Widows

by Ed McBain

  "Fine. She thinks the three of us should get together sometime soon to talk things over, try to . . ."

  "Okay. Whenever."

  "Well, good, I was hoping you'd ... I usually see her on Mondays and Wednesdays, how about. . .?"

  "Whenever."

  "How about tomorrow then?"

  "What time?"

  "I've got a five o'clock ..."

  "Fine."

  ". . . appointment, would that be all right with you?"

  "Yes, that'd be fine."

  "You know where her office is, don't you?"

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  "Yes, I do."

  "Headquarters Building, fifth floor."

  "Yes."

  "So I'll see you there at five tomorrow."

  "I'll see you there," he said, and hesitated. "Been a long time."

  "Yes, it has. Well, goodnight, Bert, I'll. . ."

  "Maybe she can tell me what I did wrong," he said.

  Eileen said nothing.

  "Because I keep wondering what I did wrong," he said.

  Her beeper went off. For a moment, she couldn't remember where she'd put it, and then she located it on the coffee table across the room, zeroed in on the sound as if she were a bat or something flitting around in the dark, reached for the bedside lamp and snapped it on - they used to talk to each other on the phone in the dark in their separate beds - the beeper still signaling urgently.

  "Do you know what I did wrong?" he asked.

  "Bert, I have to go," she said, "it's my beeper."

  "Because if someone can tell me what I . . ."

  "Bert, really, goodbye," she said, and hung up.

  There were children in swimsuits.

  The fire hydrant down the block was still open, its spray nozzle fanning a cascade of water into the street, and whereas not a moment earlier the kids had been splashing and running through the artificial waterfall, they had now drifted up the street to where the real action was. Outside the building where the blue-and-white Emergency Service truck and motor-patrol cars were angled into the curb, there were also men in tank tops and women in halters, most of them wearing shorts, milling around behind the barricades the police had set up. It was a hot summer night at the end of one of the hottest days this summer; the temperature at ten p.m. was still hovering in the mid-nineties. There would have been people in the streets even if there hadn't been the promise of vast and unexpected entertainment.

  In this city, during the first six months of the year, a bit more than twelve hundred murders had been committed. Tonight, in a cluttered neighborhood that had once been almost exclusively Hispanic but that was now a volatile mix of Hispanic, Vietnamese, Korean, Afghani, and Iranian, an eighty-four-year-old man from Guayama, Puerto Rico, sat with his eight-year-old American-born granddaughter on his knee, threatening to add yet another murder to the soaring total; a shotgun was in his right hand and the barrel of the gun rested on the little girl's shoulder, angled toward her ear.

  Inspector William Cullen Brady had put a Spanish-speaking member of his team on the door, but so far the old man had said only five words and those in English: "Go away, I'll kill her." Accented English, to be sure, but plain and understandable nonetheless. If they did not get away from the door of the fifth-floor apartment where he lived with his son, his daughter-in-law, and their three children, he would blow the youngest of the three clear back to the Caribbean.

  It was suffocatingly hot in the hallway where the negotiating team had "contained" the old man and his granddaughter. Eileen and the other trainees had been taught that the first objective in any hostage situation was to contain the taker in the smallest possible area, but she wondered now exactly who was doing the containing and who was being contained. It seemed to her that the old man had chosen his own turf and his own level of confrontation, and was now calling all the shots - no pun intended, God forbid! The narrow fifth-floor hallway with its admixture of exotic cooking smells now contained at least three dozen police officers, not counting those who had spilled over onto the fire stairs or those who were massed in the apartment down the hall, which the police had requisitioned as a command post, thank you, ma'am, we'll send you a receipt. There were cops all over the rooftops, too, and cops and firemen spreading safety nets below, just in case the old man decided to throw his granddaughter out the window, nothing ever surprised anybody in this city.

