by Ed McBain
“What do you make of it?” Meyer said.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you must have thought there was something fishy, or you wouldn’t have scribbled that note to the lieutenant.”
“Yeah,” Carella said.
“What did Pete have to say about it?”
“Not a hell of a lot. Figured it was some kids, I think.”
“What was the mo., Steve? Do you remember?”
“A window at the back of the shop was forced in each case. And in each case, only one large item or a few small items were stolen.”
“Why do you suppose the thief did that?”
“Maybe he figured a small theft wouldn’t be reported. Or perhaps not even missed. Assuming this was the same thief on each job.”
“Well, it sure as hell looks that way to me,” Meyer said.
‘Mmm. In any case, it’s not very serious.”
“I suppose not. Here. You’d better add these new ones to your list.” Meyer paused and scratched his bald head. “You suppose we’re dealing with a Russian spy or something here?”
“Either that or a member of the I.R.A.”
“I mean, why else would anybody want all these parts?”
“We may be dealing with a ham who can’t afford his hobby,” Carella said.
“Yeah, so why doesn’t he switch his hobby?”
“One thing I stopped worrying about the minute I became a detective,” Carella said, “is motive. If you try to figure out what motivates a crook, you go nuts.”
“You’re destroying a boy’s faith in detective fiction,” Meyer said. “The Means, the Motive, and the Opportunity. Everybody knows that.”
“Except me. I just do my job,” Carella said.
“Yeah,” Meyer said.
“It always comes out in the wash, anyway. One day, all the mysterious pieces click together. And they’re never what you thought they were going to be. To figure out motivation, you have to be a psychiatrist.”
“Still,” Meyer said, “all that equipment. And the thief hit seven times to get it. That’s a big chance to take for a hobby. What does it add up to, Steve?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” Carella said, and he began typing again.
* * * *
3
Diane King was not a beautiful woman.
She was, however, an attractive woman.
Her attractiveness was directly attributable to the bone structure of her face, which, while not adding up to the Hollywood or Madison Avenue concept of beauty, nonetheless provided an excellent foundation upon which to build. Her attractiveness, too, was indirectly attributable to a number of things like: (a) the various concoctions offered by the myriad beauty-preparation firms, (b) a life of comparative ease and luxury, (c) ready access to the hairdresser’s, and (d) an innate good taste in the selection of clothes to complement a figure unendowed with a movie star’s mammillary overabundance.
Diane King was attractive. Diane King, in fact, was damned attractive.
She stood just inside the entrance foyer of her luxurious home, a woman of thirty-two wearing black tapered lounging slacks and a long-sleeved white blouse open at the throat. A towel was draped over the neck and shoulders of the blouse. Her hair echoed the ebony black of the slacks, except for a fresh silver streak which rose from a widow’s peak and spread like mercury to a point somewhere on the top of her head. A silver-studded belt circled her narrow waist. Her green eyes fled from the entrance doorway to Pete Cameron’s face, and again she asked, “What did they do to Doug?”
“Nothing,” Cameron said. He looked at her hair. “What’d you do to your hair?”
Distractedly, Diane’s hand went up to the silver streak.
“Oh, it was Liz’s idea,” she said. “What was all the shouting about, Pete?”
“Is Liz still here?” Cameron asked, and there was an undeniable note of interest in his voice.
“Yes, she’s still here. Why’d Doug come steaming upstairs like the Twentieth Century? I hate these damn high-power meetings. He didn’t even see me up there, Pete, do you know that?”
“He saw me,” a voice said, and Liz Bellew came down the steps and into the living room. Whatever Diane King lacked in the way of beauty, Liz Bellew possessed. She was born with blond hair that needed no hairdresser’s magic, blue eyes fringed with thick lashes, an exquisitely molded nose and a pouting sultry mouth. She had acquired over the years a figure which oozed S-E-X in capital letters in neon, and had overlaid—if you’ll pardon the expression—her undeniable beauty with a polish as smooth and as hard as baked enamel. Even dressed for casual life in Smoke Rise, as she was now, wearing simple sweater and skirt, suede flats, and carrying a suede pouch-like bag, sex dripped from her curvaceous frame in bucketfuls, tubfuls, vatfuls. She wore only one piece of jewelry, a huge diamond on her left hand, a diamond the size of a malignant cancer.
“I’ll be damned if I’ll let any man rush past Liz Bellew without saying hello,” she said, obviously referring to her encounter with King upstairs.
“So hello,” Cameron said.
“I was wondering when you’d notice me.”
“I understand you’ve turned beautician in your spare time,” Cameron said.
“Diane’s hair! Isn’t it stunning?”
