” she asked.
“What is what?”
“You know. This.”
“I’m afraid to tell you.”
“Big brave policeman who got stabbed in the head?”
“Yeah, well, not that brave.”
“Tell me.”
“How’d you like to marry me?” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “When?”
“I may be serious.”
“Okay, so where’s the ring?”
“Honey…” he said
.
“Yes, Cotton?” she said, and put both elbows on the table, and cupped her chin in her hands.
“You are perhaps the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Perhaps?”
“You are in fact…”
“Too late to apologize,” she said.
Her eyes were dancing.
He said nothing for a moment.
She raised her eyebrows.
Yes? her eyebrows asked. Her eyes asked.
“If I were to offer you dessert…” he said.
“Yes?” she said.
“…would you accept?”
“Or?”
“Or would you rather we went home and watched you on television?”
“Offer me and see,” she said.
“Honey…”
“Yes, Cotton?”
“Would you care for dessert?”
“No, I would like you to take me home,” she said, and smiled as if she were still on camera. “Would you care for dessert?” she asked.
11
SEEMED like old times.
A bright morning in the merry month of May, and the detectives of the Eight-Seven were gathered in the Loot’s office for a Tuesday morning confab. The lieutenant was late. Arthur Brown was telling a drunk driver joke.
“Motorcycle cop’s been hiding in the bushes all day, hoping to catch a speeder, he finally pulls over this dude doing eighty miles an hour in a convertible Jag. Grinning from ear to ear, the cop leans into the Jag and says, ‘I’ve been waiting for you all day long, pal.’ The dude in the Jag has three sheets to the wind. He says, ‘Well, offisher, I got here as fast as I could.’ ”
Brown burst out laughing.
So did the other detectives in the room.
Seven of them altogether. Six men and one woman, typical of most squadrooms in this city. Andy Parker couldn’t resist trying to embarrass Eileen Burke.
“Another motorcycle cop pulls over the same drunk,” he said. “This time the cop’s a female. She tells him, ‘Sir, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be held against you.’ The drunk says, ‘Tits.’ ”
Which Eileen guessed was better than breaking into her locker and pissing in her shoes. In fact, she thought the joke was pretty funny. After the meeting this morning, she was scheduled to interview a woman who’d been snorting cocaine since she was fifteen years old, but who was now ready to take a stand against the gang that was terrorizing her building in the projects. It was tough enough trying to quit the powder crowd. Protecting your kids against the people hoping to hook them was something else again. The woman was twenty-seven years old. She had a son of eleven who’d already been approached. Enough was enough.
“There’s this guy gets stopped by a cop for speeding?” Richard Genero said tentatively. As the newest detective on the squad, he was still not too sure of himself at these weekly meetings. But the lieutenant wasn’t here yet, and everyone seemed to be in a receptive mood this morning, so he was ready to venture a joke. “The cop wants to know where he’s going in such a hurry, and the guy says, ‘I have to do a show in New Haven.’ The cop asks, ‘What kind of show?’ The speeder says, ‘I’m a juggler.’ The cop is skeptical. ‘Oh yeah?’ he says. ‘Let’s see you juggle something.’ The speeder says, ‘I’d be happy to, but all my equipment is at the theater.’ Well, the cop leads him around to the back of his cruiser, and he opens the trunk and takes out three flares, which he lights and hands to the speeder. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Juggle these!’ It so happens the guy really is a juggler, so he throws the flares into the air and is doing his little act when who should come speeding down the highway but that same drunk in the Jag! He takes one look, jams on the brakes, walks over to the cop, and says, ‘Take me to jail right now, offisher. I’ll never be able to pass that test.’ ”
Everyone was still laughing when Byrnes walked into the room. Gray-haired and bullet-headed, he walked behind his desk, said a gruff “Good morning,” and then asked, “What’s so funny?”
Genero said they were telling drunk driver jokes.
“This drunk comes out of a liquor store,” Byrnes said, “sees a motorcycle cop at the curb, writing a parking ticket. He staggers over to the cop, says, ‘Come on, pal, give a guy a break.’ The cop keeps writing the ticket. ‘Come on,’ the drunk says, ‘don’t be such a friggin Nazi.’ So the cop writes a second ticket for the car having bald tires. The drunk calls him an asshole, and the cop writes a third ticket for worn windshield wipers. This goes on for ten minutes, the drunk hurling abuse, the cop writing ticket after ticket. Finally, the cop closes his book, and says, ‘You satisfied now?’ The drunk says, ‘I really don’t give a damn, offisher. My car’s parked aroun’ the corner.’ ”
The detectives laughed harder than perhaps they should have.
