by Ed McBain
“Well now,” Wilkerson said, “that is one hell of a mouthful, Nell.”
“Don’t call me Nell,” Nellie said. “I wasn’t raised in the woods with wolves.”
“Well, gee, excuse me, Mrs. District Attorney. But now that you’ve told us where you plan to go, and now that you’ve made all your wonderful suggestions, do you think you might like to frame all that rhetoric in the form of a question? Because, I must tell you, my patience is wearing a bit thin and I’m on the edge of making a suggestion of my own, which is the one I made to my client in the first place, and that is to keep silent from this moment on.”
“Mrs. Henderson,” Nellie said, “were you the person our witness saw running out of the alley at King Memorial, yes or no?”
“No.”
“Mrs. Henderson, did you almost knock a black man off his feet in your haste to get out of the hall that morning, yes or no?”
“No.”
“Mrs. Henderson, did you shoot your husband from the wings stage right…”
“No.”
“…and then make your escape by…”
“No.”
“Let me finish, please.”
“I don’t want to answer any further questions,” Pamela said.
“Good,” Wilkerson said, and nodded in dismissal.
“You can stop answering questions, that’s Miranda-Escobedo, and it still holds for some lucky citizens of these United States,” Nellie said. “But you’re still under arrest, and you can’t stop me from asking you to put on a baseball cap like the one you were wearing when the witness saw you—who by the way is down the hall waiting to have a better look at you in a lineup—and you can’t stop me from asking you to put your finger to your nose, or walk across a stage, or jump up and down for me three times, or sing ‘Eeensy Weensy Spider’ in the key of G! And please don’t give me any bullshit about fingerprints and The Poisoned Tree, Alex. I’ve been informed by Detective Carella that we already have her prints on file, but I don’t want to risk any technical nonsense later on about them not being hers, or whatever you might come up with, which from personal experience I know can be plenty. That’s why I want her prints taken again, now, in my presence, which is exactly what we’re going to do. And then we’re going to compare them with the ones we lifted from two separate rest rooms at King Memorial. If we get a positive match, and I feel certain we will, your client can kiss…”
“Can they do all that?” Pamela asked suddenly.
“I’m afraid they can,” Wilkerson said.
“Then it’s all over,” Pamela said.
17
THIS WAS THE meat-packing section of the city.
During the daytime, trucks pulled in and out, and sides of beef were unloaded, and hung on platform hooks and then carried inside where they were weighed and refrigerated. Food stands and flower carts and stalls selling photographs suitable for framing lined the streets during the daytime, and African merchants in tribal robes hawked imitation Rolexes and Louis Vuitton luggage. During the daytime, there were restaurants and book shops and antiques emporiums and furniture stores, and couples wandered down to the river to watch the big steamers and the tug boats, and the ferries chugging over to Bethtown during the daytime.
At night, the streets were thronged with hookers.
“Vice don’t bother with this petty shit anymore,” Walsh told Ollie. “Ever since the terrorist business started, we got more important things on our mind. Hookers have it easy now. Terrorism made it easy for hookers.”
“How about you get some hooker commits a crime?” Ollie said.
“That’s a different story. Every now and then, one of the girls’ll stab a john gets out of line, that’s an ADW no matter how you slice it, no pun intended.”
“I’m not talking about deadly assault, I’m talking about a minor crime like stealing somebody’s dispatch case has something valuable in it. Does that attract your attention?”
“You know,” Walsh said, “you sometimes have a snotty way of saying things.”
“Gee, really. What did I just say that was snotty?”
“You said, ‘Does that attract your attention?’ With a little edge to it, you know? As if we’re not doing our jobs or something. As if Vice has nothing to do all day long but worry about some fuckin dispatch case.”
“Well, you just told me you look the other way, you got more important things on your mind, you don’t bother with this petty shit anymore…”
“That’s just what I mean,” Walsh said. “The way you just said that.”
“I was only repeating what you said.”
