Tricks

by Ed McBain

  "I'm assumin' you don't know how to read," Robinson said, "so I'll fill you in fast." He snatched the article off the bartop before it got too much scrutiny, folded it, put it back into his wallet again. Eileen sat looking bored. "Now what that article says, man, is that not even L.A.'s finest could lay a finger on me, is what that article says. An' the same applies right here inthis city, ain't no kinda law can touch me, ain't no kinda shitty bartender hellip;"

  "Iown this place!" Larry said.

  "You list'nin' to me, man, or you runnin' off at the mouth? I'm tellin you I don't cut my action with nobody, not the law, not nobody else runnin' girls, and most of all notyou ."

  "This ain't L.A.," Larry said.

  "Well, no shee-it?" Robinson said.

  "I mean, I got rules here, man."

  "You want me to shove your rules up your ass, man? Together with that jar of tomato juice? Man, don't tempt me. This little girl here, she's gonna sit here long as she likes, you dig, man? An' if I'm happy with the service she gets, then maybe I'll drop some other little girls off every now an' then, give this fuckin' dump some class." His wallet came out again. He threw a fifty-dollar bill on the counter. "This is for whatever she wants to drink. When that's used up, I'll be back with more. You better pray I don't come back with somethin' has a sharp end. You take my meanin', man?"

  Larry picked up the bill and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He figured he'd won a moral victory. "What's all this strong-arm shit?" he asked, smiling, playing to the crowd now, showing them he hadn't backed down. "We're two gentlemen here, can't we talk without threatening each other?"

  "Was you threatenin' me?" Robinson said. "I didn't hear nobody threatenin' me."

  "What I meant hellip;"

  "We finished here, man? You gonna treat Linda nice from now on?"

  "All I said to the lady hellip;"

  "What you said don't mean shit to me. I don't want no more phone calls from her."

  "I don't mind a nice-looking girl in the place," Larry said.

  "Good. An' I don't mind her bein' here," Robinson said, and grinned a big watermelon-eating grin. He put his hand on Eileen's shoulder again. "Now, honey," he said, "go easy on the sauce. 'Cause Daddy got some nice candy for you when the night's done."

  "See you, Torp," she said, and offered her cheek for his kiss.

  Robinson gave Larry a brief, meaningful nod, and then did his cool pimp shuffle over to the door and out to the white Cadillac at the curb.

  From the other end of the bar, Annie said, "I wishI had a man like that."

  The third liquor-store holdup took place while Alvin Robinson was doing his little dog-and-pony act for the owner of Larry's Bar, but the blues didn't respond till nine-thirty, and Carella and Meyer didn't arrive at the scene till nine thirty-five, by which time Robinson was already driving back toward the Seventy-Third Precinct.

  This time, nobody had been killed mdash;but not for lack of trying. Martha Frey, the forty-year-old woman who owned and operated the store on Culver and Twentieth, told them that four of them mdash;wearing clown suits, and pointed pom-pommed clown hats, and white clown masks with bulbous red noses and wide grinning red mouths mdash;had started shooting the minute they walked in. She'd grabbed for her heart and fallen down behind the counter in what she hoped was a very good imitation of someone who'd been mortally wounded. It had occurred to her, while they were cleaning out the cash register, that one of them might decide to put a "coop dee gracie," as she called it, in her head while she was lying there playing possum. None of them had. She considered it a miracle that she was still alive, four little guns opening up that way, all of them at the same time. She wondered if maybe they'd hit her after all. Was it possible she was now in shock and didn't know she'd been hit? Did the detectives see any blood on her?

  Meyer assured her that she was still in one piece.

  "I can't believe they missed me," she said, and made the sign or the cross. "God must have been watching over me."

  Either that, or they were nervous this time around, Carella thought. Three times in the space of four hours, even your seasoned pro could spook. No less a handful of grade-schoolers.

  "Did you see who was driving the car?" Carella asked.

  "No," Martha said. "I was tallying the register for the night. I usually close at nine on Fridays, but this is Halloween, there's lots of parties going on, people run short of booze, they make a last-minute run to the store. This was maybe twenty after when they came in."

  The Mobile Lab van was pulling up outside the store.

