Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (9 page)

“Suppose someone saw us tonight?”

“But no one did.”

“You don’t know that for a fact.”

“Did
you
see anyone?”

“No, but …”

“Neither did I. No one saw us. Don’t worry.”

Kissing her again. Gently. Her lips, her breasts. His hand under the gossamer gown, stroking her, touching her.

“Everything’s happening so fast,” she whispered.

“It’s supposed to.”

“They’ll ask …”

“Sure.”

“Me. You. They’ll ask.”

“And we’ll tell them. Everything
but.“

“They’re not stupid.”

“We’re smarter.”

“They’ll realize.”

““No.”

“Hold me, Johnny, I’m so scared.”

“No, baby, no, Michelle, don’t worry.”

T
HE TWO BLUES SEARCHING THE ALLEY WERE COMPLAINING
that nobody in this city would’ve gave flying fuck about a stabbing if the victim hadn’ta been a celebrity.

“Also,” one of them said, “the only perp tosses a weapon is the pros. They use a cold piece, they throw it down a sewer afterwards,
we find it, we can shove it up our ass. A person ain’t a contract hitter, he don’t throw away no weapon. Even a
knife
costs money, what d’you think? A person’s gonna throw it away cause he just
juked
somebody with it? Don’t be ridiculous. There’s switchblades cost fifty, a hundred bucks, some of them. He’s gonna throw it
away cause it’s got a little blood on it? Gimme a break, willya?”

“Who’s the vic, anyway,” the other one asked, “we’re searchin this fuckin alley in the rain?”

“The fuck knows,” the other one said. “I never heard of her.”

It was really raining quite hard again.

Both of the blues were wearing black ponchos, and rain covers on their hats, but their shoulders and heads were dripping wet,
anyway, and the drilling rain made it difficult to see in the dark alley here at close to two o’clock in the morning, even
though they were industriously fanning every inch of it with their torches. Although they hadn’t expressed it quite this way,
they were right about fame in that a stabbing in this city—especially so soon after there’d been so
many
stabbings in Grover Park last Saturday—was a relatively insignificant occurrence that might have gone virtually unnoticed
if the victim hadn’t been an actress who once upon a time had played the lead in a road show production of
Annie.
Instead, here they were in a fuckin dark alley looking for a knife that had given some unknown “star” a scratch on the shoulder.

Well, something more than a scratch maybe, but according to what each of them had seen separately on television before they’d
come on tonight, Michelle Cassidy’s shoulder wound had been truly superficial. How bad
could
it have been if they’d released her from the hospital within several hours of her admission to the emergency room? So if
this was just a scratch here, then it couldn’t possibly be the required “serious” physical injury for Attempted Murder or
even Assault One. What they had here was an Assault Two,
maybe,
where there’d been just a
plain
physical injury by means of a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument. Which is why they were looking for a knife in the
rain, they guessed.

“A fuckin Class D felony,” one of the blues said.

“Seven years max,” the other one said.

^“
Get a sharp lawyer in there, he’ll bargain it down to Assault Three.”

“A Class A mis.”

“Is what we’re wastin our time on.”

“This country, anything happens to you,” the first blue said, “you automatically become a star and a hero. All these shmucks
came back from the Gulf War, they were all of a sudden
heroes.
I can remember a time when a hero was a guy who charged a fuckin machine-gun nest with a hand grenade in each hand and a
bayonet between his teeth.
That
was a hero! Now you’re a hero if you just
went
to the fuckin war.”

“Or if you get yourself stabbed,” the other one said. “It used to be if you
defended
yourself against the perp, and grabbed the knife
away
from him, and shoved it down his fuckin throat,
then
you were a hero. Now you’re a hero if you just get stabbed. The TV cameras come in on you, this is the person got stabbed
on the subway tonight, folks, he’s a hero, look at him, he got himself stabbed, give him a great big hand.”

“A hero
and
a celebrity, don’t forget,” the first one said.

“Yeah, but this one here is really
supposed
to be a celebrity, though.”

“You ever hear of her?”

“No.”

“Neither did I. Michelle Cassidy? Who the fuck’s Michelle Cassidy?”

