Tricks

by Ed McBain

  Annie was watching her.

  Eyes the color of loam behind glasses that gave her a scholarly look, black hair cut in a wedge, firm cupcake breasts on a slender body. About the same age as Eileen, a bit shorter. As hard and as brilliant as a diamond. Annie used to work out of Robbery, where she'd blown away two guys holding up a midtown bank. Blew them out of the air. If she hadn't been frightened by two seasoned hoods facing a max of twenty, would she have any sympathy for a decoy cop running scared?

  Well, I've been on the job, Eileen thought, I'mnot running scared.

  But she was.

  "When was the first one?" she asked.

  "The tenth. A Friday night, full moon. Alvarez thought maybe a loonie. Then the second one turned up a week later, the seventeenth. And another one last Friday night."

  "Always Friday night, huh?"

  "So far."

  "So tonight's Friday, so Homicide wants a decoy."

  "So does Alvarez. I spoke to him right after I got the call. He sounds smart as hell, but so far he hasn't got a place to hang his hat."

  "What's his thinking on it?"

  "You don't know the Zone, huh?"

  "No."

  "Then you missed what I was saying about Houston."

  "I guess so."

  "There's an area bordering the Ship Canal down there, it's infested with hookers and dope. Sleaziest dives I've ever seen in my life. The docks on the Calm's Point Canal run a close second."

  "Are they hookers then? The victims?"

  "Yes. Hookers."

  "All three?"

  "One of them only sixteen years old."

  Eileen nodded.

  "What'd he use?" she asked.

  Annie hesitated.

  "A knife," she said.

  And suddenly it all played back again in Eileen's head hellip;

  Her hand going for the Browning .380 automatic tucked into her boot, Don't force me to cut you,the pistol coming free of its holster, moving into firing position mdash;and he slashed her face. Sudden fire blazed a trail across her cheek. She dropped the gun at once. Good girl,he said. And slashed her pantyhose and the panties underneath hellip;>

  And hellip;

  And thrust the cold flat side of the knife against her hellip; against her hellip;

  "Want me to cut you here, too?"

  She shook her head.

  No, please, she thought.

  And mumbled the words incoherently, No, please, and said them aloud at last, "No, please. Please. Don't hellip; cut me again. Please>."

  "Want me to fuck you instead?"

  "Don't cut me again."

  Annie was watching her intently.

  "Slit their throats with a knife," she said.

  Eileen was covered with cold sweat.

  "So hellip; I hellip; I guess they want me to play hooker, is that it?" she said.

  "That's it."

  "New girl in town, huh?"

  "You've got it."

  "Cruising? Or have they set up hellip; ?"

  "They're planting you in a place called Larry's Bar. On Fairview and East Fourth."

  Eileen nodded.

  "Tonight, huh?"

  "Starting around eight."

  "That's early, isn't it?"

  "They want to give him enough rope."

  "Where do I check in?"

  "The Seven-Two. You can change there."

  "Into what? The hookers today look like college girls."

  "Not the ones working the Canal Zone."

  Eileen nodded again.

  "Has Alvarez picked my backups?"

  "One. A big beefy guy named hellip;"

  "I want at least two," Eileen said.

  "I'm your other one," Annie said.

  Eileen looked at her.

  "If you want me."

  Eileen said nothing.

  "I'm not afraid of using the piece," Annie said.

  "I know you're not."

  "But if you'd feel better with another man hellip;"

  "Nothing's going to make me feel better," Eileen said. "I'm scared shitless. You could back me with the Russian army, and I'd still be scared."

  "Then don't do it," Annie said.

  "Then when do I stop being scared?" Eileen asked.

  The room went silent.

  "Homicide asked me to get the best decoy I knew," Annie said softly. "I picked you."

  "Thanks a lot," Eileen said.

  But she smiled.

  "Youare , you know."

  "Iwas ."

  "Are," Annie said.

  "Sweet talker," Eileen said.

  And smiled again.

  "So hellip; it's up to you," Annie said, and looked up at the clock. "But you've got to let me know right away. They want everything in place by eight tonight."

