by Ed McBain
Anyway, it took a lot of work to keep all those books for all those phony operations looking like the books for real operations. In other words, it was a complete fake. One dummy corporation did business with another dummy corporation. What it was, everybody was a crook, and the books made him honest. Mr. Carfon paid the accountants a lot of money each year because it was them, so to speak, who kept him out of jail.
Well, they were there when I arrived. They looked like three monks making corrections on those big dusty manuscripts the monks work on. Mr. Carfon gave me the big hello, so it wasn’t about Louise after all. Milt came over and slapped me like I was his uncle from Jersey City he hadn’t seen since the day he got bar-mitzvahed. Everything was palsy-walsy, jollsy-wollsy, and I began to wonder what was in the wind. We sat around and drank a little bit and yokked it up, but nobody was saying anything important. After a while, one of the accountants called Mr. Carfon aside, and they had a private chat in the corner, both wagging their heads like doctors agreeing where to make the incision. Then Mr. Carfon came over to me. Mr. Carfon don’t mince words, I like that about him. He’s got something to say, he says it—with no bull.
“How would you like to move up, Frankie?” he said.
“You know I would,” I said.
“Up to now,” Mr. Carfon said, “I thought it advisable to limit the executive power of the organization to two men and only two men. I’ve just discussed the tax situation with our good Mr. Knowles, and he tells me we have some money it would do well to disburse.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” I said.
“Then I’ll explain it to you, Frankie. The money is in excess of forty thousand dollars a year. If I don’t give it to someone in the form of a salary, I’ll have to give it to the government.” Mr. Carfon smiled. “I hate giving anything to the government.”
“So?”
“So I’d rather give it to you.”
“Forty grand a …”
“Yes.”
I whistled. I was stunned, to tell the truth. I was lucky I could get the whistle out.
“Naturally, a salary of such magnitude would necessitate enlarging your status with the group. In short, were you to receive this salary, I would expect a sort of executive board. The members of the board would be Milt, me, and you.”
“I … I see,” I said. My palms were wet. I had a feeling my upper lip was wet, too, but I didn’t make a move to wipe it.
“What do you think, Frankie?” Mr. Carfon said.
“I … I think it’s great. It sounds great.”
“And patience is its own reward, isn’t it?” Mr. Carfon said, laughing, and then all of a sudden he stopped laughing. “There’s just one problem,” he said. He had walked away from me, and now he turned to face me, and he looked very serious.
“What’s that, Mr. Carfon?” I asked. I was beginning to get a little nervous. That forty grand was almost in my mitt, and I didn’t want nothing to come between us. “What’s that?” I said.
“I had a visit yesterday,” Mr. Carfon said. “A little surprise visit.”
“From who?”
“From your wife.”
“May?” I said.
“Yes.”
“May came here? What did she—”
“She’s a lovely girl, Frankie. Very pretty. She’s also very tough. A lot of American pioneer spirit in that girl. It’s a pity she was born a century too late.”
“Wh … what did she want?” I said.
“In effect, she wanted me to fire you.”
“Fire me? Oh, Jesus, why can’t she—”
“I have no intention of firing you. I’m sure you know how much I think of you, Frankie. You’re a valuable man. God knows, there are few enough around right now. With the exception of this new boy, Georgie, I don’t see very much talent around. So I have no intention of firing you. Besides, as was the case with Andy, you know quite a bit about the organization’s internal machine. I would like you to stay inside the organization.”
“I see,” I said. I didn’t miss his point. He was saying: You better stay in the organization or you’ll be shaking hands with Andy and Celia soon. “Well, I got no intention of leaving,” I said, “no matter what May thinks.”
“That’s an admirable attitude, Frankie, admirable. Unfortunately, May is a tough girl with pioneer spirit. She has other ideas.”
“Ideas? What do you—?”
“She has a rather outmoded sense of justice. She believes in crime and punishment. She thinks policemen are here to protect the citizenry.”
“Protect the—?”
“Yes. To make this short, Frankie, she threatened to go to the police unless I release you.”
“The cops? May? Jesus, Mr. Carfon, I can’t believe—”
“Then ask her,” Mr. Carfon said. “You might be interested to know that she plans to tell them about the Andy Orelli incident. In short, Frankie, her threat is not an idle one. And whereas I’ve no doubt we can handle ourselves with the police department, I simply do not care to get involved. I’ve gone to great pains to establish a legitimate-seeming group of enterprises. A police investigation might possibly penetrate the front, and I wouldn’t want that to happen. I might add that were you to be pulled in on the Orelli kill, I couldn’t guarantee beating the rap for you and jeopardizing the organization. You’d be on your own. These are all things for you to consider.”