“It’s the way you repeated it.”
“All I’m asking is whether a hooker who stole a dispatch case is worth your valuable time, is all I’m…”
“There you go again,” Walsh said. “My valuable time. That little edge of sarcasm there. That snotty tone. I was trying to indicate to you that we’ve been on high alert for Arabs and other such types ever since 9/11. This is Vice here, we know every whore house in this city. These fucks pray to God five times a day, but then they go out drinking and lap-dancing before they crash an airplane into a building.”
Ollie suddenly liked the man.
“I tell you,” Walsh said, “I wouldn’t care to be some guy who looks even vaguely Middle Eastern when the only mischief on his mind is getting laid, though they ain’t supposed to do that in their religion, anyway, go to a whore house. Unless they’re Saudi Arabians in London,” Walsh said, and Ollie liked him even more. “We got girls all over town waiting to call us the minute one of these creeps shows up. But that ain’t all we do, Weeks.”
“Oh, I know that,” Ollie said.
“No, you don’t know it, all your remarks about our looking the other way, or being sarcastic about my valuable time…”
“Don’t be so fuckin sensitive,” Ollie said.
“Well, I am sensitive,” Walsh said. “Vice ain’t concerned only with prostitution. We’re after the policy racket, bookmaking, loan sharking, ticket scalping, we’re after the big boys, the ones running the show. We want to get ’em on RICO, send ’em up forever. That’s why you tell me some hooker stole a fuckin dispatch case, I’m supposed to get all excited about it? Give me a break, willya?”
“I’m sorry, but that case had something in it very valuable to me.”
“You telling me it’s your case?”
“Yes, it was my case this Herrera hump stole from my parked car and hocked.”
“So what was so valuable in this case of yours?”
“Well, now you’re doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Sounding sarcastic.”
“I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic.”
“I mean, you tell me you’re sensitive, well, I’m sensitive, too,” Ollie said.
“I’m sorry, okay? Tell me what was in the fuckin case, okay?”
“A novel I wrote.”
“You wrote a novel?”
“Yes.”
“So did I!” Walsh said.
Everybody wants to get in the act, Ollie thought.
“It’s with my agent right this minute,” Walsh said.
He’s got an agent, no less, Ollie thought.
“What’s it about?” he asked.
“Police work, what do you think it’s about?” Walsh said.
That’s what we need, all right, Ollie thought. Another novel about police work. There used to be no novels about police work at all. Then, all of a sudden—God knows who or what the influence might have been—every shitty little town in America had a fictitious character working out of a detective squadroom. To look at all these police novels out there, you’d think every hamlet in America was overrun with crime. Dumb little village has a population of six hundred people, according to these novels there are murders being committed there every hour on the hour. Let’s say you live in Dung Heap, Oklahoma, and your day job is you’re a garage mechanic. You go to the local police chief and you tell him you�
�re a writer and you want to set a series in his police station. The Chief says, “Come in, sit down, I’ll bare my soul to you.” Never mind being a real cop. Nobody’s real anymore, Ollie thought, that’s the trouble. Well, Walsh is real, but fuck him, the Irish hump! He wrote a police novel. That makes him competition.
“So let’s find Herrera, okay?” Ollie said.
“One of these days, we have to have a beer together,” Walsh said. “Talk shop.”
Yeah, one of these days next year, Ollie thought.
“Hey, fellas, wanna take a picture of my pussy?” a voice behind them said.
They both turned to see two girls standing there and grinning. The one with the camera seemed a trifle high. Not stoned high, just silly high. Marijuana, Ollie guessed.
“It’s Polaroid,” she said, still grinning, extending the camera to them. “You like what you see, we can talk about further exploration.”
Further exploration, Ollie thought. Everybody sounds literary these days.
“Thanks, no,” he said.
But to tell the truth, he was tempted.
