by Ed McBain
How’s that again? Mullaney thought.
“No, before they were painted,” McReady said.
Now he’s talking gibberish, Mullaney thought, frowning.
“Black, of course,” McReady said.
Mere gibberish.
“That is correct,” McReady said, “you have it all, Signor Ladro. Please be patient, won’t you? You will receive the coffin as soon as we can correct the problems on this end. We understand that’s the family’s wish, and we are doing everything possible to comply. Well, thank you. Thank you, Signor Ladro. Thank you, I appreciate that. It was good hearing from you, too, Signor Ladro. Thank you. Please give my regards to Bianca. Ciao.”
McReady hung up, and then took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow. Mullaney, standing outside the window, was thinking furiously. McReady had reeled off a string of numbers, eight, and three, and nine, and eleven, he could barely remember them all, were they some sort of code? He had also said “At five to six,” was that a time? Was he referring to a specific time, and was it New York time or Roman time? Ten, that was another one of the numbers, what did any of them have to do with the jacket or with the paper scraps Gouda had substituted for …
Wait a minute. Didn’t McReady say the accident had occurred two nights ago? In that case, he couldn’t have been referring to the highway accident involving Gouda and the others because that had happened only yesterday afternoon, no, he had been referring to something else, something that was still very very warm, if I recall his words correctly, something that was still a delicate matter, here in New York at least, something that …
We had them drilled, McReady had said.
Each one.
Had he been referring to the three men who’d been shot on the highway? But no, how could he have been? It was Kruger’s fellows who’d caused the accident, Kruger’s fellows who’d done the shooting. Had there been another shooting as well, a gangland killing perhaps, a swap of assassinations, we kill somebody here in New York, you kill somebody there in Rome, even steven? But then why the need for a casual corpse picked up on Fourteenth Street, why not send the genuine item? Or items? There would have been more than one corpse because McReady had said “them,” he had very clearly and distinctly said “We had them drilled,” plural, them, not singular, him, her, or it. But why would anyone want to paint the victims of a shooting?
Black, he thought. McReady had said, “Black, of course.”
Melanie is from the Greek, it means black.
Black.
The jacket was black, the lining was black, the buttons were black, the coffin was …
Oh my God, Mullaney thought, eight and three!
Oh my sweet loving merciful mother of God, oh you smart son of a bitch, Mullaney, eight at five to six, oh you genius Mullaney, you are once again sitting on a fortune, you have cracked the code, you have pierced the plan, you have tipped to what these fellows have done and are planning to do, you are a bloody blue-nosed genius!
Exuberantly, he rose from his crouching position outside the window.
The thing to do now, he thought, is get back to Brooklyn as fast as I possibly can and locate the girl who has my Judy Bond shopping bag. I don’t need you any more, gentlemen—not you, Purcell, and not you, K, thank you very much indeed.
Need them or not, they appeared at the mouth of McReady’s driveway just then, arriving in the same black Cadillac that had picked him up on Fourteenth Street the day before, and looking none the worse for wear after their bout with Solomon and his fellows.
He thought, I’m too close now to be stopped. I have doubled my bets and then retreated, doubled them again, and retreated further still, but this time I’m going all the way, straight to Jakarta where I will bet on cockroach races and sampan regattas, Mullaney’s system, I am ready for the big kill, gentlemen, and you cannot stop me.
He ran for the taxicab waiting alongside the curb.
K and Purcell had already seen him and were backing the Cadillac out of the driveway as he threw open the door of the cab and hurled himself onto the seat.
“Those men in the Cadillac are thieves,” he said to the driver. “Get me out of here! Fast!”
The driver reacted by putting the cab into gear and gunning it away from the curb, obviously delighted by this most recent of developments, and thinking how lucky he was to have found a diversion that took his mind off his three miserable sons.
“What did they steal?” he asked.
“They stole something worth half a million dollars in a certain foreign nation, Italy for example.”
“That is a lot of cabbage,” the driver said.