“But if she loves me so damn much, why would she want to send me to jail? Maybe the chair even?”
“To save you.” Mr. Carfon smiled. “To save you from yourself and—to use a favorite expression of the police—your ‘bad associates.’ Women sometimes act peculiarly, Frankie. Nonetheless, the facts remain.”
“What’s her plan?”
“She wants you to quit by April first. That’s only a week away, Frankie. If you have not left the organization by that time, she will go to the police. That’s the long and the short of it.”
“I see.”
“Now, I don’t know what emotional involvements you have with this woman. It’s been my experience that women are like streetcars, but of course I’m older than you and, if you’ll forgive me, somewhat wiser. Should you choose to leave the organization because of your attachment to this particular woman …” Mr. Carfon shrugged, and I thought of Andy again. “On the other hand, should you remain with the organization, your wife presents a clear and recognizable danger. I’m presenting all the facts to you, Frankie, so that you can make your own decision. I don’t want to force a choice upon you. And one of the facts is that if you remain with us, you will share the command with Milt and myself at a salary of …” He turned to Knowles, the accountant. “What was that, Richard?”
“Forty-two five,” the accountant said.
“Forty-two thousand five hundred dollars a year,” Mr. Carfon said. “If you stay. If you leave …” Again he shrugged.
“Well … well, what the hell am I supposed to do?” I said. “If May’s got this bug in her—”
“She does, believe me.”
“I’ll beat the crap out of her,” I said.
“A temporary measure at best. And it might serve to strengthen her resolve.”
“Well, what—?”
“Frankie, I don’t have to tell you what an opportunity this represents. You’ll be a big man, Frankie, a really big man. I’m not kidding you. And believe me, it isn’t easy to come by this kind of a position or this kind of a salary these days. A big man, Frankie.”
“Yeah …”
“The decision is yours,” he said. “Think it over.”
“Yeah.”
“But not too long. She’s going to the police on April first.”
I beat her up that night.
I swear to God, I beat her until she was limp. It didn’t do no good. I couldn’t understand her. She kept telling me she loved me and all that, but she wouldn’t change her mind. Either I quit the goddamn outfit, or she’d go to the police. I tried to explain to her that you j
ust don’t walk out on something this big, did she think I was playing marbles on the street corner? She told me I only had myself to blame for the situation I was in, and either I quit or she’d go to the police. That was her song. Over and over again she sang it, and I beat the crap out of her.
The weather turned mild that week. Spring was in the air. New York was coming alive again. You could feel it. I swear to God you could just feel people beginning to take deep breaths in their lungs. I wish I could have enjoyed it. But all the time I walked in the streets, I kept thinking of May and me and the outfit. Forty grand a year. More than that. Forty-two five. That was a lot of money. I could do a lot with that money. If only May would be reasonable, we could live like a royal couple, that was the truth. Only May wouldn’t be reasonable. May was a dame, and who can ever figure dames? Like streetcars, Mr. Carfon had said. You miss one, and there was always another one right after that.
And yet, May wasn’t like that. May wasn’t no damn streetcar. May was my wife, don’t a guy owe something to his wife? But don’t he owe something to himself, too? For all the winters he froze his ass off? For being hungry? For being dead the first twenty years of his life? Don’t he owe that much to himself? Don’t he owe it to himself to grab what he can get, all he can get? Jesus, what the hell was a guy supposed to do?
And what would happen if I quit?
I knew what would happen. Mr. Carfon played it safe and played it cool. If I quit, May would still be a danger to the outfit. And so would I. No, no there was no sense to that.
So what was I supposed to do?
April first was a Monday.
On Sunday night, May went to the movies alone. She wore dark glasses because to tell you the truth I’d hurt her real bad that night I beat her up, and her eyes didn’t look good. I clocked her when she left the house, and then I called the Paradise to find out what time the show broke. They told me. I sat down to wait.
About a half-hour before she was supposed to leave the movie house, I went out. I went to Poe Park because I knew she’d take the short cut on the way home. I stood behind the thing where the bands used to play when I was a kid. It was a nice night, but there weren’t many people in the park. It didn’t matter anyway.
