Ed McBain - Downtown (17 page)

Here we are again on the streets of Fabulous Downtown New York, Michael thought, with the fun just about to begin, folks, because my arm is bleeding very badly, and there are two cops chasing us with guns in their hands, and I can't shoot at either one of them because I'm as innocent as the day is long, which so far happens to be the longest day in my life.

He told himself he could not afford to pass out, even though his arm was killing him--where was the address book, had Connie picked up the address book? Charlie Nichols was in that book and Charlie just might know what the hell was going on here. If this were a War Movie, which with all this shooting it was beginning to resemble a lot, he'd have told the Chinese girl guiding him through enemy lines to go

on without him, he was hurt too bad and

251 he wasn't going to make it. Or if this were a Show Biz Movie, he'd have told his Chinese dancing partner to accept the job Ziegfeld had offered because he himself was only a second-rate hoofer who didn't want to stand in her way. But this wasn't a movie at all, this was real life, and so he clung to Connie's hand as if he were hanging outside a tenth-story window with nothing but her support between him and the pavement below. Behind him, he heard Nelson yelling like a fucking Cong Jap, "We don't wanna hurt you, Barnes," although he'd already hurt Michael pretty badly. They had almost reached the sidewalk now.

"Police!" someone yelled. "Freeze!" They both stopped dead in their tracks. A green-and-white car was at the curb.

The lettering on it read SIXTH PRECINCT.

Two uniformed cops in what looked like padded blue parkas with fake-fur collars were running toward them. "Freeze!" one of them shouted again. "Police!" the other one shouted. Still running toward them. "Drop those guns!" one of them yelled. What? Michael thought. And then he realized that these nice police officers had heard gunfire, and had pulled their car to the curb and had seen a bleeding man and a nice Chinese woman running out of this nice little Welsh lane here, and chasing them were a menacing tall guy and an equally menacing short guy in bowling jackets, both of them screaming, and each of them with a gun in his hand. Michael wondered if Nelson and Leibowitz would turn to flash the yellow SEVENTH PRECINCT BOWLING TEAM lettering on their jackets.

But Connie was rushing him away from the alley. This was some city, this city. Here was a man bleeding from a bullet wound in his left arm, the blood staining the sleeve of his overcoat--though admittedly the coat was a dark blue and the blood merely showed on it as a darker purplish stain--being rushed into a taxi by a gorgeous Chinese girl, and nobody on the street batted an eyelash. Michael found this amazing. In Sarasota, if you belched in

public, you got a standing ovation.

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The cab driver said, "What is that there? Is that blood there?"

"Yes, my husband just got shot," Connie said. "Sure, ha-ha," the cabbie said. Michael realized she had called him her husband.

He tried the name for size: Mrs. Michael Barnes. Constance Barnes. Connie Barnes. "So what _really happened?" the cabbie wanted to know.

"We were walking down the street minding our own business," Connie said, "when this man came along from the opposite direction with a tiger on a leash."

"Boy oh boy," the cabbie said, shaking his head, watching her in the rearview mirror.

"So my husband told him he thought that was against the law, having a tiger on a leash ..." Again. She'd said it again. "... and the man said, `Sic him!`" "To the tiger?" "Yes."

"Sheeesh," the cabbie said. "What a city, huh?" "You said it," Connie said.

"So what'd the tiger do? This musta been a trained tiger, huh?"

"Oh, yes. He jumped on my husband." "An attack tiger, huh?" "Oh, yes."

"Mauled him, I'll bet. Your husband." "Exactly what happened."

"Sheeesh," the cabbie said again. "What was his name?"

"I don't know. He was a tall, dark man wearing ..." "No, I mean the tiger." "Why do I have to know the tiger's name?" "So you can report this to the police." "I don't think I heard his name." "Then how you gonna identify him? All tigers look alike, you know." "I know, but ..."

"So you have to know his name. If the police should ask you his name."

"Well, why would they do that? I mean,

255 I don't think there are too many tigers on leashes in this city, do you?" "Who knows? There could be." "I mean, have _you ever seen a tiger on a leash in this city?"

"I'm just now hearing about one, ain't I?" the cabbie said. "His name was Stripe," Connie said.

Michael was thinking that everybody in this city was crazy.

