Ed McBain - Downtown (22 page)

"... in a garbage can someplace," the woman said. "... like behind a McDonald's." "... drive the cops nuts."

_Three people in that other room. Two men and a woman. None of them sounded like anyone he'd ever met. All three of them were laughing now. They thought this would be comical. Driving the cops nuts. "Or kill him and just leave him _here," one of the

men said. "In Ju Ju's bed."

331 They all thought this would be even more comical. Killing him and leaving him here in Ju Ju's bed. Was Ju Ju's bed the one he was tied to? The one that stank of piss? Was Ju Ju a cutesy-poo name for Judy Jordan? Was this, in fact, Judy Jordan's bedroom? Was Judy Jordan a bed-wetter? There was hysterical laughter in the other room now. It was contagious. Michael almost laughed himself. He had to stifle his laughter. Michael wondered who Ju Ju was. He hated movies with casts of thousands.

"We'd better wait till Mama gets here," the woman said. Mama again. The _woman's mother? Or did _everybody call her Mama?

Maybe Connie was right. Maybe Mama was a big, fat lady who everyone-- _Connie! She'd told him if he wasn't back in ten minutes she'd come up and get him. How much time had gone by since he'd left her down there on the ground floor? Five minutes to climb to the third floor, another three minutes while he'd waited in the hallway for the naked woman to put on her-- The doorbell rang. Oh, Jesus, he thought. Connie! Or maybe Mama.

Either way, that ringing doorbell could only mean more trouble. Because if the person doing the ringing was Connie, they would hit her on the head and then tie her up alongside him on the bed.

And then when Mama finally arrived, it would be so long to both of them. Shoot them both and leave them in Ju Ju's bed, ha ha. Or else shoot them and drop them in a garbage can behind McDonald's, which would be almost as amusing. Michael found neither choice acceptable. So he hoped against hope that it was not Connie ringing that doorbell. Because if they were going to shoot anyone at all, he much preferred it to be himself alone, leave Connie out of this entirely. The doorbell kept ringing. He began actively wishing that one of them would go answer the door and it would be big, fat Mama standing there, Hi, kids, it's me. "Who is it?" one of the men yelled.

"Abruzzi Pizzeria," someone

333 yelled back. Michael listened. Someone was coming into the apartment. "You order a large pizza?" A delivery boy. "That's right."

The woman. Obviously the one who'd placed the order. "Half anchovies, half pepperoni?" "Right." "Three Cokes?" "Three Cokes, right." "Here's the napkins, that comes to thirteen dollars and twenty-one cents." "That sounds like a lot," one of the men said. "How do you figure it's a lot?" the delivery boy asked. "For a pizza and three lousy Cokes? Thirteen bucks and change?" "Yeah, but it's a large with anchovies and pepperoni." "Only _half anchovies and _half pepperoni." "Which costs nine dollars and ninety-five cents. For the large with the anchovies and pepperoni." "So how much are the Cokes?" "Seventy-five cents each." "That sounds high, too." Cheap bastard, Michael thought.

"How do you figure that's high?" the delivery boy asked. "For a lousy Coke? Seventy-five cents?"

"Yeah, but these are twelve-ounce Cokes." "That's still high. That's six cents and change for an _ounce!" "Yeah, but that's what it _costs an ounce," the delivery boy said. "That's very high for an ounce of Coke." "Yeah, but that's what it costs. Seventy-five cents for twelve ounces." "So how do you get thirteen dollars and twenty-one cents?"

"There's an eight and a quarter percent tax. See it here on the bill? A dollar is the tax. So if you add a dollar to the nine ninety-five for the pizza and the two and a quarter for the Cokes, you get thirteen twenty-one. See it here?"

"Who added this?"

335 "The cashier." "What's her name?" "Marie. Why?" "She's a penny off." "What do you mean?" "You see this here? Add it yourself. Nine ninety-five for the pizza, two twenty-five for the Cokes, and a dollar for the tax is thirteen dollars and _twenty cents, not thirteen dollars and twenty-_one cents." "Gee," the delivery boy said. "Tell Marie." "I will." Cheap bastard, Michael thought again. "Here's fifty bucks," the man said. "Keep the change." Michael heard the door opening and closing again. The sudden aroma of cheese and garlic and tomatoes and pepperoni and anchovies wafted into the room where he was tied to the bed.

