Mischief

by Ed McBain

  “THAT’S WHY NIGGERS ARE THECOLOR OF SHIT!”

  The input lights on the board went out the minute Spit Shine quit.

  “It’s not coming from the stage,” one of the engineers said.

  “THAT’S WHY NIGGERSSTINK LIKE SHIT!”

  The intercom call light flashed.

  The other engineer picked up.

  “What’s the joke?” a voice asked.

  “It’s not us,” the engineer said.

  “THAT’S WHY NIGGERS AREDUMB AS SHIT!”

  “Are your masters down?” the voice asked.

  The first engineer slapped at the master faders.

  “Nothing’s going out of the console,” he said.

  But the shouting continued.

  “NIGGERSARE SHIT…”

  “Must be somebody on the stage,” the second engineer said.

  “NIGGERS’LL TURN THEWORLD TO SHIT, NIGGERS’LL…”

  “Let’s pull all the wires,” the first engineer said.

  But just then the first shot was fired—and it was too late.

  CARELLA AND BROWNwere already in the car when the crowd exploded. On the other end of the radio Alf Miscolo in the clerical office was giving them the location of the incinerator. As an aside, he reported that Hawes and Meyer had just left the squad room on their way to Grover Park.

  “There’s some kind of trouble there,” he said.

  THE SOME KIND OF TROUBLEwas the same kind of trouble that had been eroding America’s spirit for the past half-century. In an unmarked sedan speeding crosstown and downtown toward the Department of Sanitation incinerator on Houghton and the river, a white man yelled “Hit the hammer!” to a black man, and the black man flicked the siren switch and rammed the accelerator pedal to the floor. The white man and the black man in that speeding police sedan had been raised in an America that promised a melting pot, that told them stories about people from all nations living together in harmony and peace. In this land of the free and home of the brave, men and women of every religion and creed would loudly sing the praises of freedom while reaping all those amber waves of grain. The persecution, the starvation, the deprivation that had brought this human refuse to our teeming shores would be obliterated here for all time. Men and women would come to respect each other’s customs and beliefs while simultaneously merging into a strong single tribe with a strong single voice, a voice distinctly American, a voice more powerfulprecisely because it was composed of so many different voices from so many different lands. Here in America, the separate parts would at last become the whole, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  Well, the liberty and justice for all had somehow become liberty and justice for merelysome , and the glorious notion of a unified tribe had somehow become something no one ever mentioned anymore, like a dream dreamt too often and too yearningly, until its brilliant colors faded to drab and you woke up crying. Because the Deaf Man had realized all this, and because he’d had not the slightest compunction about capitalizing on it, he’d been able to instigate a riot with total certainty and absolute ease.

  Carella and Brown were well aware of the riot.

  They had rushed to the car before the crowd got completely out of hand because containing a riot was not their obligation; catching the man who’dcaused it was. Now there was nothingbut the riot on every police radio channel, interspersed with dispatcher warnings to maintain total radio silence until the trouble was contained. The riot made them uncomfortable because they were respectively a white man and a black man and the trouble in the park was one of color. But they were a black man and a white man acting as a team to catch the son of a bitch responsible for the riot, the man who’d turned a promising golden day into yet another dark and dismal gloom. Tight-lipped, they sped downtown with the siren blaring, passing a dozen or more radio cars racing uptown in the opposite direction.

  Which was what the Deaf Man had planned all along.

  “CHLOE!”he shouted. “Take my hand!”

  She reached for his hand.

  Reached for the future.

  Grasped it eagerly.

  Below the stage, there was bedlam. The first shot had inspired more shooting. When there are guns on the scene, the first gun openly to appear encourages boldness from anyone else who’s armed. Boldness and the challenge of the Old West. High noon in the OK Corral. All that shit. Guns are guns. Guns are weapons of destruction. There were an estimated 250,000 people on that lawn when the first gun came out and the first shot was fired. It was fired by a black man at a white man because the Deaf Man’s baiting words were directed at blacks, and because—as Rivera had written about the multitude—“It will turn on itself and see in itself the olden enemy.” Well,this multitude had heard the inflammatory words, and they had correctly identified the speaker of those words as white, and their single goal was to kill Whitey…

  Its fury will blind its eyes…

  …kick the ofay, kill the ofay, snuff the ofay, off the ofay, box the ofay,hate the ofay, cause the ofay hateyou !

  The crowd moved forward relentlessly, chanting, stamping, shouting, a massive beast that seemed all flailing arms and thrashing legs…

  “This way!” Sil shouted. “The band trailer!”

  White men and black men were shooting at each other, shoving at each other, screaming at each other, pushing at each other, kicking each other, punching each other…

  …eager to destroy the victim it had chosen, the common enemy, a roar rising as if from a single throat, “kill, kill,kill! ”

  Sil threw open the trailer door, put his hands on either side of her waist, and lifted her onto the step.

  The white man’s bullet took Chloe in the back of her head, spattering blood and brain tissue onto the side of the trailer where the wordsSPIT SHINE were lettered in bold silver lettering edged in black, shattering her dream and killing her at once.

