by Ed McBain
She actually pounded the dresser top in anger, pounded it again and again with her closed fist, screaming, “You mother-fucking son of a bitch bastard!,” obscenities she hadn’t used since the war, and then calmed down just a little bit and went to the phone and dialed 911.
WILL WAS TELLING THE BLONDE that he’d been born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, but that he hadn’t been back there in quite a while.
“What’s the Will for?” she asked. “William?”
“No, Wilbur,” he said.
“Wilbur Struthers?”
“Wilbur Struthers is what it is, ma’am.”
She almost burst out laughing. She didn’t. She even managed to keep herself from smiling, which he certainly appreciated. They were sitting in a booth in a bar called Flanagan’s, on Twenty-first and Culver. Will had first ordered a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, which the waiter didn’t know what it was, or care to know, it was that kind of bar. So he had asked Jasmine—that was her name—what she might prefer instead, and she had ordered a Harvey Wallbanger, and he had ordered a bourbon and water for himself, and they were now on their third drink each, with their knees touching under the table, and their heads very close together above the table. He figured if he played this one correctly, she would soon be in his bed back at the apartment.
He told her how he’d booked onto a tramp steamer after he quit college, headed for the Pacific Rim, found himself in Cambodia just about when the Khmer Rouge were rampaging there, got himself taken prisoner, and spent two years waiting for them to blow his brains out before he attempted a daring escape that landed him first in Manila and next in Singapore. Jasmine figured he was full of shit, but he had the tall rugged look of a cowboy, wearing a dark blue turtleneck that complemented the lighter blue of his eyes. Gray sports jacket, darker gray slacks. His hair a sort of sunwashed brown, rather than truly blond. Good strong face, good strong hands. Southern accent—or whatever it was—that didn’t hurt the Home-on-the-Range image. Too bad he’s a trick, she thought, although he hadn’t yet asked her how much this would cost him, or anything so crass as that, which she considered the sign of a true gent. She figured he’d get around to it sooner or later, but meanwhile she enjoyed listening to him tell her about the time a Khmer Rouge soldier put the barrel of a pistol in his mouth, which only happened to her every night of the week, more or less.
When it got time to pay for the drinks, Will handed the waiter a hundred-dollar bill, and then asked her if she’d made any other plans for the night. If she hadn’t, did she think she might enjoy accompanying him back to his place? Perhaps they could find a liquor store that sold Veuve Cliquot, a truly astonishing champagne, he told her, which they could drink while watching a movie on HBO. She still figured he was full of shit, but she thought this might be a good time to mention that she got five bills for the night, Around-the-World understood, of course.
Will blinked.
“I’m a working girl,” she said. “I thought you knew.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I surely didn’t.”
“So what do you think?”
“I never paid for a lady’s favors in my life,” Will said.
“Always a first time, cowboy. Teach you things you never dreamt of.”
“I dreamt most everything,” he said.
“Does that mean yes or no?”
“I guess it means no,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“No sorrier’n I am,” Jasmine said, and picked up her handbag and said, “Have a nice Christmas,” and threw her coat over her shoulders and went swiveling toward the front door, passing within a few feet of where the waiter was handing Will’s hundred-dollar bill to the cashier.
The cashier, a woman named Savina Girasole, held up the bill to the light to check the otherwise invisible polyester strip. The embedded security tape revealed itself at once, the upside downUSA 100 USA 100 USA 100 repeating itself over and over again down the left hand side of the bill. So it’s genuine, Savina thought. But there was something about the feel of it—well, not exactly thefeel, the paper certainlyfelt as reliable as any other U.S. bill. But …
Well … thelookof it.
The funny writing in ink across Franklin’s face, for one thing. Thesmellof it, too. It had a sort of sweet smell. Savina didn’t normally go around sniffing money that came in, but this bill really did have an odd aroma. Not like marijuana, nothing like that. More like some kind of cheap perfume. As if it had been between the breasts of some girl who bought her brassieres off downtown pushcarts.
The guy whose bill it was sat in the booth all alone now, nursing his drink as sad as could be. He looked like an all-American back yard barbecue champ, which didn’t mean he was above passing a phony hundred-dollar bill, which if it ended up in her cash register would cause Mr. O’Brien to fire her. Ronnie O’Brien was the owner of the place and not anybody named Flanagan, no matter what it said on the sign outside. Savina didn’t want to lose her job. So she picked up the phone resting alongside the credit card machine, and called the number she had Scotch-taped to the side of the cash register.