In that moment, he wanted nothing more from life than a slice of pizza.

If they told him they would kill him the moment Mama got here, his last request would be a slice of pizza. "This is very good pizza," the woman said. A rap sounded at the window. He turned his head sharply.

A man wearing a black silk handkerchief over his nose and down to his chin was standing on the fire escape. He put his forefinger to where his lips would have been under the handkerchief, signaling Michael to keep quiet. Michael looked at him.

The man was wearing a black cap to match the black handkerchief. And a black jacket bristling with little chrome studs. In keeping with his attire, the man himself was black, or at least what was nowadays _called black even though his exposed hands were certainly not the color of his clothing. His hands were, in fact, the color of Colombian coffee.

The man hefted something onto the windowsill. A black satchel.

He opened the satchel and took out some kind of black tool.

Terrific, Michael thought. A burglar. In the other room, they began talking about pizza.

One of the men maintained that pizza with a

337 thin crust was the best kind. The woman said she preferred her pizza with a thick crust. The other man said extra cheese was the secret. They all agreed that extra cheese was desirable on a pizza. Michael was dying of hunger. The black man was working on the window with the black tool, which Michael surmised was a jimmy.

"When we finish this pizza here," one of the men said, "I think we ought to do him. Whether Mama's here or not." Michael guessed they were talking about him. About doing _him.

"Anchovies I don't find too terrific on a pizza," the woman said.

"Me, neither, Alice," the other man said. Alice. The woman's name was Alice. "They're too salty," she said.

"They overpower all the other ingredients," the man said, agreeing. "Because the longer this man stays alive, the bigger the threat he is," the first man said, making a reasonable case.

"I think we should wait for Mama," Alice said.

"It was Mama sent you after him the first time," the other man said. "I know that, Larry." Larry. Another county heard from.

"So if Mama wanted him dead at eight o'clock tonight," he said, "why should it be any different now?"

"Because now is ten-thirty and not eight o'clock," Alice said.

"Which, by the way, you fucked up," the first man said. "On the roof there." "No, by the way, I _didn't fuck up, I was _ambushed, Silvio." So Alice was the blonde who'd been firing from the roof.

"Which it don't matter," Silvio said, "so long as we do the job right _this time." "That's _still saying I did it wrong _last time," Alice said.

"All I know is what Mama told me. Barnes was down Benny's asking questions about Arthur Crandall. So Barnes had to go. So you got sent

to do him and you _didn't do him, which is why

339 he's tied to the bed in there now and you're telling me we should wait for Mama, which I don't know why."

"Because I say so," Alice said flatly.

"And I say we do him and leave him here in Ju Ju's bed," Silvio said, and they all burst out laughing again. They were silent for the next few minutes or so. Eating.

"As far as I'm concerned," Alice said, "the best combination is sausage and peppers."

"On a pizza, you mean?" Larry asked. "No, on a piano," Alice said. "_Certainly on a pizza. We're _talking about pizza, aren't we?" "I thought you were talking about a sandwich," Larry said. "If you don't mind," Silvio said, "_I'm talking about let's finish the goddamn _pizza here and _do the man, okay?" "A grinder, I thought you meant," Larry said. "A sausage and pepper grinder."

"No, a pizza," Alice said. "Half sausage, half pepper."

Michael was hoping the burglar would hurry up and open the window. Then maybe he could talk the man into untying the ropes. Before they finished their pizza and came in here to do him. But the burglar seemed pretty new at the job. He had put the first tool back into the satchel and had taken out another one, but he didn't seem to be having any better luck with the new one. Meanwhile, in the other room, the pizza seemed to be dwindling. Michael was happy it had been a large one to begin with. "Who wants this last slice?" Alice asked. "Go ahead, take it," Larry said.

"Hey, _wait a minute," Silvio said, "don't be so fucking generous with _my pizza, if you don't mind."

"If you want it, take it," Alice said.

"Go ahead, Silvio, take it," Larry said. "If Alice wants it, she can have it," Silvio said. "No, this slice is all anchovies," Alice said.

"That's why I don't want it," Silvio said.

"I thought you _did want it,"

341 Alice said.

"No, I only said he shouldn't be giving it away so fast in _case I wanted it." "Well, I don't want it," Alice said. "It's all anchovies." "I don't want it, either," Larry said.

"Then the hell with it," Silvio said. "Throw it in the garbage, and let's go do him."

