by Ed McBain
“Felice, huh?” he said to the babysitter. “Is that your name?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What do you do, Felice? Do you go to school?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Where?”
“Fieldston, Riverdale.”
“What’s that, a private school?”
“Yes,” she said. “Is that Scotch you’re drinking?”
“That’s Scotch,” he said, “yeah,” and looked at the glass in his hand.
“I hate Scotch,” she said. “I like rye and ginger.”
“Well, that’s a nice drink, too,” he said. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Fifteen,” she said.
“That’s a little young to be drinking, isn’t it?”
“My parents know about it,” she said flatly.
“Well, fine then,” he said, and thought Fuck you, kid.
He had finished the drink and was about to pour himself another, when Jessica came into the room. She was wearing a green dress that was cut low in the bodice, with a pleated flaring skirt and a hemline that ended about three inches above the knee. She had on green earrings and a green pendant that hung just between her breasts; he didn’t know whether they were real emeralds, he couldn’t tell from this distance, but he guessed they weren’t. There was green eye shadow over her eyes, and she was wearing a pale orange lipstick and green high-heeled pumps. Her legs looked spectacular, and he could tell from just one quick glance at the front of her dress that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She came striding into the room like an actress or a model, knowing she looked terriffic and waiting for his response, waiting for the approval on his face, but at the same time seeming embarrassed about wanting the approval and lowering her eyes somewhat shyly as she came toward him.
“You look beautiful,” he said, and suddenly felt very foolish. She was dressed to kill, and all he had in mind was the Harbin Inn up on a Hundredth and Broadway. He was wearing grey slacks and a blue blazer, with a simple gold tie, and he felt too casually dressed now, and realized he should have worn a suit. “Really beautiful,” he said.
“Well, you look beautiful, too,” she said, and glanced at the empty glass in his hand, and said, “Shall we go? Or did you want another one?”
“I’m ready when you are,” he said.
“Felice,” she said, turning away from him, the pleated skirt of the dress flaring, “Peter’s in his crib, but he’s not asleep yet, so please check on him in ten minutes or so.”
“Sure,” Felice said. “How late will you be?”
“Well, I’m not sure. Do you have a curfew?”
“No, I just wanted to know.”
“I have no idea. Felice, don’t let anyone in. Lock the door after we go out, and then don’t open it for anyone. I’ll let myself in with my key.”
“Okay,” Felice said. “Did you want to leave a number where you’ll be?”
“I don’t know where we’ll be. I’ll call later, anyway,” Jessica said.
“Fine,” Felice said.
“Okay?” she said, and started toward the entrance foyer. “Do I need a coat, Alex?”
“Well, I don’t know. I haven’t been outside. It might be a little chilly, with just the dress.”
She took a light topcoat from the hall closet, and they went out of the apartment. Behind him, he heard Felice locking the door. A lot of good it would do if anybody wanted to get in there. The lock was a cheap piece of crap.
He had secrets.
He had secrets from her, and secrets from the world.
His biggest secret was that he was a burglar. He lived outside the law, and took pride in this; he was not like her or any of the squares surrounding them in the restaurant. He lived by his wits and his skill and his daring; he was like an adventurer, who looked for challenge after challenge, beating each one in turn. He kept his secret as tight as if it were locked inside a cannonball keyster. Neither she nor any of the restaurant patrons or waiters could pry the secret from him. It was his alone, locked tight behind layers of impenetrable steel that couldn’t be punched, drilled, peeled, or torched. His secret could look out through the one-way mirrors of his eyes, but no one could see through those eyes and into his secret; all they got was a mirror image of themselves. He was a burglar; that was his biggest secret. And though it was securely hidden, he felt it gave him a touch of swagger, style, and danger—the way you looked at a sword in its sheath and all you saw was the handle, but you knew there was a razor-edged blade inside there.
There were other secrets, too.
Secretly, he was pleased by the way she looked, the way heads had turned when they walked together into the restaurant, the way even now men sneaked glances at her. And by extension, the radiance her beauty emanated seemed to include him as well, and made him feel better looking, and stronger, and smarter than the square johns who didn’t have Jessica sitting opposite them at their tables, Jessica leaning forward to accept a light for her cigarette, Jessica laughing, Jessica studying the menu seriously and then suggesting that he order for both of them since he probably knew more about Chinese food than she did. He knew that every man in the place was envying him—that was their secret, though a transparent one—but he suspected that everyone, men and women alike, were envying them, a beautiful, blue-eyed, golden-haired pair having a great time together.
They were special, that was it. They gave off an aura of something special. And this added to the secret of his occupation: He was Alex Hardy, burglar, and he had the most beautiful girl in the room, and she was hanging on his every word, her eyes sparkling and attentive, her hand darting out every so often to touch his. Secretly, he glowed with the pleasure of simply being there with a woman so extraordinarily beautiful, though she had not seemed quite this beautiful that first day in the taxi.
