Vanishing Ladies

by Ed McBain

  If you weren’t raised in a city, you won’t understand the good things.

  You won’t understand the joy of playing marbles alongside a curb after a summer rainstorm. You won’t understand the deep pleasure of sticking your hand into a black puddle of water to span your marble and your competitor’s. You won’t savor the unparalleled thrill of riding a pusho which was made out of a two-by-four, an orange crate, and an old ball-bearing skate. You can hear the ball bearings rattle around in the wheels, because you purposely used a skate which had wheels with worn rims. You can feel the black asphalt skimming under the pusho, and you bounce on the two-by-four and skirt along with the other pushos, and in that moment you’re Lawrence of Arabia on a white steed.

  In the summer heat, you turn on the fire hydrant, and you bend a coffee tin and put it over the nozzle, and the water sprays up in a force-packed shower, and the kids dance under it, the black pavement slick and wet. When the cop comes, you run like hell, and you watch solemnly while he turns off the pump with a Stillson wrench until the water becomes only a trickle, and then only a memory.

  In the summer, too, you sit on the front stoop with the other kids, and the city has its own song at night, especially on a summer night when the heat has baked into the street and the sidewalk and the brick walls of the tenements and a cool breeze blows in over the river. You can hear the city’s song very clearly on a summer night. You can hear the horns, and the tugs, and the voices, and the people. You can hear the sound around you like the sound of mingled voices at a public beach, hovering on the air, indistinct, unintelligible, and beneath that the whisper of your friends beside you on the stoop, and the cool comfort of a cup of ices clenched in your fist, and the vast exchange of sex and religion and philosophy.

  In the fall, the city doesn’t have turning leaves. In the fall, the city has a bite on the air, a bite as sharp as a dragon’s tooth. You put the summer to rest, and you buckle down, and if you’re a kid you shop the five-and-dime for your new looseleaf folder, and your new pencils, and you can smell school in the air, and the smell is a good one. The tempo is picked up. You can’t feel tempo anywhere but in the city. In the city the footsteps are magnified by a million, and you can feel the quicker beat, and there’s suddenly purpose to the city—the summer is gone, the loafing is over, the city is tightening its belt for the cold winter ahead. You see health glowing on the faces. You see apple-red cheeks, and you can remember roasting potatoes in empty lots when there were still empty lots, and you can remember Election Day bonfires leaping high in the middle of the street, leaping to the second story of an apartment building, you can remember hauling wood for the fire, dancing around it like the goblin you were on Halloween. You wore knickers then. You wore a watch cap, banded with multicolored stripes of wool. Sometimes you wore your leather aviator’s helmet, fleece-lined, with the goggles down only when you were sitting around a fire.

  The winters were cold, and you didn’t ice skate in the city. Ice-skating was something you learned later, when you were older, something you would never be really good at because you learned so late. But the snowplows rushed through the streets like giant tanks, pushing the snow to the curb, making tall fortresses. You climbed the fortresses, and the city became a mountainland of cold and ice and you felt for a moment a part of the people all around you, and you longed for the greater intimacy of a really snowbound community.

  In the spring, you had Saint Paddy’s day. You weren’t Irish, but your blood sang on that day, anyway, and you made sure you had a green tie, and there was an Irish girl in your class you kissed, and you sang “Did Your Mother Come from Ireland?” and you cut classes to watch the parade downtown. You saw cops then. Lines and lines of cops. Marching in precision, lines of blue. You became a cop later for different reasons, but you’d never forget the marching blue uniforms, or the sudden mild breeze, mild for March, the sudden warm sun, so warm for March, that heralded the day of the Irish and the beginning of spring.

  You loved the city because the city had been part of you since the day you looked up from your carriage and saw the buildings reaching for the sky. You could go to the country for picnics, but the city always called you back, and you heard her keening song in the strangest places—on gangway watch in the yards at Boston, on the fantail of a destroyer on a quiet moonlit night with the Pacific as still as a sleeping babe, behind the heaving smoking barrels of a 40 mm. gun trained on a Jap Zero, the pom-pom, pom-pom bursting your eardrums, the acrid stench of cordite powerful in your nostrils. You didn’t forget the song of the city. You couldn’t forget it because you helped write it.