She came into the park around midnight. The park was almost empty by then. There was just an old guy sitting on a bench near the street lamp on the other end, reading a Yiddish newspaper. I guess I knew it the minute she entered the park, even though I couldn’t see her face. She was wearing high heels, and I heard them on the concrete walk, and I watched her and the sway of her hips, and I pulled the .45 out of my waist band, and I put the silencer on the end of it, and my hand was sweating. I flipped off the safety.
I saw May when she passed the bandstand. She walked with her head up, still wearing the dark glasses. I waited until she passed me.
And then I whispered, “May.”
She turned. For a second, I thought she was going to smile, as if I’d surprised her by waiting to walk home with her.
I shot her four times, and then I ran away without looking back at her, and I threw the .45 down a sewer on the Concourse.
14
We didn’t have the party until a month later.
The cops were finished with me by that time. They knew I had a record, you see, on a gun offense at that, and so they were pretty rough with me. But Mr. Carfon set up an airtight alibi with the boys in Utica. There were a dozen guys upstate who swore that I was nowhere near New York City that night. Still, they kept at me until they realized they weren’t going to get a thing out of it, and then they dropped it. They figured, I guess, that she was a punk’s wife after all—so why waste too much time over her? Good riddance to bad rubbish is what they figured.
The party was a very big one. There were guys from out-of-town and everything. Mr. Carfon introduced me all around. I was like the guest of honor. The whole party was to explain to everybody that I was a big man in the outfit now. There was liquor and food and girls. It was a crazy party.
I spotted Georgie there. He was wearing a tailor-made suit. Along around midnight, Mr. Carfon brought him over to me and said, “Frankie, I want you to keep your eye on this boy. He’s going to be all right. He’s going to be a big man.”
Our eyes locked, mine and Georgie’s. He smiled at me. “I want to congratulate you,” he said. “It’s a great thing.” He kept smiling.
“Thanks,” I said, but I didn’t smile back.
It was a crazy party. I went home around two o’clock. Most of the guys stayed, but I went home. I was still living in the Bronx, even though I could afford a better place now. I thought I’d wait until the cops really buried whatever they had on me.
The apartment was very quiet. I went in, and then locked the door behind me. I didn’t turn on the lights. There was a bar across the street, and the neon blinked first red, then green into the apartment. It was a nice mild spring night. I opened the windows, and I could hear the traffic noises on the Concourse. The apartment was very quiet.
I pulled an easy chair up to the window, and I lit a cigarette and sat smoking it, and then I got up and walked around the living room a while, and then I walked into the bedroom. The clock was ticking on the dresser, tick, tick, tick, tick. There was a framed picture of May alongside the clock, and there was her hairbrush on the dresser. I picked it up. Some of her black hair was still caught in it. I put it down quickly. I went back into the living room and stood by the window looking down at the street.
I was a big man.
I went to the telephone and dialed a number. I sat down and waited while it rang.
“Hello?” the voice said.
“Angelo, this is Frankie. Did I get you out of bed?”
“Oh, no Frankie,” he said. His voice was sleepy.
“Angelo, get in touch with Louise.”
“Yes, Frankie.”
“Send her up here right away.”
“Yes, Frankie.”
“Right away, you hear?”
“Yes, Frankie.”
“Good. And, Angelo—” I heard the click on the line. I was a little disappointed. I guess I felt like talking to him a little. I guess so. And then, to tell the truth, I knew I really wanted to talk to May. I put her out of my mind. I began thinking of Louise instead. I lit another cigarette. I sat smoking for about a half-hour, thinking.
When the doorbell rang, I jumped. I turned in the chair and pulled out the new .45. For some reason, I began to sweat. All at once I thought of Andy and Weasel, and I thought of this new kid Georgie with the dollar signs in his eyes and the big fake grin on his mouth, and I began to sweat. My hands got so slippery I almost dropped the gun.
The doorbell rang again.
I went over to it. I threw off the safety catch on the .45. I leaned close to the door, listening. For just a second, I wondered how many damn doors I’d have to open in the years to come. And I wondered which one of them wouldn’t open on a smiling honey blonde.
Trembling, I said, “Who is it?”
About the Author
Ed McBain is one of the many pen names of legendary author Evan Hunter (1926–2005). Named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, Hunter is best known for creating the long-running 87th Precinct series, which followed an ensemble cast of police officers in the fictional city of Isola. A pioneer of the police procedural, he remains one of the best-loved mystery novelists of the twentieth century. Hunter also wrote under the pseudonyms Richard Marsten, Hunt Collins, John Abbott, Ezra Hannon, Curt Cannon, and others.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses,
companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1959 by Ed McBain
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3923-9
This 2016 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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