Tricks

by Ed McBain

  "Torpedo Holmes," Eileen said.

  "Is he black, or what?"

  "Black."

  "Yeah, mine, too. Lou was white. I think the white ones are meaner, I really do. Lou used to beat the shit out of me. That first time, after the guy from Ohio, you know, where I didn't know what to do, Lou beat me so I couldn't walk. Had a dozen of his buddies come up the next morning, one after the other, twelve of them, teach the little hayseed from Baltimore how to suck a cock. Broke in my ass, too. That was when Ireally got turned out, believe me. The guy from Ohio was child's play. In fact, everything after that night with Lou's buddies was child's play."

  "Yeah, they can be rotten when they want to," Eileen said.

  Guy sitting there talking to Annie was the other possibility, though she doubted Shanahan would've made such obvious contact. Brown eyes, but those could be contacts if he was playing this real fancy. Wearing a plaid jacket that made him look wider than Shanahan. Sitting on a stool, so Eileen couldn't tell how tall he was. But he was a possibility.

  "This guy I got now hellip; you know Ham Coleman?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Hamilton? Hamilton Coleman?"

  "Yeah, maybe."

  "Black as his name. Coal, you know. Coleman. Hung like a stallion, likes to parade around the pad with only a towel around him, dares the girls to snatch it off. Quick as a bullfighter. You snatch off the towel, he gives you a little treat. My poison is still hoss mdash;well, you know, that's what Lou hooked me on. But some of the girls mdash;there's six of us with him mdash;they dig the nose candy, and he gets them whatever they need, good stuff too, I think he has Colombian connections. It's like a game he plays with the towel, snatch it off, suck his big dick, he lays the dope on you. I mean, it's just a game, 'cause he keeps us supplied very nice, anyway. It's kind of cute, though, the way he struts around in that towel. He's really okay. Ham Coleman. You ever think of moving, you might want to come over. We don't have any redheads. That your real hair?"

  "Yeah," Eileen said.

  " 'Cause mine is straight from a bottle," Sheryl said, and laughed.

  She still had a little-girl's laugh. Twenty-two years old, hooked on heroin, in the life since she was seventeen. Thought Ham Coleman with his towel was "kind of cute."

  "What I'm really hoping for hellip; well, this is just adream , I know," she said, and rolled her eyes, "but I keep asking Ham about it all the time, who knows, it might really come true one day. I keep asking him to set us up like real call girls, you know, hundred-buck tricks, maybe two hundred, never mind dropping us here in the Zone where we're like commonwhores , you know what I mean? I mean, you and me, we're just common whores, ain't we? When you get right down to it?"

  "Uh-huh. And what does he say?"

  "Oh, he says we ain't got the class yet to be racehorses. I tell him class, shit. A blowjob's a blowjob. He says we still got a lot to learn, all six of us. He says maybe in time he'll set up a class operation like what I got in mind. So I tell himwhen? When we're all scaley-legged hookers, thirty, forty years old? Excuse me, I guess maybe you're in your thirties, I didn't mean no offense, Linda."

  "Don't worry about it," Eileen said.

  "Well, we all have our dreams, don't we?" Sheryl said, and sighed. "My dream when I first came to this city was I'd become an actress, you know? I was in a lot of plays in high school, in Baltimore, I figured I could make it big as an actress here. Well, that was just a dream. Like being a hundred-dollar call girl is probably just a dream, too. Still, you got to have dreams, am I right? Otherwise hellip;"

  "You girls gonna sit here talking to each other all night?"

  The man standing by the table had padded up so quietly that he startled both of them. Blond guy, Eileen figured him at five-eleven, around a hundred and seventy pounds, just like Shanahan Wearing dark glasses, she couldn't see the color of his eyes. The blond hair could be a wig. Moved a bit like Shanahan, too, maybe hewas Shanahan. If so, he'd just won the bet. One thing he wasn't was the killer. Not unless he'd lost three, four inches, thirty pounds, a pair of eyeglasses, and a tattoo near his right thumb.

  He pulled out a chair.

  "Martin Reilly," he said, and sat. "What's a nice Irish lad doing in a joint like this, right?"

  Voice heavier than Shanahan's. Calm's Point accent. Turtle Bay section, most likely. Lots of Irish families still there.

  "Hi, Morton," Sheryl said.

