Tricks

by Ed McBain

  "All I know about him hellip;"

  "Right down to his beauty spot," Brown said, and snapped the notebook shut.

  "Marie, what is he talking about?" Dolores asked.

  "I think she knows what I'm talking about," Brown said.

  Marie said nothing.

  "If the prints come up blank," Brown said, "we've still got the head. Someone'll identify him. Sooner or later, we'll get a positive ID."

  She still said nothing.

  "He's Jimmy Brayne, isn't he?" Brown asked.

  Silence.

  "You and your husband killed Jimmy Brayne, didn't you?" he said.

  She sat quite still, her hands folded on the lap of her robe.

  "Mrs. Sebastiani," Brown said, "would you like to tell us where your husband is?"

  Parker opened the door with a skeleton key.

  On the sofa bed in the living room, a male midget and a female midget were asleep. They jumped up the minute the door opened.

  "Hello," Parker said softly, and showed them the gun.

  Wee Willie Winkie was one of the midgets. He was wearing striped pajamas. He looked cute as a button, but his face went pale the moment he saw the gun. His wife, Corky, was wearing panties and a baby-doll nightgown. Pink. She grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her breasts as Parker approached the bed. Light from the hallway spilled illumination into the room. It glinted on the gun in Parker's hand. Gorky's brown eyes were opened wide. She kept holding the pillow to her breasts. Parker thought she looked a little bit like Debbie Reynolds.

  "Are the others asleep?" he whispered.

  Willie nodded.

  "Where?"

  Willie pointed to a pair of closed doors.

  "Up," Parker whispered.

  They got out of bed. Corky looked embarrassed in only her nightgown and panties. She kept holding the pillow to her in front, but her back was exposed. Parker gestured with the gun.

  "We're going to wake them up," he whispered. "Don't yell or I'll shoot you both."

  In one of the bedrooms, Oliver Twist was asleep with a full-sized woman. The woman was very fat and very blonde. Parker remembered the old joke about the midget marrying the circus fat lady and running around the bed all night yelling, "Mine, all mine!"

  He nudged the midget.

  The midget popped up in bed.

  Red hair all mussed, blue eyes wide.

  "Shhhh," Parker said. "It's the police."

  Oliver blinked. So did Willie. This was the first he was hearing of this. Up to now, he'd thought they were dealing with a burglar, which was bad enough. Now he knew it was a cop in here, his worst nightmare realized. He glanced at Corky, his eyes blaming his wife for her goddamn friendship with Little Annie Oakley and her trigger-happy finger.

  "Wake up your lady," Parker said to Oliver.

  Oliver nudged the fat blonde.

  She rolled over.

  He nudged her again.

  "Go away," she said.

  Parker pulled the blanket off her. She was wearing a long granny nightgown. She tried to pull the blanket back over her again, grasped futilely at only thin air, and then sat up, annoyed and still half-asleep.

  "Police," Parker said, smiling.

  "What?" she said, blinking.

  "You the one did the driving?" he said.

  "What driving?" she said.

  "She don't know what driving," Parker said to Oliver, still smiling.

  "Quentin did the driving," Oliver said. "This lady had nothing to do with any of it."

  "Any of what?" the blonde said.

  Quentin, Parker thought. The guy at the party.

  "Where is he?" he asked.

  "In the other room," Oliver said.

  "Let's go tell him the party's over," Parker said. "Get out of bed. Both of you."

  They got out of bed.

  "Is this a joke?" the blonde whispered to Oliver.

  "I don't think it's a joke," Oliver whispered back.

  Parker herded the four of them into the other bedroom. The radiator was hissing, and the room was suffocatingly hot. Parker snapped on the lights. Quentin Forbes was in bed with Alice. Neither of them stirred. They had thrown back the covers in their sleep, and they were both naked. Alice looked as pretty as a little doll, her blonde hair fanned out over the pillow.

  "Police!" Parker shouted, and they both jumped up at the same time. "Hello, Alice," he said, and smiled.

  "Hello, Andy," she said, and smiled back.

  "We have to get dressed now," he said, as if to a child.

  "Okay," she said, and reached under the pillow.

  Parker said it even before he saw the gun in her hand.

