Widows

by Ed McBain

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  woman is when he no longer loves the woman he already has. Do you think that's going to happen? Are you afraid the time will come when you won't love Teddy anymore?"

  "How can I know that, Pop?"

  "You can know it. You can feel it in your bones and in your blood. You can know you'll love this woman till the day you die, and you'll never want another woman but her. And if you don't know this now . . . don't marry her."

  "Now isn't tomorrow," he said.

  "Yes, now is tomorrow. Now is forever," his father said.

  The shop fell silent.

  "Listen to me," his father said.

  "Yes, Pop."

  His father put his hands on Carella's shoulders. Big hands covered with flour. He looked into Carella's eyes.

  "How do you feel about anyone else touching her?" he asked.

  "I would kill him," Carella said.

  "Yes," his father said, and nodded. "You have nothing to worry about. Marry her. Love her. Stay with her and no one else. Or I'll break your head," he said, and grinned.

  And now, all these years later, Carella was following his sister's husband because the possibility existed that a time had come when he didn't love her anymore. He supposed that time could come to anyone. He did not think it would ever come to him. But he wondered now if that was because he truly loved Teddy to death or only because his father had threatened to break his head. In the darkness, quickening his pace as Tommy rounded a corner ahead, he smiled to himself.

  He must have been trailing Tommy for at least half a mile, ten blocks or so, the area changing from strictly residential to commercial, elevated train tracks overhead now, stores still open on this gaudy summer night, July still flaunting her passion, men and women in the streets - was he planning to take a train? Was he heading for the platform on the next . . .?

  No, he walked right past the stairway leading up to the

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  platform and the tracks, staying on the avenue, his stride deliberate, his step that of a man who knew where he was going, a man with a destination. A little past nine o'clock now, the earlier lingering dusk now snuffed, the moonless sky black, the only illumination coming from store lights and sidewalk lamps and the red and green traffic lights on the tracks above and the streets below. Tommy was moving at a pretty fast clip, looking at his watch every now and then, continuing on up the avenue until he reached Brandon, and then turning left, off the avenue, down to Willow where the brick library Carella used as a kid stood on the southern side of the street, mantled in darkness now.

  A car was parked up the street, some short distance from the library.

  Tommy walked directly to the car.

  He opened the door on the passenger side, triggering the interior light, the light going out again the instant he slammed the door behind him. The headlights came on. Carella ducked away from their sudden glare. The driver gunned the engine into life and set the car in motion. Carella moved deeper into the shadows as it approached the corner. A red Honda Accord sped by.

  A woman was at the wheel.

  8

  "He wanted to fire you," Goodman said. "I talked him into a thirty-day probation period."

  "Fire me?" Eileen said. "But why?"

  They were having lunch together in a seafood joint down near the Headquarters Building. Special Forces was on the tenth floor, Goodman's office was on the fourth. It was convenient. But she'd believed, until this moment, that he'd asked her to lunch to offer congratulations.

  "You have to understand him," Goodman said.

  "Oh, I understand him, all right."

  "Well, yes, that," he said.

  She loved the way men brushed off matters of enormous concern to women. Bert yesterday with his Well, yeah, that in reference to what had merely been the most traumatic experience in her life, and now Goodman with his Well, yes, that, when he knew she'd been referring to Brady's blatantly sexist attitude.

  "He just adores the class clown," she said, "and he . . ."

  "Well, you have to admit Materasso's a pretty funny guy."

  "How about Pellegrino? Or Riley? They're not too comical, and Brady treats them like long-lost brothers. He's got two women on the team only because ..."

  "Give credit where it's due, Eileen. He's the one who put women on the team in the first place."

  "I wonder why."

  "Certainly not because he's sexist."

  "Then what was the 'Well, yes, that' all about?"

  "I thought you knew."

  "No, Mike, I'm sorry, I don't."

  Using the name for the first time, realizing she hadn't called him anything until now, not Dr Goodman, not Michael, and certainly not Mike. But there it was. Mike.