  The cop working the door was an experienced member of the negotiating team who normally worked out of Burglary. His name was Emilio Garcia, and he spoke Spanish fluently, but the old man wasn't having any of it. The old man insisted on speaking English, a rather limited English at that, litanizing the same five words over and over again: "Go away, I'll kill her." This was a touchy situation here. The apartment was in a housing project where only last week the Tactical Narcotics Team had blown away four people in a raid, three of them known drug dealers, but the fourth - unfortunately - a fifteen-year-old boy who'd been in the apartment delivering a case of beer from the local supermarket.

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  The kid had been black.

  This meant that one of the city's foremost agitators, a media hound who liked nothing better than to see his own beautiful face on television, had rounded up all the usual yellers and screamers and had picketed both the project and the local precinct, shouting police brutality and racism and no justice, no peace, and all the usual slogans designed to create more friction than already existed in a festering city on the edge of open warfare. The Preacher - as he was familiarly called - was here tonight, too, wearing a red fez and a purple shirt purchased in Nairobi and open to the waist, revealing a bold gold chain with a crucifix dangling from it; the man was a minister of God, after all, even if he preached only the doctrines of hate. He didn't have to be here tonight, though, shouting himself hoarse, nobody needed any help in the hate department tonight.

  The guy inside the apartment was a Puerto Rican, which made him a member of the city's second-largest minority group, and if anything happened to him or that little girl sitting on his lap, if any of these policemen out here exercised the same bad judgement as had their colleagues from TNT, there would be bloody hell to pay. So anyone even remotely connected with the police department - including the Traffic Department people in their brown uniforms - was tiptoeing around outside that building and inside it, especially Emilio Garcia, who was afraid he might say something that would cause the little girl's head to explode into the hallway in a shower of gristle and blood.

  "Oigame," Garcia said. "Solo quiero ayudarle."

  "Go away," the old man said. "I'll kill her."

  Down the hall, Michael Goodman was talking to the man's daughter-in-law, an attractive woman in her mid-forties, wearing sandals, a blue mini, and a red tube-top blouse, and speaking rapid accent-free English. She had been born in this country, and she resented the old man's presence here, which she felt reflected upon her own Americanism and strengthened the stereotyped image of herself as just another spic. Her

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  husband was the youngest of his sons - the old man had four sons and three daughters - but even though all of them were living here in America, he was the one who'd had to take the old man in when he'd finally decided to come up from the island. She had insisted that the old man speak English now that he was here in America and living in her home. Eileen wondered if this was why he refused to speak Spanish with their talker at the door.

  She was standing with the other trainees in a rough circle around the woman and Goodman, just outside the open door to the command-post apartment, where Inspector Brady was in heavy discussion with Deputy Inspector Di Santis of the Emergency Service. Nobody wanted this one to flare out of control. They were debating whether they should pull Garcia off the door. They had thought that a Spanish-speaking negotiator would be their best bet, but now -

  "Any reason why he's doing this?" Goodman asked the woman.

  "Because he's crazy," the woman said.

  Her name was Gerry Valdez, she had alre
ady told Goodman that her husband's name was Joey and the old man's name was Armando. Valdez, of course. All of them Valdez, including the little girl on the old man's lap, Pamela Valdez. And, by the way, when were they going to go in there and get her?

  "We're trying to talk to your father-in-law right this minute," Goodman assured her.

  "Never mind talking to him, why don't you just shoot him?"

  "Well, Mrs Valdez . . ."

  "Before he hurts my daughter."

  "That's what we're trying to make sure of," Goodman said. "That nobody gets hurt."

  He was translating the jargon they'd had drummed into them for twelve hours a day for the past six days, Sunday included, time-and-a-half for sure. Never mind containment, never mind establishing lines of communication, or giving assurances of nonviolence, just cut to the chase for the great

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  unwashed, dish it out clean and fast, we're trying to talk to him, we're trying to make sure nobody gets hurt here.

  "Not him, not anybody," Goodman said, just in case the woman didn't yet understand that nobody was going in there with guns blazing like Rambo.

