by Ed McBain
Jotham gave him a look that said Man, when you were born and raised in this neighborhood and two cops come calling on you one fine morning, and start asking questions about the last time a sales rep was in here, you know damn well they ain’t here to buy no book about electrical engineering.
“Thanks for your time,” Carella said.
Not three blocks away from the bookstore, Wiggy the Lid was talking to the bartender at the Starlight Bar, where he’d met one of the blondes who’d cold-cocked him on Christmas night.
“I NEVER SEED HER before that night,” the bartender said.
“Just walked in out of the blue, is that it, John?”
“That’s what it was, Mr. Wiggins.”
“She ever been in here before?”
“Don’t recollect seeing her.”
“Or another blonde looked just like her?”
“I’d’ve remembered somebody looked like that,” John said.
“Neither one of them come in here, ast did a man named Wiggy Wiggins frequent this place?”
“No, neither one of ’em, Mr. Wiggins.”
“Man named Wiggy the Lid? Did either one of ’em come in here, ax for me by that name?”
“Nobody come in here axin for you by no name at all.”
“Cause I think she come in lookin for me, John.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“I think she knew I’d be here, come in here lookin for me specific.”
John the bartender clucked his tongue in sympathy.
“Found out somehow that I drop in here every now and then, come in here toget me, John.”
John the bartender clucked his tongue again.
“You didn’t happen to see me get in that limo with her, did you?”
“Well, yes, I was watchin thu the winder.”
Wiggy opened his eyes wide.
“You didn’t happen to see the license plate, did you?”
John the bartender grinned from ear to ear.
IN THE NEXT three bookshops on the list Ollie had obtained from Wadsworth and Dodds, the two detectives learned a few things about the publishing business in general and his prospective publisher in particular.
“A sales rep’ll make fifty to seventy K a year,” the first of the booksellers told them. His name was Oscar Haynes. He asked them to call him Oz. Ollie figured him for a fag because he was wearing a purple shirt.
“To cover the U.S., you’ve got to hire, what, twenty to thirty reps?” Oz said. “That comes to big bucks. Frankly, I don’t see how a small firm like W&D can afford that kind of coverage.”
“They’ve only got five reps,” Ollie said.
“Even so, that comes to two hundred and fifty K minimum,” Oz said. “That’s a lot of bread.”
In the second bookstore, they learned from a bookseller whose last name was African and unpronounceable—he asked them to call him Ali—that most publishers have a two-season list, and it was therefore not unusual for Jerome Hoskins to make calls here only twice a year. “Unless a house has a big bestseller, where there’ll be reorders, a rep has no reason to come by again. W&D has never had a bestseller in its history, take it from me.”
“Never?”Ollie said, dismayed.
“Not that I know of. You want my opinion, W&D publishes books nobody wants to read.”
In the third and last of the bookshops, they learned that a firm the size of Wadsworth and Dodds usually employs a distribution company to peddle its books. “A distributor will handle sales for a hundred or so small companies,” the bookseller told them. His name was David. He was black, too, and he was wearing a pink shirt. Ollie figured him for another fag. Ollie was beginning to think the entire industry was populated with faggot Negro booksellers. “I’m surprised W&D has its own reps, really,” David said.
“Did Jerome Hoskins stop by here on the twenty-third?” Carella asked.
“If he did, it had to be after five o’clock. That’s when I closed.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?” Ollie asked.
“September sometime. October. Around then.”
“Ever see him with any other W&D reps?”
“Nope.”
“Man named Randolph Biggs? Ever meet him? From Texas?”
“Nope.”
It was time for lunch and all they’d learned about Hoskins was that he hadn’t visited any of his bookshop customers on the twenty-third. Which meant he’d been up here for some other reason. Some other reason that had got him shot in the head and dumped in a garbage can.
“Total fucking loss,” Ollie said.
“Not entirely,” Carella said. “We now know Wadsworth and Dodds is a two-bit publisher that never had a bestseller in its history.”
“Who gives a shit?” Ollie said. Actually, he was heartbroken; he’d been hoping his first novel would sell millions of copies.
“But they hired five sales reps, anyway,” Carella said. “At fifty to seventy grand a pop. To peddle a list of books nobody wants to read.”
“Let’s go eat,” Ollie said.
SINCE THE ABILITY to fix tickets for traffic violations was essential to Wiggy the Lid’s business, one of the people on his payroll was a sergeant in the Motor Vehicles Bureau. He called the man—whose name was Evan Grimes—at one o’clock that afternoon, and asked if he could trace a car for him, and then gave him the license plate number John the bartender had seen through the window of the Starlight on Christmas night. Grimes got back to him ten minutes later. He told him that the car was registered to a company called West Side Limousine, and he gave Wiggy an address and a telephone number he could call. He also advised Wiggy not to call him at work again and hung up abruptly, which was tantamount to a gladiator thumbing his nose at the emperor. Wiggy called him back, at work, an instant later.
