Mischief

by Ed McBain

  “There we are,” he said, topping off her glass, and then pouring one for himself.

  “Thank you, Harry,” she said. She had never liked the name Harry, but on him it was kind of cute. On him,any name would be kind of cute.

  He lifted his glass in a toast.

  “To you,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “And to me,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, and smiled.

  “And to the beautiful music we’ll make together.”

  She nodded, but said nothing. No need to make him feel too confident. They clinked glasses. They sipped champagne as the boat bobbed on the water and a raw wind blew in off the river, tearing the clouds to tatters, allowing the sunshine to break through at last.

  “There’s a CD player below,” he said.

  “Is there?”

  Emerald eyes wide in interest.

  “Do you think you might like to go down there?”

  “Whatelse is down there?”

  Champagne glass poised near her generous mouth. Lips slightly parted. One sneakered foot jiggling.

  “A double bed…”

  “Oh my.”

  “And more champagne.”

  “Mmm.”

  “And me,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her.

  She felt suddenly dizzy, and wondered if he’d put something in the champagne. And then she realized it was only the way he was kissing her that made her so dizzy, and she thought Oh boy am I in trouble. He lifted her from the banquette. Carried her across the bobbing deck to where there was an open doorway leading downstairs. Carried her down the stairway, a ladder she guessed you called it, into what looked like a small kitchen, a galley she guessed you called it, carried her up front, upforward , to where there was a double bed—which was the only possible thing youcould call it.

  As he lowered her gently to the bed, he said, “I’m going to fuck you senseless, Gail.”

  Which was her name.

  And which she guessed he just might.

  2.

  “WHAT I DON’T LIKEabout what I’m seeing here is this is a freebie gig we’re doing and it’s only twelve days away and we’re gettin no coverage atall on it,that’s what I don’t like about it,” Jeeb said.

  Jeeb was the lead rapper in the group. There were four of them altogether, Jeeb and Silver and the two girls, one of them named Sophie and the other named Grass. The group called itself Spit Shine. It was Jeeb who’d thought up the name. This was when they were still rapping on street corners in Diamondback and calling themselves Four-Q, which was certainly appropriate for the kind of music they were making, but which Jeeb figured might not go down too well in the big time, which was where they planned togo , man, straight to the top, man.

  Jeeb remembered his grandfather telling him they used to use the word “shine” to describe people of color back in the old days, though he didn’t know where the word had come from, maybe it had something to do with black folks’s skin looking shiny, was what his grandpa told him. Anyway, it was an expression in common use back then, shine. Jeeb figured it’d be good to throw that word right back in Whitey’s face—shine, huh?—but attach the wordspit to it so it came outspit shine, like a black man snarling and spitting, which is what their music was all about, anyway. The girls thought the new name was terrific. Silver thought it sucked. Silver thought it was cool somebody came up to you, ast you what the name of this crew was, you tole him, “Four-Q.” Silver thought that was real cool, man. Jeeb told him it would put off a record producer, he’d think you were tellin him to go fuck himself. Silver said that was exactlythe attitude they should be tryin’a project here, man, you don’t like what we’re tellin you, then Four-Q, man.

  The girls said they were embarrassed to tell they mamas Four-Q. Grass, especially, who was only fourteen back then when they were rapping for nickels and dimes on street corners, she was ashamed to say the name of the band out loud, her mother’d hit her one upside the head if’n she did. Grass was the only virgin Jeeb knew at the time. He respected her opinion because he felt there was something pure about her. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t mindrapping the wordfuck but was ashamed ofsaying Four-Q, he couldn’t understand that at all. He knew in his heart, though, that Spit Shine was a better name than the one they had, and he also knew it wouldn’t pay to get all huffy with Silver, tell him Hey, man,I’m the leader of this crew, so you know what you can do, man, don’t you? That wouldn’t work with Silver, who had more pride than anyone Jeeb knew. So he just took him aside one day and reasoned with him and then told him it’d be great could Silver write a new song for them called “Spit Shine,” spellin it all out for anybody out there wasn’t gettin the message. Silver liked that idea. He wrote the best lyrics of any rapper in the business, wasn’t anything he liked better than writing. He took that name Spit Shine and turned it into a rap that shook thunder from the sky.

  Shine what you call me,

  Shine what I am,

  Spit in your eye, man,

  Shine that I am…

  Was Spit Shine thesong that flew off their first album and right onto the singles chart. Was Spit Shine thesong that made a household name of Spit Shine thecrew . Silver never let Jeeb forget it washim who’d written that song. Silver never let anybody forgetanything . Only thing he was willing to forget was the name he was born with, Sylvester. Sylvester Cummings. Hated that name like poison, said it made him sound like some pansy served dinner and helped you get dressed. The girls told him Sylvester Stallone wasn’t no pansy, and Silver said Stallone didn’t call himselfSylvester , you might’ve noticed, he called himselfSly . So whyn’t you callyour self Sly, Sophie asked him, and he said, Whyn’t you callyour selfSlit , which was a reference to the fact that Sophie had been a hooker before she’d joined the crew.