  OUTSIDE THEincinerator building, Carella and Brown found a man lying at the foot of the cyclone fence, dead. Inside the building, they found two garbage men and four police officers bound and gagged, blindfolded, and wearing ski masks for good measure.

  They figured the Deaf Man had arrived in the garbage truck parked outside.

  THE FOOT PATROLMANwalking the beat outside the boat basin saw what looked like a police van sitting in the parking lot, close to the river’s edge. He checked it out, and sure enough itwas a P.D. vehicle, with Property Clerk’s Office markings on its side panels. He opened the door on the driver’s side, and found a set of keys hanging from the ignition.

  Aside from that, all there was in the van was some stuff looked like syringes and pipes and other cheap drug paraphernalia.

  THEY HAD DRIVENfrom the boat-basin parking lot, uptown to the Hamilton Bridge, and then over it to the next state—Florry, Carter, and Gloria driving their own rented cars, the Deaf Man driving the Chevrolet he’d rented. By two-thirty that afternoon, he’d paid all of them the remainder of their fees and had opened several bottles of champagne in celebration. All four cars were parked outside the motel room. The stolen narcotics were covered with a tarpaulin in the trunk of the Deaf Man’s Chevy. He had told them it would be best if they went their separate ways in fifteen-minute intervals, Florry first, then Carter, then Gloria. They seemed content to let him do things his way. There’d been scarcely any fuss at all this afternoon, and they were now all a hundred thousand dollars richer because of him.

  They toasted the ease with which the job had gone down, toasted each other’s brilliance and cool, particularly toasted Gloria, who, for a woman, had displayed uncommon ballsiness in putting away the garbage man. None of them complained about the split. They knew—or must have known—that the narcotics in the Chevy outside were worth a great deal more than the Deaf Man had paid them, but he was the one who’d concocted the scheme, and they knew in their hearts that he was entitled to the lion’s share.

  So they drank their champagne like good old friends at a black tie party late in the night after
everyone else had gone home, and at last Florry looked at his watch and said “Time to boogie,” and went into the bathroom to change his clothes. When he came out again, he was wearing brown corduroy trousers, a green sports shirt, a tan V-necked sweater, and brown socks with brown loafers. Carter told him not to spend all his money in one place, and they all laughed and he shook hands all around and went outside, where in a minute or so they heard his car starting and driving off.

  Ten minutes later, Carter sighed and said, “My friends, all good things must come to an end,” and he went into the bathroom to change, shedding the spruce-green uniform and returning in a red turtleneck, gray slacks, a blue blazer, and blue socks with black shoes. He shook hands with the Deaf Man, kissed Gloria on the cheek, and went out. The moment the Deaf Man heard his car driving off, he said, “Alone at last.”

  Gloria arched an eyebrow.

  “I have to be out of here in fifteen minutes,” she said.

  “You still haven’t taught me that trick of yours,” he said.

  “That trick’s a secret,” she said. “I haven’t taught that trick to anyone in the world.”

  “Know any other tricks?”

  “A few.”

  “Want to teach me those?”

  “The fifteen minutes was your idea,” she said.

  “But who’s counting?” he said, and smiled.

  He poured more champagne, and he turned on the radio that was part of the room’s television set and found a station playing elevator music, soft and romantic, with a lot of strings. Gloria sat in the room’s only easy chair, and he sat on the edge of the bed, and leaned over to clink his glass against hers, and they both said “Cheers” at the same moment, and then brought the glasses to their lips and sipped at the good bubbly wine. She was watching him over the rim of the glass. He considered this a good sign.

  “Are you going to drive home in that garbage man’s uniform?” he asked.

  “No, I’ll change before I leave,” she said.

  There was a moment’s hesitation.

  Then he said, “Why don’t you change now?”

  She looked at him for a moment. Then she put down her glass and said, “Sure.”

  She was in the bathroom for what seemed like a very long time. When she came out again, she was wearing a short black skirt with black pantyhose, a red silk blouse, and high-heeled black patent pumps. Through the open bathroom door, he could see all the garbage man uniforms heaped on the floor near the tub. She sat where she’d been sitting earlier, crossed her legs in the black pantyhose, picked up her champagne glass, lifted it to him in a silent toast, and drank again. He went to where she was sitting, leaned over her, and kissed her.

  “The day I interviewed you,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  Still leaning over her. Her face tilted up to his.

  “You asked me what I wanted you to do, do you remember?”

  “I remember.”

  He kissed her again.

  “You have a lovely mouth,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Youdo remember what you said, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Do you remember whatI said?”

  “Sure.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You said you didn’t pay women for sex.”

  “And what’d you say to that?”

  “I said, ‘Good, because I don’t suck cocks for money.’”

  “Good,” he said, “because I don’t plan togive you any money.”

  “Good,” she said.

  “Good,” he repeated, and took her hands, and helped her gently out of the chair. Lifting her into his arms, he carried her to the bed, and put her down on it, and kicked off his loafers and lay down beside her. She rolled into him to meet him, and he took her in his arms and kissed her more fiercely this time, and then his hands were under the short black skirt, easing the pantyhose down over her hips and past the blonde triangle of her pubic patch, rolling them down over the long length of her legs, until they were bunched at her ankles, holding her there like leg cuffs, the black high-heeled pumps just below them.