“I don’t like it,” Cameron said. “Forgive my honesty. I think she’s quite beautiful without any gilding of the lily—”
“Oh, hush, monster,” Liz said. “The streak gives her glamour. It emancipates her.” She paused. Underplaying the next line, she said, “Besides, she can wash it out if she doesn’t like it.”
“Well, I’ll see what Doug thinks first,” Diane said.
“Darling, never ask a man what he thinks about any part of your body. Am I right, Pete?”
Cameron grinned. “Absolutely.”
Diane glanced toward the steps nervously. “What’s he doing up there?”
“Your beloved?” Liz said. “He’s only making a phone call. I stopped him, and he apologized for ignoring me, and said he had an important call to make.”
“Pete, are you sure he’s not in trouble? That look on his face…”
“Don’t you know that look?” Liz said. “My God, Harold wears it all the time. It simply means he’s about to murder someone.”
“Murder?”
“Certainly.”
Diane turned sharply to Cameron. “Pete, what happened down here?”
Cameron shrugged. “Nothing. They offered Doug a deal, and he spit in their collective eye.”
“My Harold would have kicked them out of the house,” Liz said.
“That’s just what Doug did.”
“Then everything’s under control. Prepare for a homicide, Diane.”
“I’m always prepared for one,” Diane said. A troubled look had come into her green eyes. She turned away from Liz and Cameron and walked to the bar. “But they seem to be getting more and more frequent.”
“Well, Diane,” Cameron said, “that’s business. Dog eat dog.”
“Anyway, murder can be fun,” Liz put in. “Lay back and enjoy it, that’s my motto.” She smiled archly at Cameron, who immediately returned the smile.
If there seemed to be slightly more than ultrasophisticated social palaver between Cameron and Liz, if indeed they seemed to have shared more than a passing acquaintanceship, the impression was probably nurtured by the fact that they had, over the years, and discreetly, to be sure, enjoyed that boat ride up extramarital waters. For whereas Liz Bellew was devoted to her husband Harold, and whereas Pete Cameron was a junior executive whose every waking moment was occupied with thoughts of the company, they had each managed to find the time to be mutually attracted, to arrange a first tentative meeting, and then to fall into a pattern of assignations which bordered on bacchanals.
Liz Bellew was suffering from a disease known to many thirty-five-year-old women and labeled by medical science “itchiness.” It was all well and good to be married to a succes
sful tycoon, and it was marvelous to live in Smoke Rise with an upstairs maid, a downstairs maid and a chauffeur, and it was delightful to be able to wear mink interchangeably with ermine—but when something like Pete Cameron strolled by, the temptation to add another acquisition to the Bellew holdings was not easily put aside. Nor was Liz a person who really struggled too valiantly against the siren calls of everyday living. Lay back and enjoy it, that was her motto. And she’d been doing just that for as long as she could remember. Happily, Pete Cameron satisfied her about as well as any mere thing of flesh and blood could satisfy her, and—thanks to him—she was saved the ugliness of becoming a real wanton. In any case, their public face, a mask they had both agreed to wear, consisted of a light sex play designed to evoke in the viewer and listener the feeling that there could not possibly be any fire where there was so much obvious smoke.
Diane poured herself a drink and turned to face Cameron. “Is Doug planning to slit another throat?” she asked.
“Yes, I think so.”
“I thought after what he did to Robinson, he might just possibly…”
“Robinson?” Liz said. “Oh, yes, that quaint little man. He played lousy bridge. Doug’s better off without him.”
‘I’m better off without whom?” King asked from the staircase, and then he came down the steps exuberantly and walked directly to Diane where she stood near the bar.
“Did you make your call, tycoon?” Liz asked.
“The lines are tied up,” King answered. He kissed his wife lightly, backed away from her with a small take, and studied the silver streak in her hair. “Honey,” he said, “you’ve got egg in your hair.”
“Sometimes I wonder why we bother,” Liz said sourly.
“Don’t you like it, Doug?” Diane asked.
King weighed his answer carefully. Then he said, “It looks kind of cute.”
“Holy God, it looks kind of cute!” Liz mimicked. “The last time I heard that was at a senior tea. From a football player named Leo Raskin. Do you remember him, Diane?”
“No. I didn’t know many football players.”
“I wore a blouse cut down to—” Liz paused and then indicated a spot somewhere close to her abdomen—“well, at least here! I was practically naked, believe me, it’s a wonder I wasn’t expelled from college. I asked Leo for his opinion, and he said, ‘It looks kind of cute.’ “
“What’s wrong with that?” King asked.
“It looks kind of cute?” Liz said. “Hell even a football player should be able to count!” She glanced quickly at her watch. “I’m getting out of here. I promised my tycoon I’d be back by four.”
“You’re late already,” Cameron said. “Have one for the road.”
“I really shouldn’t,” Liz said, and she smiled at him archly.
