Criminal Conversation

by Ed McBain

  There was a picture of Andrew holding the infant namesake in his arms. It was summertime and the grandfather—fifty-two years old at the time, according to the article—was standing in his shirtsleeves before the plate-glass window of a shop called Marcella’s Bakery. The baby was wearing a white unisex shift and little white booties. Even at that tender age, the kid’s jug ears were clearly visible.

  The article explained that the shop had been named by Andreo Faviola in honor of his wife, who—at the time the article was written—was eighty-four years old, “God bless her,” Andrew told the reporter. This meant that Topolino was a great-grandson of the woman who …

  Topolino?

  Michael almost spilled his morning coffee.

  . . . woman who sixty-five years earlier had made the long and arduous journey from a mountaintop village midway between Bari on the Adriatic and Naples on the Tyrrhenian. The elder Andrew …

  . . . explained how his namesake had come by the nickname “Topolino.” His mother still spoke broken English, although she’d been an American citizen for well on sixty years now, and when she saw the infant in the hospital for the first time, she turned to her son and said, in Italian, “Ma sembra Topolino, vero? Con quelle orecchi così grande!”

  Which translated into English as “But he looks like Mickey Mouse, isn’t that true? With those big ears!” The article went on to explain that Mickey Mouse was as popular in Italy as he was here in the United States, and that the old lady was using the name affectionately, since—as anyone could plainly see—the child was extraordinarily beautiful with the same blond hair and blue eyes as many of the region’s mountain people.

  Topolino, Michael thought.

  Mickey Mouse.

  Later Anglicized and bastardized to Mick-a-lino.

  Lino.

  What goes around comes around, he thought.

  Poor but honest Italian immigrant comes to America around the turn of the century, opens a bakery shop which his native-born son, Andrew, inherits when he dies. Andrew in turn has a son named Anthony, who becomes “a rising young building contractor,” and in turn sires two daughters and a son, subsequently named Andrew after his grandfather and nicknamed Topolino by his great-grandmother.

  Andrew Faviola.

  The “Lino” his father had chosen to succeed him if/when he ever fell from power.

  Andrew Faviola.

  The student who’d made weekend visits from UCLA to Las Vegas, where he supervised his father’s gambling operations when he wasn’t being “a favorite of the town’s chorus girls and a big roller at all of the casinos.”

  Andrew Faviola.

  Who nowadays had to be consulted before a jackass gambler could be let off the hook.

  Andrew Faviola.

  Who was maybe running the whole damn show now that his father was locked away in Kansas.

  It was nine a.m. on the thirtieth of December, two days before the new year. Michael picked up the phone and dialed his boss’s extension.

  2: January 11–February 17

  He was waiting for her when she came out of the school.

  It was a bitterly cold day, the sky overhead a dull gunmetal gray, a blustery wind sweeping ruthlessly eastward from the Hudson. It was only four in the afternoon, but it seemed as if dusk had already fallen.

  Sarah pushed through the doors, pulling on her gloves, a red woolen hat yanked down over her ears, a matching muffler wound about her throat. She’d been back on the job for a week already, her tan was virtually gone. She normally walked a block east to the IRT station on Sixtieth and Lex, took the local uptown to Seventy-­Seventh, and then walked from there to the apartment on Eighty-First, altogether a fifteen-minute commute. She was starting for Lex now when he cut diagonally across the street toward her, popping up in front of her much as he had on the beach in St. Bart’s.

  “Hi,” he said.

  In the split second before she recognized him, she thought she was being accosted by one of New York’s loonies. And then she realized who he was, and knew in that moment that his appearance here was not an accident, he had sought her out, he was here by design.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “I have to talk to you.”

  “Please go away,” she said.

  “I want to apologize for …”

  “There’s no need to apologize, just go away, please, just leave me alone.”

  They started to cross Park Avenue, the light changing just as they reached the center island, where the wind seemed somehow fiercer. They waited in silence until the light changed again. He fell into step beside her, adjusting his longer strides to hers, and they; began walking together toward Lexington Avenue.

  “Do you know what movie she said that in?” he asked.

  “No. Who? What movie? What are you talking about?”

  “Garbo,” he said.

  “No, I don’t. Listen, I’m on my way home, I’m a married woman, I have a daughter …”

  “Grand Hotel,” he said. “‘I want to be alone.’”

  “I do want to be alone,” she said. “I don’t know why you came here …”

  “To apologize. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No. Goodbye, Mr. Farrell.”

  “Andrew,” he said.

  “Yes, Andrew, goodbye,” she said, and started down the steps into the subway. He fell behind her for just an instant and then immediately caught up, falling in beside her again as she dug into her handbag for a token. She was out of tokens. She was starting for the change booth when he stepped into her path again.

  “Please stop doing that!” she said.

