by Ed McBain
“Excuse me, Alan,” a voice said.
Ollie turned to see a slight and narrow, precise little man wearing a blue blazer, a red tie, a white shirt, gray slacks, gray socks, and black loafers. Ever since the terrorist bombing at Clarendon Hall, everybody in this city dressed like an American flag. Ollie figured half of them were faking it.
“We’re having a conversation here,” he said.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I wanted to ask…”
“You know this man?” Ollie asked Pierce.
“Yes, he’s our press rep. Josh Coogan.”
“Excuse me, Alan,” Coogan said, “but I was wondering if I should get back to headquarters. I know there’ll be hundreds of calls…”
“No, this is a crime scene,” Ollie said. “Stick around.”
Coogan looked flustered for a moment. He was maybe twenty-four, twenty-five years old, but he suddenly looked like a high school kid who hadn’t done his assignment and had got called on while he was trying to catch a nap. Ollie didn’t have much sympathy for politicians, but all at once this seemed very sad here, two guys who all at once didn’t know what to do with themselves. He almost felt like taking them out for a beer. Instead, he said, “Were you here in the hall when all this happened, Mr. Coogan?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Where in the hall?”
“In the balcony.”
“What were you doing up there?”
“Listening to sound checks.”
“While you were listening to these sound checks, did you happen to hear the sound of a gun going off?”
“Yes.”
“In the balcony?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
“From somewhere down below.”
“Where down below?”
“The stage.”
“Which side of the stage?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“Right or left?”
“I really couldn’t tell.”
“Was anyone with you up there in the balcony?”
“No, I was alone.”
“Incidentally, Mr. Pierce,” Ollie said, turning to him, “did I hear you tell those reporters you went upstate with Mr. Henderson?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Where upstate?”
“The capital.”
“When?”
“We flew up together on Saturday morning. I’m his aide. I was his aide,” he said, correcting himself.
“Did you fly back together, too?”
“No. I left on Sunday morning. Caught a seven A.M. plane.”
“So he spent all day Sunday up there alone, is that it?”
“Yes,” Pierce said. “Alone.”
“You the detective in charge here?” the ME asked.
“I am,” Ollie said.
“Your cause of death is gunshot wounds to the chest.”
Big revelation, Ollie thought.
“You can move him out whenever you like. We may find some surprises at the morgue, but I doubt it. Good luck.”
Monoghan was walking over with a man wearing a red bandana tied across his forehead, high-topped workman’s shoes, and bib overalls showing naked muscular arms, the left one tattooed on the bicep with the words SEMPER FIDELIS.
“Weeks, this is Charles Mastroiani, man in charge of decorating the hall here, you might want to talk to him.”
“No relation to Marcello,” Mastroiani promptly told Ollie, which was a total waste since Ollie didn’t know who the hell he was talking about. “My company’s called Festive, Inc.,” he said, exuding a sense of professional pride and enthusiasm that was all too rare in today’s workplace. “We’re listed in the city’s yellow pages under ‘Decoration Contractors.’ What we do is we supply everything you need for a special occasion. I’m not talking about a wedding or a barmitzvah, those we leave to the caterers. Festive operates on a much larger scale. Dressing the stage here at King Memorial is a good example. We supplied the bunting, the balloons, the banners, the audio equipment, the lighting, everything. We would’ve supplied a band, too, if it was called for, but this wasn’t that kind of affair. As it was, we dressed the hall and wired it, made it user-friendly and user-ready. All the councilman had to do was step up to the podium and speak.”
All the councilman had to do, Ollie thought, was step up to the podium and get shot.
“Will you get paid, anyway?” he asked.
“What?” Mastroiani said.
“For the gig. Him getting killed and all.”
“Oh sure. Well, I suppose so.”
“Who contracted for the job?”
“The Committee.”
“What committee?”
“The Committee for Henderson.”
“It says that on the contract?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Who signed the contract?”
“I have no idea. It came in the mail.”
“You still got it?”
“I can find it for you.”
“Good. I’d like to see who hired you.”
“Sure.”
“All these people who were onstage with you when he got killed,” Ollie said. “Were they regulars?”
“What do you mean, regulars?”
“Have you worked with them before?”
“Oh sure. All the time.”
“All of them reliable?”
“Oh sure.”
“None of them strangers to you, is that right? What I’m driving at, would any of these guys have come in here with a concealed…”
“No, no.”
“…weapon and popped Henderson, is what I’m asking.”
“None of them. I can vouch for each and every one of them.”
“Cause what I’ll have to do, anyway, I’m gonna have to send some of my colleagues from up the Eight-Eight around to talk to them individually, just in case one of them got a bug up his ass to shoot the councilman.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that.”
“Yeah, well, I worry about such things. Which is why I’ll need a list of all your people here on the job.”
“Sure. But they’re all bonded, so I’m sure you won’t find anything out of the way.”
“Why are they bonded?”
“Well, we sometimes do these very big affairs where there’s jewelry and such laying around…”
“Uh-huh.”