“She’s a Little Orphan Annie.”

“She’s
bull
shit is what she is. Anybody gets hurt in this country, he becomes a hero and a celebrity, they give him a fuckin ticker tape
parade. You notice how everybody knows exactly how to be interviewed on television? There’s a tenement fire and the television
cameras are there, and all at once this spic in her nightgown, she just got here from Colombia the night before, she’s standin
in the street can hardly speak English, she’s giving an interview to the reporter, she sounds as if she’s the guest star on
The Tonight Show
. ‘Oh, si, it wass so
terrible,
my baby wass in huh creeb in dee odder room, I dinn know
wah
to do!’ An illegal from Colombia is all at once a fuckin
celebrity
givin interviews.”

“She’ll be doin hair commercials next week.”

“Commercials for
fire
extinguishers,” the first blue said, and both of them burst out laughing.

The rain kept pouring down, sobering them.

“You see any fuckin knife in this alley?” the first one asked.

“I see
rain
in this alley, is what I see.”

“Let’s try the sidewalk.”

“The gutter.”

“Maybe he threw it in the gutter.”

“Maybe he took it home and tucked it under his pillow, fifty-dollar switchblade knife.”

“What time you got?”

“Almost two.”

“Wanna call in a pee break?”

“Too early.”

“Ain’t you hungry?”

“I could go for a slice a’pizza.”

“So let’s give it a shot.”

“We only been on two hours.”

“More than two.”

“Two and a quarter.”

“In the fuckin
rain,
don’t forget.”

“Even so.”

“Lookin for a knife don’t exist.”

“He coulda tossed it in the gutter.”

“Knife we’ll never find.”

“Let’s check the gutter.”

Twenty minutes later, they were eating pizza in an all-night joint just off Mapes Avenue.

Seven hours after that, Carella and Kling were sitting in the squadroom going over the notes they’d taken at the theater last
night. The rain had tapered a bit, but not enough to keep them from feeling that winter was still here. This was the seventh
day of April. Spring had been here for two weeks and three days already, but it had been a rotten winter, and it was
still
a rotten winter as far as anyone in this city was concerned.

“The way it looks to me,” Kling said, “everybody had already left the theater when she came out into that alley.”

“Except the costume designer,” Carella said. “According to Kendall, she stayed behind for a fitting with the costume designer.”

“Woman named Gillian Peck,” Kling said, and yawned. “Stage manager gave me her address and phone number, too.”

“Late night?” Carella asked, and stifled the urge to yawn himself.

“I got home around three. We talked a lot.”

“You and Sharon?”

“Sharyn.”

“She finally agreed to let you come all the way out to C.P., huh?”

“No, she met me here in the city. Anyway, how’d you … ?”

“Small squadron.”

“Big ears.”

“I muri hanno orrecchi,
“ Carella said.

“What’s that mean?”

“The walls have ears. My grandmother used to say that all the time. So who is she?”

“Your grandmother?”

“Yes, my grandmother.”

“Sharyn, you mean?”

“Sharon, I mean.”

“Sharyn.”

“Must be an echo in this place.”

“No, it’s
Sharyn
. With a ‘y.’ ”

“Ahh,
Sharyn.“

“Sharyn, yes.”

“So, who is she?”

“A cop,” Kling said.

He guessed it was reasonable to call a one-star chief a cop.

“Anyone I know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Where’d you meet her?”

“On the job.”

Which was also true, more or less.

“If all of them had already left the theater,” he said, changing the subject, “any one of them could have been out in the
alley stabbing her. So …”

“Are you changing the subject?” Carella asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“I just don’t want to talk about it yet,” Kling said.

“Okay,” Carella said, but he looked hurt. “Where do we start here?”

“Steve …”

“I know.”

“How long are we gonna beat this thing to death? She was out of the hospital a minute and a half after she checked in. She’ll
be back at rehearsal today, the show will go on. I’ve got three backed-up murders and a dozen …”

“I know.”

“This isn’t that important, Steve.”

“You
know it’s not important, and
I
know it’s not important, but does Commissioner
Hartman
know it’s not important?”