  That was four years ago.

  Sophie was now twenty-two years old, and Grass (whose real name was Grace) was now eighteen and no longer a virgin thanks to Jeeb, whose real name was James Edward Beeson, which he’d shortened to Jeeb, and Spit Shine was now famous enough to do a free concert in Grover Park, sponsored by a chain of citywide banks that now called itself FirstBank althoughits original name was First National City Bank.

  Sophie was still Sophie.

  “I agree with Jeeb,” she said. “The bank gets a free ride and tons of publicity but so far the gig’s almost here and there’s still nothing but a trickle aboutus performing.”

  “Other crews gettin all the splash,” Silver said.

  He was twenty-three years old, the senior member in the crew, lanky and handsome, with eyes as dark as river mud, a nose like a Roman centurion’s, and dreadlocks that could scare away a witch. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with the name of the crew in neon yellow across the front of it,SPIT SHINE .

  Actually, he didn’t have his mind completely on what they were talking about here. He’d recently come across an album of calypso songs written by a singer who’d been murdered some years back, and one of the songs had stuck in his mind as a good example of early rap, though it was set to a calypso beat. He’d rapped the song for Sophie, skipped the tune entirely, just rapped out Chadderton’s lyrics—that was the singer’s name, George Chadderton, he used to bill himself as King George. The songs had been discovered in a notebook he’d kept before he got killed and a singer who did a pretty good Belafonte imitation had recorded them for an obscure label in L.A.

  Sophie hadn’t much liked the song, which was titled “Sister Woman,” but that was because the song was about hookers and she thought Silver was tryin’a dis her about the days when she’d earned her money walking the streets. As she argued back and forth with Jeeb now about ways they could get more publicity out of their forthcoming concert, Silver went over the Chadderton lyrics in his mind one more time:

  Sister woman, black woman, sister woman mine,

  Why she wearin them clothes showin half her behine?

  Why she walking the street, why she workin
g the line?

  Do the white man dollar make her feel that fine?

  Ain’t she got no brains, ain’t she got no pride,

  Letting white man dollar turn her cheap inside?

  Takin white man dollar, lettinheinside?

  Sister woman, black woman, why she do this way?

  On her back, on her knees, for the white man pay?

  She a slave, sister woman, she a slave this way,

  On her knees, on her back, for the white man pay.

  On her knees, sister woman, is the time to pray,

  Never mind what the white manhegot to say,

  Let thewhitegirl do what the white man say.

  Sister woman, black woman, on her knees give head

  To a man like he like to see her dead

  Can’t she see, don’t she see, can’t she read in his head?

  She a slave to his will, and the man want her dead.

  She a nigger for sure, she a slave still in chains,

  And the white man’ll whip her ankeepher in chains.

  Sister woman, black woman, won’t she hear my song?

  What she doin this way surely got to be wrong.

  Lift her head, raise her eyes, sing the words out strong,

  Sister woman, black woman…

  “What doyou think, Sil?”

  Jeeb’s voice, cutting through the lyrics that were sliggeding through Silver’s head. Good hip-hop, for sure. The album sleeve had credited copyright to Chloe Productions, Inc. He wondered who the hellthat was.

  “Silver? You with us.”

  “I say we call FirstBank an’ tell ’em we’re outta this thing entirely ’less they take a big ad headlinin us.”

  Grass, who had been silent until now, very softly said, “That’s the onliest way, Silver, the man dissin us like that.”

  And smiled at him.

  Jeeb all at once wondered if something was going on between these two.

  CATALINA HERRERAwas in the waiting room of the Morehouse General Hospital morgue when Parker joined her. This was now two o’clock on that afternoon of March twenty-third. The sun was shining, but the temperature was still somewhere down there in the low-to-mid-thirties and more rain was expected tonight, some springthis was.

  Catalina was in her late twenties, early thirties, Parker guessed, a diminutive woman with large brown eyes, dark hair, and the major hooters you found on all these spics. He guessed she’d got knocked up with young Alfredo when she was twelve, thirteen years old, they matured early down there in the tropics and it was difficult for all those macho caballeros down there to keep their hands off all those ripe boobs under the palms in the sand. Catalina’s eyes were luminous with tears. He was here only to ascertain that the dead kid in there was, in fact, Alfredo Herrera and not somebody who’d copped his I.D. Sobbingly, she told Parker that the kid on the slab in there was her son.

  “He was a good boy,” she said.

  Which is what they all said. Looked you straight in the eye after their kid had killed his grandmother, his four-year-old sister, his pet beagle, and his three goldfish, and told you without flinching, “He was a good boy.” Parker had already done a computer run on the late Alfredo Herrera and had come up with zilch. The kid was clean, albeit dead. Parker wondered if his mother knew how handy he’d been with a spray can. He also wondered if she knew whether or not her son had been into anything that might have invited two big ones in the face and another one in the chest. He decided to ask her to have a cup of coffee with him in the hospital coffee shop. He was thinking he might try taking her to bed, those boobs. Parker thought women found him irresistible.

