Tricks

by Ed McBain

  "Exactly what I am," she said. "How about it?"

  "No, you're too far gone," he said.

  Eyes on the mirror again. The blonde who'd been talking with Eileen earlier was back now, together with her frizzied brunette friend. Both of them young and looking for more action. His eyes checked them out. Stick with me, pal, she thought. Here's where the action is.

  "Are you a cop?" he asked without even looking at her.

  Mind-reader, she thought.

  "Sure," she said. "Are you a cop, too?"

  "I used to be," he said.

  Oh, shit, she thought. A renegade. Or a malcontent.

  "I can always tell a cop," he said.

  "You wanna see my badge?" she said.

  Deliberately using the word badge. A cop called it a shield.

  "Are you with Vice?" he asked.

  "Oh, man,am I," she said. "Clear down to my tonsils."

  "I used to be with Vice," he said.

  "SoI'm the one who caught myself a cop, huh?" she said, and smiled. "Well, Howie, that makes no difference to me at all, the past is the past, all water under the bridge. What do you say we take a little stroll up the street, I'll show you a real good hellip;"

  "Get lost," he said.

  "Let's get lost together, Howie," she said, and put her hand on his thigh.

  "You understand English?" he said.

  "French, too," she said. "Come on, Howie, give a working girl a hellip;"

  "Getlost !" he said.

  A command this time.

  Eyes blazing, big hands clenched on the bartop.

  "Sure," she said. "Relax."

  She got off the stool.

  "Relax, okay?" she said, and walked down to the other end of the bar.

  Inexplicably, her palms were wet.

  Guy sitting next to him at the bar was running a tab, twenty-dollar bill tucked under the little bowl of salted peanuts. Big flashy Texan sporting a diamond pinky ring, a shirt as loud as he himself was, and a black string tie held with one of those turquoise-and-silver Indian clasps. He was drinking martinis, and talking about soybeans. Said soybeans were the nation's future. No cholesterol in soybeans.

  "So what doyou do?" he asked.

  "I'm in insurance."

  Which wasn't too far from the truth. Soon as Marie made the insurance claim hellip;

  "Lots of money in insurance," the Texan said.

  "For sure."

  At double indemnity, the policy came to two hundred grand. More money than he could make in eight years' time.

  "By the way, my name's Abner Phipps," the Texan said, and extended a meaty hand.

  He took the hand. "Theo Hardeen," he said.

  "Nice to meet you, Theo. You gonna be in town long?"

  "Leaving tomorrow."

  "I'm stuck here all through next week," Phipps said. "I hate this city, I truly do. There're people who say it's a nice place to visit, but I can't even see it for that. Worth your life just walkin' the streets here. You see that thing on television tonight?"

  "What thing is that?"

  The black bartender was listening silently, standing some six feet away from them, polishing glasses. The clock on the wall read ten to eleven. Shows'd be breaking soon, he wanted to be ready for the crowd.

  "Somebody chopping up a body, leaving pieces of it all over town," Phipps said, and shook his head. "Bad enough youkill somebody, you got to chop him up in pieces afterward? Why you suppose he did that, Theo?"

  "Well, I'll tell you, Abner, there're all kinds of nuts in this world."

  "I mean, there're two rivers in this city, Theo. Why didn't he just throw the whole damnbody in one of them?"

  That's where the head is, he thought. And the hands.

  "Still," Phipps said, "if you got a body to get rid of, I guess it's easier to dump in sections. I mean, somebody sees you hauling a corpse around, that might raise suspicion, even inthis city. An arm, a head, whatever, you can just drop in a garbage can or down the sewer, nobody'll pay any attention to you, am I right, Theo?"

  "I guess maybe that's why he did it."

  "Well, who can figure the criminal mind?" Phipps said.

  "Not me, that's for sure. I have a hard enough time selling insurance."

  "Oh, I'll bet," Phipps said. "You know why? Nobody likes to think he's gonna kick off one day. You sit there tellin' him how his wife's gonna be sittin' pretty once he's dead, he don't want to hear that. He wants to think he's gonna live forever. I don't carehow responsible a man he is, it makes him uncomfortable talkin' about death benefits."