And secretly, he took pride in understanding Chinese food, and in being able to order knowledgeably and extravagantly from the menu, his expertise as unchallengeable as his skill at burglary. He knew Chinese food, and he knew burglary, and he knew jazz, and he led the conversation around to jazz because jazz was what he wanted her to listen to after they’d finished eating, and this led him to his final secret, which he also chose not to share with her, but which he suspected she already knew, and the secret was that he was going to lay her tonight. Not only was she beautiful, not only did every man in the place acknowledge her beauty and envy him for it, but inside they were probably aching as well because they also knew Alex was going to lay her before the night was through. He never doubted it for a moment, and he suspected she’d already accepted it as fact, and he hoped every man in the place knew it, and this made him feel more important than all the other secrets combined.
“I’ve been collecting jazz a long time,” he said, “started when I was just a kid.”
“Do you mean Dixieland?” she asked.
“Well, some Dixieland,” he said, “but mostly other stuff. I have a lot of Charlie Parker records, he’s the king, he’s the one I really dig.”
“Mm,” she said.
“Do you know Charlie Parker?”
“No, I don’t,” she admitted.
“Oh, then you’ve got a real treat coming,” he said. “If that’s what you want to do afterwards, go back and listen to some records.”
“I’m starved,” she said. “Are you starved?”
“Yeah, we’ll be eating in just a bit,” he said. “He’ll bring the appetizers with our drinks, and then he’ll bring the rest of the stuff. This is a really good Chinese restaurant, you know, this is really good Northern cooking. You can get your usual spareribs and egg rolls here, too, but I thought you might want to try something a little different.”
“Yes,” she said.
“The sea bass is terrific, I hope you like fish.”
“Yes, I do. I love fish.”
“Ah, here’s the drinks. Thanks,” he said to the waiter, “the lady gets the whiskey sour, I get the Scotch. They cook it in this paper bag,” he
said, and lifted his glass. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” she said, and clinked her glass against his.
“I’m really enjoying this,” he said.
“So am I.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said, “you look just terrific.”
“Thank you. I feel terrific,” she said, and shrugged her shoulders slightly and giggled. “I haven’t been out in such a long time. This is something very new for me.”
“What is?”
“Going out with a man,” she said. “I mean with a man who’s not my husband. I’ve been married for six years. I haven’t been out with anyone else in all that time.”
“Well, there’s always a first time,” he said.
“I’m learning that. Tell me more about your jazz collection.”
“Well, it’s very difficult to explain jazz,” he said. “When I’ve got the records on, later, I’ll tell you what I know about the artists, the performers. That’s if you want to go back later and hear the records.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “Is there anything good playing around?”
“I didn’t check the papers. We’ll see, okay? If you want to go to a movie, we can do that. Whatever you want to do. Here’s the appetizers.”
“Mm, they smell delicious,” she said.
“They are delicious. Waiter, bring us some sweet-and-sour sauce, huh? And some mustard. You want another drink, Jessica? Make it another round, waiter.”
“How’d you happen to become a theater electrician?” she asked.
“Well, my father was an electrician,” he said. “Try some of these. They’re water chestnuts wrapped in bacon.”
“A theater electrician?”
“Yes. That’s how I got into it. It’s a very tight union, you see. A father-and-son union, actually.”
“I didn’t realize that,” she said.
“Oh, yes.”
“Then you must have been interested in the theater even when you were a child.”
“Well, my father didn’t get into it till I was a teenager.”
“What did he do before then?”
“He was an electrician, but not a theater electrician.”
“In New York, was this?”
“Yes.”
“Are you originally from New York?”
“Yes. The Bronx. Can’t you tell?”
“Well …”
“That’s all right; I know I don’t sound like a Harvard graduate. I never even finished high school,” he said. “I only got through my junior year, and then I quit.” He looked directly into her eyes, and then said, “I always regretted not having gone to college,” which was a deliberate lie since he’d never given a single thought to going to college.
“That doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “Whether or not a man’s been to college. My husband’s got a master’s, but that doesn’t make him the kind of man I particularly respect and admire.”
“What kind of man do you respect and admire?” Alex asked.
“Well … I like honesty in a man. It’s very honest of you to recognize, for example, that there’s a … well … a trace of New York accent in your speech, and to …”
“The Bronx,” he said.
“Yes, and to admit it freely, and not get all uptight about it.”
“Well, I do sometimes get uptight about it,” he said. “Sometimes, when I’m with people who are … well … who sound more refined than I do, I guess I get uptight about it. Last year about this time, I was down in Puerto Rico, for example, and I was staying at the Conquistador down there, El Conquistador, and I had a conversation with a doctor and his wife, this was around the pool, and he made me feel like two cents. He was a surgeon. From Detroit, I think, or Chicago, I forget which. I got home, I remember, I started looking up words in the dictionary, and doing crossword puzzles, you know, lots of crossword puzzles, trying to build a vocabulary. So I do get uptight sometimes.”
