Eight Black Horses

by Ed McBain

* * * *

  In this neighborhood you had to be careful, even with it being so close to Christmas. In fact, maybe even more careful this time of year; people did funny things around Christmastime. Lots of the street people around here, they could remember a time—well, this hadn’t been Christmastime, it was in March sometime, years ago—they could remember some young kids setting fire to bums sleeping in doorways. Winos. Doused them with gasoline and set fire to them. Doug Hennesy hadn’t lived in this city then, but he’d heard plenty about them long-ago roasts, and he knew you had to be more careful in this city than maybe in any city on earth. Not that Doug considered himself a bum. Or even a wino. Doug was a street person, is what he was.

  He didn’t particularly enjoy the holiday season because the streets were always too crowded, everybody rushing around, everybody selfish and concerned only with his ownself, never mind dropping a coin in the hand of someone needy like Doug. He’d managed to get four dollars and twenty-two cents today—two days before Christmas, could you imagine it? Where was the spirit of giving?—but that had taken him from eight this morning till almost seven tonight. He kept wondering who had given him the two cents. Had it been that well-dressed guy in the raccoon coat and the beaver hat? Two cents. But the money Doug collected had been enough for three bottles of excellent wine at a dollar forty a bottle, including tax, with the two cents still left over. He’d already drunk one of the bottles and planned to savor the remaining two all through the night, huddled in the doorway here on Mason Avenue.

  The hookers on Mason Avenue didn’t like the idea of street people sleeping in doorways. They felt it made the neighborhood look shoddy, as if anything could make it look shoddier than it actually was. Felt it was bad for business. Downtown Johns came up here looking for a little black or Puerto Rican ass, they didn’t want to see wino bums sprawled in the doorways. The hookers on Mason Avenue were thinking of getting a petition signed against the street people who made their turf look shoddy. Well, Doug guessed he couldn’t blame them much. They worked hard, those girls did. He tried to remember the last time he’d been to bed with a woman, hooker or otherwise. Couldn’t remember for the life of him. Back in Chicago, wasn’t it? Back when he used to be an accountant in Chicago? Another lifetime

  Some of your street people, the men, they took advantage of women living on the streets same as themselves. Found a bag lady curled up in a doorway, threw her skirts up, had their way with her. Doug would never in a million years do anything like that, take advantage of someone unfortunate. He’d seen—this was yesterday morning, it almost broke his heart. He’d seen this young street person, she couldn’t have been older than twenty-eight or nine, wearing a pink sweater over a thin cotton dress, woolen gloves cut off at the fingers, Christ, she almost broke his heart. Standing in a doorway. Looking at herself in the plate glass window on the door. Hands clasped over her belly. Exploring her belly. Fingers widespread in the sawed-off woolen gloves. Touching her belly. Her belly as big as a watermelon. And on her face a look of total bewilderment. For an instant Doug visualized her standing in a bedroom someplace, the closet door open, a full-length mirror on the closet door, imagined her standing in a silken nightgown, her hands widespread over her pregnant belly, just the way they were widespread over her belly in that doorway, only with a different look on her face. A look of pride, of pleasure. A young pregnant woman awed by the wonder of it, her face glowing. Instead, a doorway on a cold winter day near Christmas—and a look of utter confusion.

  Ah, God, the poor unfortunates of this world.

  He unscrewed the top of the second bottle of wine.

  It was going to be another cold night.

  Maybe on Christmas Day he’d wander over to the Salvation Army soup kitchen.

  Well, he’d see. No sense making plans in advance.

  He had the bottle tilted to his mouth when the man appeared suddenly out of the darkness. The street light was behind the man; Doug couldn’t see his face too clearly. Only the blond hair whipping in the wind. And what looked like a hearing aid in his right ear.

  ‘Good evening,’ the man said pleasantly.

  Doug figured he was a downtown John up here looking for a little poontang.

  ‘Good evening,’ he answered, and then—in the season’s spirit of generosity—he extended the bottle of wine and said, ‘Would you like some wine, sir?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ the man said. ‘I’d like your ear.’

  At first Doug thought the man wanted to talk. Friends, Romans., countrymen, lend me your ears. But then, suddenly and chillingly, he saw a switchblade knife snap open in the man’s hand, the blade catching the reflection of the traffic light on the corner, the steel flashing red and then green as the light changed, little twinkly Christmas pin-points of light, and all at once the man’s left hand was at Doug’s throat, forcing him onto his back in the doorway. The wine bottle crashed to the sidewalk—a dollar and forty cents!—splintered into a thousand shards of green glass as the man rolled him over onto his left side, the knife flashing yellow and then red as the traffic light changed again.

  Doug felt a searing line of fire just above his right ear.

  And then the fire trailed downward, spreading, the pain so sharp that Doug screamed aloud and instantly cupped his hand to his right ear.

  His right ear was gone.

  His hand came away covered with blood.

  He screamed again.

  The blond man with the hearing aid disappeared as suddenly as he had materialized.

  Doug kept screaming.

