Tricks

by Ed McBain

  "Yes."

  "Who? Can you take a look for me?"

  Brown reached across the desk for the duty chart.

  "Kling and Carella are riding together," he said. "Meyer and Genero are out solo."

  "Any idea which sectors?"

  "No."

  "Okay, I'll try to raise them."

  "Keep in touch."

  "Will do."

  Brown hung up.

  "What?" Hawes asked.

  "Homicide on Culver. There goes the neighborhood."

  The telephone rang again.

  "Take a look at this picture," Parker said, coming over to Brown's desk. "You ever see a body like this one?"

  "Eighty-Seventh Squad, Hawes."

  "Look at those tits," Parker said.

  "Hello, who am I talking to, please?" a woman's voice asked.

  "Detective Hawes."

  "Legs that won't quit," Parker said.

  "My husband's gone," the woman said.

  "Yes, ma'am," Hawes said, "let me give you the number for hellip;"

  "My name is hellip;"

  "It'll be best if you call Missing Persons, ma'am," Hawes said. "They're specially equipped to deal with hellip;"

  "He disappeared here inthis precinct," the woman said.

  "Still hellip;"

  "Does that look like a fifty-year-old broad?" Parker asked.

  The telephone rang again. Brown picked up.

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

  "Artie? This is Genero."

  "Yeah?"

  "Artie, you won't believe this."

  "What won't I believe?" Brown asked. He looked up at Parker, covered the mouthpiece, and whispered, "Genero."

  Parker rolled his eyes.

  "It happened again," Genero said.

  "My name is Marie Sebastiani," the woman on Hawes's phone said. "My husband is Sebastian the Great."

  Hawes immediately thought he was talking to a bedbug.

  "Ma'am," he said, "if your husband's really gone hellip;"

  "I'm at this restaurant, you know?" Genero said. "On Culver and Sixth?"

  "Yeah?" Brown said.

  "Where they had the holdup last night? I stopped by to talk to the owners?"

  "Yeah?"

  "My husband is a magician," Marie said. "He calls himself Sebastian the Great. He's disappeared."

  Good magician, Hawes thought.

  "And I go out back to look in the garbage cans?" Genero said. "See maybe somebody dropped a gun in there or something?"

  "Yeah?" Brown said.

  "I mean he'sreally disappeared," Marie said. "Vanished. I went out back of the high school where he was loading the car, and the car was gone, and so was Frank. And all his tricks were dumped in the driveway like hellip;"

  "Frank, ma'am?"

  "My husband. Frank Sebastiani. Sebastian the Great."

  "It happened again, Artie," Genero said. "I almost puked."

  "What happened again?"

  "Maybe he just went home, ma'am," Hawes said.

  "No, we live in the next state, he wouldn't have left without me. And his stuff was all over the driveway. I mean, expensivetricks ."

  "So what are you saying, ma'am?"

  "I'm saying somebody must've stolen the car and God knows what he did to Frank."

  "Artie?" Genero said. "Are you with me?"

  "I'm with you," Brown said, and sighed.

  "It was in one of the garbage cans, Artie."

  "What was in one of the garbage cans?"

  "Which high school is that, ma'am?" Hawes asked.

  "Herman Raucher High. On North Eleventh."

  "Are you there now?"

  "Yes. I'm calling from a pay phone."

  "You stay right there," Hawes said, "I'll get somebody to you."

  "I'll be waiting out back," Marie said, and hung up.

  "Artie, you better come over here," Genero said. "The Burgundy on Culver and Sixth."

  "What is it you found in hellip;?"

  But Genero had already hung up.

  Brown slipped into his shoulder holster.

  Hawes clipped his holster to his belt.

  Parker picked up the telephone receiver.

  "Peaches Muldoon, here I come," he said.

  5:40 P.M. on Halloween night, the streets dark for almost an hour now, the city off daylight savings time since the twenty-sixth of the month. All the little monsters and goblins and devils and bats out in force, carrying their shopping bags full of candy from door to door, yelling "Trick or Treat!" and praying no one would give them a treat with a double-edged razor blade in it.