“What are you saying?”

“Pete called me at home this morning.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Said he’d just got off the phone with Hartman. The Commish
and
the Mayor both wanted to know what the Eight-Seven was doing about this big star who got stabbed right outside the theater.
Said they understood she’d been up here previously to report …”

“Three
hours
previously!”

“But who’s counting? Said it didn’t look good that we
knew
about threatening phone calls and still allowed …”

“Allowed?”

“…
the vic to get stabbed …”

“Oh yes, we allowed her to get stabbed.”

“Is what the Commish told Pete. Which Pete repeated to me on the phone this morning at seven-thirty. The media’s making a
big deal out of this, Bert. Another feeding frenzy. Pete wants the knifer. Fast.”

A uniformed black doorman asked Carella who he was here to see, please, and Carella showed him his shield and gave him Morgenstern’s
name. The doorman buzzed upstairs, announced Carella, and then told him he could go right up, it was Penthouse C, elevator
just to the right there. A uniformed black maid opened the door for Carella and told him that Mr. Morgenstern was in the breakfast
room, would he care to follow her, please? He followed her through a sumptuously decorated apartment with windows facing the
park everywhere.

Marvin Morgenstern was sitting in a bay window streaming midmorning sunlight, wearing a blue silk robe with a blue silk collar
and a blue silk sash. Silk pajamas of a paler blue hue showed below the hem of the robe and in the open V of its front. He
was munching on a piece of toast as the maid led Carella into the room. “Hello,” he said, “nice to see you,” and then rose
and wiped either butter or jelly from his hand, and offered it to Carella. They shook hands, and then Morgenstern said, “Sit
down, sit down. Have some coffee. Some toast? Ellie, bring some hot toast and another cup. You want some orange juice? Ellie,
bring him a glass of juice, too. Sit down. Please.”

Carella sat.

He’d had breakfast at eight this morning, and it was now a little past ten. Morgenstern hadn’t yet shaved, but he’d combed
the sleep out of his hair, sweeping it back from his forehead without a part. He had shaggy black brows to match the hair,
though the hair was so black it looked dyed. Maybe the brows were dyed, too. Narrow thin-lipped mouth, bright blue eyes, mouth
and eyes seeming to join in secret amusement, though Carella could find nothing funny about assault.

“So do you know who did it yet?” Morgenstern asked.

“Do you?” Carella said.

“Who knows, the bedbugs in this city? What ideas do you have?”

“We’re still investigating,” Carella said vaguely.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Yes.”

“You think
I
did it?” Morgenstern said, and burst out laughing.

“Did you?”

“I’m sixty-seven years old,” he said, his laughter subsiding. “I had a triple bypass three years ago, my knee from when I
had the cartilage removed twenty years ago is finally beginning to tell me when it’s going to rain, and you think I stabbed
my own star in an alley? Have a heart, willya? Ah, here’s Ellie,” he said. “Fresh coffee, too, terrific. Just set it down,
Ellie. Thank you.”

The maid put down a tray bearing a teaspoon, a fork, a knife, a napkin, a glass of orange juice, an empty cup and saucer,
a rack of toast, and a fresh pot of coffee. Carella guessed she was no older than twenty-three, a pretty woman with sloe eyes
and
a cafe au lait
complexion. He guessed Haitian only because so many of the new black immigrants
were
Haitian. Without uttering a word, she left the room again.

Morgenstern poured coffee, passed the cream pitcher and the sugar bowl. Carella drank his orange juice, and then reached for
a piece of toast. He buttered it and put strawberry jam on it, and then bit into it. The bread was fresh and the toast was
crunchy and still warm. The coffee was good and strong, too. He made himself at home.

“So tell me about the theater business,” he said.

“You want to know if it was worth my while stabbing her, right?” Morgenstern said.

He still seemed secretly amused by all this.

“Something like that,” Carella said.

“Like what do I stand to gain now that my star has been stabbed and everybody in town knows the name of my play,” he said,
and this time he smiled openly, never mind any secrets.

“
And
the date it’s going to open,” Carella said.