  "Don't."

  She hesitated.

  "Please, Alice," he said. "Don't."

  She must have discerned something in his eyes. She must have known she was looking into the eyes of a cop who had seen it all and heard it all.

  "Okay," she said, and put down the gun.

  Forbes said, "This is an outrage."

  "It is, I know," Parker said.

  "Let me see your badge," the blonde said.

  Parker showed her his shield.

  "What is this?" she asked.

  "Let's get dressed now," he said, and went to the window and yelled down for the two uniformed cops from the Three-One.

  There were only three pairs of handcuffs among them, and six people to cuff. This was a problem in the law of supply and demand. One of the blues went downstairs again and radioed for assistance, making it clear this wasn't a 10-13, they just needed some more handcuffs. The sergeant at the Twelfth wanted to know what two blues from the Three-One and a detective from the Eight-Seven were doing on his turf, but he sent a car around with the extra cuffs. By the time the cuffs arrived, Parker had personally searched the apartment. He'd found a valise full of money. He'd found a trunk with costumes and masks and wigs in it. He'd found four .22-caliber Zephyr revolvers and a Colt .45-caliber automatic.

  He figured he had a case.

  When they put the cuffs on her, Alice was wearing a pair of tailored gray slacks, a long-sleeved pink blouse, a double breasted navy-blue jacket with brass buttons, blue patent leather shoes with French heels, and a little navy-blue overcoat. She looked adorable.

  As they went out of the apartment together, she said, "It didn't have to happen this way, you know."

  "I know," Parker said.

  Willis hoped there wasn't a gun in the room here. He hoped there wouldn't be shooting. With O'Brien along hellip;

  "Police," O'Brien said, and knocked on the door again.

  Silence inside the room there.

  Then the sound of a window scraping open.

  "He's moving!" Willis said.

  He was already backing away from the door and raising his right leg for a piston-kick. Arms wide for leverage, he looked like a football player going for the extra point. His leg lashed out, the sole and heel of his shoe hitting the door flat, just above the knob. The latch sprang, the door swung inward, O'Brien following it into the room, gun extended. Don't let there be another gun in here, Willis thought.

  A man in his undershorts was halfway out the window.

  "That's a long drop, mister," O'Brien said.

  The man hesitated.

  "Mr. Sebastiani?" Willis said.

  The man still had one leg over the windowsill. There was no fire escape out there, Willis wondered where the hell he thought he was going.

  "My name is Theo Hardeen," he said.

  "So your wife mentioned," Willis said.

  "My wife? I don't know what you're talking about."

  They never knew what anyone was talking about.

  "Mr. Sebastiani," Willis said, "at this very moment, your wife is driving in from Collinsworth with two detectives from the Eighty-Seventh Squad, upon whose instructions and advice we're hellip;"

  "I don't have any wife in hellip;"

  "They also have a chain saw in the car," O'Brien said.

  "They found a chain saw i
n your garage," Willis said.

  "There's a lot of blood on the saw," O'Brien said.

  "Sir, we're arresting you for the crime of murder," Willis said, and then began reeling off Miranda-Escobedo by rote. Sebastiani listened to the recitation as though he were being lectured. He still had one leg over the windowsill.

  "Mr. Sebastiani?" Willis said. "You want to come in off that window now?"

  Sebastiani came in off the window.

  "She blew it, huh?" he said.

  "You both did," Willis said.

  This time is for real, Carella thought.

  No tricks this time.

  This time I go west.

  Swirling darkness, blinking lights, aurora borealis, murmuring voices, beeping sounds, everything so fake and far away, but everything so real and immediate, it was funny. Floating somewhere above himself, hovering above himself like the angel of death, "Wear this garlic around your neck," Grandma used to say, "it'll keep away the angel of death," but where's the garlic now, Grandma? Crisp white sheets and soft feather pillows, tomato sauce cooking on the old wood stove in the kitchen, your eyeglasses steaming up, the time Uncle Jerry ate the rat shit, thinking it was olives, everyone gone now, is Meyer dead, too?

  Jesus, Meyer, don't be dead.

  Please don't be dead.