  Martha Halsted, the tight-assed little brunette with the Go-to-Hell look, seemed eager for a chance to work the door. She kept glancing down the hall to where Garcia kept pleading in Spanish with the old man, her brown eyes alive with anticipation, if you relieve Garcia, then choose me, pick me, I can do the job. Eileen guessed maybe she could.

  She had asked Annie Rawles what she knew about her. Annie remembered her from when she was still working Robbery. She described her as a "specialist." This did not mean what Eileen at first thought it meant. A specialist in robbery or related crimes, right? Wasn't that what Annie meant? Annie explained that, well, no, the term as it was commonly used - hadn't Eileen ever heard the expression? Eileen said No, she hadn't, all eyes, all ears. Annie explained that a specialist was a woman who . . . well ... a woman adept at oral sex, come on you're putting me on, you know what a specialist is. My, my, Eileen thought. Martha Halsted, a specialist. For all her hard, mean bearing and her distant manner, Martha Halsted was all heart, all mouth. Live and learn, Eileen thought, and never judge a book by its cover.

  She figured Martha had as much chance of working the door on this one as she had of playing the flute with the Philharmonic. Unless she'd been blowing sweet music in the inspector's ear, so to speak, or perhaps even the good doctor's, who knew what evil lurked? Even so, neither of them would risk putting a trainee on the door a week after those Narcotics jerks had blown away a teenager. However much they taught that everything was theory until it was put into practice, and nothing was as valuable as actual experience in the field, nobody in his right mind was going to trust anyone but a skilled professional in a situation like this one. So eat your

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  heart out, Martha. Tonight is a night for specialists of quite another sort.

  From down the hall, Garcia was signaling.

  Hand kept low at his side so that the old man in the apartment wouldn't see it, wouldn't spook and pull the shotgun trigger. But signaling distinctly and urgently, somebody get over here, will you please? Martha was the first one to spot the hand signal, busy as she was with watching the door and waiting for her golden opportunity. She told Goodman the guy at the door wanted something. Goodman went in to talk to Brady, and the inspector himself went down the hall to see what it was Garcia wanted. He had already decided to pull Garcia off the door. Now he had to decide who would replace him. A knowledge of Spanish was no longer a priority; the old man obviously spoke English and would speak nothing but English. In a situation as volatile as this one, Brady was thinking that he himself might be the right man for the job. Anyway, he went down the hall to see what the hell was happening.

  Gerry Valdez was telling Goodman and the assembled trainees that her father-in-law was a sex maniac. She'd caught him several times fondling her daughters, or at least trying to fondle them. That was what had started it all today. She had caught him at it again, and she had threatened to ship him back to the goddamn island if he didn't quit bothering her daughters, and the old man had got the shotgun out of where Joey kept it in the closet, and had grabbed Pamela, the youngest one, the eight-year-old, and had yelled he was going to kill her unless everybody left them alone in the apartment.

  Goodman was thinking they had a serious problem here.

  Brady was coming back up the hall with Garcia. There was no one at the door now. Just a lot of uniformed cops milling around down the hall,' aiting for God only knew what.

  "Mike?" Brady said. "Talk to you a minute?"

  The three of them went inside the command-post apartment. Brady closed the door behind them.

  Gerry Valdez began telling the trainees that she didn't really

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  think the old man was a sex maniac, it was just that he was getting senile, you know? He was eighty-four years old, he sometimes forgot himself, forgot he wasn't still a little boy chasing little girls along the beach, you know? It was really a pity and a shame, but at the same time she didn't want him fooling around with her kids, that was child abuse, wasn't it?

  Eileen guessed it was.

  She wondered what they were talking about inside that apartment.

  Were it not for the shotgun, it would have been comical.

  The old man wanted a girl.

  "What do you mean, a girl?" Goodman said.

  "He told me he'd trade his granddaughter for a girl," Garcia said.

  "A girl?"

  "He said if we send in a girl, he'd give us his granddaughter."

  "A girl?" Goodman said again.