  "You hit it right on the head, Abner. I talk myself blue in the face, and half the time they're not even listening. Explain, explain, explain, they don't know what the hell I'm talking about."

  "People just don't listen anymore," Phipps said.

  "Or they don't listen carefully enough. They hear only what they want to hear."

  "That's for sure, Theo."

  "I'll give you an example," he said, and then immediately thought Come on, he's too easy. On the other hand, it might teach him a valuable lesson. Chatting up a stranger in a bar, no real sense of how many con artists were loose and on the prowl in this city. Teach him something he could take back home to Horse's Neck, Texas.

  He reached into his pocket, took out a dime and a nickel.

  "What have I got here?" he asked.

  "Fifteen cents," Phipps said.

  "Okay, open your hand."

  Phipps opened his hand.

  "Now I'm putting this dime and this nickel on the palm of your hand."

  "Yep, I see that, Theo."

  "And I'm not touching them anymore, they're in your hand now, am I right?"

  "Right there on the palm of my hand, Theo."

  "Now close your hand on them."

  Phipps closed his hand. The bartender was watching now.

  "You've got that fifteen cents in your fist now, am I right?"

  "Still there," Phipps said.

  "A dime and a nickel."

  "A dime and a nickel, right."

  "And I haven't touched them since you closed your hand on them, right?"

  "You haven't touched them, right."

  "Okay, I'll bet you when you open your hand, one of them won't be a dime."

  "Come on, Theo, you're lookin' to lose money."

  "Man's lookin' to lose money for sure," the bartender said.

  "I'll bet you the twenty dollars under that peanut bowl, okay?"

  "You got a bet," Phipps said.

  "Okay, open your hand."

  Phipps opened his hand. Fifteen cents still on his palm. Same dime, same nickel. The bartender shook his head.

  "You lose," Phipps said.

  "No, I win. What I said hellip;"

  "The bet was that one of these coins wouldn't be a dime no more."

  "No, you weren't listening. The bet was that one of them wouldn't be a dime."

  "That's just what hellip;"

  "And one of them isn't. One of them's a nickel."

  He slid the twenty-dollar bill from under the peanut bowl, and tucked it into his jacket pocket. "You can keep the fifteen cents," he said, and smiled and walked out of the bar.

  The bartender said, "That's a good trick to know, man."

  Phipps was still looking at the fifteen cents on the palm of his hand.

  Genero was a celebrity.

  And he was learning that a celebrity is expected to answer a lot of questions. Especially if he shot four teenagers. There were two people waiting to ask questions now. One was a roving investigative reporter from Channel 6. The other was a Duty Captain named Vince Annunziato, who was filling in for the Eight-Seven's Captain Frick. The reporter was interested only in a sensational news story. Annunziato was interested only in protecting the Department. He stood by silently and gravely while the reporter set up the interview; one sure way to get the media dumping on cops was to act like you had something to hide.

  "This is Mick Stapleton," the reporter said, "at the scene o
f a shooting on North Eleventh Street, here in Isola. I'm talking to Detective/Third Grade Richard Genero, who not forty-five minutes ago shot four teenagers who allegedly started a fire in the apartment building behind me."

  Annunziato caught the "allegedly." Protecting his ass in case this thing blew up to something like the Goetz shootings in New York. Guy with a hand-held camera aimed at Stapleton, another guy working some kind of sound equipment, third guy handling lights, you'd think they were shooting a Spielberg movie instead of a two-minute television spot. Crowds behind the police barriers. Ambulances already here and gone, carting away the four teenagers. Annunziato was happy they weren't black.

  "Detective Genero, can you tell us what happened here?" Stapleton asked.

  Genero blinked into the lights, looked at the red light on the front of the camera.

  "I was making a routine tour of the sector," he said. "This is Halloween night and the lieutenant put on extra men to handle any problems that might arise in the precinct."

  So far, so good, Annunziato thought. Care and caution on the part of the commanding officer, concern for the citizenry.