  “A cup of coffee. So I can explain.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  There was on his face the same plaintive look that had been on Mollie’s the night they’d bought the Christmas tree. She was already shaking her head, no, no, no, but the look on his face was so forlorn, so very …

  “Listen,” she said, “I really …”

  “Please,” he said again. “I’m sorry for what I did that morning. I want to explain.”

  “There’s nothing to explain. I accept your apology. It was nice seeing you again.”

  “You don’t really mean that,” he said.

  “I really don’t,” she said, and stepped around him and up to the booth. The black woman behind the glass looked at her.

  “Ten tokens, please,” Sarah said, and took out her wallet and was reaching inside it when he said, “I’ve got it.”

  “What?” she said.

  He slid a twenty under the glass panel.

  “I’m paying for it, miss,” she said at once, and slid a five and a ten under the panel.

  “Take it from the twenty,” he told the attendant.

  “Who is paying here?” the woman said calmly.

  “I am,” they said simultaneously.

  “You can’t both be paying,” she said, “and I’m busy here.”

  “She never lets me pay for anything,” Andrew said, and grinned and retrieved the twenty.

  Sarah picked up her change and the packet of tokens.

  “Now I owe you a cup of coffee,” he said.

  “How do you figure that?” she asked.

  She already knew she would allow him to buy her a cup of coffee.

  “Well, you paid for the tokens, didn’t you?” he said.

  “The logic escapes me,” she said.

  “Is there a place nearby?” he asked.

  There was a cluster of restaurants, coffee shops, and delis along Lexington Avenue near the subway station, but she did not want to take him to anyplace frequented by students from the school. She would wonder about that later. Wonder why she had chosen even then not to be seen in his company by any of her students. She walked him down to Second
Avenue instead, where she told him she knew a little French place that served terrific croissants and wonderful coffee.

  There was a sense of wintry coziness inside the shop, overcoats huddled on wall pegs just inside the enclosed entry, patrons in turtlenecks and tweeds, the aroma of strong coffee and good things baking, the paneled and bellied front window framing pedestrians hurrying past with their heads ducked against the ferocious, wind.

  They found a table near a giant copper espresso machine, and they both ordered cafe filtre and chocolate-filled croissants. He was wearing a blue flannel shirt, a gray tweed sports jacket, darker gray slacks. Sarah was wearing what she called her “schoolmarm threads”: a moss-green sweater, a dark brown wool skirt, opaque green panty hose. Normally, she wore French-heeled shoes to work. Today, because of the rotten weather, she was wearing knee-high brown leather boots. She had taken off the red hat and stuffed it into the pocket of her coat. The red muffler was still draped around her neck. He’d been hatless to begin with. They sat on either side of a small scarred wooden table, blue-eyed and blue-eyed, blond hair and brown hair.

  Later, she would tell him they made a good-looking couple.

  And would wonder if she’d actually thought it on that first day together in New York.

  “So let me explain,” he said, and waited for her nod, and then said, “To begin with, I don’t usually go around kissing married women.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I mean it. I’m usually very … careful that way.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That morning … I don’t know … I just … I couldn’t take my eyes off you the night before, and when …”

  “Andrew,” she said, and hesitated, and then said, “I don’t want this, really. I’m not looking for it, I don’t want it, I don’t need it …”

  “You want to be alone, I know.”

  “I’m not alone. I have a husband.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Oh, Jesus!” she said, and quickly glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone was sitting close enough to hear all this. “Andrew,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you. I’m not being coy, I’m not in any way trying to encourage …”

  “I know.”

  “So cut it out, okay? Just stop it!”

  There was a long silence.

  Awkwardly, they sat across from each other.

  The coffee and croissants arrived.

  She sipped at the coffee. Cut into the croissant with a fork. The chocolate was rich and dark and delicious.

  “Do you like teaching?” he asked.

  “I love it.”

  “How’d it go today?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good, I’m glad.”

  “How’d your day go?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “I never did learn what you do.”

  “I’m a gangster,” he said, and grinned.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Actually, I’m what you’d call an opportunity investor,” he said, the grin giving way to the earnest look of someone very young trying to appear very serious and very grown-up. “I look for businesses that need an investment of time and money, and I nurture them along till they bring me a good return.”

  “What sort of businesses?”

  “Import-export, shipping, real estate, construction, and so on. I’m into a lot of things.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “You’re exciting,” he said.

  “Okay, I think it’s time I went home,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you still don’t under—”

  “I’d love to kiss you,” he said.

  “Let’s get a check,” she said.

  “Do we fight over this one, too?”

  “No, you asked me.”

  “That’s true. May I kiss you?”

  “No.”

  “In that case,” he said, and leaned across the table and kissed her full on the mouth.

  She would later tell him that she became immediately wet the moment his lips touched hers again.

  Now she stood abruptly.

  “Goodbye, Andrew,” she said, and left him sitting at the table while she went to the row of pegs and yanked her coat off the wall, and ran outside into the cold without putting it on and without looking back at him.