  A hooker swishing by in red Christmas satin and fake fur, heading for the bar up the street, her stiletto heels clattering on the sidewalk, looked into the doorway and shook her head and clucked her tongue.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER TEN

  Christmas Eve dawned bright and clear and sparklingly cold. The Deaf Man was pleased. Snow would not have upset his plans at all, but he preferred this kind of weather. It made the blood hum.

  He loved Christmastime. Loved all the Santa Clauses jingling their bells on virtually every corner. Loved the horse-drawn carriages in the streets. Loved the big Christmas tree in Andovcr Square. Loved all the little runny-nosed toddlers ooohing and ahhhing at the sights and sounds. Loved the thought of all that money waiting to be stolen.

  The streets were thronged with holiday shoppers.

  That was good.

  More cash in the till.

  The Deaf Man smiled.

  He had put Charlie Henkins up in a hotel some ten blocks from the 87th Precinct station house. Nothing to write home about, and probably a place frequented by a great many prostitutes, but the best to be found in the area. He himself had rented a brownstone miles from the precinct. Charlie had never been there. It was important that he not know where the Deaf Man lived. After the job, when Charlie realized nobody was going to come to the hotel with all that hard-earned cash, the Deaf Man didn’t want him paying an unexpected visit. But even if Charlie went snooping, he would never find the brownstone.

  The Deaf Man had rented it as Dr. Pierre Sourd. In lower case pierre meant stone in French. Sourd meant deaf. Together and with a little license-—the actual idiom would have been completement sourd or, more familiarly, sourd comme un pot—the words meant ‘stone deaf.’

  Elizabeth had moved into the brownstone with him at the beginning of October. He’d met her in September at the Isola Modern Art Museum, which the natives of this city affectionately called IMAM. In Moslem countries an imam was an Islamic prayer leader, but in this city it was a museum and a good place to meet impressionable young women. Chat them up over the Matisses and the Chagalls—would you care for some tea in the garden? Shy, she was, Elizabeth. A virgin, he’d thought at first—but there were surprises. There are always surprises.

  Learned she’d been working as a cashier since sometime in August. Well, now. Learned she handled large sums of money. Really, Elizabeth? Called her Elizabeth, which she loved. Hated people calling her Lizzie or L
iz. Three, four hundred thousand dollars a day, she said. Oh my, he said. Fucked her that very night. A screamer. The quiet ones were always screamers.

  The hotel Charlie was staying at was called the Excelsior, a prime example of hyperbole, perhaps, in that the word derived from the Latin excelsus, from the past participle of excellere, which meant ‘to excel.’ Perhaps the Excelsior had once, in a past too long ago to remember, indeed excelled—but the Deaf Man doubted it. On the other hand, ‘excelsior’ was the word used to describe the slender, curved wooden shavings used for packing and also—in the hands of an arsonist—for starting fires. So perhaps the building had been appropriately named, after all, in that it was most certainly an excellent fire trap. The word ‘excellent’ also derived from the Latin—excellens, which was the present participle of the same word excellere, ‘to excel.’

  The Deaf Man loved words.

  The Deaf Man also loved to excel.

  He sometimes felt he would have excelled as a novelist, though why anyone would wish to pursue such a trivial occupation was far beyond his ken.

  Charlie Henkins was studying the combinations when the Deaf Man came into the room.

  ‘I was going over the combinations again,’ he said.

  ‘Let me hear them,’ the Deaf Man said. ‘Outer door.’

  ‘Seven-six-one, two-three-eight.’

  ‘And the inner door?’

  ‘Nine-two-four, three-eight-five.’

  ‘Good. And the safe itself?’

  ‘Two-four-seven, four-six-three.’

  ‘Good. Again.’

  ‘Outer door, pad to the right, seven-six-one, two-three-eight. Inner door, pad to the right again, nine-two-four, three-eight-five. Opens into the vault itself, the cashier and her assistant at two desks, the money in the safe. Pad to the right, two-four-seven, four-six-three.’

  ‘You shoot them at once,’ the Deaf Man said.

  “Cause there’s alarm buttons on both desks.’

  ‘Under both desks, yes. Foot-activated. You say, “Merry Christmas, ladies,” and shoot them.’

  ‘This silencer’s gonna work, huh?’

  ‘It’s going to work, yes.’

  ‘‘Cause I never used a piece with a silencer on it.’

  ‘It’ll work, you have nothing to worry about.’

  ‘After I pack the money in the bag...’

  ‘Not only the money. Everything in the safe.’

  ‘Checks, everything, ‘cause there’s no time to do any sorting. I just throw everything in the bag.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And then I leave by the employee’s entrance.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And you’ll be waiting outside on the sidewalk.’

  ‘With “Silent Night” going.’

  ‘Yeah, “Silent Night,’” Charlie said, and smiled.

  * * * *

  Detective Richard Genero opened the top drawer of his desk and sneaked another peek at the invitation:

  Scrawled on the flap of the card in the same handwriting was the message:

  He had received the invitation two days ago. It had taken him a long while to figure out that Harriet was Harriet Byrnes, the lieutenant’s wife. He had asked Hal Willis a discreet question—‘Hey, who’s Harriet?’—and Hal Willis had winked and said, ‘Pete’s wife.’ Genero suspected that Hal Willis had been invited to the party, too, but he was sworn to secrecy and so he hadn’t said another word. He wondered now what the party was for. It seemed funny to him that Mrs. Byrnes hadn’t mentioned what the party was for. Also what should he call Mrs. Byrnes on the night of the party? She had signed the invitation ‘Harriet,’ hadn’t she? Should he call her Harriet? Should he call the lieutenant Pete? He had never in his life called him Pete.