The girl was wearing a short black skirt, a red silk blouse, and red patent shoes to match, no stockings. She looked like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Well, the red shoes did. She had very lovely breasts, most of them showing in the low cut peasant blouse. In fact, Ollie thought he detected the rosiest of nipples peeking out of the right side of the blouse. The girl had a beauty mark near the corner of her mouth, and black hair done in twisty little ringlets, and dark brown eyes. Ollie suddenly thought of Patricia Gomez.
“You want to look for Herrera or what?” Walsh asked.
“Be more fun taking my picture,” the girl said, and waggled her eyebrows.
“Some other time,” Ollie said, and winked at her as he turned to follow Walsh.
THE NAMEThe Cozy was lettered onto the plate glass windows out front.
“They may know something about him here,” Walsh said, and reached for the doorknob.
A little bell tinkled over the door as the detectives entered, making the place sound as cozy as it looked. The feeling was one of gingham and pine. Ten or twelve tables with blue, checked table cloths. Stools at the bar cushioned in the same blue check. A pine-framed mirror behind the bar. A blonde wearing a white T-shirt, red Larry King suspenders that exaggerated the thrust of her breasts, high-heeled pumps, and a short blue skirt was behind the bar. A second blonde, identically dressed, was working the tables. There were maybe six or seven people sitting here and there around the room. The detectives took stools at the bar. The blonde behind the bar came over. Ollie wondered if the other blonde was her twin sister.
“Are you drinking or working?” she asked Walsh.
“We’re both off duty,” he said. “What’ll you have, Ollie?”
It’d been “Weeks” before he discovered they were both literary people. Now it was “Ollie.” Next thing you knew, he’d be asking how to utilize metaphor most effectively.
“A beer’d be fine,” Ollie said. “You got Pabst?”
“Coming up,” the blonde said. “How about you, Detective Walsh?”
“Just a shot of bourbon, Flo, little water on the side.”
The other blonde came to the bar, looked at her pad, read off, “BLT down, hold the mayo, iced tea no sugar,” and then turned to Walsh and said, “Hey, long time no see. How’s your book coming along?”
“Finished it,” Walsh said. “With my agent right this minute.”
“Oh, gee, good luck with it.”
“Thanks, Wanda. This is Detective Weeks here.”
“Hey,” Wanda said, and gave him the once-over.
Of the two blondes, Ollie guessed Wanda was the prettiest. Although to tell the truth, they were both quite attractive. Ollie had always liked the look of blondes, especially real blondes, which these two definitely did not seem to be, but then again you could never tell until the panties came off, could you? He thought it odd that he was now attracted to a woman like Patricia Gomez, all dark and exotic looking, not that he was attracted to her, per se, but certainly interested in her, to say the least. He wondered how she was, in fact. Wondered what she was doing right this very minute, eleven o’clock at night. He thought maybe he’d give her a call when he got home later on, ask her if she’d like to go for some pancakes or something. He sure liked the way she filled that uniform of hers.
As he was leaving the Eight-Seven tonight, he happened to mention to his good buddy Parker that he’d made a date to go dancing this Saturday night with a Puerto Rican girl.
“Is she a hooker?” Parker asked.
“Hell, no,” Ollie said. “She’s a cop.”
“I don’t think you should date a fellow police officer,” Parker said, offended.
“I like the way she fills her uniform,” Ollie said, and winked.
“Never mind how she fills her uniform. Don’t go dating a cop. Especially a Puerto Rican one.”
“Why’s that?” Ollie asked.
“Cause she’ll cut off your dick for a nickel and sell it to the nearest cuchi frito joint,” Parker said.
Ollie wondered about that now.
Wanda here, and her twin sister behind the bar, if that’s what she was, certainly knew how to fill their own uniforms, these T-shirts with the red suspenders framing tits like melons, how do you like that for a fresh simile, Detective Walsh?
Wanda took the stool on his left.
“So, Detective, what brings you to this part of the city?” she asked.