  In the coffee shop, with doctors and nurses sitting at tables all around them—some of them in green surgical gowns ostentatiously spattered with blood, green surgical masks hanging down around their throats like they’d just come from some tremendous lifesaving operation mere mortals couldn’t appreciate—Parker asked Catalina if she knew what her son was doing out in the middle of the night last night, which was presumably when he’d got shot.

  “I don’ know wha’ he wass doing,” she said.

  Thick Spanish accent that Parker found attractive on these Latino women but disgusting on the men, who should for Christ’s sake learn how to speak English.

  “When’s the last time you saw him?” he asked, and ended the sentence there, without adding the wordalive , thereby rescuing himself from another Seaman Shavorskyism.

  “When I come home,” she said. “I was out.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Siss, siss-t’irty,” she said.

  Very charming. Made him think of guitars and black lace, languid breezes playing. Made him think of fucking her, too.

  “We ha’ supper together.”

  Lilting to the ear. Lovely. You got used to it after a while, it almost sounded accent-free. He wondered if she’d ever made love in English. He almost asked her. Instead he said, “What’d you talk about during dinner?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Many things.”

  “Like what?”

  “He told me he wanted to buy a car.”

  “Does he have money to buy a car?”

  Parker immediately thought dope. Eighteen-year-old kid tells his mother he’s thinking of buying a car, where’s he gonna get the bread for the car? Dope, right? Besides, he was Hispanic. On Parker’s block, that meant he was into dope.

  “His grandmother left him money when she died,” Catalina said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It was my husband’s mother,” she said, dismissing the woman with a shrug.

  She’s got a husband, Parker thought.

  “What sort of work does your husband do?”

  “We’re divorced, I don’t know what he does anymore. He went back to Santo Domingo. I haven’t seen him in maybe six months.”

  But still counting, Parker thought.

  “What time did your son leave the house last night?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I left before him.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  A boyfriend, Parker thought.

  “To a movie,” she said.

  She likes movies, he thought.

  “Alone?” he asked.

  She looked at him. He realized all at once that she thought he was asking her for an alibi, trying to make sure she hadn’t dusted her own kid and then painted him red afterward, which of course was a possibility, wet eyes or not.

  “With a girlfriend,” she said.

  He wondered if he should ask her to go to a movie with him tonight.

  “What time did you get back?”

  “Around midnight.”

  “And he was gone.”

  “He was gone,” she said, and burst into tears again.

  Parker watched her.

  Everywhere around them, all these medical people were discussing anything but medicine. It was as if there was an unwritten rule in the coffee shop that you didn’t talk about appendectomies or catheters or loose bowel movements or anything that had to do with work. This was break time, and you didn’t let blood and pus interfere with the enjoyment of your cheese Danish. Parker was a little embarrassed that some of the nurses had turned to look at Catalina crying. The doctors couldn’t care less, they were in a universe of their own, but some of the nurses had turned to stare at this tiny, very attractive brunette who was crying her eyes out, and Parker was afraid they might thinkhe was the one who’d made her cry, not that he gave a shit. Besides, this was a hospital, there were people dying here every ten minutes, the nurses should’ve been used to seeing somebody crying, it wasn’t such a big deal. Still, it made him feel uncomfortable, the two or three nurses who turned to look at them, one of them wearing a green O.R. gown, she’d probably just come from looking inside somebody’s stomach or chest.

  Awkwardly, he watched her.

  “He was a good boy,” she said again, this time into her damp handkerchief.

  He waited.

>   “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No, hey,” he said. He didn’t feel comfortable comforting people. He wanted to ask her if she’d ever seen any spray cans around the house, but he figured he’d better wait till she stopped crying. He also wanted to ask her if her son had been in any serious fights or arguments with anybody in the neighborhood recently, like somebody who might want to pump three shots into him because of it, and then paint him red besides. But she was still crying.

  He kept waiting.

  At last the crying stopped, sort of. She still kept dabbing at a stray tear every now and then, but the real storm had passed, she was in control of herself again. He asked her if she’d like another cup of coffee, and she looked at her watch, and it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps there was a job she had to get to, her son’s murder had consumed the major part of her day so far. But he’d reached her at home this morning, and that had been before lunchtime. He wondered if her husband in the Dominican Republic was paying alimony.

  “More coffee?” he said again.

  “I would like to, but…”

  Another look at her watch. Tears welling in her eyes again. So frail, so beautiful.

  “Do you have to get to work or something?” he asked.

  “I work at home,” she said.

  “Oh. What do you do?”

  “Typing.”

  “Ahh,” he said.

  “Yes. But today…I want to help you. I want you to find whoever…”

  And burst into tears again.

  Jesus, he thought.

  He signaled to one of the volunteer pink-lady waitresses and ordered two more cups of coffee, trying to disassociate himself from this woman bawling across the table from him, people looking at him now like he was a wife-beater or something. He felt like taking out the little leather fob holding his shield, flash the tin, let them know he was a fuckingpolice officer here doing a job, trying to get some information from this woman here, whose dumb spic son went around writing on walls. Again, he waited. He was beginning to get a little irritated with her, busting into tears every thirty seconds.