  "I'm willing to bet he's never trusted a woman in his life."

  "You'd lose."

  "Would I?"

  "I'm starved," he said, suddenly peering at her from behind his eyeglasses, raising his eyebrows and looking very much like a hungry little boy. "Aren't you?"

  "I can eat," she said.

  "Good, let's order."

  They both ordered the steamed lobster. Eileen ordered a baked potato, he ordered fries. Eileen asked for Roquefort on her salad, he asked for creamy Italian. The salads came first. He ate ravenously. It was almost comical watching him. No manners at all. Just dug in. She wondered if he'd come from a large family.

  "So tell me," she said.

  "He lost one," Goodman said.

  "What does that mean?"

  "A negotiator. A woman."

  "What are you saying?"

  "Early on. The first woman he put on the team."

  "You're kidding me."

  "No, no. This was a long time ago, you probably weren't even on the job at the time. Woman named Julie Gunnison, worked out of Auto Theft, good cop, a Detective/Second. It was summertime, same as now. First time she worked the door. Woman in an apartment with her three kids, suddenly went bananas, threw one kid out the window before the police got there, was threatening to do the same with the other two if they didn't pull back. He put Julie on the door because it was a woman in there. There was a theory at the time that

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  women confided more freely in other women, we now know it doesn't always work that way. But that was the thinking back then. Hostage negotiation was a new thing. You got a woman taker, you gave her a woman talker."

  "What happened?" Eileen asked.

  "Who gets the baked?" the waitress asked.

  "I do."

  The waitress put down their plates.

  "Anything to drink?" she asked.

  "Eileen, some wine? Beer?"

  "I'm working," she said.

  "Right. Coke? Pepsi?"

  "Coke."

  "I'll have a Heineken beer," Goodman said.

  "One Coke, one Heineken," the waitress said, and rushed off looking harried.

  "I'm listening," Eileen said.

  "Julie was on that door for six hours straight, performing a high-wire act that defied all the laws of gravity. Every five minutes, the lady inside there grabbed one of her kids and rushed to the window and hung the kid outside it, upside down, holding him by the ankles, swinging him, yelling she was going to let go if the cops didn't back off. Cops and firemen all over the street, trying to figure out where to run with the net, which way she was going to swing that kid before she dropped him. Julie at the door, talking her out of it each time, telling them all they wanted to do was help her, help the kids, help each other, come on but of there we'll talk it over. Woman had a meat cleaver in her hands. Her husband was a butcher. The kid she dropped out the window before they got there, she'd cut off his hands at the wrist."

  "Wow," Eileen said.

  "Heineken and a Coke," the waitress said, and put down the drinks, and rushed off again.

  "Anyway," Goodman said, "Julie started to think she was making some progress. For the past hour - this was now eight o'clock at night, she'd been on the door since two in the

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  afternoon, they'd already sent out for pizza and sodas. The woman has asked for beer, but you know we never let them have anything alcoholic ..."

  Eileen nodded.

  ". . . and she'd already fed herself and the- kids and was beginning to feel chatty and at least for the past hour she hadn't tried to throw anyone out the window. So Julie starts telling her about her own kids, the way Mary Beth did with that woman in the lingerie shop last week, and they're getting along fine, and Julie's got her convinced she isn't armed, takes off her jacket, pats herself down ... no guns, see? Nobody gets hurt, right? And then she takes a chance, she asks the lady to send out one of the kids, nobody's going to hurt her, the kids must be sleepy, they've got a cot set up down the hall, why doesn't she send out one of the kids? And the lady says Let me see again that you don't have a gun, and Julie shows her she doesn't have a gun, which is the truth, and the lady says Okay, I'll let you have one of the kids, and she opens the door and splits Julie's head in two with the cleaver."

  "Jesus!" Eileen said.

