by McBain, Ed
SCHEINER: I followed them from the church.
WEEKS: Were you at the reception?
SCHEINER: No. I waited downstairs for them.
WEEKS: All the while the reception was going on?
SCHEINER: Yes. Except for when I moved the ambulance.
WEEKS: When was that?
SCHEINER: About eleven o’clock, I think it was. I moved it into the alley behind the hotel. That was after I learned where the service courtyard was.
WEEKS: Then what?
SCHEINER: Then I came around to the front again—because the alley door was locked, I couldn’t get in that way. And I was just coming through the revolving doors when I saw them standing there, just inside the doors—he was taking a picture of her and another man. I turned away, I walked toward the phone booths.
WEEKS: How’d you find out what room they were in?
SCHEINER: I picked up a house phone in the lobby, and asked.
WEEKS: You see that? You see what they’ll tell you? You walk in any hotel in this city, you ask them what room Mr. So-and-so is in, they’ll tell you. Unless he’s a celebrity. How’d you get into the room, Scheiner?
SCHEINER: I used a slat from a Venetian blind.
WEEKS: How come you know how to do that? What are you, a burglar?
SCHEINER: No, no. I drive an ambulance.
WEEKS: Then how’d you learn about that?
SCHEINER: I have read books.
WEEKS: And you learned how to loid a door, huh?
SCHEINER: I learned how to force a door, to push back the bolt.
WEEKS: That’s loiding.
SCHEINER: I don’t know what you call it.
WEEKS: But you know how to do it pretty good, don’t you, you shithead? Didn’t you know there was a cop in that room? He could’ve blown your head off the minute you opened the door.
SCHEINER: I did not think he would have a gun on his wedding day. Besides, I was prepared.
WEEKS: For what?
SCHEINER: To kill him.
WEEKS: Why?
SCHEINER: For taking her from me.
They put Kling and Augusta into a taxi, and then they went out for hamburgers and coffee. Fat Ollie Weeks ate six hamburgers. He did not say a word all the while he was eating. He had finished his six hamburgers and three cups of coffee before Meyer and Carella finished what they had ordered, and then he sat back against the red leatherette booth, and belched, and said, “That man was a fuckin’ lunatic. I’da cracked the case earlier if only we hadn’t been dealing with a lunatic. Lunatics are very hard to fathom.” He belched again. “I’ll bet old Augusta ain’t gonna forget this for a while, huh?”
“I guess not,” Meyer said.
“I wonder if he got in her pants,” Ollie said.
“Ollie,” Carella said very softly, “if I were you, I wouldn’t ever again wonder anything like that aloud. Ever, Ollie. You understand me?”
“Oh sure,” Ollie said.
“Ever,” Carella said.
“Yeah, yeah, relax already, will ya?” Ollie said. “I think I’ll have another hamburger. You guys feel like another hamburger?”
“Are you sure you understand me?” Carella asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ollie said. He called the waitress over, and ordered another hamburger, and then was silent until the hamburger came. He gulped it down without saying a word, and then he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and said, completely out of the blue, “I think I’ll apply for a transfer to the Eight-Seven. I mean it, that’s one hell of a precinct you got there. That’s just what I’m gonna do.”
Carella looked at Meyer.
“Yep,” Ollie said.
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.