  Brown looked at his watch.

  Along about now, his wife, Caroline, would be taking Connie around. His eight-year-old daughter had previewed her costume for him last night. She'd looked like the most angelic witch he'd ever seen in his life. All next week, there'd be sweets to eat. The only people who profited from Halloween were the candymakers and the dentists. Brown was in the wrong profession.

  He had chosen to walk to the Burgundy Restaurant on Culver and Sixth. It wasn't too far from the station house, and a cop mdash;if Genero could be considered one mdash;was already on the scene.

  The night was balmy.

  God, what an October this had been.

  Leaves still on the trees in the park, dazzling yellows and reds and oranges and browns, daytime skies a piercing blue, nighttime skies pitch-black and sprinkled with stars. In a city where itchy citizens took off their overcoats far too early each spring, it now seemed proper and fitting that there was no need to put them on again quite yet. He walked swiftly toward Culver, turning to glance at E.T. hurrying by with Frankenstein's monster on one side and Dracula on the other. Smiling, he turned the corner onto Culver and began walking toward Sixth.

  Genero was waiting on the sidewalk outside the restaurant.

  He looked pale.

  "What is it?" Brown asked.

  "Come on back," Genero said. "I didn't touch it."

  "Touch what?" Brown asked. But Genero was already walking up the alleyway on the right-hand side of the restaurant.

  Garbage cans flanked either side of the restaurant's back door, illuminated by an overhead flood light.

  "That one," Genero said.

  Brown lifted the lid on the can Genero was pointing to.

  The bloody upper torso of a human body was stuffed into the can, on top of a green plastic garbage bag.

  The torso had been severed at the waist from the rest of the body.

  The torso had no arms.

  And no head.

  "Why does this always happen to me?" Genero asked God.

  CHAPTER 2

  "I once found a hand in an airlines bag," Genero said.

  "No shit?" Monoghan asked without interest.

  Monoghan was a Homicide cop. He usually worked in tandem with his partner Monroe, but there had been two homicides in the Eight-Seven tonight, a few blocks apart from each other, and Monoghan was here behind the restaurant on Culver and Sixth, and Monroe was over at the liquor store on Culver and Ninth. It was a shame; Monoghan without Monroe was like a bagel without lox.

  "Cut off at the wrist," Genero said. "I almost puked."

  "Yeah, a person could puke, all right," Monoghan said.

  He was looking down into the garbage can where the bloody torso still rested on the green plastic bag.

  "Nothing but a piece of fresh meat here," he said to Brown.

  Brown had a pained look in his eyes. He merely nodded.

  "M.E. on the way?" Monoghan asked.

  "Called him ten minutes ago."

  "You won't need an ambulance for this one," Monoghan said. "All you'll need is a shopping bag."

  He laughed at his own little witticism.

  He sorely missed Monroe.

  "Looks like a man, don't it?" he said. "I mean, no knockers, all that hair on the chest."

  "This hand I found," Genero said, "it was a man's, too. A great big hand. I nearly puked."

 
; There were several uniformed cops in the alley now, and a couple of technicians sniffing around the back door of the restaurant, and a plainclothes lady cop from Photo taking her Polaroids. Crime Scene signs already up, even though thiswasn't a crime scene in the strictest sense of the word, in that the crime had almost certainly taken place elsewhere. All they had here was the detritus of a crime, a piece of fresh meat mdash;as Monoghan had called it mdash;lying in a garbage can, the partial remains of what had once been a human being. That and whatever clues may have been left by the person who'd transported the torso to this particular spot.

  "It's amazing the number of dismembered stiffs you get in this city," Monoghan said.

  "Oh, boy, you're tellingme ?" Genero said.

  Monoghan was wearing a black homburg, a black suit, a white shirt, and a black tie. His hands were in his jacket pockets, only the thumbs showing. He looked like a sad, neat undertaker. Genero was trying to look like a hip big-city detective disguised as a college boy. He was wearing blue slacks and a reindeer-patterned sweater over a sports shirt open at the throat. Brown penny loafers. No hat. Curly black hair, brown eyes. He resembled a somewhat stupid poodle.