  "Yeah. So the ES cops stormed the door and killed the lady and that was the end of the story. Except that Brady got called on the carpet downtown, the Commish wanting to know what had happened there, a kid dead, a woman dead, a police officer dead, what the hell had gone wrong? If there was already a person dead when the hostage team got there, why didn't they just storm the door to begin with? Brady explained that we didn't work that way, whatever had happened before we got there didn't matter, it was a clean slate, our job was to make sure nobody got hurt after we were on the scene. Which the Commish must have thought was ridiculous because people had got hurt, there were three people dead and television was having a field day.

  "The TV people were angry because Brady wouldn't let any of them near where the lady was contained - well, that's still a rule, no television cameras. So they began questioning the entire validity of the program. Almost wrecked it, in fact. All

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  the hard work Chief McCleary had done getting it started, all the advances Brady had made when he took over, all of it almost went down the drain. The newspapers went after him, too. They'd all endorsed the incumbent mayor, who'd lost the election, and the new mayor had appointed a new commissioner and now the Commish was being blamed for what Brady had done, and naturally the buck stopped at Brady, it was his program, he was in command of the team. It was a hell of a mess, believe me."

  Goodman was working on his lobster as he said all this. Delicately taking it apart with nutcracker, fingers, and fork, dipping the succulent meat into the butter sauce, chewing, popping a fry into his mouth, back to the lobster, working on the claws now, a gulp of beer, another fry, eating, talking.

  "Brady blamed himself, of course, he's that kind of man. Got it into his head that he hadn't adequately trained Julie . . . which wasn't true, we've since learned there's only so much you can teach in a classroom. And, anyway, she was really a top-notch negotiator with a great deal of experience. Played it just the way she should have, in fact. Her bad luck was to come up against a lady who'd've snapped under any circumstances."

  Goodman fell silent. Eileen watched him demolishing the rest of the lobster. Huge gulp of beer now. Another fry.

  "Big family?" she asked.

  "Just the three kids," he said.

  "I meant you."

  "No, I'm ... huh?"

  "The way you're eating."

  "Oh. No, I've always eaten this way," he said, and shrugged. "I get hungry."

  "I see that."

  "Yeah," he said, and shrugged again, and drained what was left of his beer. "Took him a long time to get over it," he said. "For a while there, he wouldn't have any women on the team at all. Then he hired Georgia ... I don't think you've met her . . . and Mary Beth. I don't know why he fired her, I thought

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  she was doing a good job. Maybe he began feeling helpless again. A woman working the door, another woman contained, the entire situation a volatile one. Maybe he fired. Mary Beth because he was afraid something would happen to her."

  "Mike ..."

  Using the name again, getting used to the name.

  ". . . however you slice it, that's a sexist attitude. Has he fired any men!"

  "One. But the guy had a drinking problem."

  "Well, there you are."

  "I'm not sure it's that simple."

  "Do you think he'll fire me?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well. . . did he feel I was in danger yesterday?"

  "You were in danger. He shouldn't have put you on the door. I argued against it, in fact. Sending in either you or Martha."

  "Why?"

  "Too early. Not enough observation yet, not enough training."

  "But it worked out."

  "Luckily. I don't think Martha would have been successful, by the way. It's a good thing the old man turned her down."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Too eager, too aggressive. I'm not sure she'll ever make a good negotiator, for that matter."

  "Have you told that to Brady?"

  "I have."

  "How about me? Do you think I'll make a good one?"

  "You're already a pretty good one. You handled some things clumsily, but it was an enormously difficult situation. I like to call a spade a spade, Eileen. A police negotiator is a police negotiator and we should never lie about that, whatever the taker may want. Pretending to be a hooker . . ."He shook his head. "I told Brady I didn't like the idea. When he insisted we go ahead with it, I told him we should call Georgia, get her to come in. If we were going to lie to the taker, then we

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  needed an experienced negotiator to pull it off. Georgia's done undercover work, by the way, decoy work, too. I'm surprised you don't know her."

  "What's her last name?"

  "Mobry. M-O-B-R-Y. Georgia Mobry."

  "Doesn't ring a bell."

  "She works mostly with Narcotics."