  I’m a city boy.

  The country doesn’t gas me.

  I don’t like lonely roads without lights, and I don’t like the hum of insects, the incessant goddamn chirruping and croaking and cccsssking, and chipock-chipocking. I don’t like getting out of a car and being hit in the face with the eerie strand of a spider’s web. I don’t like stepping in soft mud, and I don’t like the feeling that the next time I put down my foot it might be on a wasp’s nest, or in a bed of quicksand, or on a snake.

  I’m chicken that way.

  I’m a coward.

  I got out of the police sedan on the night of June 4th, and there was nothing I’d rather have done less. I brushed the spider’s web from my face, feeling crawly, wondering if the spider were entangled in my hair, and then I started through the woods. I was about as absolutely quiet as Davy Crockett with his leg in a plaster cast. A deaf Parisian sitting in the shade of the Eiffel Tower could have heard me. A dead Indian buried in the Taj Mahal would have perked up his ears at my coming. Martians paddling down their canals undoubtedly wondered what all the racket was about.

  There was only one thing I wanted.

  Mike Barter had driven somewhere with Hezekiah on business. I didn’t know what the business had been, but they’d driven in the truck. I wanted a look at that truck.

  There were sounds in the woods. I didn’t like the sounds. They scared me. That’s the absolute truth. I pulled my .38 from its holster in my back pocket. I threw off the safety, and I edged my way through the woods listening to the sounds. Branches snapped. Animals seemed to lurk behind every tree. Birds screeched every now and then. The insects buzzed and hummed. There wasn’t a light showing anywhere. A country boy would have made a beeline for the motel. I’m a city boy. I didn’t know where the hell I was going. I hoped I was going in a straight line. I hoped I was heading for the motel. I hoped I could find my way back to the car if it turned out I wasn’t heading for the motel.

  Hope is a poor substitute for woodsmanship. I should have been a Boy Scout. I should have been a pioneer. I should have stayed in bed.

  I don’t believe in stacking the deck. It gets comical after a while. It gets like a soap opera.

  “When we left Nellie May yesterday, her mother was dying of frostbite and the phone was out of order. Nellie couldn’t send her brother Tom to the village for the doctor because Tom had a broken leg. The lion who’d escaped from the circus was clawing at the kitchen screen door, and the oil burner had just exploded setting the basement on fire. As we all know, Nellie is a drug addict, and her last fix had been three days ago …”

  So I don’t believe in stacking the deck. I figured Phil was in enough trouble as it was. I figured DeMorra was sticking his neck out by sending me to help. I figured Ann might be in serious danger, and I figured I was a horse’s ass for traipsing through the woods without a compass.

  I needed what happened next. I needed it like Nellie May needed the circus lion at her kitchen door.

  I felt myself falling.

  The fall came suddenly, the ground abruptly sloping off so that I lost my footing. I stumbled forward, groping for support where there was none. Something cold touched my ankle, and panic roared up into my brain until I realized the something cold was water. I was too far gone by that time. I fell flat on my face, covered with slime, covered with water that surely had come out of an ice-cube tray. I�
��d clung tightly to the .38, but it was submerged with me, and it probably wouldn’t fire for the next ten years. I sat up. The water was up to my waist. I wanted to laugh. Until I heard—or rather sensed—movement in the water.

  I thought it was a trick of my eyes at first, a gag my ears were playing.

  I’d heard about snakes swimming, but I’d never seen one before.

  I couldn’t even see this one too clearly, except that he was about three feet away from me in the water and coming on an apparent collision course. If you’re going to be shocked, go ahead. I didn’t ask for the snake. I didn’t even ask for a caterpillar. I’m no different from you, unless you’re a snake trainer. I don’t like them. I pulled the .38 up, and I fired. The gun misfired, and I squeezed the trigger again, and again there was nothing, and then the snake hit.