  The two detectives initially assigned by Michael to the surveillance of Andrew Faviola met with him in his office on Tuesday morning, the twelfth of January. They’d been working the case for a week now, ever since Michael got back from the Caribbean, but there wasn’t much to report.

  Johnny Regan, the older of the two detectives, and the more experienced, sat in a chair alongside his young partner, Alex Lowndes. The men felt comfortable in this office, they’d been here many times before. Besides, the office encouraged casualness. When Michael was a teenager, his mother had engaged in a constant battle with him to keep his room from resembling a garbage dump. His office wasn’t quite the mess his room had been; he was, after all, a grown man now. But an office told a great deal about the person who lived in it sometimes twelve out of every twenty-four hours, and Michael’s bordered on the edge of neglect. This was not to say that it was either sloppy or untidy. Instead, there was a sense of … well … somewhat orderly clutter.

  Stacks of transcripts and other legal documents rested on each of the three desks in the spacious room. Windows facing Centre Street covered one long wall, the area beneath them occupied by bound copies of New York’s Penal Law, Criminal Law, and Criminal Procedure Law. A glassed cabinet held more legal volumes, together with framed photographs of Sarah and Mollie, and several blue peaked caps with the insignias or logos of various law enforcement agencies he’d worked with in the past. A mock, blue-enameled gold detective’s shield—a gift from the DA’s Office Squad after Michael had served as lead attorney on his first OCCA case—was hanging in a small bell jar. His framed B.S. degree from Duke hung on the wall above the cabinet, alongside his Juris Doctor degree from Columbia.

  A television monitor with a VCR sitting on a shelf under it was in one corner of the room. Labeled videotapes from various surveillances were scattered on top of a table alongside the monitor. On that same table were a stacked amplifier and tape deck, together with a CD player. Labeled discs and tapes were fanned helter-skelter on the tabletop, together with Magic Markers and blank labels.

  Hanging on the wall right-angled to the window wall, there were framed mug shots of the Lombardi Crew, six gangsters Michael had put away five years ago, when he first moved over to Organized Crime. Standing in the corner of the joining walls was a coatrack that held Michael’s own beige Burberry trench coat and matching muffler, and the black raincoats both Regan and Lowndes had worn to work this morning. A black umbrella was lying on the floor near the coatrack; Michael had carried it to work with him two weeks ago.

  “What we did,” Regan was saying, “was run a routine check with Motor Vehicles. Guy lives in New York, chances are he’s either a licensed driver or he owns a car.”

  Regan was puffing on a cigar. He looked like a fight manager. Brown trousers, a tan crew-neck sweater, little beer-barrel belly bulging above the waist. Always looked as if he needed a shave. He was left-handed, so he wore his shoulder holster strapped on the right side of his body.

  “We got nothing at all in New York or Nassau County, so we hit Connecticut and Jersey. Nothing in Jersey, but Alex came up with something in Connecticut. Well, you tell him,” Regan said, and turned to his partner.

  Alex Lowndes looked mean as a pawnbroker’s offer. Long and lank, with stringy dirty-blond hair and eyes that appeared gray although they were actually a pale blue, he sat in blue jeans and a black turtleneck sweater with a black leather jacket over it. There was a scar at
the tail of his left eyebrow. He told people he’d got it in a knife fight with a crazed junkie. Actually, he’d had the scar since he was ten, when he fell down roller-skating and hit his head on the curb. Michael knew this because Lowndes had confided it to his partner, and Regan had passed the information on. The two men didn’t get along. Everyone in the department knew that. It was amazing neither of them had asked for a new partner. Maybe this was because their arrest record was phenomenal.

  “We got an Acura Legend coupe registered to an Andrew Faviola at 24 Cradle Rock Road, Stonington, Connecticut,” Lowndes said.

  “Terrific,” Michael said sourly.

  “Yeah, his father’s house up there,” Lowndes said.

  “Where he don’t live anymore,” Regan said. “The old man.”

  “Where he won’t live ever again,” Lowndes said.

  “What we figure, the kid doesn’t live there, either,” Regan said. “No sign of the Acura, anyway, the three nights we sat the house.”

  “When was this?”

  “This past weekend. We figure you live in Connecticut, that’s when you go home, right? For the weekend. Snow, trees, all that shit. But no sign of him.”

  “Has he got a driver’s license?” Michael asked.

  “I was coming to that,” Regan said. “He did have one, but it got suspended after three consecutive speeding tickets. Far as we can tell, he doesn’t have one now.”

  “How does he drive the Acura?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t go visit his mama on weekends.”

  “What was the address on the license he had?”

  “No luck there, Michael. It was a California license. From when he was in school out there. An address on Montana. It sounds like the Wild West, I know, but it’s a street in L.A.”

  “Suspended in California?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Eight years ago.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s been driving without a license all that time?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “No application in New York for a new one?”