  "Who's this big beefy guy?"

  "His name's Shanahan. Irish as Paddy's underwear, six-feet tall, weighs at least two hundred pounds. I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley, believe me."

  "Iwould ," Eileen said. "I'd like an hour with him before I hit the street. Can he be in the squadroom by seven?"

  "You'll do it then?"

  "Only 'cause you're the other backup," Eileen said, and smiled again.

  But she was trembling inside.

  "This guy who killed them," she said. "Do they have any idea what he looks like?"

  "Alvarez says he's got some statements that seem to jibe. But who knows what he'll look like tonight? If he comes in at all."

  "Terrific," Eileen said.

  "One thing for sure, though."

  "Yeah?"

  "He's passing himself off as a trick."

  The saw ripped through wood, ripped through flesh and bone along the middle of the wooden box and the middle of the woman. Blood gushed from the track the saw made, following the sharp teeth. The saw itself was bloody when at last he withdrew it from box and woman. He looked up at the wall clock. 5:05 p.m. He nodded in grim satisfaction.

  And lifted the lids on both sides of the box.

  And the woman stepped out in one piece, grinning, and held her arms over her head, and the audience began to applaud and cheer.

  "Thank you, thank you very much," the man said, bowing.

  The audience was composed mostly of boys and girls between the ages of thirteen and eighteen because the performance was being held at the high school on North Eleventh. The principal of the school, Mr. Ellington, beamed contentedly. Hiring the magician had been his idea. A way to keep these restless teenagers happy and occupied for an hour or so before they hit the streets. He would make a little speech after the performance was over, which should be any minute now. He would tell them all to go home and have a good dinner and then put on their costumes and go out for a safe and sane Halloween in the secure knowledge that among the rights granted in a democracy was freedom of assembly mdash;like the assembly they'd had this evening mdash;and also freedom of assembly in the streets, butnot the freedom to perform malicious mischief, definitely not. That would be his pitch. The kids, grateful for an hour's entertainment, would mdash;he hoped mdash;follow his directives. No one from Herman Raucher High would become involved in vandalism tonight. Nossir.

  He watched now as the magician's assistant rolled the wooden box off the stage. She was a good-looking blonde, in her late twenties Ellington guessed, wearing a sequined costume that exposed to good advantage her long, long legs and her exuberant breasts. Ellington noticed that most of the boys in the auditorium could not take their eyes off the assistant's long legs and the popping tops of her creamy white breasts. He himself was having a little difficulty doing that. She was back on stage now, wheeling a tall box. A vertical one this time. The magician mdash;whose name was Sebastian the Great mdash;was wearing tails and a top hat. Ellington looked up at the clock. This was probably the closing number of the act. He hoped so because he wanted to make his little speech and get the kids the hell out of here. He had promised Estelle he would stop by on the way home from school. Estelle was the lady he stopped b
y to see every Wednesday and Friday afternoon, when his wife thought he had meetings with the staff. Estelle's legs weren't as long, nor were her breasts as opulent as those on the magician's assistant, but then again Estelle was forty-seven years old.

  "Thank you, kids," Sebastian the Great said, "thank you. Now I know you're all anxious to get out there in the streets for a safe and sane Halloween, and so I won't keep you much longer. Ah, thank you, Marie," he said to his assistant.

  Her name's Marie, Ellington thought, and wondered what her last name was, and wondered if she was listed in the phone book.

  "You see here a little box mdash;well, not so little because I'm a pretty tall fellow mdash;which I'm going to step into in just a moment hellip; thank you, Marie, you can go now, you've been very helpful, let's have a nice round of applause for Marie, kids."

  Marie held her hands up over her head, legs widespread, big smile on her mouth, and the kids applauded and yelled, especially the boys, and then she did a cute little sexy turn and went strutting off the stage in her high heels.

  "That's the last you'll see of Marie tonight," Sebastian said.

  Shit, Ellington thought.

  "And in just a few minutes, you'll see the last of me, too. What I'm going to do, kids, I'm going to step inside this box hellip;"

  He opened the door on the face of the box.