“ SO AS I UNDERSTAND THIS ,” one of the detectives was telling Cass, “all this guy took is two expensive furs, is that it?”
“Yes, that’s it,” Cass said.
She hadn’t mentioned the missing cash, and she didn’t intend to.
“One of them a full-length sable coat …”
“Yes, from Revillon.”
“How much would you say it’s worth, Miss?”
“Forty-five thousand dollars,” she said.
“And the mink stole? How much wasthat worth?”
“Six thousand.”
“Insured?”
“No.”
“You should insure things, Miss.”
“I intended to.”
“Your initials in either of them?”
“Both of them.”
“And what would those initials be?”
“CJR.”
“For?”
“Cassandra Jean Ridley.”
“Could you please spell Ridley for us?”
“R-I-D-L-E-Y,” she said. “What are the chances of getting them back?”
One of the detectives was redheaded. With a white streak in his hair. The other was short. She figured the chances were nil.
“We have a very good recovery record, don’t we, Hal?” the redheaded one said.
“Well, so-so,” the short one said, and smiled.
Which confirmed Cass’s doubts.
“We’ll let you know if we come up with anything,” the redheaded one said. “Here’s my card, I’ll write my beeper number on the back in case you think of anything else.” The card said he was Detective/Second Grade Cotton Hawes of the Eighty-seventh Detective Squad.
“Thank you,” Cass said, though she couldn’t imagine what else she might think of to call them about.
“We know just how you feel,” the short one said.
“Oops!” the redheaded one said, and stopped dead in his tracks and bent to pick up a black eyeglass case on the floor near the dresser. “Almost stepped on them,” he said.
Cass did not wear eyeglasses.
“Thank you,” she said at once, and took the case.
“Have a nice Christmas,” the short one said.
“You, too,” Cass said.
She led them to the door, and locked it behind them. The minute they were gone, she looked at the name and address imprinted on the case in barely legible gold letters:
Eyewear Fashions, Inc. 1137 Stemmler Avenue (corner of 22nd Street)
Cass went to the closet for her red fox jacket.
THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR came at a little past four that afternoon. Will went to the door and said, “Yes?”
“Secret Service,” a voice said. “Mind opening the door for us?”
Secretwhat?Will thought.
“Say again?” he said.
“Special Agent David A. Horne,” the voice said. “Few questions I’d like to ask you, si
r. Routine matter.”
Which to Will meant he ought to go out the window this very minute. Trouble was, there was no fire escape outside the window.
“Just a minute, let me put something on,” he said, even though he was fully clothed. In the next thirty seconds, he debated whether he should go hide the stolen hundred-dollar bills in the toilet tank or the freezer compartment of the fridge, both of which places would be searched at once if this was related to the burglary he’d committed on South Ealey. He decided to play it cool.
“Just a minute,” he said again, and went to the door and opened it.
The man standing there was tall and thin and blue-jowled, wearing a neon blue parka and a woolen hat with ear flaps. “Special Agent David A. Horne,” he said again, “with an ‘e,’” and opened a little leather case to show a gold star that looked like the ones the Texas Rangers carried back home. Will tried to think if there were any outstanding warrants on him back home. He couldn’t think of a single one.
“Good evening,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“It’s still afternoon,” Horne corrected. “Is your name Wilbur Struthers?”
“It is.”
“Ask me in,” Horne said, and smiled.
“Sure, come on in,” Will said.
He was somewhat frightened now, but he spoke calmly and politely because it was always best to be polite to policemen. Even back home in Texas, Will spoke politely to policemen, whose long suit was definitely not courtesy. But Horne was a Secret Service agent with considerably more sophistication, he hoped. He stepped into the room now, looking around as if there might be an accomplice or two lurking about.
“You were in Flanagan’s earlier today,” Horne said. It was not a question.
“That’s right,” Will said.
The hooker, he thought at once. Something happened to the hooker, so now the Secret Service is here to question me about her. He hoped it was nothing serious. He hoped nobody had killed her or raped her.
“You had some drinks there,” Horne said.
“I did.”
Had she been poisoned?
“You paid for them with a hundred-dollar bill,” Horne said.“This bill,” he said, and removed from the inside pocket of the bulky blue parka a narrow folder that looked like the kind you put money in for a Christmas gift to your mailman or your doorman, except that it had a gold star embossed on the front of it. Horne opened the folder and took a hundred-dollar bill from it. “Recognize it?” he asked, and handed it to Will.
