Criminal Conversation

by Ed McBain

  “Of course it isn’t.”

  “Well, Moreno knows that, you think he’s a fuckin’ dope? He’s figurin’ I throw my fuckin’ coke in the pot, I may get a third of nothing in return. Which, in a way, he’s right.”

  “He’s got to be convinced otherwise, Uncle Rudy. This isn’t pie in the sky here, this is a cartel taking shape. In time, his third’ll be worth millions more than what he’s putting up.”

  “Sure, in time,” Rudy said. “Tell that to a fuckin’ spic with his dick in his hand.”

  “Well, as I see it, he’s got no choice.”

  “Let me put Petey Bardo on this,” Rudy said, “get him to work up some figures. In the long run, it might be worth giving this jih-drool a little more on his end, keep him aboard. There’s no deal at all without his coke, you know.”

  “I know. But there’s no deal without the Chinese, either, and they’re beginning to get itchy. I can’t wait forever for Moreno to see the light.”

  “Let me see what Petey thinks we can afford, okay?”

  “What if Moreno turns it down?”

  “Then we got to think of some other way to convince him, huh?”

  “Mm,” Andrew, said.

  The men were silent for a moment.

  Andrew looked at his watch.

  “You expecting somebody?” Rudy asked.

  “One o’clock,” Andrew said, nodding.

  “Just a few more things I have to tell you.”

  “No hurry, I can make a call.”

  “The word’s out all over that nothing’s changed. Your father’s partners are your partners, capeesh? Same deals everywhere. Just in case somebody got it in his head, Hey, I’m on my own now Faviola’s in the slammer. Wrong. One or two guys we still have to talk to, make sure they understand completely, but otherwise I don’t see any trouble.”

  “Okay.”

  “One last thing. Some stupid fuck gambler in Queens stiffed Sal the Barber for fifteen grand plus the vig. Then he had the fuckin’ nerve to steal another five grand of cash he got for deliverin’ some coke for Frankie Palumbo. Frankie had a sitdown with Jimmy Angels, you know him?”

  “No.”

  “Angelli, Jimmy Angelli, he owns a shitty restaurant in Forest Hills, he’s a capo in the Colotti family. Anyway, his cousin’s involved with this fuckin’ thief, and now Angelli’s askin’ yet another favor.”

  “What was the first favor?”

  “Lettin’ that asshole deliver the coke, for which he paid back Frankie by stealing five grand from him.”

  “Tell Frankie to take care of him,” Andrew said. “So it won’t happen again.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing,” Rudy said, “I’ll leave you to your pleasure.”

  He rose, embraced his nephew, kissed him on both cheeks, said, “Ciao, Lino,” and left the apartment through the door that led to the tailor shop downstairs.

  The girl rang the doorbell on the Mott Street side of the building. The gold lettering on the black mailbox read “Carter-Goldsmith Investments.” She wondered who Carter-Goldsmith was. He hadn’t told her he was in the investment business. A voice came over the speaker set into the doorjamb.

  “Who is it, please?”

  His voice. Andrew’s.

  “Me,” she said. “Oona.”

  “Come on up, Oona,” he said.

  A buzzer sounded. She turned the knob, opened the door, closed it again behind her. The buzzer kept sounding as she climbed the stairs, stopped when she was about midway up. The staircase was paneled with wood on either side. There was a lovely wood-paneled door at the top of the stairs. A small bell button in a brass circle was set in the doorjamb. She pressed the button. The door opened at once.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “You made it,” he said:

  “I told you I would.”

  “Come in,” he said.

  Her name was Oona Halligan, she was an Irish girl from Brooklyn, he’d met her at a disco joint last night. Red hair and green eyes, Irish as they come, he loved fucking Irish girls.