  Genero hated it when things got complicated.

  For example, why had Mrs. Byrnes called him Richard? The only person in the entire world who called him Richard was his mother. Nobody on the squad called him Richard. Nobody on the squad called him Dick, either. Nobody in the world called him Dick. On the squad they called him Genero. Always his last name. Genero. They called Carella ‘Steve,’ and they called Hawes ‘Cotton,’ and Kling ‘Ben,’ but they always called him ‘Genero.’ His last name. Of course, they called Meyer ‘Meyer,’ but that was because his first name and his last name were exactly the same. His mother told him that was a sign of respect, people calling him by his last name. He told his mother they didn’t call him Mr. Genero, they just called him Genero. She insisted it was a sign of respect.

  She also insisted that he should find out more about this party because maybe he was expected to bring a present. If he was expected to bring a present and he didn’t bring a present, this would make him look bad in the lieutenant’s eyes.

  ‘Il mondo è fatto a scale,’ his mother said. ‘Chi le scende e chi le sale.’

  This meant: ‘The world is made of stairs, and there are those who go up and those who go down.’

  This further meant: If Genero ever wanted to go any place in the police department, he’d better bring a present to the lieutenant’s party if a present was expected.

  ‘Ognuno cerca di portare l’acqua al suo Molino,’ his mother said.

  Which meant: ‘Every man tries to bring water to his own mill.’

  Which further meant: It was in Genero’s own interest to bring a present to the lieutenant’s party if he wanted to get anywhere in the police department.

  But Harriet Byrnes had asked him to keep the party a secret.

  So how was he supposed to ask anyone if a present was expected?

  It was all very complicated.

  Genero sighed and looked out the window to the parking lot behind the precinct.

  Harry afternoon sunlight glinted off the white roofs of the patrol cars parked there.

  * * * *

  The forecasters were promising snow for Christmas, but you wouldn’t suspect it from today. There were days in this city when you wondered why anyone bothered moving to the Sun Belt. Cold, yes, the day was cold, you couldn’t deny that. But the cold merely quickened your step and made you feel more alive. And the sky was so blue you felt like hugging it. And the brilliant sunshine made everything seem like summertime, despite the cold.

  The big stores had all taken out full-page ads in the newspapers, announcing that they would be open till six tonight, business as usual. It was a glorious day for shopping. The benevolent sun, the crisp cold air reminding you that this was indeed the day before Christmas, the streets alive with a sense of anticipation and expectation, the welcoming warmth of the stores with their glittering displays, even the shoppers more polite and courteous than they would have been if not sharing the knowledge that this was Christmas Eve.

  On the sixth floor of Gruber’s uptown store, not far from the 87th Precinct station house, Santa Claus—or rather the man pretending to be Santa Claus—was amazed to see a line of kids still waiting to talk to him at five in the afternoon. He told all the little boys who climbed up onto his lap that they had to give him their toy orders real fast because he had to hurry on up to the North Pole to feed the reindeer and get ready for his long chilly ride tonight. The little boys were all in awe of Santa, and they reeled off their requests with the speed of tobacco auctioneers. The little girls took their good sweet time, perhaps because this would be the last shot they had at Santa till he came down that chimney tomorrow morning or perhaps because the man pretending to be Santa encouraged them to take all the time they needed. Actually the man pretending to be Santa was named Arthur Drits, and the closest he’d ever come to the North Pole was Castleview Prison upstate, where he’d spent a good many years for First-Degree Rape, a Class-B felony denned as:

  Being a male, engaging in sexual intercourse with a female:

  1. By forcible compulsion; or

  2. Who is incapable of consent by reason of being physically helpless; or

  3. Who is less than eleven years old.

  The personnel manager who’d hir
ed Drits to portray Santa for Gruber’s uptown store did not know that he had a prison record or that he loved children quite so much as he claimed to love them—especially little girls under the age of eleven. The personnel manager saw only a jolly-looking fellow with a little potbelly and twinkly blue eyes, and he figured he would make a good Santa. Even after Drits started working for the store, the personnel manager never noticed that Santa gave most little boys pretty short shrift while he kept even ugly little girls on his lap for an inordinately long time.

  Today, at a little past five now and with the store officially closing its doors at six, Drits kept a little eight-year-old curly headed blond girl on his lap for almost five minutes, his eyes glazed as he listened rapturously to her various requests. He reminded her to leave a cup of hot chocolate for him before she went to bed tonight, and then he helped her off his lap, his big meaty right hand clenched into her plump right buttock as he lifted her to the floor, and then he turned to the next little girl in line—a darling little Hispanic girl with bright button eyes and a mouth like an angel’s—and he said, ‘Come, sweetheart, sit up here on Santa’s lap and tell him what you want for Christmas.’