“Even that’s an honest admission,” Jessica said.
“Well, thank you,” he said. “What else do you look for in a man?”
“Why do you want to know?”
Alex shrugged. “I’m a man, and I’m sitting here with you, so naturally I want to see how I shape up.”
“Well,” she said, and smiled, and then struck a thoughtful pose, and said, “I like men who are appreciative.”
“Yeah, how?”
“Who tell me I’m beautiful,” she said. “When I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make myself look beautiful.”
“You are beautiful,” Alex said.
“Thank you,” she said, and lowered her eyes. “And I like men who have … I suppose you’d call it an air of certainty, yes. Men who seem to know what they’re doing.”
“That lets me out, I guess. I sometimes don’t know which side is up.”
“I don’t believe that about you,” she said, and raised her eyes and looked full into his face. “I think you’re a man who’s very much in command of a situation, whatever the situation might be.”
“What do you think the situation is here and now?” he asked, and reached across the table and covered her hand with his own.
“I’m not quite sure,” she said.
“But you think I’m in command of it, huh?”
“Yes. Very much so.”
“That could be dangerous,” he said. “For you, I mean.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Well, we’ll see,” he said.
There was no thought of going to a movie after dinner; neither of them even raised the question again. Instead, they walked back to the building and then went upstairs to Alex’s apartment. He asked her if she wanted some Courvoisier or Grand Marnier, and she said she’d like the Grand Marnier, please, and then asked him where the telephone was. He told her it was in his bedroom, and she went in there and he heard her dialing as he poured the drinks into brandy snifters. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, the telephone to her ear, when he came in.
“Yes,” she said, “in a box on the floor of the linen closet. Be sure you get the overnight Pampers. And, Felice, it would be a good idea to put him on the potty first.” She listened for a moment, and then said, “Yes, I’m sure he’ll go back to sleep after you change him. But I’ll give you the number here, if there are any problems,” and read Alex’s number from the telephone dial. She listened again, and said, “I don’t know what time. If there are any problems, just call me.” She hung up, took the snifter from Alex, said, “Ahh, thank you,” sipped at it, and then said, “I hope she can handle it. She seemed responsible, didn’t you think?”
“Yes,” Alex said, remembering that old Felice had told him she liked to drink rye and ginger, but not willing to divulge this; that’s all he had to do, tell Jessica her darling baby boy was downstairs with a teenage boozer, she’d rush right out of here. Anyway, Felice had probably been trying to sound like a big shot, probably never drank anything stronger than a Pepsi. “So you want to hear some records?” he asked.
“That’s why we’re here,” she said and smiled, and stood up and followed him out into the living room.
“You ought to sit on the couch,” he said. “The way the speakers are positioned, you’ll get the best sound there.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Some of these are kind of scratchy. I’ve had them a long time, and I play them a lot. The thing I missed most when I was in …” He stopped short. He’d been about to tell her he’d missed his records while he was in prison.
She had just sat on the couch and was putting her drink on the coffee table when he stopped speaking. She looked up at him and said, “Yes?”
“The records,” he said.
“What about them?”
“When I was down with my mother in Miami,” he said, “I missed them a lot. I was only there for a week, but I missed the records.”
“I can understand that,” she said.
“You get used to things, you know. I play them all the time, so
I missed them while I was down there.”
“Yes,” she said. “I hope that damn kid knows how to change a diaper.”
“Oh yeah, she seemed very bright. She goes to a private school, you know.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“Well,” he said, “this is Charlie Parker,” and he held up the album to show it to her. “Now what I’ve done, I’ve picked a record that’ll give you an example of what his different styles were like. I’ve got records here, for example, some of his early records, that would just tell you what he was playing at one time in his career, you understand? But this was, this is a reissue that covers a lot of the different bands he had, and it’ll give you some idea. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”
Smiling, he put the record on the turntable. As the first sounds came from the speakers, he adjusted the treble and bass, and then asked, “Is that loud enough?”
“Yes, that’s fine.”
“Okay,” he said, and sat opposite her in a chair near the bookshelves, where the record albums were stacked on edge.
“But can you hear it all right from there?” Jessica asked.
“Yeah, this is fine.” He thought she might have been inviting him to join her on the couch, but he wasn’t going to make the same mistake he’d made with the square in Miami. Slow and easy tonight. “This first cut he did with the Neal Hefti Orchestra, it’s called ‘Repetition.’ There are some very good people on this cut, some of them maybe you’re familiar with. Shelly Manne is on drums, for instance, do you know Shelly Manne?”
“No,” she said.
“Or Flip Phillips? He plays tenor sax.”
“No,” she said.
“Here’s Parker now,” he said, “listen. He’s about to come in on the alto.”
“Um-huh,” she said, and nodded and closed her eyes and then leaned her head back against the couch and crossed her legs. The flared skirt moved higher on her thigh for just an instant. Automatically, she lowered it with one hand and then began jiggling her foot in time to the music. “That’s very nice,” she said.