No, Michael thought. _Somebody eat it. Please.

"Well, if nobody wants it," Alice said, "I'll take it." "In fact, let's split it," Larry said. "Three ways," Silvio said. The window opened a crack. Cold air rushed into the room. And what smelled like fish. The black man all in black pushed the window up higher, letting in more cold air and the very definite stink of fish. He climbed over the sill and came into the room. Came directly to the bed. Pulled the handkerchief off his face, leaned in close to Michael's ear, and whispered, "Connie sent me." "Untie me," Michael whispered.

In the other room, Silvio said, "It's a sin to make good food go to waste." "This is very hard to cut," Larry said. "Hold it with the fork," Alice said. The black man began untying the ropes. He was no better at untying than he was at jimmying. In the other room, they were silent now. Michael figured they were concentrating on slicing the slice of pizza into three even slices, which was probably more difficult than untying a man tied to a bed. He hoped. He wished they would say something in there. The silence was somehow ominous. Maybe they had _already sliced the slice of pizza and already eaten it. Maybe they were at this very moment loading pistols instead of slicing-- "Listen," he whispered, "don't you have a _knife in that satchel?" "This'll only take a minute," the black man whispered. He had finally untied the first wrist. That left two ankles and a wrist to go.

"Get the ankles," Michael said. "I'll try the other wrist."

"Did you hear something just then?" Larry asked. Silence.

Oh, Jesus, Michael thought.

343 "No," Silvio said. "What did you hear?" "Like somebody talking," Larry said. "Where?" "I don't know. Like next door." They all listened again. The black man had untied Michael's left ankle and was now working on the right one. Michael was plucking at the knots in the rope holding his left wrist to the headboard. He figured that in about two minutes he would be a dead man. "I _still don't hear anything," Silvio said. "Are you going to finish these Cokes, or what?" Alice asked. "I'm done," Larry said. "Me, too," Silvio said. "Me, too," the black man whispered. So was Michael.

He yanked his left hand free of the rope, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and went immediately to the window. The black man was right behind him. As they went out onto the fire escape, Michael heard Silvio saying, "Let's go do him." The black man's name was Gregory Washington. The name of the club was the Green Garter.

Gregory told him that this was where Connie had said she would meet them. He also told Michael that the club was sometimes known as the Green _Farter because it attracted a very old clientele. Michael looked around the place and did not see anyone who looked older than thirty. But Gregory was only nineteen. A lot of the women standing at the bar, or sitting in the booths or at the tables, seemed to be wearing only lingerie. Garter belts and panties and seamed silk stockings and teddies and negligees and stiletto-heeled shoes that made them look a lot like either the redheaded detective named O'Brien, who'd mistaken him for a cheap hold-up artist, or the redheaded hooker named Hannah, who'd mistaken him for the man in the Carvel commercials. Michael wondered if Frankie Zeppelin had yet found someone to kill Isadore Onions. He wondered whose thigh Isadore's girlfriend had her hand on now. He wondered if all the women in New York

City walked around in their underwear at

345 Christmastime. "You have adorable buns," Gregory said. "Has anyone ever told you that?"

Which was when Michael began to suspect that both Gregory and the Green Garter were what you might call gay, and that all these underdressed women were in actuality men. One of them winked at him.

"Oh, look," Gregory said. "Phyllis has her eye on you."

He sounded like Eddie Murphy doing his gay bit in _Beverly _Hills _Cop. In fact, he even looked a little like a younger Eddie Murphy, if there _was such a thing as a younger Eddie Murphy. It seemed to Michael that nowadays there were no male movie stars who were his age. All the male movie stars up there on the screen were twenty years old. Making love to stark-naked women who had to be at least in their thirties. The only twenty-year-old movie stars Michael believed were the ones in war movies because in Vietnam almost everybody was twenty years old or younger. Even the lieutenants were twenty years old. The only people who weren't twenty years old were sergeants. Phyllis winked at him again.

Phyllis was wearing a blonde wig, a red silk blouse, and a green silk skirt with high-heeled pumps to match. Most of the people in the room, Michael noticed, were dressed in either red or green in honor of the yuletide season, except for the ones who were wearing swastikas and chains and jeans and black leather jackets bristling with metal spikes and studs. They looked tougher and meaner than any man Michael had ever seen in his life, but he guessed they were gay, too, otherwise what were they doing here?