by Ed McBain
“Merry Christmas, Miss,” the black bartender said. “Something to drink?”
“I’ll have a Tanqueray martini,” she said. “On the rocks. A twist.”
“Another scotch, Mr. Wiggins?” the bartender asked.
“No, John, I think I’ll try what the lady’s drinking,” Wiggy said, and swung his stool around to face her. “What’d you just order there, Miss?”
“A Tanqueray martini.”
“Sounds good to me,” Wiggy said.
“It is,” she said, and smiled.
He had never drunk a martini in his life. He did not know what Tanqueray was, either. He had, however, seen a lot of James Bond movies.
“Stirred or shaken?” he asked.
He did not like Bond making it with black girls. The girl here looked very white indeed. But if so, what was she doing in a black bar at midnight on Christmas Day?
“Shaken is better,” she said, and smiled.
“Shakin it, huh?” he said. “Is better, you think?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Much.”
“Then, John,” he said, “you best shake it for me, too.”
“Two martinis comin right up, Mr. Wiggins,” the bartender said.
“So,” Wiggy said to the blonde, “how was your Christmas?”
“Very nice, thank you,” she said. “And yours?”
“Spent it with my mama,” he said, which was the truth. His mama didn’t know he was dealing drugs. She thought he got lucky as a day trader. Only person in his family knew he was thus involved was his cousin Ashley, who was one of his runners. Kid made more money than Wiggy’s father did, who was a mailman. “How about you?”
“Uh-huh,” she said, but he noticed she hadn’t mentioned who with, or exactly how she’d spent the day.
“Santa treat you nice?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” she said.
“Two martinis on the rocks, a twist,” John said.
“Thank you, m’man,” Wiggy said, and raised his glass to the blonde. “Cheers,” he said, “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” she said again, and clinked her glass against his.
Wiggy tasted the drink.
“Mm,” he said. “Good.”
“Told you, didn’t I?”
“So you did.”
Not a trace of Spanish accent, but lots of these third-generation spics spoke English good as he did. Last thing he needed was a roll with a girl had six diseases she’d picked up in San Juan.
“Walter Wiggins,” he said, and put his glass down, and extended his right hand. She took it in her own hand; it was cold from holding the drink.
“I’m Sheryl,” she said.
“Nice to meet you, Sheryl.”
Didn’t sound like any Spanish name he knew, maybe she was white, after all. Or Jewish maybe, which was even better. You got some of these Jewgirls in bed, they screamed down the whole fuckin hood.
“You live up here in Diamondback?” he asked.
Smattering of spics lived up here, maybe she was one of them, after all. He was tempted to take John aside, ask him who the blonde with the long legs and the big tits was. A Spanish working girl or an import?
“No, I spent the day here with a girlfriend,” she said.
“She live up here?”
“Her mother does.”
“She a black girl?”
“No.”
“Spanish?”
He looked her dead in the eye.
“White,” she said. “Same as me.”
“Where doyou live?” he asked.
“Same place my girlfriend does. We’re roommates.”
“And where’s that?”
“Downtown. Hastings and Palm. Near the Triangle.”
“Nice neighborhood,” he said. “So what are you doing up here?”
“I told you. My girlfriend’s mother invited us for Christmas.”
“White woman living up here?” he asked.
“On thepark,” she said. “What is it with you?”
“I thought you might be Puerto Rican.”
“I’m not. But what difference would it make?”
“None at all.”
“So what’s the bullshit?” she asked. “I mean, what is it, areyou so fucking white?”
All at once, he liked her.
“Have another drink,” he said.
“Oh, am I suddenly white enough for you?”
“You’re white enough, honey,” he said, and put his hand on her thigh. She looked into his eyes.
“Another Tanqueray,” she told the bartender.
“How about you, Mr. Wiggins?”
“I’ll join the lady, sure,” Wiggy said, and squeezed her thigh. She kept looking into his eyes. She was jiggling her foot now. She had terrific tits in a very low cut black dress.
“So what are you doing here at the Starlight?” he asked.
“What areyou doing here at the Starlight?”
“Hoping to meet a gorgeous blonde from downtown on Hastings and Palm,” he said. “Near the Triangle.”
“So you met her,” Sheryl said, and covered his hand on her thigh with her own. Her hand was no longer cold.
“Seems I have,” Wiggy said.
Sheryl looked at her watch. “My girlfriend’s picking me up in five minutes,” she said. “We’ve got a car and a driver. You want to come downtown with us, honey?”
“Let’s have our drinks first,” Wiggy said.