“Let me splain the rules of the game, shithead,” he said.
Grimes listened.
Carefully.
Then he personally called the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission and asked if a trip sheet had been filed by West Side Limo for a pickup at the Starlight Bar on St. Sebastian and Boyle around oneA.M . on December twenty-sixth. “License plate would’ve been WU 3200,” Grimes said, “I don’t have the car number.” The guy at T&L asked him to wait while he checked, and then came back on the line some five minutes later.
“I think I got what you want,” he told Grimes. “But I don’t have it as the Starlight Bar. I’ve got it as 1271 St. Sebastian.”
“What time would that have been?”
“Ten past one.”
“That’d be it. Who ordered the car?”
“Company named Wadsworth and Dodds. You need an address?”
“Please,” Grimes said.
Which is how, within minutes of each other that Thursday afternoon, three people converged on the old landmark building off Headley Square.
One of them was Wiggy Wiggins himself.
The other two were Detectives Steve Carella and Ollie Weeks.
ACTUALLY, THEY RODE UP in the elevator together.
Wiggy knew these two dudes were cops the minute they stepped into the car. He could smell cops from a hundred miles away. Even if he hadn’t seen the butt of a nine-millimeter pistol showing under the fat one’s jacket, he’d have spotted him for plainclothes. The other one, tall and slender, had Chinese eyes that didn’t hide the look of awareness about him, as if he was expecting a crime to erupt around him any minute and was getting ready for it to happen. The fat one was saying that was the worse pastrami sandwich he’d ever had in his life. Half of it was on his jacket, from the looks of it, mustard stains on one of the lapels, ketchup stains on the other. Wiggy looked up at the ceiling.
The elevator operator was a pimply-faced white kid wearing a brown uniform with gold braid. “Fourth floor,” he said, as the elevator ground to a halt. He slid open the door and looked over his shoulder at all three of them. The two cops—Wiggy was sure they were—stepped out into a large waiting room with framed
posters of books lining the walls. Wiggy hesitated.
“Sir?” the elevator operator said. “This is the fourth floor.”
In the next ten seconds, Wiggy did some quick calculations. Two blondes had forced him to give up the money he’d taken from Frank Holt before shooting him dead and stuffing him in a garbage can. Now two cops were here at the place that had hired the limo for the two blondes. Was it possible the cops were also looking for the blondes? If so, how long would it be before they linked Wiggy himself to the murder of Frank Holt?
“I think I made a mistake here,” he said to the elevator operator.
“Hi, Charmaine,” the fat cop said to the fat broad behind the reception desk.
“Take me back to the lobby,” Wiggy said.
The elevator operator shrugged and started to pull the door shut.
The tall, slender cop turned and took a look at Wiggy just as the closing door blocked him from view.
THE MAN WHO INTRODUCED HIMSELF as the publisher here at Wadsworth and Dodds was wearing a brown suit, darker brown shoes, a corn-colored shirt, and a green bow tie sprinkled with gold polka dots. He had snow white hair, and he told Carella his name was Richard Halloway. He remembered Ollie as DetectiveWatts, a misapprehension Ollie quickly corrected.
“It’sWeeks, sir,” he said. “Detective OliverWeeks.”
“Yes, of course, how stupid of me,” Halloway said. “Sit down, gentlemen, please. Some coffee?”
“I could use a cup,” Ollie said.
“Detective Carella?”
“Yes, please.”
Halloway lifted the receiver on his phone, pressed a button on the base, and asked someone to bring in some coffee. He put down the receiver, turned to the detectives, smiled, and said, “So. What brings you back here, Detective Weeks?”
“We’re still trying to figure out what Jerry Hoskins was doing up in Diamondback on December twenty-third,” Ollie said. “According to his customers, he wasn’t there to see any of them.”
“It is peculiar, isn’t it?” Halloway said.
“A couple of the booksellers seemed surprised you had sales reps at all,” Carella said.
“Oh? Did they?”
“Seemed to think a firm this size might do better with a distributor.”
“We’ve considered that, of course. But then we wouldn’t get the personal service we now enjoy.”
“Five sales reps altogether,” Carella said.
“Yes.”
“One of them in Texas, is that right?”
Before Halloway could answer, a knock sounded on the door, and the receptionist came in with a tray on which there was a pot of coffee, three cups and saucers, a pitcher of milk, and a bowl containing an assortment of white, pink, and blue packets.