That is a whole hell of a lot of cabbage,” Mullaney said. “My friend,” he said, “if you can get me where I’m going safely, without those fellows in the Cadillac catching me and killing me, I will give you a reward of five thousand dollars, which is exactly one percent of the total, and which is the biggest tip you’re ever going to get in your life.”
“It’s a deal,” the driver said.
“Share the wealth,” Mullaney said, “what the hell. Have you ever been to Jakarta?”
“I have never even been to Pittsburgh.”
“Jakarta is better.”
“I am sure,” the driver said. “Where is Jakarta?”
“Jakarta is in Indonesia, and is sometimes spelled with a D-j,” Mullaney said, recalling volume J–JO, See Djakarta, volume D–DR. “It is, in fact, the capital of Indonesia, which is the base of a triangle whose apex is the Philippines, pointing north to Japan. They have marvelous cockroach races in Jakarta.”
“I have marvelous cockroach races in my own kitchen every night,” the driver said.
“My friend, they are gaining on us,” Mullaney said, glancing through the rear window.
“Have no fear,” the driver said, and rammed the accelerator to the floor.
This is a fine exciting chase, Mullaney thought, if I don’t get killed. It is almost as exciting as the finest most exciting chase I ever experienced, but that was a long time ago, and neither my life nor half a million dollars was at stake that time. The only thing at stake then was Irene. Irene was the pursued and I was the pursuer, and that was a fine exhilarating chase beginning on West End Avenue and Seventy-eighth Street, exactly where Irene lived, and ending in the Cloisters.
The chase started much as this chase had started, with the unexpected arrival of, coincidentally, two men. The two men who arrived that day at Irene’s apartment were neither K nor Purcell, but a pair of U.C.L.A. philosophy professors whom she had met the month before on her yearly summer visit to her aunt in Brentwood, Los Angeles 49. This was July, I can remember the exact date, it was a Saturday, and it was July twentieth, and Irene had reason thereafter to remember the date, too, because we both made certain irrevocable commitments (we thought at the time) which later turned out to be as easily canceled as any peace treaty. But I did not know that, I only knew what was happening then, happening to Andrew Mullaney who was twenty-nine years old and still single, still living the carefree life of a bachelor. I had just started working for the Educational Encyclopedia Company, Incorporated, I remember, after having served two years in the United States Army, and then having completed my education (ha!) at City College, and having held a series of unrelated jobs in the intervening months since graduation. I had met Irene at a dance given by the Sons of Erin on Fordham Road, and had taken her out perhaps three or four times since that April night, had even escorted her to what was then called Idlewild Airport to put her on an airplane for her yearly visit to Auntie Brentwood (as we referred to her), little knowing she would meet these two very nice philosophy professors from U.C.L.A. Certainly never suspecting they would come to New York in July and naturally think of looking up the vivacious redhead whom they had tried to teach to surfboard at the Santa Monica beach one Saturday afternoon when Auntie Brentwood was out marketing in her gold lamé slacks and high-heeled slippers.
New York in July is a real su
mmer festival, even without the unexpected arrival of two philosophy professors. The temperature on that July twentieth was seventy-nine degrees at eight o’clock in the morning, and was forecast to hit ninety-five before the day was done. The combined heat and humidity were intolerable (it ain’t the heat, it’s the humidity) even though the Weather Bureau had not yet created its “Discomfort Index,” rare euphemism. Mullaney woke at ten-thirty in a sodden bed of tangled sheets, immediately called Irene to ask if she would like to go out to the beach, grinned when she said, “Oh my God, yes!” and went into the kitchen for a leisurely breakfast of orange juice, coffee, scrambled eggs and toast. He put on a pair of swimming trunks, pulled a pair of Army fatigues over them, went down to his old Chevrolet before the alternate-sides-of-street parking expired, and drove down to West End Avenue in time to see Irene leaving the building with two very handsome and bronzed young men whom he later learned (and didn’t at first believe) were philosophy professors from U.C.L.A.