“Precious antiques, things like that, on these big estates, you know…”
“You’re saying these men are honest individuals, is what you’re saying.”
“That’s right.”
“Wouldn’t harm a fly, is what you’re saying.”
“Is basically what I’m saying.”
“We’ll have to talk to them anyway,” Ollie said. “So what I’m saying, after you give me all their names, you might advise them not to leave the city for the next couple of days, till my people have a chance to talk to them.”
“I’ll be happy to do that.”
“Good. So tell me, Mr. Master-yonny…”
“It’s Mastroiani.”
“Ain’t that what I said?”
“No, you said…I don’t know what you said, but it wasn’t Mastroiani.”
“You know, have you ever thought of changing your name?”
“No.”
“To something simpler?”
“No. Like what?”
“Like Weeks, for example. Short and sweet and easy to say. And people would think you’re related to an American police detective.”
“I don’t think I’d like to do that.”
“Entirely up to you, my friend, ah yes,” Ollie said.
“And I am American,” Mastroiani said.
“Of course you are,” Ollie said. “But tell me, Charles, may I call you Charles?”
“Most people call me Chuck.”
“Even though most Chucks are fags?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not Chuck?”
<
br /> “I’m not a fag.”
“Then should I call you Charles?”
“Actually, I’d prefer being called Mr. Mastroiani.”
“Sure, but that don’t sound American, does it? Tell me, Chuck, where were you exactly when the councilman got shot?”
“I was standing near the podium there.”
“And?”
“I heard shots. And he was falling.”
“Heard shots from the wings there?”
“No. From the balcony.”
“Tell me what happened, Chuck. In your own words.”
“Who else’s words would I use?” Mastroiani asked.
“That’s very funny, Chuck,” Ollie said, and grinned like a dragon.
“Tell me.”
The way Mastroiani tells it, the councilman is this energetic little guy who gets to the Hall at about a quarter to nine, dressed for work in jeans and a crewneck cotton sweater, loafers, real casual, you know? He’s all over the place, conferring with his aide and this kid he has with him looks like a college boy, giving directions to Mastroiani and his crew, arms waving all over the place like a windmill, running here, running there, going out front to check how the stage looks every time a new balloon goes up, sending the college kid up to the balcony to hear how the sound is, then going up there himself to listen while his aide talks into the mike, then coming down again and making sure the podium is draped right and the sign is just where he wants it, and checking the sound again, waving up to the kid in the balcony who gives him a thumbs up signal, and then starting to check the lights, wanting to know where the spot would pick him up after he was introduced…
“That’s what he was doing when he got shot. He was crossing the stage to the podium, making sure the spot was following him.”
“Where were you?”
“At the podium, I told you. Looking up at the guy in the booth, waiting for the councilman to…”
“What guy in the booth?”
“The guy on the follow spot.”
“One of your people?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“I have no idea. My guess is he works here at the Hall.”
“Who would know?”
“You got me.”
“I thought you supplied everything. The sound, the lighting…”
“The onstage lighting. Usually, when we do an auditorium like this one, they have their own lighting facilities and their own lighting technician or engineer, they’re sometimes called, a lighting engineer.”
“Did you talk to this guy in the booth? This technician or engineer or whatever he was?”
“No, I did not.”
“Who talked to him?”
“Mr. Pierce was yelling up to him—Henderson’s aide—and so was the councilman himself. I think the college kid was giving him instructions, too. From up in the balcony.”
“Was the kid up there when the shooting started?”
“I think so.”
“Well, didn’t you look up there? You told me that’s where the shots came from, didn’t you look up there to see who was shooting?”
“Yes, but I was blinded by the spot. The spot had followed the councilman to the podium, and that was when he got shot, just as he reached the podium.”
“So the guy working the spot was still up there, is that right?”
“He would’ve had to be up there, yes, sir.”
“So let’s find out who he was,” Ollie said.
A uniformed inspector with braid all over him was walking over. Ollie deemed it necessary to perhaps introduce himself.
“Detective Weeks, sir,” he said. “The Eight-Eight. First man up.”
“Like hell you are,” the inspector said, and walked off.
2
WHEN OLLIE GOT BACK to his car, the rear window on the passenger side door was smashed and the door was standing wide open. The briefcase with Report to the Commissioner in it was gone. Ollie turned to the nearest uniform.
“You!” he said. “Are you a cop or a doorman?”
“Sir?”
“Somebody broke in my car here and stole my book,” Ollie said. “You see anything happen, or were you standin here pickin your nose?”
“Sir?” the uniform said.
“They hiring deaf policemen now?” Ollie said. “Excuse me. Hearing-impaired policemen?”
“My orders were to keep anybody unauthorized out of the Hall,” the uniform said. “A city councilman got killed in there, you know.”
“Gee, no kidding?” Ollie said. “My book got stolen out here!”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the uniform said. “But you can always go to the library and take out another one.”
“Give me your shield number and shut up,” Ollie said. “You let somebody vandalize a police vehicle and steal valuable property from it.”
