Ed McBain - Downtown (28 page)

"Not entirely. But a thousand dollars is a lot of money." "What do you mean?"

"Charlie paid each of us a thousand for the job." "You and Felix." "Yes."

Which accounted for two thousand dollars of the check Crandall had cashed on Friday. But where had the other seven thousand gone?

"I was the one who picked Felix for the part," Judy said. "He was very good, didn't you think?" "Yes, excellent," Michael said. "Yes, he's a very good actor. I still owe him the thousand, but Charlie hasn't paid me yet."

Nor is he likely to, Michael thought. "So as I understand this," he said, "you were supposed to steal my identification ..."

"Well, borrow it, yes. And your money, too." "Why the money? If all you needed was my ..." "In case you went to the police. So it wouldn't look as if we'd been after your I.D. Actually, it was the best improv Felix and I ever did together." "The best what?" "Improvisation. Picking up a stranger in a bar, and then ..." "You mean I was chosen at _random?"

"Well, not entirely. Charlie gave me the nod."

"What nod?"

427 "To go ahead." "Go ahead?"

"Yes. He was sitting at the bar, listening to everything we said ..." "Yes, I know that." "And he gave me the okay, just this little nod, you know--do you remember when I looked down the bar?" "No." "Well, I did. To get his okay. The nod."

"To get his permission, you mean, to _steal my goddamn ..." "Well, it was only for a joke, you know." "A _murder was committed!"

"Well, I'm sorry about that, but Felix and I had nothing to do with it."

"Where does Crandall fit in?" he asked. "I have no idea, but he's a very good director and I'm glad it wasn't him you killed."

"I didn't kill _anyone, goddamn it!" "I don't like profanity," she said at once. "And if you want to know something, I'm beginning to find you enormously boring and a trifle sinister. If the police made a mistake, you should go to _them and correct it, instead of breaking the concentration of someone who's trying to master a very complex role." "That was very good," he said sincerely. "You sounded absolutely royal." "Do you really think so?" she asked. "Positively majestic. Better than Bette Davis in _Elizabeth _and _Essex ..." "Honestly?" "Even better than Hepburn in __The Lion in _Winter." "Oh dear," she said. "But would you happen to know a bar called Benny's?"

"No. I'm not being _too forceful, am I? Maybe I should temper the steel with a touch of lace." "No, I think you've got exactly the proper balance, really. On Christmas Eve, Crandall went to Benny's to meet a man sent there by someone named Mama. Would you happen to know who Mama is?" "Well, of course."

"You do?"

429 "Mady Christians, am I right?" "Who?" he said.

"That was in the original 1944 production, of course. When _we did it fifteen years ago, a woman named ..." "Yes, but _this Mama is an illegal alien. Would you know anyone ...?was "Oh," she said. "_That Mama." He held his breath. "Charlie's crack dealer," she said. "I've never met her, but he talks about her all the time." "Do you know where she lives?" Michael asked. Only her last name was on the mailbox. Rodriguez. The match Michael was holding went out. The hallway was very dark again. "Somebody peed in here," Connie said.

Michael was thinking it would be very dangerous to ring Mama's bell and then go up there to see her. He wondered if they should go up the fire escape again. Apartment 2C. Was what it said under the name Rodriguez on the mailbox.

Michael rang the bell for apartment 3B. There was no answering buzz. He tried 4D. No answer.

"Is this an abandoned building?" he asked Connie.

"Not that I noticed," she said. "Why don't you just kick the door in?" He did not want to hurt the sole of his foot again by trying to kick in yet another door. And he didn't want to throw his shoulder against the door, either, because his arm still hurt from getting shot and then hurling himself at Alice. He wondered if there were any medics here in this almost abandoned building.

What's the matter, honey? Andrew asked.

Cute little baby girl, eight months old, not a day older. Crying her eyes out. Sitting the way the Orientals did. Squatting really. Legs folded under her, feet turned back. Bawling. Birds twittering in the jungle. The village not six hundred yards behind them. Friendlies. Charlie had left three days ago, the old man had told Mendelsohnn. Took all the rice, moved out. Had to be miles and miles away by now. The baby crying.

Come to Papa, sweetie.

