by Ed McBain
“Mmm-huh,” Carella said pleasantly. “Ever wear sunglasses in the street?”
“Oh, sure,” Manners answered.
“Were you wearing them on Friday, October thirteenth?” Carella asked pleasantly.
“Gee, who knows? When was that?”
“The middle of last month,” Carella said pleasantly.
“Maybe, who knows? We had a lot of sunshine last month, didn’t we? I could’ve been wearing them.” He paused. “Why?”
“Why do you think we’re here, Mr. Manners?”
Manners shrugged. “I don’t know. Stolen car? That it?”
“No, guess again, Mr. Manners,” Brown said.
“Gee, I don’t know.”
“We think you’re a murderer, Mr. Manners,” Carella said.
“Huh?”
“We think you went into a bookstore on Culver Avenue on the evening of—”
And Kling suddenly reached for him. He stepped between Brown and Carella, cutting off Carella’s words, grabbing Manners by the front of his coveralls and then pushing him backward against the side of the car, slamming him there with all the strength of his arm and shoulder.
“Let’s have it,” Kling said.
“Let’s have what? Let go of my—”
Kling hit him. This was not a dainty slap across the cheek nor even a vicious backhanded swipe to the jaw. Kling hit him with the butt of his .38. The gun collided with Manners’ forehead, just over his right eye. It opened a cut two inches long that began bleeding immediately. Whatever Manners had expected, it wasn’t this. He went dead white. He shook his head to clear it and then stared at Kling, who hulked over him, right hand holding the gun, poised to strike again.
“Let’s have it,” Kling said.
“I…I don’t know what—”
Kling hit him again. He swung up his arm, and then he brought it forward and down in a sharp short blow, hitting the exact same spot, like a boxer working on an opened wound, hitting directly and with expert precision, and then pulling back the gun, and tightening his left hand in Manners’ clothes, and saying, “Talk.”
“You son of a…you son of a bitch,” Manners said, and Kling hit him again, breaking the bridge of his nose with the gun this time, the bones suddenly splintering through the skin.
“Talk,” he said.
Manners was bellowing in pain. He tried to bring his hands to his shattered nose, but Kling shoved them away. He stood before the man like a robot, the hand tight in the front of the coveralls, his eyes slitted and dead, the gun ready.
“Talk.”
“I…I…”
“Why’d you do it?” Kling asked.
“He…he…oh, Jesus, my nose…Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…” The pain was excruciating. He gasped with the agony of trying to bear it. His hands kept flitting up to his face, and Kling kept knocking them away. Tears filled his eyes mixed with the blood from the open wound on his forehead, running into the blood that gushed from his mashed nose. Kling brought back the gun a fourth time.
“No!” Manners screamed. “Don’t!” And then the words came streaming from his mouth in an anxious torrent, tumbling from his lips before the gun descended again, one word piling onto the next, a hysterical outburst from a terrified and wounded animal. “He came in here the lousy Jew bastard and told me the color was wrong the lousy kike told me the color was wrong I wanted to kill him right then and there I had to do the whole job over again the lousy son of a bitch bastard he had no right telling me the kike the louse I told him I warned him I told him he wasn’t going to get away with this can’t even speak English the bastard I followed him I killed him I killed him I killed him I killed him!”
The gun descended.
It hit Manners in the mouth and shattered his teeth, and he collapsed against the car as Kling raised the gun again and fell upon him.
It took both Carella and Brown a full five minutes to pull Kling off the other man. By that time, he was half dead. Carella was already typing up the false report in his head, the report that would explain how Manners had resisted arrest.
Patterns.
Indictment for Murder in the First Degree by Shooting
FIRST COUNT
The Grand Jury of Isola, by this indictment, accuse the defendant of the crime of murder in the first degree, committed as follows:
The defendant in Isola, on or about October 13, willfully, feloniously and of malice aforethought shot Herbert Land with a pistol and thereby inflicted divers wounds upon said Herbert Land and thereafter and on or about October 13 said Herbert Land died of the wounds.
SECOND COUNT
…feloniously and of malice aforethought, shot Anthony La Scala with a pistol and thereby inflicted divers wounds...
THIRD COUNT
…upon said Joseph Wechsler and thereafter and on or about October 13...
FOURTH COUNT
...said Claire Townsend died of the wounds.
Patterns.
The pattern of December sunlight filtering past barred and grilled windows to settle in a dead white smear on a scarred wooden floor. Shadows merge with the sun smear, the shadows of tall men in shirt sleeves; it will be a cold December this year.
A telephone rings.
There is the sound of a city beyond those windows.
“87th Squad, Carella.”
There are patterns to this room. There is a timelessness to these men in this place doing the work they are doing.
They are all deeply involved in the classic ritual of blood.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph © Dragica Hunter
Ed McBain was one of the many pen names of the successful and prolific crime fiction author Evan Hunter (1926–2005). Born Salvatore Lambino in New York, McBain served aboard a destroyer in the US Navy during World War II and then earned a degree from Hunter College in English and psychology. After a short stint teaching in a high school, McBain went to work for a literary agency in New York, working with authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and P.G. Wodehouse, all the while working on his own writing on nights and weekends. He had his first breakthrough in 1954 with the novel The Blackboard Jungle, which was published under his newly legal name Evan Hunter and based on his time teaching in the Bronx.
Perhaps his most popular work, the 87th Precinct series (released mainly under the name Ed McBain) is one of the longest running crime series ever published, debuting in 1956 with Cop Hater and featuring over fifty novels. The series is set in a fictional locale called Isola and features a wide cast of detectives including the prevalent Detective Steve Carella.
McBain was also known as a screenwriter. Most famously he adapted a short story from Daphne Du Maurier into the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). In addition to writing for the silver screen, he wrote for many television series, including Columbo and the NBC series 87th Precinct (1961–1962), based on his popular novels.
McBain was awarded the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1986 by the Mystery Writers of America and was the first American to receive the Cartier Diamond Dagger award from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. He passed away in 2005 in his home in Connecticut after a battle with larynx cancer.