  "Techs'll be here a while," Carella said. "They'll want to see if there's anything on that register."

  "There ain't anythingin it, that's for sure," Martha said mournfully.

  "Did they say anything to you?" Meyer asked. "When they came in?"

  "Just 'Trick or Treat!' Then they started shooting."

  "Didn't say, 'This is a stickup,' anything like that?"

  "Nothing."

  "Hello, boys," one of the techs said. "Kiddy time again?"

  "School let out again?" the other tech said.

  "How about when they were cleaning out the register?" Meyer asked, ignoring them.

  "One of them said, 'Hold it open, Alice.' I guess he meant the shopping bag."

  "Alice?" Carella said. "A girl?"

  "A woman, yes," Martha said.

  Carella thought this was carrying feminism a bit too far.

  "Well, this little girl hellip;" he started to say, but Martha broke in at once.

  "Awoman ," she said. "Not a little girl. These weren'tchildren , Detective Carella, they weremidgets ."

  He looked at her.

  "I used to work the high-wire with Ringling," she said. "Broke my hip in a fall, quit for good. But I still know midgets when I see them. These weremidgets ."

  "What'd I tell you, Baz?" one of the techs said. "I shoulda taken your bet."

  "Midgets," the other tech said. "I'll be a son of a bitch."

  Me, too, Carella thought.

  But now they knew what they were looking for.

  And now they had a pattern.

  Peaches and Parker were the only ones not in costume.

  "What are you supposed to be?" a man dressed like a cowboy asked.

  "I'm a cop," Parker said.

  "I'm a victim," Peaches said.

  "I'll be damned," the cowboy said.

  Parker showed his shield to everyone he met.

  "Looks like the real McCoy," a pirate said.

  Peaches lifted her skirt and showed a silent-movie director a black-and-blue mark on her thigh.

  "I'm a victim," she said.

  She had got the black-and-blue mark banging against a table on her way to the bathroom one night.

  The silent-movie director, who was wearing jodhpurs and carrying a megaphone, said, "That's some leg, honey. You wanna be in pictures?"

  The girl with him was dressed as Theda Bara. "That's an anagram for Arab Death," she said.

  Parker looked into the front of her clingy, satin, low-cut dress, and said, "You're under arrest," and showed her his shield.

  In the kitchen, Dracula and Superman and Scarlett O'Hara and Cleopatra were snorting cocaine.

  Parker didn't show them his shield. Instead, he snorted a few lines with them.

  Peaches said, "You're kinda fun for a cop."

  This was the first time in a good many years that anyone had told Parker he was kind of fun, for a cop or anything else. He hugged her close.

  She went, "Oooooo."

  A white man in blackface, dressed as Eddie Murphy dressed as the Detroit detective inBeverly Hills Cop said, "I'm a cop," and showed Parker a fake shield.

  "I'll go along quietly," Parker said, and hugged Peaches again.

  "Way I figure it," Kling said, "we go over there soon as we're relieved. Maybe get to the Zone around midnight, a little after."

  "Uh-huh," Hawes said, and looked up at the wall clock.

  Ten minutes to ten. Less than two ho
urs before the relieving shift began filtering in.

  "They don't even need to know we're there," Kling said. "We take one of the sedans, just cruise the streets."

  They were sitting at his desk, talking in whispers. Across the room, Brown was getting a description of Jimmy Brayne. He was right now ready to bet the farm that Sebastian the Great's apprentice was the one who'd done him in and chopped him up in pieces.

  "This guy's extremely dangerous," Kling said. "Juked three people already."

  "And you think they may need help, huh?" Hawes said. "Annie and Eileen?"

  "More the merrier," Kling said.

  "White or black?" Brown asked.

  "White," Marie said.

  "His age?"

  "Thirty-two."

  "Height?"

  "About six feet."

  "Annie never even mentioned she was going out on this," Hawes said. "I talked to her must've been hellip;"

  "She didn't get the call from Homicide till late this afternoon. That's the thing of it, Cotton. They pulled this whole damn thing out of a Cracker Jack box."

  "Weight?" Brown said.

  "About a hundred and eighty? Something like that."

  "Color of hair?"

  "Black."

  "Eyes?"

  "Brown."