  I screamed.

  I don’t give a damn what you think about men screaming. I screamed. I screamed as loud as I know how to scream, and then I felt a needle-like pain in my leg, and I screamed again, and I lashed out at the snake with the butt of the .38, and I kept lashing, striking up the water, hitting at the snake, and yelling and screaming and cursing all the while. He left.

  As suddenly as he’d come, he was gone.

  I couldn’t move.

  I sat with the black waters swirling around my waist. I was trembling, and I suppose my eyes were shut tight, and then the shocking idea came that there might be more snakes in the water, and I leaped to my feet and clawed my way up the bank of the pond, and I fell flat on my face again, but this time I got up and shoved my way through the bushes, feeling the bushes clawing at me like live things, hearing the insects, and hearing the animal noises, but pushing through, and then becoming aware of the awful pain in my leg, and suddenly cognizant of the fact that the snake may have been a poisonous one.

  It occurred to me that the most idiotic thing I could do at the moment would be to get lost in the woods and die of snake bite. I could not, right then, think of a more moronic way of dying. I didn’t have a pocket knife, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have known the first thing about lancing a snake bite and drawing off the poison. I didn’t know where I was, and I didn’t know how to find out where I was, and I longed for the feel of asphalt under my feet, longed for the screech of the elevated trains, longed for the blare of a traffic signal.

  I came close to panic again.

  It’s very easy to panic. Panic is the easiest thing in the world to do. You don’t panic when you’re up against a situation you know you can control. You can face another man with a revolver, and he can be firing at you, and you won’t panic because you’ve faced men with revolvers before. You can face a broken bottle being thrust at your jugular vein and you won’t panic because this is old hat. But it’s easy to panic when you don’t know the score. You can feel the panic bubbling inside your stomach, and it’s so easy to let it go, so easy to let it erupt into your mind and your body, so easy to let it propel your legs, let it control the wild flailing of your arms, let it put fright in your eyes and fear in your heart.

  I didn’t.

  I wouldn’t.

  I kept shoving my way through the woods, dragging my leg behind me, dragging my backside, dragging every ounce of will power I could muster. I kept on what I hoped was a line paralleling the road. And finally I saw a light.

  I still had the .38 in my fist. I clung to it, as if it were a howitzer instead of a gun which wouldn’t fire.

  I came out of the woods behind the motel, and I staggered down to the gravel court, and I shouted, “Help!”

  I wasn’t thinking of detective work at the moment. I was thinking I’d been bitten by a poisonous snake, and I needed a doctor. The office door opened. Barter and Hezekiah stepped into the light.

  “Help!” I said again, and I limped toward them. Hezekiah came out of the doorway. Something big and ugly was in his hands.

  “I’ve been bitten by a snake,” I said, and Hezekiah, son of a bitch that he was, hit me on the head.

  15

  I felt like a private eye.

  Only private eyes get hit on the head. They feel “blackness closing in,” or “consciousness going down the drain.” Or they feel “the lights going out.” Private eyes are always getting hit on the head. It’s a wonder their skulls don’t look like sieves.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever been hit on the head with a wrench. Hezekiah hit me with a wrench. In books, in the movies, you get hit on the head with a wrench and you go unconscious and when you wake up you feel a little dizzy. Otherwise, you’re fine. You just missed a little bit of the action, but everybody is in a big hurry to fill you in.

  I would like to correct this false impression.

  The skull, even if it is a hard one like mine, is a pretty vulnerable thing. If you get hit with a wrench, or a bottle, or a hammer, or a chair, or a club, or a shoe, or whatever, you don’t just drift off into a peaceful sleep. Bang your head sometime by accident and see how quickly the bump rises. Then add the force of a man’s arm and shoulder to the blow, add the terrible impact of a piece of forged steel.