  Floating on the air above himself, looking down at himself, the big hero, some hero, open to the world, open to the hands and eyes of strangers, an open book, don't let Meyer be dead, let me hold you, Meyer, let me hold you, friend. Let's go in now, did someone say that years and years ago? Open him up now, open up the hero, big editorial conference out there, but no last-minute editorial decisions this time, no one here to say you can't kill the hero, big hero, some hero, cold-cocked by midgets, bang-bang, gotcha, close the book.

  Exit.

  But hellip;

  Please save that for later, okay? Save the final curtain for somewhere down the line, I'm a married man, give me a break. He almost laughed though nothing was funny, tried to laugh, wondered if he was smiling instead, heard someone say something through the fog rolling in off the water, heavy storm brewing out there, I never even learned to sail, he thought, I never had a yacht.

  All the things I never did.

  All the things I never had.

  Well, listen, who's hellip; ?

  All the treasures.

  Thirty-seven five a year doesn't buy treasures.

  Ah, Jesus, Teddy, I never bought you treasures.

  All the things I wanted to buy you.

  Forgive me for the treasures, bless me father for I have sinned, A is for amethyst and B is for beryl, C is for coral and D is for diamonds, F is for furs and G is for gold and H is for heaven and I is for hellip;

  E is missing.

  E is for exit.

  But hellip;

  Please don't get ahead of me, please don't rush me, just give me a little time to finish the rest of the alphabet, I beg of you, please.

  I is for me.

  "Careful," someone said.

  There's one hot-bed hotel the girls use, plus fifty or sixty rented rooms all over the Zone.

  Shanahan talking.

  Too many hours ago.

  She had lost her backups, she knew that.

  She didn't know what had happened on the street outside, but they were gone, that was for sure.

  So here we are, she thought.

  Alone at last.

  You and me.

  Face to face.

  Not in that single hot-bed hotel, where there was a chance they might find her before the crack of dawn, but in one of those fifty or sixty rented rooms. Lady downstairs taking the money from him, looking at it on the palm of her hand as if she expected a tip besides, up the stairs to the third floor, the smells of cooking permeating the hallways, terrific spot for a honeymoon, key in the door, the door opening on a room with a bed and a dresser and a wooden chair and a lamp and a tattered window shade, and a small door at the far end leading into a bathroom with only a toilet bowl and a soiled sink.

  "It's small, but it's cheerful," he'd said, grinning, and then he'd locked the door behind them and put the key into the same pocket with the knife.

  That was almost an hour ago.

  He'd been talking ever since.

  She kept reminding him that time was money, wanting him to make his move, get it over with, but he kept laying twenty-dollar bills on her, "A dollar a minute, right?" he said, and the empty minutes of the night kept ticking away, and he made no move to approach her.

  She wondered if she should bust him, anyway. Here we go, mister, it's the Law, run a lineup for the pair of hookers who'd described him, run the risk of them either chickening out or not remembering, run the further risk mdash;evenwith a positive ID mdash;that he'd talk his way out of it, walk away from it. Two hookers claiming they saw him chatting up the victims didn't add up to a conviction. No. If he was their man, he had to move on her before she could bust him. Come at her with the knife. No easy way out of this one, she thought. It's still him and me, alone together in this room. And all I can do is wait. And listen.

  She was learning a lot about him.

  He was lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling, and she was sitting in the wooden chair across the room near the dresser, her bag on the floor near her dangling hand, and she felt like a psychiatrist listening to a patient. The room was warm enough, she had to say that for it. Sizzling hot radiator throwing heat, she was almost getting drowsy, that's all she needed. His jacket draped over the back of the wooden chair now, his voice droning into the room. She sat with both feet planted firmly on the floor, legs slightly apart, gun strapped to her ankle inside the right boot. She was ready for anything. But nothing came. Except talk.

  " hellip; that maybeshe was partly to blame for what happened, you know?" he said. "My mother. Listen, I love her to death, don't get me wrong, she's the one who made my freedom possible, may she rest in peace. But when you think of it another way, was it all myfather's fault? Can I just hold him responsible? For laying Elga? I mean, isn't mymother partly to blame for what happened?"

  Elga again.

  Hardly a sentence out of his mouth without some mention of the housekeeper.