  "I mean, wouldyou go out there with only two backups?" Kling said. "Where the guy's armed with a knife, and already boxed three people?"

  "Those don't sound like bad odds," Hawes said. "Three to one? All three of them loaded. Against only a knife."

  "Only, huh? My point is, if Annie and this Shanahan guy stay too close to her," Kling said, "he won't make his move. So they have to keep their distance. But if he breaks out, who's covering the backfield?"

  "Any identifying scars, marks, or tattoos?" Brown asked.

  "Not that I know of."

  "Any regional accent or dialect?"

  "He's from Massachusetts. He sounds a little like the Kennedys."

  "What was he wearing when you left the house today?"

  "Let me think."

  She was sitting on a bench under the squadroom bulletin board, her hands folded on her lap. Her face was still tear-stained. Brown had one foot up on the bench, a clipboard resting on his knee. He waited.

  "Blue jeans," she said. "And a woolen sweater, no shirt. A V-necked sweater. Sort of rust-colored. And sneakers. And hellip; white socks, I think. Oh, yes. He wears a sort of medallion around his neck. A silver medallion, I think he won it in a swim meet. A high school swim meet."

  "Wears it all the time?"

  "I've never seen him without it."

  "Have you discussed this with Eileen?" Hawes asked.

  "Yeah, I mentioned it at dinner," Kling said.

  "Told her you want to go over there?"

  "Yeah."

  "To the Zone?"

  "Yeah."

  "What'd she say?"

  "She told me she could handle it."

  "But you don't think she can, huh?"

  "I think she can handle it better with a few more people on the job. They shoulda known that themselves, Homicide. And also the Seven-Two. Putting two women on the street against hellip;"

  "Plus Shanahan."

  "Well, I don't know this Shanahan, do you?"

  "No, but hellip;"

  "For all I know hellip;"

  "But you can't automatically figure he's a hairbag."

  "I don't know what he is. Ido know he's not gonna care as much about Eileen asI care about her."

  "Maybe that's the problem," Hawes said.

  "Does he wear a wristwatch?" Brown asked.

  "Yes," Marie said.

  "Would you know what kind?"

  "One of those digital things. Black with a black band. A Seiko, I think. I'm not sure."

  "Any other jewelry?"

  "A ring. He wears it on his right pinky. A little gold ring with a red stone. I don't think it's a ruby, but it looks like one."

  "Is he right-handed or left-handed?"

  "I don't know."

  "What do you mean?" Kling said.

  "I mean, why don't you leave it to them?" Hawes said.

  Kling looked at him.

  "They're experienced cops, all of them. If Homicide or the Seven-Two hasn't put an army out there, it's maybe 'cause they think they'll spook him."

  "I don't see how two more guys is gonna make anarmy ," Kling said.

  "These guys can smell traps," Hawes said, "they're like animals in the jungle. Anyway, they'll be carrying walkie-talkies, won't they? Annie, Shanahan? Maybe even Eileen. There'll be rmp's cruising the Zone, they're not gonna be alone out there. Any one of 'em calls in a 10-13 hellip;"

  "I don't want her getting cut again," Kling said.

  "You thinkshe wants to get cut again?" Hawes said.

  "Tell me what happened before you left the house today," Brown said. "Was he behaving differently in any way?"

  "Same as always," Marie said.

  "Did he get along okay with your husband?"

  "Yes. Well, he wants to be a magician, you see. He studies all the tricks the famous magicians did mdash;Dai Vernon, Blackstone, Audley Walsh, Tommy Windsor, Houdini, Ballantine mdash;all of them. He keeps up with all the new people, too, tries to dope out their tricks. And my husband is hellip;"

  Her face almost broke.

  "My husband hellip; was hellip; very patient with him. Always willing to explain a sleight, or a pocket trick, or a stage illusion hellip; helping him with his patter hellip; taking the time to hellip; to hellip; show him and hellip; and guide him. I don't know how he could've done something like this. I'll tell you the truth, Detective Brown, I'm willing to give you anything you need to find Jimmy, but I can't believe he did this."

  "Well,we don't know that for sure, either," Brown said.

  "That's just what I mean," Marie said. "I just pray to God something hasn't happened tohim , too. I just hope somebody hasn't hellip; hasn't killed themboth ."