One elbow on the bar. Leaning over it. Left breast pressing against the rounded edge. Short blue skirt sliding back very high over very white, very smooth-looking legs and thighs. Looking up at him. Blue eyes. Her sister had blue eyes, too. If Flo was indeed her sister.
“Oh, a little business down this way,” Ollie said.
“Are you Vice, too?” she asked.
“No, no. I’m with the Eight-Eight Squad. We just wrapped a murder,” he said.
“Oh my, a murder,” Wanda said, and rolled her delicious blue eyes. “Who got killed? Or am I being presumptuous?”
Everybody so literary these days.
“No, not at all,” he said. “You probably read about it in the papers. It’s Councilman Lester Henderson.”
“Oh, wow, a big one,” Wanda said.
“But he’s down here looking for a dispatch case,” Walsh said, leaning over to talk past Ollie.
“Actually, I recovered the dispatch case,” Ollie said.
“Oh. Then it’s the book was inside the case,” Walsh said to Wanda. “Ollie wrote a book, too.”
“Did you, Ollie?” Wanda said. “May I call you Ollie?”
“Yes. But I used a pen name on it,” he said.
“What name did you use?”
“John Grisham,” Walsh said, getting even for the Irish joke.
“Actually, I used a girl’s name,” Ollie said.
“Oh, really?” Wanda said, and leaned closer to him, her eyes widening.
“Ready when you are, hon,” Flo said.
“I’ll be back,” Wanda said, and swung out sideways to get off the stool, the skirt sliding back even higher on her thighs, almost to Katmandu, in fact. She went to the other end of the bar, picked up her order, looked back over her shoulder at Ollie—who felt himself growing faintly tumescent in his pants—winked at him, and then swiveled over to a man sitting alone alongside the wall under a framed poster of Boy George.
“I wish I could write a book,” Flo said wistfully.
“Maybe I could give you lessons sometime,” Ollie said.
“Maybe you could give us both lessons,” she said.
“Maybe so. Let’s ask Wanda when she comes back.”
Ollie was thinking he’d stepped in shit here. A three-way without any effort at all. How lucky could a person get? Walsh looked at him. There was a faint, smug, Irish look on his kisser. Probably congratulating himself on his wise-ass John Grisham remark, whoever the hell that was.
“Meanwhile,” Walsh said, “we wanted to ask you girls about somebody who maybe you’ve seen in here.”
“What makes you think that?” Flo asked.
“Kind of place The Cozy is,” Walsh said.
“Hi, honey, you miss me?” Wanda said, and took the stool on Ollie’s left again. Ollie put his left hand on her knee.
“How come you decided to put a girl’s name on the book?” she asked.
“I thought it would sell more copies,” Ollie said, and slid his hand onto her thigh.
“That the only reason?” Wanda asked, and snuggled a little closer to him.
“Guy’s a Puerto Rican switch-hitter,” Walsh told Flo. “Goes by Emmy on the street. His square handle is Emilio Herrera. Ever see him in here?”
“Oh, sure,” Flo said. “Emmy’s a darling.”
“You know Emmy, too?” Ollie asked Wanda, just as he reached clear up under her skirt and got the shock of his life.
• • •
“YOU SHOULD HAVE told me she was a he,” he shouted at Walsh. The two men were striding up the street toward where Ollie had parked the car. One look at them, you’d know they were cops, that stride they had. Same way you took one look at a hooker, you knew she was a hooker, the strut on her.
“You were getting along so fine there,” Walsh said, grinning. “I didn’t want to…”
“And who the fuck is John Grisham?”
“…interrupt a beautiful…”
“Is the other one a man, too? Flo? Is she a man?”
“She is a man, yes, Ollie.” He grinned again, the fuckin Irish bastard. “I guess that rules out both of them, huh?” he said.
Ollie walked on ahead of him. He was at the car, unlocking the door, checking the windows to make sure some other faggot junkie hooker hadn’t smashed one of them, when Walsh caught up.