“Have some bagels and coffee,” Byrnes said, and turned to where Carella was standing over by the bookcases with all the legal tomes in them. “What happened last night?” he asked. Carella told him everything that had happened to him down at One Fed Square and beyond.
“And?” Byrnes said.
“I walked,” Carella said.
“Why?”
“I was there through sufferance.”
“Sufferance, huh? Well, my beamish boy, what if I told you the Commish wants us to stick with it?”
Carella looked at him.
“This is all politics,” Byrnes said. “We caught the squeal. If the Feebs crack the case, we look inept. If we’re the ones who nab these guys, we come off smelling of roses.”
“The Feebs don’t have anything yet. And neither do I,” Carella said.
“That’s why we’re here today, ain’t it?” Byrnes said, and turned away and said, “You ready to listen, men?” And immediately added, “Eileen?”
“Good save, Loot,” Eileen said, and everyone laughed. Score one for the frails, she thought, and crossed her splendid legs for emphasis.
Cotton Hawes thought of Honey Blair crossing her legs last night.
“Here’s what we’ve got,” Byrnes said. “You all know we caught this friggin kidnapping Saturday night…”
“Actually, I’m the one who caught it,” Andy Parker said.
“Bravo, you want a medal?” Byrnes asked. “The Joint Task Force moved in and the vic asked for Carella to…”
“Not the vic,” Carella corrected.
“Right, the CEO of the company that records the vic, you’ve seen her all over television. He asked for Carella on the case because he has some sort of rapport with him…”
“Must be the smile,” Meyer said.
“Must be,” Carella said, and flashed a toothy grin.
“Anyway, they get him down there and treat him like a country cousin, except when the CEO demands he go along on the ransom drop. Am I getting this right, Steve?”
“More or less,” Carella said.
“So last night, when they diss him yet again, he walks. Told Corky Corcoran…any of you know him?”
“A prick,” Brown said. “ ’Scuse me, Eileen.”
“Why?” Eileen said. “He is a prick.”
“Anyway, Steve told him to shove his job.”
“Good for you,” Meyer said.
“Only trouble is,” Byrnes said, “I got a call from the Commish last night, soon as he heard what happened.”
“How’d he hear?” Genero asked.
“Corcoran called him. Filed a complaint.”
“The prick,” Eileen said.
“The Commish agrees. He wants Carella—he wants us—to stay on it. In fact, he would like nothing better than for us to crack it. Before The Squad does.”
“Fat Chance Department,” Parker said. “They’ve got technology pouring out of their wahzoo.”
“Didn’t help them locate the perps,” Carella said.
“What’d you learn down there, Steve?” Brown asked.
He told them about all the equipment the Feebs had set up, told them about the perps leading h
im and Loomis out to The Wasteland, told them about the dead Golden Retriever…
“Sons of bitches,” Parker said.
“So we’d know they’re ready to kill the girl,” Carella said.
“Could’ve made their point another way.”
“That’s what Loomis thought. He still thinks these guys are honorable, you know. That they’ll make a deal and stick to it. They asked for two-fifty large the first time around, and when we delivered it, they came back asking for a mil. But he still seems to think…”
“A mil more?” Kling asked.
“No, altogether.”
“The girl’s worth it,” Hawes said. “Did you see that tape of the kidnapping? I saw it on a large screen down at Channel Four,” he said, and grinned sort of goofily.
“We got the MCU report, by the way,” Carella said. “The guy was limping.”
“What guy?”
“One of the perps. The lefthanded one.”
“Well, there’s something,” Parker said.
“We already put out a medical alert,” Hawes said.
“Anything?” Eileen asked.
“Not so far.”
“I mean, how many limping lefthanded guys are there in this city?” Parker asked reasonably.
“Who’s an experienced thief,” Carella said, nodding.
“How so?” Genero asked.
“Stole the Explorer he used on the night of the snatch. Also has a barrel full of stolen cell phones. So at least one of them’s a thief.”
“Means a record, maybe,” Hawes said.
“Maybe for the lefthanded one.”
“Who limps, don’t forget.”
“Any of you guys remember a movie called The Fallen Sparrow?” Byrnes asked.
They all looked at him.
“The bad guy limps. Drags his foot. Scariest scene in the movie is John Garfield waiting for him, his face all covered with sweat, and all we hear is that foot dragging down the hall, coming closer and closer.”
“Who’s John Garfield?” Genero asked.
“That was suspense,” Byrnes said. “Nowadays, they put a lot of bullshit technology on the screen, the directors think that’s suspense.”
“Think we should put out a second med alert?” Eileen asked.
“Couldn’t hurt,” Brown said. “All these doctors are too busy to pay attention the first time around.”