“Two lemon peels?”
“The memory of that boy. He knows I can’t resist his cocktails.”
Her eyes locked with Cameron’s. Neither Diane nor King paid the slightest bit of attention to all this obvious smoke. Happily, the telephone rang, and Diane picked it up.
“Hello?” she said.
“Ready on your call to Boston now,” the operator said.
“Oh, thank you. Just a moment, please.” She handed the phone to King. “Were you calling Boston, Doug?”
“Yes,” he said, taking the receiver.
Cameron looked up from the Martinis he was mixing. “Boston?”
“Hello?” King said into the phone.
“We’re ready with your Boston call now, sir. One moment, please.” There was a long pause, and then the operator said, “Here’s your party, sir.”
“Hello?” a voice asked. “Hello?”
“Is that you, Hanley?” King asked.
“Yes, Doug, how are you?”
“Fine. How’s it going up there?”
“Just about the way we expected, Doug.”
“Well, look, we’ve got to sew this thing up fast.”
“How fast?”
“Today,” King said.
“Why? Something wrong?”
“I just had the undertakers in here for a showdown,” King said, “and they’re not going to sit still for very long. What’s with our man anyway?”
“He wants to hang on to five per cent, Doug.”
“What? What the hell for?”
“Well, he feels—” Hanley started.
“Never mind, I’m not interested. That five per cent is as important to me as the rest of it, so get it. Just get it, Hanley!”
“Well, I’m trying my best, Doug, but how can I…?”
“I don’t give a damn how you do it, just do it! Go back to him, cry on his shoulder, hold his hand, go to bed with him, get what we want!”
“Well, it may take a little time,” Hanley said.
“How much time?”
“Well… actually, I don’t know. I suppose I can go over to see him right now.”
“Then go ahead. And call me back as soon as you’ve seen him. I’ll be waiting. And listen, Hanley, I’ll assume you’re going to deliver and I’ll act accordingly. So don’t foul me up. Do you understand?”
“Well, I’ll try.”
“Don’t just try, Hanley. Succeed. I’ll be waiting for your call.” He hung up and turned to Cameron. “Pete, you’re going to Boston.”
“I am?” Cameron said. He handed the Martini to Liz.
“How lucky you are!” she said. “I just adore Scollay Square.”
“You’re going to Boston with a big fat check,” King said, “and you’re going to deliver that check to Hanley, and we’re going to close the biggest damn deal I’ve ever made in my life!”
“If your lawyer’s in on it, it must be big,” Cameron said. “What’s it all about, Doug?”
“Now don’t jinx it,” King said smiling. “I don’t like to talk about anything until it’s all set. I’ll tell you all about it in due time, but not until I’m sure, okay? Meanwhile, you get on the phone and find out how the flights are running to Boston. Use the upstairs phone. I want to leave this line clear for Hanley.”
“Sure, Doug,” Cameron said, and he started for the steps. He stopped, turned toward Liz and said, “You won’t leave without saying goodbye, will you?”
Liz looked up from her Martini. “Darling, I always linger over my farewells,” she said.
Cameron smiled and went up the steps. King clapped his hands together once, sharply, and began pacing the room.
“Oh, are those vultures going to be surprised! They think they’re circling a dead body, but watch their faces when the body stands up and smacks them in the teeth! Asking me to go in with them, can you beat that, Diane?”
“Excuse me, Mr. King,” a voice said.
The man who had come in at the other end of the living room could not have been more than thirty-five years old, but at first glance he appeared much older. It was, perhaps, the way he stood hesitantly in the doorway to the living room, his shoulders hunched, the chauffeur’s uniform adding somehow to his posture of demeanor. His name was Charles Reynolds, but he was called simply Reynolds by everyone in the King household, and perhaps a man reduced to his last name is a man driven to his last retreat. Whatever the case, there was an almost tangible weakness about the man. Watching him, you felt you could reach out to touch a substance at once sticky and gelatinous. And watching him, too, you felt an extreme sympathy, a sadness. Even if you did not know his wife had died not a year ago, even if you did not know he shared the rooms over the King garage with his young son, raising the boy with the awkwardness of bereavement—even unaware of this, you felt sympathy for the man, you felt he was one of the world’s strays.
“What is it, Reynolds?” King asked.
“Excuse me, sir, I don’t mean to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding,” King said. There was a gruffness to his voice. Fond of the man as he was, King could not abide weakness, and weakness was this man’s strength.
“I only wanted to know, sir�
�� is my son… is Jeff here, sir?”
“That’s Mrs. King’s department,” King said.
“He’s upstairs with Bobby, Reynolds.”
“Oh, fine. I hope I’m not bothering you, ma’am, but it’s turned a little chilly, and I figured he might need a coat if he goes outside to play.”