  "Martin," he corrected at once.

  "Ooops, sorry," Sheryl said. "I'm Sheryl, I know just how you feel. When people call me Shirley, it really burns my ass."

  "You know what really burns my ass?" Reilly said.

  "Sure. People calling you Morton."

  "No," Reilly said. "A little fire about this high."

  He held out his hand, palm down, to indicate a fire only high enough to burn a man's ass.

  "That one has hair on it," Eileen said, looking bored.

  "Like the palm of my hand," Reilly said, and grinned. "All those months at sea, ladies, a man marries his hand."

  Still grinning. Rows of even white glistening teeth, the better to eat you with, my dear. If Shanahan had capped teeth like that, he'd be starring on Hill Street Blues.

  >

  "You just get in?" Sheryl asked.

  "Docked tonight."

  "From where?"

  Lebanon."

  "Ain't there no girls there in Lebanon?" Sheryl said, and rolled her eyes.

  "Not like you two," he said.

  "Oooo, my," she said, and leaned over the table so he could look into the front of her blouse. "So what are you looking for?" she asked, getting straight to the point. "A handjob's fifteen," she said, quoting high, "a blowjob's twenty-five, and Miss Puss is forty."

  "How about your friend here? What's your name, honey?" he asked, and put his hand on Eileen's thigh.

  "Linda," she said.

  She let his hand stay on her thigh.

  "That means beautiful in Spanish."

  "So they tell me."

  "How much for both of you? Do I get a better price for both of?

  "You're getting a bargain as it is," Sheryl said.

  "Tell you what," Reilly said, and slipped his hand up under Eileen's skirt. "I'll give you hellip;"

  "Mister," Eileen said, and caught his hand at the wrist. "You ain't given usnothing yet, so don't grope the goods, okay?"

  "I'm sampling it."

  "You get what you see, you don't need samples. This ain't a grocery store honors coupons."

  Reilly laughed. He folded his hands on the table top.

  "Okay, let's talk numbers," he said.

  "We're listening," Sheryl said, and glanced at Eileen.

  "Fifty for the both of you," Reilly said. "Around the world."

  "You talking fifty foreach of us?" Sheryl said.

  "I saidboth of you. Twenty-five each."

  "No way," Sheryl said at once.

  "Okay, make itthirty each. And you throw in a little entertainment."

  "What kinda entertainment?" Sheryl asked.

  "I wanna see you go down on the redhead here."

  Sheryl looked at Eileen appraisingly.

  "I hardly know her," she said.

  "So? You'll get to know her."

  Sheryl thought it over.

  "Make it fifty apiece, we'll give you a good show," she said.

  "That's too much," he said.

  "Then fuck off," Sheryl said. "You're wasting our time here."

  "I'll tell you what," Reilly said. "I'll make it forty apiece, how's that?"

  "What are you?" Sheryl said. "A Lebanese rug merchant?"

  Reilly laughed again.

  "Forty-five," he said. "For each of you. And a ten-dollar bonus for whoever brings me off first."

  "Count me out," Eileen said.

  "What's the matter?" Reilly asked, looking offended. "That's a fair and honest deal."

  "It really is, you know," Sheryl said.

  "Sheryl can show you a good time all by hers
elf," Eileen said, doing a fast tap dance. "I don't work doubles."

  "Then what the fuck were we talking about here?" Reilly asked.

  "You were doing all the talking," Eileen said. "I was only listening."

  Reilly dismissed her at once.

  "You got any other girlfriends in here?" he asked Sheryl.

  "How about the frizzied brunette over there?" she said.

  Reilly looked over to where the brunette was still in conversation with one of the other Shanahan possibilities.

  "That's Gloria," Sheryl said. "I worked with her before."

  "Is she a muff-diver?" Reilly said. "Or is she like your friend here?"

  "Sheloves pussy," Sheryl said, lying. "You want me to talk to her?"

  "Yeah, go talk to her."

  "That's forty-five apiece," Sheryl said, cementing the deal, and a ten-buck bonus." She was figuring they'd do a little show, and take turns blowing him, and share the extra ten for fifty each. Which wouldn't be bad for an hour's work. Maybe less than an hour if he'd been at sea as long as he'd said. "A hundred in all, right?"

  "A hundred is what I said, ain't it?"