THE LIMO WAS a black Lincoln Town Car driven by a black chauffeur. There was another blonde on the back seat, wearing a black dress like Sheryl’s, high-heeled black shoes like her, a black cloth coat identical to hers, little black fur collar at the neck. The car felt warm and smelled of expensive perfume. “Hi,” the other blonde said, extending her hand. “I’m Toni.” Wiggy slid onto the seat beside her, took her hand. “Hi, honey,” she said, and leaned across him to kiss Sheryl on the cheek. He felt her breasts against his arm. Her dress was high on her thighs. The door on Sheryl’s side slammed shut. She moved closer to him. The brother came into the car, made himself comfortable behind the wheel.
“We’re going home,” Toni told him, and the tinted glass separating front from back slid up at once.
“Excuse me, ladies,” Wiggy said, “but how much is this going to cost me?”
“One million, nine hundred thousand dollars,” Toni said.
He turned to look at her.
She was holding an AK-47 in her lap.
6 .
THE OFFICES OF Wadsworth and Dodds were in a side street off Headley Square, close to the Municipal Theater and the Briley School of Art. As Ollie crossed the small park outside the school, and then the square itself, a fierce wind almost blew his hat from his head. He clutched at it with both hands, cursed at the wind, and at God—who was also on his list of people, places, things, and supernatural beings he hated—and then proceeded across the square to the building in which the publishing firm was housed. The wind moaned beneath the eaves of the old landmark building as he mounted the low flat entrance steps and walked into the lobby, stomping slush from his shoes. He checked the lobby directory—Wadsworth and Dodds was on the fourth floor of the six-story building—and walked toward the waiting elevator, its fancy grillwork door looking like it had come out of a spy movie set in Vienna.
“Whoosh!” he said to the elevator operator, and took off his hat when he noticed there was a lady in the car. The gesture did not go unnoticed. The woman, a good-looking broad in her late fifties, Ollie guessed, with still splendid legs andpoitrines, ah yes, smiled almost imperceptibly. He figured she worked out a lot. One of these days, he’d have to go to a gym, lose a few pounds, though not anytime soon. Maybe after he learned his five songs. His next lesson was tomorrow night, he could hardly wait.
Wadsworth and Dodds occupied the entire fourth floor of the building. Ollie took one look at the receptionist behind the desk and figured she could have profited from the same aerobics classes the broad in the el
evator most likely attended. Ollie hated fat people. He considered them unsightly and weak-willed whereas he thought of his own girth as perfectly suited to his height and his large bone structure. When Fat Ollie Weeks looked into a mirror he saw an impressive figure of a man, whose very presence struck fear into the hearts of underworld types.
“May I help you, sir?” the fat lady behind the desk asked.
Ollie flashed the tin.
“Detective Weeks,” he said, cutting to the chase. “I’d like to talk to whoever runs the place here.”
“You’d want Mr. Halloway, our publisher.”
“Okay,” Ollie said, and snapped the leather case shut. “Could you let him know I’m here, please?”
The fat lady picked up her phone, pressed a button on her desk panel, listened, said, “A Detective Weeks to see you, sir,” listened again, said, “Yes, sir,” looked up at Ollie, and asked, “May I ask what this is in reference to, sir?”
“No,” Ollie said.
The fat lady looked startled. “Uh,” she said into the phone, “he won’t tell me. Yes, sir,” she said. “Yes, sir.” She hung up, smiled at Ollie, and said, “He’ll be with you in a moment, sir. Won’t you please have a seat?”
“Thanks,” Ollie said, and began roaming the waiting room.
Framed posters of Wadsworth and Dodds books lined the walls. The firm’s logo was a distinctive open hand with a silver globe sitting on the palm and radiating rays of light, the fingers tentatively closed around it. Ollie didn’t recognize any of the titles.
Behind him, he heard a buzz from the phone on the fat lady’s desk.
“Mr. Weeks?” she said. “He’ll see you now. It’s the end of the corridor, the door on the right.”
Ollie nodded.
The corridor leading to Halloway’s office was similarly lined with framed posters of books Ollie never heard of. The closed walnut door on the right, at the end of corridor, had no markings on it. He knocked, heard a man’s voice call, “Come in, please,” twisted the brass doorknob, and entered. He was in a corner office with floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two walls. The other two walls were windowed, enclosing a walnut desk that matched the entrance door. A white-haired man in his early fifties, Ollie guessed, sat behind the desk. He rose the moment Ollie entered the room. Extending his hand, he said, “Richard Halloway, how do you do?”
Ollie took the hand.
“Detective Oliver Weeks,” he said, “Eighty-eighth Squad.”