He could not understand why she was leaving her apartment without him even though he was more than an hour late (he was always late for dates; she knew that by now). The two men flanked her like storm troopers (Is she being abducted? he thought in panic), and led her to a blue Chrysler convertible parked illegally alongside a fire hydrant, its top down. Mullaney, pulling up to the curb, shouted, “Irene!” in shock and surprise, but when she heard her name, she only turned and smiled and waved at him, and then got into the Chrysler, which, Mullaney now saw, was sporting California license plates and a foxtail flying from the radio aerial. The radio erupted in that moment with what was undoubtedly the Country Western forerunner of today’s Rock and Roll, the Emperor’s New Music, erupted on that silent July avenue with all the bursting energy of a mortar explosion, zoooooooom, the Chrysler pulled away from the curb in a roaring California surfing-type rock and roll lousy handsome bronzed gods abductors of Irish maidens display of horsepower and élan, “Hey!” Mullaney cried out pitifully.
He climbed out of the decrepit Chevy and stood in the middle of the street watching the disappearing rear end of the convertible and thinking They are taking my girl away, and that was the beginning of the chase.
The chase roared up West End Avenue to Ninety-sixth Street, the battered old Chevy valiantly trying to keep up with the sleek and musical Chrysler, managing to do so only because the California professors (it took him three weeks to accept the fact that they really had been professors) were unfamiliar with the trip-light system in New York and kept getting stopped by red lights on almost every other corner while Mullaney kept his speed down, making all the greens, and steadily gaining on them, Mullaney’s System in embryo. All the while, he kept seeing Irene’s hair blowing free in the wind, Irene occasionally turning to look back, certain she knew he was following, certain she was urging her professor friends to step on the gas, enjoying this enormously while he kept swearing and mumbling under his breath and hoping his car would not overheat.
The Chrysler turned left on Ninety-sixth and hit the downhill straightaway to the Henry Hudson Parkway, almost leaving Mullaney in the dust, but shrieking to a stop when a gasoline truck unexpectedly pulled out of the garage on the right-hand side of the street, just before the viaduct, enabling him to gain on them again, but causing him to wonder what would happen when they got on the parkway and could really give their powerful machine its head. He pressed his own accelerator to the floorboard—the chase was beginning to get somewhat exciting now, he was beginning to think of Irene as some sort of rare woodland sprite captured by barbarians, the prize he must rescue, he had written sonnets about girls like this—and heard the valiant old Chevy rattling away on all six cylinders, and thought Come on, Bessie (he had never, before this, called the car anything at all), we’ve got to catch that submarine up ahead. The submarine up ahead, dispensing Country Western music that was assuredly being picked up on a shortwave radio hookup to some foreign land, perhaps California, flying its foxtail flag from the radio aerial, zoomed onto the parkway, and left Mullaney’s Chevy rattling and steaming at the Full Stop sign.
They were very clever, those California hot-rod professors, but they forgot just one thing as they raced away on the parkway with the Hudson River gleaming in hot July sunshine on their left and the George Washington Bridge uptown spanning New York and New Jersey, they forgot Ford’s Law, which stated that an automobile will continue to roll forward only in direct ratio to the amount of gasoline in its tank. They ran out of gasoline some five hundred yards short of the parkway’s Mobil station, and both mad professors jumped out of the car and began running along the edge of the road, hoping not to get hit by the Saturday traffic, glancing back over their shoulders to shout words of encouragement to Irene, who was standing on the front seat of the Chrysler and cheering as Mullaney drove into view in the puffing Chevrolet. Keen of eye and strong of muscle in those days, Mullaney sized up the situation in a flash: The bronzed surfers had run out of gas and were jogging to the station for a replenishing gallon or two; Irene was alone in the automobile, wearing, he saw now, a bright-yellow shift, a yellow ribbon in her windblown red hair, a saucy impudent grin on her wide Irish mouth—she was daring him, the wench, she was daring him to kidnap her from her kidnapers.
Which he did.