“Ah, thank you, Charmaine,” Halloway said.
Charmaine put the tray down on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
“You wouldn’t have any cookies or anything, would you, Charmaine?” Ollie asked.
“Well … uh …”
“See if we have any cookies,” Halloway said.
“Yes, sir,” she said, and went out.
Ollie was already pouring.
“How do you take this?” he asked.
“Black for me,” Halloway said.
“A little milk, one sugar,” Carella said.
He was watching Halloway. A good three or four minutes had passed since he’d asked about the sales rep in Texas, more than enough time for Halloway to frame an answer. Halloway seemed to be engrossed in Ollie’s short order technique. Ollie was opening a packet of sugar now, pouring it into Carella’s cup. He handed it to him, and then carried Halloway’s black coffee to the desk. Charmaine came in with a platter of Fig Newtons, just as Ollie sat on the couch beside Carella again.
“Thank you, Charmaine,” he said.
Charmaine smiled at him and went out.
“Your rep in Texas,” Carella said.
“Yes.”
“He lives in Eagle Branch, is that right?”
“Yes, Eagle Branch.”
“You listed his name as Randolph Biggs …”
“Yes, that’s his name.”
“Would this be a side job for him?”
“A side job?”
“A second job. He wouldn’t have another job, would he?”
“Not that I know of. Another job? No. Why would he have another job? Working for us keeps him busy enough, I’m sure.”
“He wouldn’t be a Texas Ranger, would he?”
Halloway burst out laughing.
“Forgive me,” he said, “a TexasRanger? I hardly think so.”
“Have you ever met him?”
“Of course I’ve met him.”
“Did Jerry Hoskins know him?” Ollie asked.
“Yes, I’m sure they knew each other. I’m sure they were at sales conferences together.”
“Twice a year, is that right?” Carella asked.
“Yes. In the spring and the fall.”
“Would they have seen each other this year?”
“I feel certain.”
“This spring? This fall?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Where, Mr. Halloway?”
“Why, here. We had both conferences at the Century Hotel.”
“You didn’t have your conferences in Texas, did you?”
“No.”
“Eagle Branch, Texas?”
“No.”
“So they couldn’t have met down there, could they?”
“Hardly.”
“When’s the last time you yourself saw Mr. Biggs?”
“When he was up here in September. For our last sales conference.”
“Do you talk to him often?”
“Every now and then.”
“Will you be talking to him anytime soon?”
“I would imagine.”
“Tell him we were asking for him, will you?”
“I’ll be sure to.”
There seemed nothing further to say.
Carella was wondering if they had enough on Biggs to justify an arrest warrant and extradition from Texas. Ollie was thinking he would like to ask this little white-haired son of a bitch if he knew that Biggs had introduced Cassandra Ridley to his friend Frank Holt, who’d paid her two hundred thousand dollars to fly dope up from Mexico. He wanted to ask him if maybe Biggs had athird job besides sales rep and Texas Ranger, and could that third job possibly be smuggling drugs? He wanted to suggest that if one of Halloway’s sales reps was fucking with drugs down in Mexico then maybeanother of his reps was doing the same thing up in Diamondback, which was maybe what had got him killed. Ollie wanted to scare the shit out of Halloway, was what he wanted. Sometimes, if you scared them hard enough, they jumped the wrong way.
The silence lengthened.
“Well,” Carella said, “thanks for your time. We appreciate it.”
“Andthe delightful repast,” Ollie said, and stuffed some Fig Newtons into his jacket pocket.
They were walking out of the Headley Building, toward the square across the street with its statue of William George Douglas Rae, the gentleman scholar who had captivated the heart of the city with his grace, his charm, and his sparkling wit, when Ollie said, “What do you think? Is the flyboy’s word enough for an arrest warrant?”
“What flyboy?”
“Cass Ridley’s brother in Germany.”
“Depends on what judge we get.”
“You think Halloway’s in on this?”
“In on what?”
“On whatever the fuck itis.”
“If he is, we’ve got him thinking.”
“We shoulda scared him more.”
“I think we scared him enough,” Carella said.
But Halloway’s bad day was just beginning.
THE DETECTIVES DIDN’T NOTICE Walter Wiggins cross the street and head toward the Headley Building the moment he spotted them coming out onto the sidewalk. Nor did they notice the two Hispanic-lo
oking men who crossed the little park in the square and walked toward the building, reaching it at just about the same time Wiggy did. The two men were Francisco Octavio Ortiz and Cesar Villada, and they had just arrived from Mexico this morning.