  Monoghan looked at him.

  "You the one found this thing here?" he asked.

  "Well, yes," Genero said, wondering if he should have admitted this.

  "Any other parts in these other garbage cans?"

  "I didn't look," Genero said, thinking one part had been plenty.

  "Want to look now?"

  "Don't get prints on any of those garbage-can lids," one of the techs warned.

  Genero tented a handkerchief over his hand and began lifting lids.

  There were no other parts.

  "So all we got here is this chest here," Monoghan said.

  "Hello, boys," the M.E. said, coming up the alley. "What've we got here?"

  "Just this chest here," Monoghan said, indicating the torso.

  The M.E. peeked into the garbage can.

  "Very nice," he said, and put down his satchel. "Did you want me to pronounce it dead, or what?"

  "You could give us a postmortem interval, that'd be helpful," Monoghan said.

  "Autopsy'll give you that," the M.E. said.

  "Looks of this one," Monoghan said, "somebody alreadydone the autopsy. What'd he use, can you tell?"

  "Who?" the M.E. said.

  "Whoever cut him up in pieces."

  "He wasn't a brilliant brain surgeon, I can tell you that," the M.E. said, looking at the torn and jagged flesh where the head, arms, and lower torso had been.

  "So what was it? A cleaver? A hacksaw?"

  "I'm not a magician," the M.E. said.

  "Any marks, scars, tattoos?" Brown asked quietly.

  "None that I can see. Let me roll it over."

  Genero noticed that the M.E. kept referring to it as "it."

  The M.E. rolled it over.

  "None here, either," he said.

  "Nothing but a piece of fresh meat," Monoghan said.

  Hawes was wearing only a lightweight sports jacket over a shirt open at the throat, no tie, no hat. A mild breeze riffled his red hair; October this year was like springtime in the Rockies. Marie Sebastiani seemed uncomfortable talking to a cop. Most honest citizens did; it was the thieves of the world who felt perfectly at home with law-enforcement officers.

  Fidgeting nervously, she told him how she'd changed out of her costume and into the clothes she was now wearing mdash;a tweed jacket and skirt, a lavender blouse and high-heeled pumps mdash;while her husband, Sebastian the Great, a.k.a. Frank Sebastiani, had gone out behind the high school to load the car with all thelittle tricks he used in the act. And thenshe'd gone out back to where she was supposed to meet him, and the car was gone, and he was gone, and his tricks were scattered all over the driveway.

  "Bylittle tricks hellip;" Hawes said.

  "Oh, you know, the rings, and the scarves, and the balls, and the bird cage hellip; well, all this stuff all over the place here. Jimmy comes with the van to pick up the boxes and the bigger stuff."

  "Jimmy?"

  "Frank's apprentice. He's a jack of all trades, drives the van to wherever we're performing, helps us load and unload, paints the boxes when they need it, makes sure all the spring catches are working properly hellip; like that."

  "He dropped you both off today, did he?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "And helped you unload and all?"

  "Same as always."

  "And stayed for the performance?"

  "No, I don't know where he went during the performance. Probably out for a bite to eat. He knew we'd be done here around five, five-thirty."

  "So where is he now? Jimmy?"

  "Well, I don't know. What time do you have?"

  Hawes looked at his watch.

  "Five after six," he said.

  "Gee, I don't knowwhere he is," Marie said. "He's usually very punctual."

  "What timedid you get done here?" Hawes asked.

  "Like I said, around five-fifteen or so."

  "And you changed your clothes hellip;"

  "Yes. Well, so did Frank."

  "What does he wear on stage?"

  "Black tie and tails. And a top hat."

  "And he changed into?"

  "Is this important?"

  "Very," Hawes said.

  "Then let me get it absolutely correct," Marie said. "He put on a pair of blue slacks, and a blue sports shirt, no pattern on it, just the solid blue, and blue socks, and black shoes, and a hellip; what do you call it? Houndstooth, is that the weave? A sort of jagged little black and blue weave. A houndstooth sports jacket. No tie."