"That's a good name for a tiger," the cabbie said. "So what's this address on Pell Street? A doctor?" "No, it's where I live," Connie said. "'Cause don't you think you ought to see a doctor?" "I want to look at it first." "Are _you perhaps a doctor, lady?" "No, but ..."

"Then what good is it gonna do, _you looking at it?" "Because if it looks bad, _then I can call a doctor."

"On Christmas Day? This is Christmas Day, lady." "I'll call a Chinese doctor." "Do _they work on Christmas Day?" "Yes, if they're Buddhists." "Look, suit yourself, lady," the cabbie said. "You want a Buddhist doctor, go get a Buddhist doctor." He was silent for the rest of the trip to her apartment. Michael guessed he was offended. When they got to Connie's building, he pocketed the fare and her generous tip, and then said, "Also, they got rabies, you know. Them attack tigers." Michael himself was beginning to believe he'd really been attacked by a tiger. As he got out of the cab, he looked up and down the street in both directions, to make sure there weren't any more of them around. He also looked up toward the roof to make sure one of them wasn't going to jump down into the street from up there. He got a little dizzy looking up. He swayed against Connie, suddenly feeling very weak. But he did not pass out until they were safe inside the apartment. "Ah, ah, ah," the doctor said. He looked like Fu Manchu.

A scarecrow of a man with a long,

257 straggly beard and little rimless eyeglasses. He wasn't wearing silken robes or anything, he was in fact wearing a dark suit and a white shirt and a tie with mustard stains on it, but there was something about his manner that seemed dynastic. He was bent over Michael, his stethoscope to Michael's heart. Michael's shirt was open. He had bled through the bandage Connie had put on his arm before calling the doctor. The sheet under him was stained with blood. The doctor moved the stethoscope. He listened to Michael's lungs. "Very good," he said. "Yes?" Connie said. "Yes, the bullet did not go through his lungs."

"Perhaps because he was shot in the arm," Connie said respectfully. "Ah, ah, ah," the doctor said. His name was Ling.

He took the bandage off Michael's arm. "Mmm, mmm, mmm," he said. "Is it bad?" Connie asked. "Someone shot him in the arm," Ling said.

"Is the bullet still in there?" Connie asked.

"No, no," Ling said, "it's a nice clean wound." Good, Michael thought. "Good," Connie said.

"You'll be able to play tennis in a week or so," Ling said, and chuckled. "Are you left-handed?" "No."

"Then you'll be able to play tennis tomorrow," he said, and chuckled again. Michael watched as Ling worked on his arm. He was wondering if he planned on reporting this to the police. He felt certain that reporting gunshot wounds was mandatory. "How did this happen?" Ling asked.

He was sprinkling what Michael guessed was some kind of sulfa drug on the wound. In the field, you stripped a sulfapak and slapped it on the wound immediately. In the field, people were spitting blood on you while you worked. In the field, everyone got to be a doctor. You lost a lot of patients in the field.

"We were walking down the street minding our own business," Connie said, "when this man came along from the opposite direction with a gun in his hand." "Ah, ah, ah," Ling said.

"So Michael said to the man ..."

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"Excuse me, but is this your husband?" Ling asked. "Not yet," Michael said. Connie looked at him. Ling looked at them both.

"You must be cautious," Ling said. "There are many problems in East-West marriages." "Like what?" Michael asked. "Like food, for example," Ling said.

"But I like Chinese food," Michael said. "Exactly," Ling said. "I see," Michael said. "So what did you say to this man?" "Which man?" "The one who shot you." "Oh." "What he said," Connie said, "is that he thought it was against the law to be walking down the street with a gun in your hand." Not in Florida, Michael thought. Florida was the Wild West these days.

Though not as much as New York seemed to be. "So the man shot him," Connie said. "Tch, tch, tch," Ling said.

"Are you going to report this?" Connie asked flatly. Ling looked at her. "Are we both Chinese?" he asked.

"I'm only walking wounded," Michael said. "And walking wounded are allowed to walk." Dr. Ling had bandaged his arm neatly and tightly, and it was no longer bleeding and certainly in no danger of becoming infected unless Michael went rolling around in the dirt someplace. Moreover, it hardly hurt at all now, so what he wanted to do ...