  This was unheard of. In all his years of hostage negotiation, Goodman had never had anyone request a girl. He'd had takers who'd asked for cigarettes or beer or a jet plane to Miami or in one instance spaghetti with red clam sauce, but he had never had anyone ask for a girl. This was something new in the annals of hostage negotiation. An eighty-four-year-old man asking them for a girl.

  "You mean he wants a girlV he asked, shaking his head, still unwilling to believe it.

  "A girl," Garcia said.

  "Did he tell you this in Spanish or in English?" Brady asked.

  "In Spanish."

  "Then there was no mistake."

  "No mistake. He wants a girl. Una chiquita, he said. I'm sure he meant a hooker."

  "He wants a hooker."

  "Yes."

  "The old goat wants a hooker," Brady said.

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  "Yes."

  "Mike?" Brady said. "What do you think?"

  Goodman looked amused. But it wasn't funny.

  "Can we send out for a hooker?" Brady said.

  "And a dozen red roses," Goodman said, still looking amused.

  "Mike," Brady said warningly.

  "It's just I never heard of such a request," Goodman said.

  "Can we get him a goddamn hooker or not?" Brady said. "Swap him a hooker for the little girl?"

  "Absolutely not," Goodman said. "We never give them another hostage, that's a hard-and-fast rule. If we sent a hooker in there and she got blown away, you know what the media would do with that, don't you? Last week a fifteen-year-old kid, this week a hooker?"

  "Yeah," Brady said glumly.

  Garcia had been the talker on the door so far, and he didn't want anything to go wrong here, didn't want the old man to blow away either his granddaughter or anybody they might send in there. Garcia was only a Detective/Second, he didn't want any shit coming down on him. Do the job and do it right, but protect your ass at all times; he'd been a cop too long not to know this simple adage. So he waited for whatever Brady might come up with. Brady was the boss. Goodman was a civilian shrink who didn't matter, but Brady was rank. So Garcia waited for whatever he might decree.

  "We've got two girls right outside," Brady said.

  He was referring to the two women police officers in his training program.

  Apparently, the old man did not know that Martha Hal
sted was a specialist. He took one look at her and told Garcia, in Spanish, that if they didn't get him a better-looking girl, he would kill his granddaughter on the spot. He gave them ten minutes to get him a better-looking girl. Martha, supremely egotistical, felt his rejection of her had to do with the fact that she was wearing white sneakers, jeans, and a T-shirt; the old

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  man had been expecting someone who looked more like a hooker. She suggested that Eileen - who was dressed almost identically, except for the sneakers - looked more like a hooker.

  "So what do you say, Burke?" Brady asked.

  "Sir?"

  "You want to go in there or not?"

  Decoy work all over again, Eileen thought. Either they put you on the street in hooker's threads or you go sit on an old man's lap in blue jeans and a T-shirt, and you try to talk him out of a shotgun. Or maybe you shoot him. She was not in this program because she wanted to shoot people.

  "If the shotgun comes out, I go in," she said.

  "That's not the deal we made with him," Brady said.

  "What was the deal?"

  "He sends out his granddaughter, we send in a girl."

  "Then what?"

  "Then the kid is safe," Brady said.

  "How about me? Am I safe?"

  Brady looked at her.

  "We can't send in a real hooker," he said.

  "I realize that, I'm asking if you're swapping my life for the kid's, sir. That's what I'm asking."

  "It's up to you to calm him down, get that shotgun away from him."

  "How do I calm him down?" Eileen asked.

  "We've had run-throughs on situations like this one," Brady said.

  "Not exactly, sir, no, sir. We didn't do any run-throughs on a man expecting a hooker and getting a talker instead."

  "This is only a. variation on a classic hostage situation," Brady said.

  "I don't think so, sir. I think he may get very upset when he finds out I'm really a cop. I think he may decide to use that gun when he ..."

  "There's no reason for him to know you're a cop," Brady said.

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  "Oh? Do I lie to him, sir? I thought once we established communication, we told the truth all the way down the line."