“Sit down,” Halloway said. “Please,” and gestured to a brown leather wingback chair studded with brass buttons. Ollie sank into the chair.
“How can I help you?” Halloway asked.
“One of your salesmen was murdered on Christmas Eve,” Ollie said. “His name …”
“What?” Halloway said.
“Yes, sir. His name’s Jerome Hoskins. From what his wife …”
“Oh my God!” Halloway said.
“From what his wife tells me, he sold books in your northeast corridor.”
“Yes. Yes, he did. Forgive me, I’m … forgive me.”
He was shaking his head now, demonstrating how overwhelmed he was. Little white-haired guy in a gray flannel suit and a bow tie with red polka dots on a black field, shaking his head and looking appalled and overcome with sudden grief, all of which seemed somewhat phony to Ollie. Then again, he’d never met a book publisher before.
“Did his territory include Diamondback?” he asked.
“Yes, it did.”
“Lots of bookstores up there, I guess.”
“Not many. But enough. We’re a small firm, last of the family publishing houses in this city, in fact. We’re constantly trying to expand our market.”
“You sell your books for cash, Mr. Halloway?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.”
“Hoskins had seven hundred dollars and change in his wallet. Seemed like a lot of cash to be carrying around.”
“I have no idea why he would have …”
“Any idea why he might have been carrying a gun?”
“Diamondback is a dangerous section of the …”
“Tell me about it.”
“Perhaps he felt he needed protection.”
“Do all of your salesmen carry guns?”
“Not to my knowledge. In fact, I didn’t knowJerry carried one until this very moment.”
“How many salesmen are there?”
“Including Jerry, only five. As I told you, we’re a small firm.”
“Is Mr. Wadsworth still alive? Or Mr. Dodds?”
“Both dead. Christine Dodds is the sole stockholder now. Henry Dodds’s granddaughter.”
“How about you? Are you a member of the family?”
“Me? No. No, what gave you that idea?”
“Well, you being thepublisher and all …”
“Oh, that’s just a title,” Halloway said airily. “Like President or Vice President or Senior Editor.”
“Pretty important title, though, huh?”
“Well … yes.”
“Who are these other four salesmen? I’ll need to talk to them.”
“Jerry was the only one based here, you know. In this city.”
“Where are the other ones?”
“Illinois, Minnesota, Texas, and California.”
“Can you give me a list of names and phone numbers?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the bookstores Mr. Hoskins visited in Diamondback.”
“I’ll ask Charmaine to get those ready for you,” he said.
Charmaine, Ollie thought. A slender wraith who weighs a ton and a half bone dry. He watched as Halloway picked up the receiver, pressed a button, and told his receptionist what he needed. There was something crisp and efficient about his motions and the way he rapped out instructions. When at last he replaced the receiver on the cradle, he seemed to suddenly realize that Ollie had been observing his every move. He smiled pleasantly. “She’ll have those for you when you leave,” he said.
“Thanks,” Ollie said. “Tell me what you know about Jerry Hoskins, okay?”
“Tell me what you’re looking for.”
“Well,” Ollie said, “I guess I want to know what a book salesman was doing with types who’ll shoot a man at the back of his head and drop him in a garbage can.”
“Good Lord!” Halloway said.
Ollie didn’t know there was anyone still left on the planet who said, “Good Lord!” He had the feeling all over again that Richard Halloway was faking surprise and sorrow.
“Most of the gangs in Diamondback are dealing drugs,” he said, and watched Halloway’s eyes. Nothing flickered there. “Hoskins wasn’t doing dope, was he?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Whowouldknow?” Ollie asked.
“Pardon?”
“If he was doing drugs. Or dealing drugs. Or involved in any way with controlled substances.”
“I can’t possibly imagine Jerry …”
“Whocouldpossibly imagine it, Mr. Halloway?”
“I suppose our sales manager would have known him better than anyone else in the firm.”
“What’s his name?”
“She’s a woman.”
“Okay,” Ollie said.
“I’ll ask her to come in.”
CARELLA AND MEYER went to the Banque Française at ten that morning of the twenty-sixth with a court order to open Cassandra Jean Ridley’s safe deposit box. The manager of the bank was a Frenchman from Lyon. His name was Pascal Prouteau. In a charming accent, he said he had read about Mademoiselle “Reed-ley’s” death in the newspapers and was very sorry. “She was a lovely person,” he said. “It is a shame what ’appen.”
“When did she first open the box, can you tell us?” Meyer asked.
“Oui, messieurs,I ’ave her records here,” Prouteau said. “It was on the sixteenth of November.”
“How many times has she been in that
box since?”
Prouteau consulted the signature card.