  "No."

  "Anyway, she could've handled it nicely yesterday. Trouble is she's on vacation. But... as you said ... it worked out."

  "Luckily. As you said."

  "Well. . . however."

  "I was lucky, wasn't I?"

  "I think it could have gone either way. We shouldn't have lied to him. If he'd found out..."

  "I tried to keep it ambiguous. If that's the word."

  "That's the word. But the fact is we were passing you off as a hooker. And if he once discovered we were deceiving him ..." Goodman nodded knowingly. "There was a little girl in that apartment. And a shotgun."

  "Why'd Brady take the chance?"

  "On you? Or the whole deception?"

  "Both."

  "You because the old man turned down Martha. Brady preferred her, she was his first choice. The deception? I don't know. He probably thought it would work. And if it might save that little girl's life ..."

  "It did save her life."

  "As it turned out."

  "So why'd he want to fire me?"

  "I'm not sure how his mind works. I've been with him for ten years now . . ."

  "That long?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  "You look younger."

  "I'm thirty-eight."

  "You still look younger. Why'd he want to fire me?"

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  "I don't know. It came as a total surprise to me. First he picks Martha over you, and then he agrees to your terms for working the door. So you get the old man and the kid out without anybody getting hurt, and he decides to fire you. Meshugge, do you understand Yiddish?"

  "I know what meshugge means. And I think I know why he wanted to fire me, too."

  "Why?"

  "Because I didn't do it his way."

  "He knew you weren't going to do it his way when you told him nobody went in till the old man let go of the kid and the gun. That wasn't Brady's way, that was your way. His way was the kid comes out and you go in, an even trade."

  "That's exactly what I'm ..." />
  "You're missing my point. If he wanted to fire you because you didn't do it his way, then why didn't he fire you on the spot? When you refused to do it his way?"

  "I don't know. Why didn't he?"

  "Maybe he realized you were right. But then, after it was all over, he had to fire you to show he's still the boss."

  "But he didn't fire me."

  "Only because I talked him out of it."

  "How'd you do that?"

  "I told him you were fearless and honest and sympathetic and smart and that you'd probably turn out to be the best negotiator the team ever had, male or female."

  "Fearless, huh? You should only know."

  "Fearless," he said. "And all those other things, too."

  "And that's why he gave me the thirty-day probation."

  "Well, I also told him you were beautiful."

  "You didn't," she said.

  "I did," he said. "Want to go to a movie tonight?"

  She looked at him.

  "What do you say?"

  "What's playing?" she asked.

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  Louis Loeb told Carella on the telephone that his partner's will had already been filed and was a matter of record and he had neither the time nor the inclination to discuss it in detail with the detectives investigating his murder, certainly not after they had violated the civil rights of Mr Schumacher's widow, an offense for which he - Mr Loeb and not Mr Schumacher -was still awaiting an apology. Carella said, "Thank you, Mr Loeb," and hung up.

  At two o'clock that afternoon - after having spent an hour and a half poring over the will in what was called Surrogate's Court in this city but which in many other cities was called Probate Court - he and Brown drove uptown onto Jefferson Avenue and parked the car in a neighborhood sprinkled with antique shops, boutiques, beauty salons, and art galleries. Nestled between two of these galleries was a shop called Bide-A-Wee Pets. The woman who owned the shop was named Pauline Weed. She had sold a black Labrador retriever puppy to Margaret Schumacher for her to give to her husband on the occasion of their first Christmas together - and now she'd been named in Arthur Schumacher's will as the legatee of ten thousand dollars.

  The woman was astonished.

  Blonde and beautiful, in her early thirties, Carella guessed, slender and tall in black dancer's tights, black pumps, and a blue smock that matched her eyes, she accepted the news with disbelief at first, asking them if they were playing a joke on her, and then taking a closer look at the gold, blue-enameled shields they showed yet another time, and then bringing her hand up to her mouth and giggling behind it and shaking her head, all in what appeared to be a genuine display of surprise and delight.