  "It's just I have to tell Gloria," Sheryl said, and got up, long leg and thigh flashing in the slit skirt. "Don't go away, honey," she said, and walked over to the other table.

  "You're in the wrong business," Reilly said to Eileen.

  Maybe I am, Eileen thought.

  There were four liquor stores on Culver Avenue between the last one hit on Twentieth, and the eastern edge of the precinct territory on Thirty-Fifth. After that, it was the neighboring precinct's problem, and welcome to it. They drove up Culver to the last store, and then doubled back to the one on Twenty-Third. The digital dashboard clock read 10:32 p.m.

  The store was empty except for a man behind the counter who was slitting open a carton of Jack Daniels sour mash. He looked up when the bell over the door sounded, saw a burly bald-headed guy and another big guy with him, and immediately placed his hand on the stock of the shotgun under the counter.

  "What'll it be, gents?" he asked.

  Hand still on the shotgun stock, finger inside the trigger guard now.

  Meyer flashed the potsy.

  "Police," he said.

  The hand under the counter relaxed.

  "Detective Meyer," he said. "Detective Carella. Eighty-Seventh Squad."

  "What's the problem?" the man said.

  He was in his early fifties, not quite as bald as Meyer, but getting there. Brown eyes, slight build, wearing a gray cotton work jacket with the words ALAN'S WHISKIES stitched in red on the breast pocket.

  "Who are we talking to, sir?" Meyer asked.

  "I'm Alan Zuckerman."

  "Is this your store, sir?"

  "It is."

  "Mr. Zuckerman," Carella said, "there've been three liquor-store holdups on Culver Avenue tonight. Starting on Ninth and working uptown. If there's a pattern mdash;and there may not be mdash;your store's next in line."

  "I'm closing in half an hour," Zuckerman said, and turned to look at the clock on the wall behind the counter.

  "They may come in before then," Meyer said.

  "You don't know me, huh?" Zuckerman said.

  "Should I know you?" Meyer said.

  "Alan Zuckerman. I was in all the papers last year this time." He looked at Carella. "Youdon't know me, either, do you?"

  "I'm sorry, sir, I don't."

  "Some cops," Zuckerman said.

  Meyer glanced at Carella.

  "This very precinct, they don't know me."

  "Why should we know you, sir?" Carella asked.

  "Because last October I shot two people came in the store to rob me," Zuckerman said.

  "Oh," Carella said.

  "Withthis !" Zuckerman said, and yanked the shotgun from under the counter.

  Both detectives backed away.

  "Bang!" Zuckerman said, and Meyer flinched. "One of them falls on the floor screaming!Bang , the other barrel! And the second one goes down!"

  "I seem to recall that now," Meyer said. "Mr. Zuckerman, you can put up the shotgun now, okay?"

  "Made all the papers," Zuckerman said, the gun still in his hands, his finger inside the trigger guard. "Shotgun Zuckerman, they called me, the papers. They had the story on television, too. Nobody tried no tricks here since, I can tell you that. It's been a year already, a little more than a year."

  "Well, these people tonight," Meyer said, "Mr. Zuckerman, could you please put up the gun?"

  Zuckerman slid the gun under the counter again.

  "Thank you," Meyer said. "These people tonight, there are four of them. All of them armed. So your shotgun there, if all four of them start shooting hellip;"

  "Shotgun Zuckerman can take care of them, don't worry."

  "What we were thinking," Carella said, "is maybe we could lend you a hand."

  "Sort of ride shotgun to your shotgun," Meyer said, nodding.

  "Backups, sort of," Carella said.

  "Only in case you need us."

  "Otherwise we'll butt out."

  Zuckerman looked at them.

  "Listen," he said at last, "you want to waste your time, that's fine by me."

  He yanked the phone from the receiver the moment it rang.

  "Hello?" he said.

  "Hi," Marie said.

  "Where are you?"

  "Metro West. I'm catching the ten forty-five home."

  "How'd it go?"

  "Tough night," she said. "Any trouble on your end?"

  "Nope. They made identification, huh? I saw it on television."

  "I was the one who made it. Where'd you leave the Citation?"

  "Behind an A P near the river."

  " 'Cause I don't think they found it yet."

  "Who's on the case?"

  "A salt-and-pepper team. Brown and Hawes. Big redhead, big black guy. In case they come snooping."

  "Why would they?"