  Your head cracks.

  The hair cushions the blow only slightly, and then the steel splits the skin and opens your skull, and if you’re lucky you don’t suffer a brain concussion. If you’re lucky, you bleed. Your head aches, and you bleed. You bleed down the side of your face, and down the side of your neck, and under your shirt collar. There is a hole in your head, and your blood runs out of it, and when you finally come to, the blood is caked and dried on your temple and your cheek and your neck.

  You squint up at the light, and you feel only a terrible pain somewhere at the top of your head. You can’t even localize the pain, because your whole head seems to be in a vise, your whole head is pounding and throbbing. This is the hangover supreme. This is the prince of all hangovers, and you don’t laugh it off and drink a glass of tomato juice. There’s nothing to laugh about. You’ve been hit on the head, and the chair didn’t shatter the way it does in the movies—but your head did.

  The light was a naked bulb suspended from a long thin wire. It hung motionless in the center of the room, a feeble sun that assailed my eyes when I opened them. I blinked. My head ached, and my leg throbbed, and I remembered the snake bite, and I could feel crusted dried blood on my face and on my trouser leg. I was sitting in a chair. I tried to get out of the chair, but my hands were tied behind it, and my legs were tied to the chair legs.

  A girl was sitting opposite me.

  The girl was a pretty brunette. Her eyes were wide with concern.

  “Thank God,” she whispered.

  I blinked at her.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said.

  I blinked again. The girl was tied, too. She wore a white cotton dress and straw pumps with lucite heels. She was very pretty, a big girl, a big girl tied in a small chair, the light hanging motionless over her head.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  I tried to talk but nothing came to my mouth. I cleared my throat. “I’m all right,” I said.

  “I’m Ann,” the girl said.

  It sounded like a vaudeville routine. “Are you all right?” “Yes, I’m fine.” “How do you do; I’m Katz.”

  “How do you do; I’m Katz,” I said.

  The girl looked puzzled. “Aren’t … aren’t you Tony Mitchell?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I got bit by a snake.”

  “It wasn’t poisonous,” the girl said. “They were talking about it. One of them said it was better this way, and then another said there weren’t any poisonous snakes in the area.”

  “My head hurts,” I said.

  “You look awful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Is Phil all right?”

  “Phil?”

  “Yes. Don’t you …?”

  “Phil,” I said. “Jesus, are you Ann?”

  “Yes, I told you …”

  “Forgive me.”

  “It’s all right. I was afr
aid you were dead. You were bleeding so badly when they carried you in.”

  “Who carried me in?”

  “A short fat man, and a tall—”

  “Barter and Hezekiah,” I grinned. “It sounds like a law firm.”

  “Is Phil all right?”

  “He’s fine. I’m Katz. Forgive me, I’m dizzy. My head hurts. I’m supposed to call him. He’s worried about you.”

  “I’m fine,” Ann said.

  “Not again, please.”

  “Not what again?”

  “Nothing. Where are we?”

  “In Davistown.”

  “Where in Davistown?”

  “Somebody’s apartment. A man they call Joe.”

  “Joe Carlisle?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t say his last name.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “By train. And by taxi.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “What time is it now, anyway?”

  “It’s almost midnight.”

  “I’m supposed to call Phil.” I paused. “They brought you here this morning, huh?”

  “Yes. When my dress dried.”

  “When your what?”

  “My dress.”

  “That’s what I thought you said.” I blinked. “Maybe you better start with when they took you out of the cabin.”

  “I was fast asleep,” Ann said. “They came in, two of them, the short one and … Barter, is that his name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Barter and the blonde. Stephanie.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “They took me out of bed, and then a truck came out of the woods. The tall one, Hezekiah, was driving it. They put me into the back of the truck. That’s how I got the blood on my dress. Somewhere in the truck.”

  “Where’d they take you?”

  “To Hezekiah’s place. He lives on a road somewhere near the motel. It wasn’t a very long trip.”