  "So you were driving past the building here hellip;"

  "Yes, and I saw the perpetrators running into the premises with objects in their hands."

  "What kind of objects?" Stapleton asked.

  Careful, Annunziato thought.

  "What turned out to be firebombs," Genero said.

  "But you didn't know that at the time, did you?"

  "All I knew was a roving band running into a building."

  "And this seemed suspicious to you?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Suspicious enough for you to draw your gun and hellip; ?"

  "I did not unholster my revolver until fire broke out in the premises."

  Good, Annunziato thought. Felony in progress, reason to yank the piece.

  "But when you first saw these youngsters, you didn't know they were carrying firebombs, did you?"

  "I found out when the fires went off inside there, and they came running out."

  "What did you do then?"

  "I drew my service revolver, announced that I was a policeman and warned them to stop."

  "And did they stop?"

  "No, sir, they threw one of the firebombs at me."

  "Is that when you shot at them?"

  "Yes, sir. When they ignored my warnings and came at me."

  Good, Annunziato thought. Proper procedure all the way down the line. Firearm used as a defensive weapon, not a tool of apprehension.

  "When you say they came at you hellip;"

  "They attacked me. Knocked me over and kicked me."

  "Were they armed?"

  Careful, Annunziato thought.

  "I did not see any weapons except the firebombs. But they had just committed a felony, and they were attacking me."

  "So you shot them."

  "As a last resort."

  Perfect, Annunziato thought.

  "Thank you, Detective Genero. For Channel Six News, this is Mick Stapleton on Eleventh Street."

  With the edge of his hand, Stapleton made a throat-slitting gesture to his cameraman, and a brief "Thanks, that was swell" to Genero, and then walked quickly to where the mobile van was waiting at the curb.

  Annunziato came over to where Genero was standing, looking surprised that it was over so fast.

  "Captain Annunziato," he said. "I've got the duty."

  "Yes, sir," Genero said.

  "You handled that okay," Annunziato said.

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Handledyourself okay with them four punks, too."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "But you better call home now, tell 'em we're taking you off the street."

  "Sir?"

  "Few questions we'll have to ask you downtown. Make sure we get all the facts before the bleeding hearts come out of the woodwork."

  "Yes, sir," Genero said.

  He was thinking the goddamn shift would be relieved at a quarter to twelve, but he'd be downtown answering questions all night.

  Train speeding through the night now, leaving behind the mills and factories just over the river, coming into rolling green land where you could see the lights of houses twinkling like it was Christmas instead of Halloween.

  By Christmas they'd be sitting fat and pretty in India someplace.

  Person could live on ten cents a day in India mdash;well, that was an exaggeration. But you could rent yourself a luxurious villa, staff it with all the servants you needed, live like royalty on just the interest the two hundred thousand would bring. New names, new lives for both of them. Never mind trying to live on the peanuts Frank had earned each year.

  She sighed heavily.

  She'd have to call his mother as soon as she got home, and then is sister, and then she guessed some of his friends in the business. Had to get in touch with that detective again, find out when she could claim the body, arrange for some kind of funeral, have to keep the casket closed, of course, she wondered how soon that would be. Today was Friday, she didn't know whether they did autopsies on the weekend, probably wouldn't get around to it till Monday morning. Maybe she could have the body by Tuesday, but she'd better call an undertaker first thing in the morning, make sure they could handle it. Figure a day in the funeral home mdash;well, two days, she guessed mdash;bury him on Thursday morning. She'd have to find a cemetery that had available plots, whatever you called them, maybe the undertaker would know about that. Had to have a stone cut, too, HERE LIES FRANK SEBASTIANI, REST IN PEACE mdash;but that could wait, there was no hurry about a stone.

  She'd call the insurance company on Friday morning.

  Tell them her husband had been murdered.

  Make her claim.

  She didn't expect any problems. Sensational case like this one? Already on television and in one of the early morning papers she'd bought at the terminal. MAGICIAN MURDERED, the headline read. Bigger headline than he'd ever had in his life. Had to get himself killed to get it.

  Two hundred thousand dollars, she thought.