  She’d explained to him that she had a lot of time on her hands just now because she was looking for a new job while collecting unemployment. Her boss had fired her because she’d wanted to do a certain thing her way instead of his way, which she’d told him was a stupid way to do it. She guessed that wasn’t a particularly clever move, huh? Telling her boss that his way was the dumb way, but live and learn. Anyway, she had a lot of time on her hands just now.

  This was while they were sitting on a black leather banquette with music blaring from ten thousand speakers that had to be worth ten million dollars, Andrew with his hand on her knee, Oona with her short red skirt riding clear north to Canada. He’d casually mentioned that if she had so much time on her hands why didn’t she stop by his apartment tomorrow afternoon sometime, say around one o’clock, they could listen to some music and he’d brew her some tea.

  The tea always got them.

  Made him sound like an English gentleman.

  I just might, she’d said, arching an eyebrow. If I’m in the neighborhood.

  You don’t have to decide now, he’d said. I won’t make any other plans, I’ll be there all afternoon, I’ll look for you around one.

  Where is your apartment? she’d asked.

  Actually, at the start of any relationship, he preferred matinees.

  Most girls didn’t like to pop into bed with you on the first date. You asked them to stop by the next day, that automatically made it a second date, and it made it daytime in the bargain, which sounded very safe, especially if you were offering tea. Besides, if you did get a girl to go home with you at three, four o’clock in the morning, she’d almost certainly be there when you woke up not knowing who she was or how she’d got there. Afternoons, you played some soft music, you offered tea or hot chocolate or even booze if that’s what the lady preferred, everything slow and easy, and then you took her upstairs later, fucked her brains out with the drapes drawn and daylight peeking around them. If the afternoon turned out to be a bummer, you cut her loose before dinner. If it went well, you asked her if she’d like to go out for something to eat, there were great Italian and Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood, and then you took her back here later, knowing her already, knowing that if she did spend the night it’d be a pleasurable experience and you wouldn’t hate yourself when you woke up alongside a beast the next morning.

  Irish girls turned him on.

  He thought of an Irish girl as a religious little darling who’d suck your cock and then run to a priest in the morning to confess her sins and say penance at the altar. He particularly liked Irish redheads. A real Irish redhead could drive a person crazy, that wild carrot-colored hair on her head and between her legs. Loved to part that flaming thatch below, spread those innocent pink Irish-girl lips, lick her into an Irish frenzy that would later cost her a hundred Hail Marys and a thousand Our Fathers, not to mention a dozen or more Acts of Contrition. He hated the Catholic religion but he loved fucking religious Irish-Catholic girls.

  He wondered all at once if Sarah Welles was Irish.

  Secretly, she was happy this hadn’t turned out to be another “family” weekend.

  Today was Martin Luther King Day, the eighteenth of January, a school holiday in New York, which meant that Sarah and Mollie automatically had the day off. But the DA’s Office was closed today, too, and it looked as if this might turn into another long weekend like those the family had shared over Christmas and New Year’s. Sarah felt strongly that King should have his own holiday—but not in January. By the time the third Monday in January came around each year, she’d had enough holiday to last a lifetime.

  This year was different.

  She would later wonder whether her life would have changed so completely
if Mollie hadn’t left for Sugarbush on Friday night to spend the long weekend skiing with a classmate named Winona Weingarten, whose parents owned a chalet up there; or if Michael hadn’t decided to run downtown on Monday morning to spend “a few hours” working on this big mysterious case of his. She would recall that the moment he left the apartment at ten-thirty, she’d felt a delicious sense of aloneness, no daughter to care for, no husband to love, honor, and cherish, no students to nurture, just Sarah Fitch Welles, all by her lonesome on one of those magnificently balmy days January sometimes offered as solace to the dwellers of this otherwise wintry gray city.

  She stepped smartly out of the building at a quarter to eleven, wearing jeans, ankle-high brown leather boots, a bulky wool turtleneck sweater, and a short woolen car coat—almost dressed too warmly, she realized at once. She said good morning to Luis, made an immediate left turn under the canopy, and began walking the two blocks to Madison Avenue, where she planned to shop the windows and maybe the stores as well. What the hell! Today was a holiday, and she was gloriously alone.