“All hundred-dollar bills look alike to me,” he said.
“Where’d you getthis hundred-dollar bill?” Horne asked.
“I won it in a crap game,” Will said.
“Won a hundred dollars in a crap game.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Where? What crap game?”
“Pickup game on Laramie,” he said.
“Where on Laramie?”
“Don’t recall the address,” he said.
Two different agendas here, he was thinking. Man here wants to know all about this hundred-dollar bill, I want to make sure he don’t find out I stole it.
“This all you won in the crap game?”
“Just the hundred, that’s all.”
“Went out to spend it, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
Listen, he thought, why the fuck are you asking all these questions?
But knew better than to say.
Two different agendas here.
“I talked to a girl named Jasmine before I came up here,” Horne said.
“Oh?”
“Got your name from her.”
“So?”
“Ran a computer check.”
Will said nothing.
“Seems you ran into a little trouble here in this city, is that right, Wilbur?”
“It’s Will, by the way.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know that, Will.”
“That’s okay,” Will said.
He was thinking it still didn’t take the curse off the oldest cop trick in the world, calling a suspected perp by his first name, which reduced him to the status of a menial. What this was here wasWill andMr. David Horne.
“Burglarized a gas station seven years ago, did time for the deed up at Castleview. That the only burglary you ever committed, Will?”
“The one and only,” Will lied.
“That’s commendable,” Horne said. “But nonetheless, on the basis of this hundred-dollar bill here, I was able to obtain a search warrant.”
“A what?”
“I believe you heard me,” Horne said, and handed Will a court order with a judge’s signature and all on the bottom of it, authorizing a search of this very apartment for monies paid as ransom …
“Ransom?” Will said.
“Ransom in a kidnapping, is what it says.Ransom money, Will.”
“That’s not my bill,” Will said at once. “I told you. I won it in a crap game.”
“Well, that’s good, Will, because the serial numbers on this bill match the serial numbers on one of the bills paid as ransom in a kidnapping case we’re investigating. Do you understand the implications of that?”
“I’m not a kidnapper,” Will said.
“That’s good, too, Will, because I have a search warrant to look for anyother bills that may have been part of the ransom payment,” Horne said, and took off the blue parka to reveal a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a red tie. The suit jacket was taut over bulging pectorals and broad shoulders. The man was a fitness freak. He took off the hat with the ear flaps, revealing a head of very black, very thick hair.
“Is it the President?” Will asked.
“Is what the President?”
“Who got kidnapped?”
“I have to warn you not to say anything that might prove incriminating,” Horne said.
Oh, Jesus, it’s the President, Will thought. Because if itwasn’t the President, then what was the Secret Service doing in this? It was theFBIwho investigated kidnappings, wasn’t it? All the Secret Service did was protect the President of the United States. And his family. So it had to be somebody in the White House who’d got kidnapped.
Horne was moving over to the closet now, where the bills sat in a shoe box on the shelf over the hanging sable coat and mink stole, both of which Will had also stolen. I can run right this minute, he thought, go visit my cousin Earl living in Fort Worth with a girl used to be Miss Texas in the Miss America contest, came within a curly blond crotch hair of winning it. Spend a few weeks down there till this whole kidnapping thing blew over, which he hadn’t done anyway,damn it! All he’d done was burglarize a fucking apartment!
“Well, well, what have we here?” Horne said.
He was looking in at the sable coat and the mink stole.
“Your search warrant says you’re supposed to look for money,” Will said.
“These are in plain view,” Horne said.
“In plain view” was an expression the police used when they appropriated something without benefit of a search warrant.
“They’re my girlfriend’s,” Will said.
“What’s her name?”
“Jasmine. Who you talked to.”
“She told us you only just met,” Horne said.
“Well, that’s true.”
“And she left her furs here?”
“She trusts me.”
Horne gave him a look. But he didn’t pursue the matter of the furs any further, perhaps because his mind was on the President’s kidnapping, who it had to be, or else someone in his family, otherwise why the Secret Service? I ought to run for it right this minute, Will thought. Horne was reaching for a shoe box on the shelf. Run for it or not? Will thought. Horne took down the box. Which? Horne took the lid off the box and looked into it. He reached in for a white envelope with a rubber band around it. He took the rubber band off the envelope. He opened the envelope.