“I was just following orders, sir.”
“Follow this a while,” Ollie said, and briefly grabbed his own crotch, shaking his jewels.
DETECTIVE-LIEUTENANT ISADORE HIRSCH was in charge of the Eight-Eight Detective Squad, and he happened to be Jewish. Ollie did not particularly like Jews, but he expected fair play from him, nonetheless. Then again, Ollie did not like black people, either, whom he called “Negroes” because he knew it got them hot under the collar. For that matter, he wasn’t too keen on Irishmen or Italians, or Hispanics, or Latinos, or whatever the tango dancers were calling themselves these days. In fact, he hadn’t liked Afghanis or Pakis or other Muslim types infiltrating the city, even before they started blowing things up, and he didn’t much care for Chinks or Japs or other persons of Oriental persuasion. Ollie was in fact an equal opportunity bigot, but he did not consider himself prejudiced in any way. He merely thought of himself as discerning.
“Izzie,” he said—which sounded very Jewish to him, the name Izzie—“this is the first big one come my way in the past ten years. So upstairs is gonna take it away from me? It ain’t fair, Izzie, is it?”
“Who says life has to be fair?” Hirsch said, sounding like a rabbi, Ollie thought.
Hirsch in fact resembled a rabbi more than he did a cop with more citations for bravery than any man deserved, one of them for facing down an ex-con bearing a grudge and a sawed-off shotgun. Dark-eyed and dark-jowled, going a bit bald, long of jaw and sad of mien, he wore a perpetually mournful expression that made him seem like he should have been davening, or whatever they called it, at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, or Haifa, or wherever it was.
“I was first man up,” Ollie said. “That used to mean something in this city. Don’t it mean nothing anymore?”
“Times change,” Hirsch said like a rabbi.
“I want this case, Izzie.”
“It should be ours, you’re right.”
“Damn right, it should be ours.”
“I’ll make some calls. I’ll see what I can do,” Hirsch said.
“You promise?”
“Trust me.”
Which usually meant “Go hide the silver.” But Ollie knew from experience that the Loot’s word was as good as gold.
Like a penitent to his priest, or a small boy to his father, he said, “They also stole my book, Iz.”
HE TOLD THIS to his sister later that night.
“Isabelle,” he said, “they stole my book.”
As opposed to her “large” brother, as she thought of him, Isabelle Weeks was razor-thin. She had the same suspecting expression on her face, though, the same searching look in her piercing blue eyes. The other genetic trait they shared was an enormous appetite. But however much Isabelle ate—and right this minute she was doing a pretty good job of putting away the roast beef she’d prepared for their dinner—her weight remained constant. On the other hand, anything Ollie ingested turned immediately to…well, largeness. It wasn’t fair.
“Who stole your book?” Isabelle said. “What book?” she said.
“I told you I was writing a novel…”
“Oh yes.”
“Anyway, it was in the back seat of the car, and somebody spotted it, and smashed the window, and stole it.”
“Why would anyone want to steal your book?” she asked.
She made it sound as if she was saying “Why would anyone want to steal your accordion?” or something else worthless.
Ollie really did not wish to discuss his novel with a jackass like his sister. He had been working on it too long and too hard, and besides you could jinx a work of art if you discussed it with anyone not familiar with the nuances of literature. He had first titled the book Bad Money, which was a very good title in that the book was about a band of counterfeiters who are printing these hundred-dollar bills that are so superb you cannot tell them from the real thing. But there is a double-cross in the gang, and one of them runs off with six million four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of the queer bills and stashes them in a basement in Diamondback—which Ollie called Rubytown in his book—and the story is all about how this very good detective not unlike Ollie himself recovers the missing loot and is promoted and decorated and all.
Ollie abandoned the title Bad Money when he realized the word “Bad” was asking for criticism from some smartass book reviewer. He tried the title Good Money, instead, which was what writers call litotes, a figure of speech that means you are using a word to mean the opposite of what you intend. But he figured not too many readers out there—and maybe not too many editors, either—would be familiar with writers’ tricks, so he abandoned that one, too, but not the book itself.
At first, the book itself was giving him trouble. Not the same trouble he’d had learning the first three notes of “Night and Day,” which he’d finally got through, thanks to Miss Hobson, his beloved piano teacher. The trouble was he was trying to sound too much like all those pissant writers out there who were not cops but who were writing what they called “police procedurals,” and by doing this, by imitating them, actually, he was losing track of his own distinctiveness, his very Oliver Wendell Weekness, no pun intended.
And then he hit upon his brilliant idea.
Suppose he wrote the book like a Detective Division report? In his own language, the way he’d type it on a DD form, though not in triplicate. (In retrospect, he wished he had written it in triplicate.) Suppose he made it sound like he was writing it for a superior officer, his Lieutenant, say, or the Chief of Detectives, or—why not?—even the Commissioner! Write it in his own language, his own words, warts and all, this is me, folks, Detective/First Grade Oliver Wendell Weeks. Call the book “A Detective’s Report” or “Report from a Detective” or—