  A smoky-blue Acura was parked at the curb some three doors up from her building. Andrew Farrell was half-sitting, half-leaning on the fender of the car, his arms folded across his chest, his head tilted up toward the sun. His eyes were closed, he had not yet seen her. She was starting to turn away, planning to walk back in the opposite direction, when—as if sensing her nearness—he opened his eyes, and turned his head, and looked directly at her.

  Her heart was suddenly pounding.

  She stood rooted to the sidewalk as he approached.

  “Hi,” he said.

  No grin this time. Wearing his solemn, serious, grownup look.

  “I’ve been waiting since eight o’clock,” he said. “I was afraid I’d miss you.”

  “How … how did you … what are you … oh, Jesus, Andrew, what do you want from me?”

  “Just you,” he said.

  In the car on the way downtown, he told her he remembered Mollie mentioning that they lived on East Eighty-First Street, and whereas he didn’t know her husband’s first name and didn’t think a high school teacher would list herself under her own name, he thought it might be possible that a twelve-year-old girl could have her own telephone. So he’d checked out the name Welles in the Manhattan directory and discovered that there were what appeared to be hundreds of them spelled W-E-L-L-S, but not too many spelled W-E-L-L-E-S. There were no Sarahs, as he’d surmised, and no Mollies, either, but there was a listing for a “Welles MD,” who—if it wasn’t a doctor—might just possibly be Mollie Doris or Mollie Diane or Mollie Dinah or even Mollie Dolly …

  “It’s Mollie Dare,” Sarah said.

  “Dare?”

  “My mother’s maiden name.”

  “Even so,” he said, and shrugged.

  As fate would have it, however, there wasn’t an address following the MD Welles name, which he thought was maybe being overly cautious, hmmm? Even in this city? Using initials to confuse any obscene phone caller cruising the phone, book, and then hiding the address, too?

  “Made it very difficult for someone like me,” he said.

  But apparently not too difficult, she thought.

  “When were you doing all this?” she asked.

  “Late Friday afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I had to see you again. And I didn’t want to wait till tomorrow.”

  Knew today was a school holiday, she thought. Figured I’d be home today. Tracked me to …

  “How did you find me?”

  “Well, after I called the school …”

  “You what?”

  “I’m sorry, but I …”

  “Are you crazy? You called the school? Let me out. Stop the car. Please, I want to get out.”

  “Please don’t leave me again, okay?” he said.

  She looked at him.

  “Please,” he said.

  “What’d you tell them? Who’d you talk to?”

  “I don’t know, some woman in the office. Whoever it was that answered the phone. I told them we had a delivery for a Mrs. Sarah Welles …”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Grace’s Market.”

  “On Seventy-First and Third?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know Grace’s … ?”

  “Well, that’s another story. Anyway, I told the woman at the school that you’d given us an address on East Eighty-First, but we couldn’t make out your handwriting and we didn’t have a phone number for you. But Herman remembered your telling him you taught at Greer …”

  “Herman?”

  “I made up a name.”

  “Herman?”

  “Yeah, which was why I was calling. Because if I could get the correct address on Eighty-First, we’d send the order right over because there was perishable fish involved.”

  “Perishable fish,” Sarah repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “So she gave you my address.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Good.”

  “Well.”

  “How did you get the address.”

  “I remembered something else Mollie said.”

  “What was that?”

  “The only other time anyone came even close to saving her life was when Luis the doorman yanked her out of the way of a taxi.”

  “There must be a hundred doormen named Luis on East Eighty …”

  “No, only three.”

  “Dear God, please save me,” Sarah said, and began laughing.

  “I went to every building that had …”

  “A hundred buildings, then.”

  “No, I only went to the ones that had doormen. I told whoever was working the door …”

  “When was this?”