"No," Connie said. "What we're going to do is I'll go down for some food and we'll eat here in the apartment and I'll call Charlie Wong and tell him I'm not feeling good and won't be able to work tonight. Then you'll go to bed and get some ..." "No," Michael said. "Dr. Ling said you have to rest."

"Dr. Ling isn't wanted for murder. What I want to do is go see this Charlie Nichols person ..." "No. You can call him on the phone if you like, but I won't let ..."

"I don't _want to call him on the

261 phone. Every time I talk to somebody on the phone, the police show up in the next ten minutes. I am wanted for _murder, Connie! Can't you ...?was "You're yelling at me," she said. "Yes. Because you're behaving like a ..."

"We're having our first argument," she said, grinning.

"Let's go see Charlie Nichols," he said.

She did not want to ask Charlie Wong for the use of a limousine because she had already called to tell him she was sick. She did not want to go to a car rental place because she suspected the police would have contacted all such places and asked them to be on the lookout for the wanted desperado Michael Barnes. So she went to Shi Kai, who ran the restaurant downstairs.

Mr. Shi had a car he only drove during the summer months. The rest of the time, it sat idle in a garage he rented on Canal. That was because the car was a 1954 Oldsmobile convertible with a mechanism that had broken while the top was in the down position. Mr. Shi handed the keys over to Connie and told her not to freeze to death. Michael was beginning to understand that Connie had a great many friends in New York City's Chinese community, all of whom seemed willing to perform all sorts of favors for her. This may have been only because she was Chinese, but he suspected it was because she was extraordinarily beautiful as well. He loved the way she wore her beauty.

His former wife, Jenny, was beautiful, too, if you considered long blonde hair and green eyes and a spectacular figure beautiful, which apparently not only Michael had considered beautiful but all of Harvard's football team while he was in Vietnam, and most recently the branch manager and God knew who else at Suncoast Federal. But Jenny _flaunted her beauty, wearing it like a Miss America who was certain her smile would bring her fame, fortune, and a good seat at Van Wezel Hall, which was Sarasota's big contribution to Florida culture, such as it was. It had sickened Michael every time Jenny gently placed her hand on someone's arm and leaned in close to flash that incandescent smile of hers, and the person--male

_or female--melted into a gushing pool

263 of gratitude and awe. Jenny knew without question that wherever she and Michael went, she was the most beautiful woman in the room. This was true. An indisputable fact. You could no more doubt that than you could doubt the certainty of the sun rising in the morning or the tides going in and out. Jenny was gorgeous. That she knew this and used this was not a particularly admirable trait. Connie seemed not to know that she was extravagantly beautiful. She wore her beauty like Reeboks. Or galoshes. It never occurred to her that Mr. Shi would feel honored when she asked to borrow his convertible with a top that could not be put up. She went to him as a supplicant, politely asking for the use of the car, generously offering to pay for the use of the car, eyes respectfully lowered when talking to this person who was older than she was, and Mr. Shi --recognizing the beauty and the grace and the modesty of this young woman who came to him as a dutiful daughter might have--handed her the keys and accepted her gratitude with a tut-tut-tut, and then cautioned her paternally against freezing to death. Connie smiled so radiantly, it almost broke Michael's heart. He guessed he was beginning to love her a whole lot. "One of the nice things about a convertible," Connie said, "is you can see all the buildings."

Michael was thinking that in this city you could drive a convertible with the top down in the dead of winter and nobody paid any attention to you. That was one of the nice things about this city, the way everyone respected everyone else's privacy. Indifference, it was called. He was beginning to learn the downtown area.

For example, he now knew that if you wanted to get out of Chinatown, you didn't have to go very far until you were in Little Italy. And if you wanted to get out of Little Italy ...

"This is all the Fifth Precinct," Connie said. "Thank you," he said. ... you either drove east toward the East River or west toward the Hudson River. On the other hand, if you wanted to get to Charlie Nichols's apartment in Knickerbocker Village, you first

drove east on Canal, and then you

265 made a left on Bowery and drove past the Confucius Plaza apartments and P.S. 124 all the way to Catherine, where you made another left that took you past P.S. 1 on your right and then a Catholic church and school on your left --there were certainly a great many educational opportunities in this fine city--and then you made another left onto Monroe, which was a one-way street, and you looked for a parking space.