431 Andrew reached for her. Michael kicked out at the doorjamb, just above the lock. The door sprang open, surprising him, catching him off balance. He stumbled forward, following the opening door into a small ground-floor rectangle directly in front of a flight of steps. Connie was immediately behind him. "2C," he said. She nodded. They began climbing the steps. Four apartments on the second floor. 2A, B, C, and D. They stopped outside the door to 2C. He put his ear to the wood, listened the way Connie had told him cops did. He couldn't hear a thing. He took the .22 out of the right-hand pocket of the bomber jacket. He wondered if he would need both pistols. Suppose Mama Rodriguez was sleeping inside there with a .357 Magnum under her pillow? In Vietnam, you slept--_when you slept, _if you slept--with your rifle in your hands. But sometimes ... Andrew's rifle was slung. His arms extended to the baby. Come on, darlin'. The baby blinking at him. It had stopped raining. A fan of sunlight touched the baby like a religious miracle.

"I don't hear anything in there," Michael said.

Birds twittering in the jungle. The leaves still wet. Water dripping onto the jungle floor. The baby had stopped crying. Fat tear-stained cheeks. Looking at Andrew wide-eyed as his hands closed on either side of her body, fingers widespread, lifting her, lifting her-- Michael was suddenly covered with sweat. Terrified again. Terrified the way he'd been that day in Vietnam when Andrew picked up the baby. Afraid of what might be beyond that door. Afraid to enter the apartment beyond that door. Because beyond that door was the unknown. Mama. A woman named Mama who had ordered him murdered. Fat Mama Rodriguez inside there. Waiting and deadly. Like the baby. Here we go, darlin', Andrew said.

The baby in Andrew's widespread

433 hands, coming up off the jungle mat, the birds going suddenly still as--

Michael did not want to know what was behind this closed door. Behind this door was something unspeakably horrible, something that went beyond fright to reach into the darkest corners of the unconscious, the baby going off in a hundred flying fragments, her arms and legs spinning away on the air, eyeballs bursting, bone fragments, tissue, blood spattering onto Andrew as the bomb exploded. A moment too late, Long Foot yelled, "She's _wired!" and a surprised look crossed Andrew's face as the metal shards ripped through his body and blood spurted out of his chest. A piece of the dead baby was still in Andrew's hands. The hands holding what had been the baby's rib cage. But the hands were no longer attached to Andrew's arms. The hands were on the trail some twelve feet away from him. And the stumps where his wrists ended were spurting blood. And a hundred smoking wounds in his jacket were spurting blood. "Oh, dear God," Michael said, and dropped to his knees beside Andrew, and the RTO said, "Barnes, they're ..." and the jungle erupted with noise and confusion. They were flanked by Charlie left and right. Charlie had wired the baby, had stolen a baby from the village and wired it, and left it just off the trail for the dumb Americans to find, Come on, darlin', here we go, and the baby exploding was the signal to spring the trap, Andrew hoisting her off the jungle mat and tripping the wire.

And in that instant, the true horror of the war struck home. The true senseless horror of it, they had wired a baby. And recognizing the horror, they had wired a _baby, Michael was suddenly terrified. Running through the jungle with Andrew in his arms, and the Cong assuring him in their sing-song pidgin English that they did not want to hurt him, and the baby's gristle and blood on Andrew's face, and Andrew's own blood bubbling up onto his lips, oh dear God his _hands were gone, they had wired a _baby, Michael knew only blind panic. Suddenly there was no logic and no sense there was only a wired baby exploding between the hands of a good dear friend and the friend was dying the friend's blood was pumping out of his body in weaker spurts the friend was oh God dear God dear

Andrew _please, and he began crying.

435 In terror and in sorrow. A sorrow he had never before known. A sorrow for Andrew and himself and for every American here in this place where he did not wish to be or choose to be and a sorrow, too, for a people that would use a baby that way because no cause on earth was worth doing something as terrible as that but behind him Charlie kept saying it was okay Yank no need to worry Yank nobody's gonna hurt you Yank. Andrew was already dead for half an hour when Michael found the medical chopper.

He would not let them take the body out of his arms.

He kept holding the handless body close, rocking it. "Come on, man," the black medic said. "Get a grip." Michael turned to him and snarled at him. Like a dog. Lips skinned back over his teeth. Growling deep in his throat. The medic backed off. A colonel came over to him later.

"Let's go, soldier," he said, "we've got work to do." "Fuck you, sir," Michael said. And growled at him, too. Click.