  “Saturday morning. What I said was that Mr. Welles had told me to ask for Luis. If there was no Luis, adios. If there was a Luis, and if the guy on duty said, ‘Who’s Mr. Welles?,’ adios again. There was a doorman named Luis in a building near First, but no Welles. There was another Luis near Third, but again no Welles. Your building has a Luis and a Welles. I would have waited for you on Saturday, but I figured your husband might be home.”

  “He should’ve been home today, too.”

  “Then I’m lucky I caught you alone.”

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like some tea?”

  “No.”

  “A drink?”

  “At eleven in the morning?”

  “What would you like?”

  She would never know what possessed her to say what she said next. Nor was she sorry when the words left her mouth.

  “I’d like you to kiss me again,” she said.

  He kissed her at once.

  Kissed her the moment she made her blatant suggestion, and then kept kissing her all the way downtown, every time he stopped for a traffic light. He drove the car like a maniac; either he was in a hurry to get wherever he was taking her, or else he was a habitual speeder. Whichever, he screeched to a stop whenever a light turned yellow, and then turned to her with the same alacrity and kissed her full on the mouth while the light remained red, which seemed a shorter while each time. She kept wishing there’d be more red lights, longer red lights, kept wishing he’d pull over to the curb and kiss her incessantly while all the traffic lights in the world flashed yellow and red and green. She kept telling herself this was crazy, she didn’t know this man, who was this man she was kissing so hungrily?

  She kept marveling, too, that she didn’t feel any guilt at all. Well, maybe any married woman getting kissed at random traffic lights by a handsome young man six years her junior automatically put aside all thoughts of her husband toil
ing in the vineyards on a holiday, no less, maybe most married women about to be seduced …

  She already knew she would go to bed with him.

  . . . conveniently put aside any feelings of guilt when they were poised on the steamy edge of breaking a solemn covenant, maybe so.

  Either that or she was an uncommon slut.

  The name on the mailbox outside the door was Carter-­Goldsmith Investments. Well, this was no surprise, he’d told her he was an opportunity investor, hadn’t he? The surprise was that he’d taken her to his office, or so she supposed, and not to a hotel or a motel or wherever a twenty-eight-year-old man about to seduce a thirty-four-year-old woman might take her … where had Heather’s sixteen construction workers taken her?

  It was no surprise that he kissed her again the moment he closed and locked the outer door behind them. Pressed her against the door and kissed her more fiercely than he had on the beach in St. Bart’s or in the French coffee shop on Second or in the Acura every time a light turned yellow, kissed her with his hands on her ass and his cock huge against her, oh Jesus, this was going to be something more than she’d bargained for, oh Jesus, she was doomed.

  As she climbed the steps in the richly wood-paneled stairwell, Andrew behind her, she wished she were wearing a short tight skirt instead of the jeans, wished she’d had the foresight to have dressed in something more accessible, something that would make the impending, inevitable, and irrevocable act easier to accomplish. On the landing outside the door to what she still supposed was an office, he kissed her again and this time she moved in against him, the bulky car coat yet another obstacle to overcome, his hands inside the coat now, his hands on her sweatered breasts, she thought, Oh Jesus, and fiercely tilted her pelvis into him an instant before he broke away to unlock the door.

  She scarcely saw the room. The room was a swirl of background impressions that served only as a setting for him, for Andrew, for what he was doing to her and about to do to her. This was not an office, she was certain of that, fireplace at the end of the room opposite the entrance door, he was slipping the coat off her shoulders, sofa facing the fireplace, he tossed the coat onto it, took her in his arms again, bookcases on the wall to the right, she wondered what he read, his lips found hers again, his hands were under the bulky woolen sweater now, on her back, she felt her breasts fall suddenly free, realized he had unclasped her bra, and stepped slightly back from him so that he could slide his hands under the sweater to find her naked nipples.