  “I want to tie you to the bed,” he said.

  “Sure,” she said.

  With leather thongs, he tied her wrists to the headboard posts and her ankles to the footboard posts, leaving her spread-eagled and waiting on the bed while he went into the bathroom to undress. He came to her naked and hard, and kissed her again, and put his hand on her where she was spread and helpless and vulnerable below. He played games with her for an hour or more, the April afternoon drifting slowly by while he teased her first with his hands and his mouth and then with his cock and finally with the Uzi, adding a little danger to the game, the barrel of the gun cool against her thighs, Gloria writhing on the bed beside him. She was still bound when at last he entered her. He did not untie her until twenty minutes later, when they were both exhausted and sweaty and spent.

  “Now you,” she said.

  “Oh-ho,” he said.

  He was lying on his back, his forearm across his eyes, his long muscular body relaxed, his cock limp.

  “Sauce for the goose,” she said, and gathered the leather thongs from where he’d tossed them on the floor.

  She tied his hands first.

  Then his ankles.

  Spread-eagled on the bed, he looked at her and smiled.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “Same as you did to me,” she said. “Only better.”

  She knelt between his spread legs and took him in her mouth. He was erect again within seconds.

  “Now suffer,” she said, and got off the bed and put on first the pantyhose and the skirt…

  “Reverse strip,” he said, smiling.

  “Yep, reverse strip,” she said, and put on her brassiere and the red silk blouse and the high-heeled pumps…

  “Come on over here,” he said.

  “Nope,” she said, and buttoned the blouse swiftly, button by button, and tucked the blouse into the skirt…

  “Come on, bitch.”

  “Beg for it,” she said, and went to the dresser and picked up the Uzi.

  “Uh-oh,” he said, smiling.

  “Yep,” she said, and nodded and fired two quick shots into his chest. She turned away at once, picked up her handbag and the keys to the Chevy, looked back at him again quickly, turned away from the sight of all that blood, and left the room.

  14.

  THEY DROVE ACROSS THE BRIDGEin the rain because listening to the morning news on the radio, Brown had heard about a motel shooting in the town of Red Point over in the next state. Three garbage men’s uniforms had been found in the motel bathroom. They called the Red Point P. D. and spoke to a detective named Roger Newcastle, who said they were welcome to come on out, but whoever’d got shot was long gone. At first, they thought he was using a euphemism, telling them the victim was dead.

  But, no, when they met Newcastle at the Hamilton Motel, as it was called because of its proximity to the bridge, they learned from him that the victim—who had to’ve bled gallons of blood, judging from the looks of the bedclothes here—had somehow got himself loose…

  “He must’ve been tied to the bed here with these here leather thongs,” Newcastle said.

  …and gone out of here leaving a trail of blood that led straight to where a car must’ve been parked.

  “Wasn’this car, though, cause we got the registration on that from when he checked in. We figure it was somebody else’s car, but not nobody’s who was checked in at the time, cause none of them says their vehicle was stolen. So we guess it was somebody’s car who was with him there in the room, maybe the person who tied him to the bed that way. Either a woman or a man, this might’ve been a homosexual thing, they can sometimes get kinky and fierce. There’s blood all over one of the thongs, he must’ve made his hand bleed tryin’ a work loose, like some animal gnawing off his own paw to get free of a trap.”

  “Find any nar
cotics?” Carella asked.

  “Not a trace. Why? You think this was some kinda dope party?”

  “Not exactly,” Brown said.

  “We dug out two slugs went on through and buried themselves in the wall behind the headboard,” Newcastle said. “There was also a pair of nine-millimeter cartridge cases on the floor near the dresser, they’re with Ballistics, too. Nobody heard any shots, this is a place guys bring girls over from the city, nobodywants to hear nothing. Half of them, if theydid hear anything, they prolly got in their cars and ran for the hills. The lab’s going over everything else right this minute, champagne bottles, glasses, the uniforms, who knows what they’ll come up with? The car he drove in with was a Chevy, by the way, gone now, we figure whoever dusted him went off in it later on.

  With thirty million dollars’ worth of stolen narcotics, Carella thought.

  “We checked the license-plate number he wrote on the motel registration card, it was a rented car,” Newcastle said. “Hertz. Name he used when he rented it was the same one he registered under here at the motel.”

  Had to’ve shown a driver’s license, Brown thought, probably a phony. Wouldn’t have given him a car without a license.

  “What name was that?” he asked.

  “Sonny Sanson,” Newcastle said. “That’s notSamson , it’sSanson —with ann .”

  “Yeah,” Carella said, and sighed. “We know.”

  IN THESunday afternoon gloom of the squadroom, they explored the possibilities.

  If the person who’d been tied to that bed was whoever had been with the Deaf Man in the motel room, then the Deaf Man had done the shooting and gone on his merry way with thirty million dollars’ worth of stolen narcotics.

  If, on the other hand, the Deaf Manhimself was the person who’d been tied to that bed, then whoever was with him had shot him and stolen thealready stolen narcotics. Honor among thieves, so to speak.