He parked his old heap directly parallel to the sleek shining California submarine, threw open the door on her side, reached in and scooped her into his arms, skirts flying, white nylon panties flashing for an instant, she shrieking, he wanting to make love to her right there in the middle of the parkway, zip, he ran around the nose of the Chrysler, zam, he threw her onto the front seat of his own car, whap, he threw the car into gear, whooosh, he was off in a belching cloud of carbon monoxide. “Hey!” the surfers cried this time, “Hey!” their voices every bit as full of pitiable despair as Mullaney’s had been outside Irene’s apartment building. “Ho-ho!” Mullaney shouted as the Chevrolet rolled by, Irene laughing, her hair whipping about her face, green eyes sparkling, “I love you,” he shouted, and she stopped laughing.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
“You lovely wench, I love you,” he said. “I’m mad about you.”
“Well now,” she said, and was solemnly quiet as he drove recklessly and wildly up the parkway, glancing now and again into the rear-view mirror for sight of the long blue submarine pulling out of the Mobil station. They do not know New York, he reasoned correctly, they are surfers from California, they do not know about such hidden nooks as the Cloisters, ah-ha, he thought, I will foil them.
“I will foil your surfboarding California friends,” he said to Irene.
“They are professors,” she answered.
“Ha!” he said.
The Cloisters was silent in mid-July heat, ancient rocks and stones baking in the sun, flowers blooming, insects droning lazily in the turreted stillness. He made love to her on a secret knoll overlooking the Hudson in the shadow of the timeless walls, feeling sacrilegious and daring and adventurous, telling her he Was wild about her, “I adore you, mmm, I am stark raving mad about your mouth and your eyes and your legs and your pert tiny breasts …”
“Tiny?” she said.
“Oh, mmm, you are all peaches and cream, all soft and round and perfect, oh, I want to marry you,” he said.
“When?” she said.
“Now,” he said.
“Love me now,” she said, “concentrate on that. You can marry me later if you like.”
That was the chase, that was how the chase had ended, with Irene in his arms and the crisp yellow shift up above her waist, while perhaps the parkway traffic watched below, who knew or cared, though later, much later, she would not do it on a Ferris wheel. That day had been the most exciting day in his life, that day he first knew the dizzying excitement of her, that had been the most exciting day in his life until now, today, when he was being chased by two thieves in a black Cadillac, racing to retrieve a jacket worth half a million dollars.
“Are they still be
hind us?” the driver asked.
“No, I think we’ve lost them,” Mullaney said, but was not at all sure.
13. MELISSA
He asked the driver to wait for him at the curb and then went into the apartment building, trying to decide where he should begin—top floor? bottom floor? middle floor? A clock in the lobby told him it was now twenty-five minutes past five, which meant that any self-respecting housewife was already preparing dinner for her spouse and children. He thought this might be a very bad time to go knocking on a hundred and thirty doors, but he could not think of a better time, what with K and Purcell possibly sniffing around and lending urgency to the situation. He was beginning to regret his promise to the cab driver. He had, after all, taken all the risks involved with locating the jacket; he had figured out exactly why and how the jacket was valuable; he had been gambling on its worth since early yesterday; why in hell should he now give the cab driver one percent of the take simply for driving him from Brooklyn to Queens and back again? Well, he thought, we’ll renegotiate that after I find the jacket, the first thing to do is find the damn jacket.
Ground floor? he thought.
Middle floor?
Top floor?
It is always best to start at the bottom, he thought, and work your way up, so what I’ll do is go to the very bottom, which is the basement. In that way, I may catch some ladies still doing their wash, and thereby save myself the possibility of duplication; if I hit the basement last, I may run across some of them I’ve already talked to, yes, it’s best to hit the basement first, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Something was bothering him, but he didn’t know quite what yet. He found himself trying to decide whether he should take the money and go to Jakarta, or whether he should take it and go to Monte Carlo, or London (which is where it was happening, baby, all sorts of gambling action there) or perhaps Sicily where he could live like a king on two dollars a week, playing bocce for money with Mafiosi—all sorts of possibilities churned around in his skull, but of course he first had to find the jacket. And yet finding the jacket was not what bothered him, it was something other than that, though he could not yet put his finger on it.