  "And I'm going to ask you all to count to ten hellip; out loud hellip; one, two, three, four, and so on mdash;you all know how to count to ten, don't you?"

  Laughter from the kids.

  "And I'm going to ask your principal, Mr. Ellington, to come up here mdash;Mr. Ellington, would you come up here now, please? mdash;and when you reach the number ten, he's going to open the door of this box, and Sebastian the Great will be gone, kids, I will have disappeared, vanished, poof! So hellip; ah, good, Mr. Ellington, if you'll just stand here beside the box, thank you. That's very good." He took off his top hat. Stepping partially into the box, he said, "I'm going to say good-bye to you now hellip;"

  Applause and cheering from the kids.

  "Thank you, thank you," he said, "and I want to remind you again to please have a safe and sane Halloween out there. Now the minute I close this door, I want you to start counting out loud. And when you reach ten, Mr. Ellington will open the door and I'll be gone but not forgotten. Mr. Ellington? Are you ready?"

  "Ready," Ellington said, feeling like an asshole.

  "Good-bye, kids," Sebastian said, and closed the door behind him.

  "One!" the kids began chanting. "Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!"

  Ellington opened the door on the box.

  Sebastian the Great had indeed vanished.

  The kids began applauding.

  Ellington went to the front of the stage, and held up his hands for silence.

  He would have to remind the kids not to try sawing anybody in half, because that had been only a trick.

  The station wagon pulled up to the curb in front of the liquor store on Culver and Ninth. The big woman behind the wheel was a curly-haired blonde in her late forties, wearing a blue dress with a tiny white floral print, a cardigan sweater over it. A kid was sitting beside her on the front seat. Three more kids were in the back of the car. The kids looked perhaps eleven or twelve years old, no older than that.

  They threw open the doors and got out of the car.

  "Have fun, kids," the blonde behind the wheel said.

  The kids were all dressed like robbers.

  Little black leather jackets, and little blue jeans, and little white sneakers, and little billed caps on their little heads, and little black masks over their eyes. They were all carrying shopping bags decorated with little orange pumpkins. They were all holding little toy pistols in their little hands. They went across the sidewalk in a chattering little excited group, and one of them opened the door to the liquor store. The clock on the wall behind the counter read 5:15 p.m. The owner of the store looked up the moment the bell over the door sounded.

  "Trick or treat!" the little kids squealed in unison.

  "Come on, kids, get out of here," the owner said impatiently. "This is a place of business."

  And one of the little kids shot him in the head.

  Parker had shaved and was back in the squadroom, rummaging through the file cabinets containing folders for all the cases the detectives had successfully closed. In police work, there was no such thing as a solution. You neversolved a case, you closed it out. Or it remainedopen , which meant the perpetrator was already in Buenos Aires or Nome, Alaska, and you'dnever catch him. The Open File was the graveyard of police detection.

  "I feel like a new man," Parker said. In fact, he looked like the same old Parker, except that he had shaved. "Muldoon," he said, "Muldoon, where are you, Muldoon?"

  "You really gonna call a sixty-year-old lady?" Brown asked.

  "Peaches Muldoon, correct," Parker said. "If she was well-preserved at fifty, she's prolly still got it all in the right places. Where the fuck's the file?"

  "Look under Aging Nurses," Hawes said.

  "Look under Decrepit Broads," Brown said.

  "Yeah, bullshit, wait'll you see her picture," Parker said.

  The clock on the squadroom wall read 5:30 p.m.

  "Muldoon, here we go," Parker said, and yanked a thick file from the drawer.

  The telephone rang.

  "Who's catching?" Parker asked.

  "I thought you were," Brown said.

  "Me? No, no. You're up, Artie."

  Brown sighed and picked up the phone.

  "Eighty-Seventh Squad," he said, "Brown."

  "Artie, this is Dave downstairs."

  Sergeant Murchison, at the muster desk.

  "Yeah, Dave."

  "Adam Four just responded to a 10-20 on Culver and Ninth. Liquor store called Adams Wine Spirits."

  "Yeah?"

  "They got a homicide there."

  "Okay," Brown said.

  "You got some people out, don't you?"