A sound to his right. He whirled, terrified. The door to apartment 2B was opening. A girl the color of cinnamon toast was standing in the doorway. She was wearing only a half-slip. Nothing else. Naked from the waist up. She stared blankly into the hall. "You lookin' for Mama?" she asked. "Yes," Connie said. "Try the club," the girl said. Michael felt a tremendous rush of relief. Mama was at the club. She was not behind this closed door. She would not have to be faced just yet.

He put the pistol back into his pocket. "What club?" he asked. He did not want to know. He hoped the girl would not tell him. Stoned out of her mind, she would not be able to remember the name of the club. No older than sixteen, stoned beyond remembrance. He had seen

that same glazed look in Vietnam.

437 Young Americans going into battle stoned. To face the faceless enemy and the nameless horror in the jungle. For Michael, here and now, inexplicably here in this hallway in downtown Manhattan, the horror was an unseen, unknown woman named Mama, and he did not wish to face that horror again. Because this time it would destroy him. This time, the horror would explode in _his hands, and he would run weeping all the way to Boston, his stumps spurting blood, only to learn that _his Mama had given away even his best blue jacket. No cause, he thought. No cause on earth. "Oz," the girl said. "All the way downtown," Connie said. "Over near the river." No cause, Michael kept thinking. "Are you all right?" she asked him. "Yes," he said, "I'm fine."

16

Oz was a disco on a peninsula that hugged the exit to the Battery Tunnel. Located on Greenwich Street, as opposed to Greenwich _Avenue farther uptown, it seemed undecided as to whether it wished to be closer to Edgar or to Morris, which were streets and not people. In any event, the club was so far downtown that in the blink of an eye the West Side could suddenly and surprisingly become the East Side. Or rather, and more accurately, the West Side could become the _South Side, for it was here at the lowest tip of the island that West Street looped around Battery Park to become South Street.

"It's all very confusing," Connie explained, "but not as confusing as the borough of Brooklyn." They had parked the open convertible in an all-night garage on Broadway, and had walked two blocks south and one block west to the disco, passing several young girls shivering in the cold in short fake-fur jackets, high-heeled shoes, and lacy lingerie. Michael wondered if any of these girls had earlier been at the Christmas party where he'd met Frankie Zeppelin. He did not think he recognized Detective O'Brien among them. At three o'clock in the morning on Boxing Day, there were at least a hundred people standing on the yellow

brick sidewalk outside Oz. Not a

439 single one of them appeared to be over the age of twenty, and most of them were dressed like characters from __The Wizard of _Oz. Standing on line in the shivering cold were a dozen or more Tin Men, half again that number of Scarecrows, six Cowardly Lions, eight Wicked Witches of the East, a handful of Glindas, three or four Wizards, a great many people wearing monkey masks on their faces and wings on their backs, some shorter folk chattering in high voices and pretending to be Munchkins, and a multitude of Dorothys wearing short skirts, red shoes, and braids. Michael felt a bit out of place in his jeans and bomber jacket.

The sidewalk outside the disco was not merely _painted a yellow brick, it actually _was yellow brick. The building itself had once been a parking garage, shaped like a flatiron to conform to the peninsula-like dimensions of the plot. Its old brick facade was now covered with thick plastic panels cut and fitted and lighted from within to resemble the many facets of a sparkling green emerald rising from the sidewalk. The name of the club was spelled out in brighter green neon wrapped around the front and sides of the building, just below the roof. There were no visible entrance doors. There was only the yellow brick leading to this huge green, multifaceted crystal growing out of the sidewalk.

The girls and boys standing on line outside were talking noisily among themselves, trying to look supremely confident about their chances of getting into the place. The man in charge of granting admission was about six and a half feet tall, and Michael guessed he weighed at least three hundred pounds. He had bushy black eyebrows, curly black hair, wide shoulders, a narrow waist, and hands like hamhocks. Despite the cold, he was wearing only a black jacket over a white turtleneck shirt, black loafers, white socks, and gray trousers that were too short. Michael heard one of the kids on the line referring to him as Curly.

There was a sudden buzz of excitement when what earlier had appeared to be part of the building's seamless facade now parted to reveal two green panels that served as entrance doors. An intense green light spilled out onto the sidewalk. There was the blare of heavy metal rock. Two