The Last Dance (33 page)

“That's possible,” Brown said, “but you're forgetting something.”

“What's that?”

“He's gay.”

“He's bi.”

“He
thinks
he's bi.”

“He wouldn'ta been there if he
wasn't
bi,” Parker insisted.

“He gets into the apartment,” Brown said, undaunted, “drops the pills, and starts moving on her. Trouble is he's gay. She doesn't excite him. He can't
perform
. So he loses his temper and jukes her.”

“Well, that's a possibility,” Meyer said, “but something else could've happened, too.”

“What's that?”

“Bridges drops the pills, right? Five minutes or so, the girl starts feeling funny. She accuses him of having put something in her drink. He panics, grabs a knife from the counter, lets her have it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Kling said, “but here's what
I
think happened. He gets in the apartment …”

“Who's for pizza?” Parker asked.

“They profile a Yardie as someone who enters the country carrying a forged or stolen British passport,” Carella said. “Usually—but not necessarily—he's a black man from Jamaica, somewhere between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. He's either got a record already …”

“Does Bridges have one?” Byrnes asked.

“Nobody by that name in their files. They said he may be a new kid on the block, there's a constant flow. Most of them are in the drug trade. Getting rope would've been a walk in the park for him.”

“Is he wanted for anything?”

“Not by the Brits. Not so far, anyway.”

“Give him time,” Byrnes said.

“Meanwhile, he's running around London someplace.”

“Or Manchester.”

“Or wherever. Actually, we don't need him, Pete. Nellie says the overt act is enough.”

“Conspiracy and the overt act, yes.”

“Which she's already got.”

“So let the Queen's mother worry,” Byrnes said.

Ollie felt very nervous, like a teenager about to ask for a first date. He dialed the number on the card she'd given him, and let the phone ring three, four, five …

“Hello?”

“Miss Hobson?” he said.

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Weeks. We talked about piano lessons, do you remember?”

“No. Detective
who?
”

“Weeks. Oliver Wendell Weeks. I was investigating the murder of Althea Cleary, do you remember? Big Ollie, they sometimes call me,” he said, which was a lie. “I wanted to learn five songs, remember?”

“Oh. Yes,” she said.

“I
still
do.”

“I see,” she said.

“I got a list we can pick from,” he said.

“Did you find him?”

“Who do you mean, Miss Hobson?”

“Whoever killed Althea.”

“He's in London just now. We're leaving it to the bobbies there, they're supposed to be very good. When can we start, Miss Hobson?”

“That depends on which songs you want to learn.”

“Oh, they're easy ones, don't worry.”

“That's so reassuring,” she said drily. “But which ones are they exactly?”

“Guess,” he said, and grinned into the mouthpiece.

They had no idea they were in the middle of a race riot until it was full upon them. Until that moment, they'd been peacefully watching television and drifting off to sleep, Kling knowing he was due back in the squadroom at eight tomorrow, Sharyn knowing her day would start at about the same time in her office at 24 Rankin Plaza, neither anticipating an explosion, each surprised when it came.

A panel of talking heads was offering its collective opinion on the war, the election, the wedding, the crash, the trial, the disaster, the game, the
whatever
because in America, it wasn't enough merely to present the news, you then had to have half a dozen commentators parading their thoughts on what the news had just been all about. Over the background din, Kling was telling Sharyn there'd been an extraordinary number of people informing on other people in this case they'd just wrapped, a veritable chorus of rats singing to whoever would listen, when all at once a blond woman on the panel said something about the “so-called blue wall of silence,” and Sharyn said, “Shhh,” and someone else on the panel, a black man, shouted that the blue wall of silence wouldn't
be holding in the Milagros case if the victim had been
white,
and someone else, a white man, shouted, “This poor
victim
you're talking about is a
murderer!”
and Kling said, “Milagros is one of the guys I mean,” and Sharyn said “Shhh” again, when all he'd wanted to say was that Hector Milagros had been given up by Maxie Blaine who'd been given up by Betty Young in a case virtually defined by perpetual snitchery.

“You don't know whether those men who went in there were white
or
black!” someone on the panel shouted.

“You don't even know if they were actually
cops!”
someone else shouted.

“They were
cops
and they were
white!”

“I'll bet they were,” someone else said, but the voice wasn't coming from the television set, it was coming from the pillow next to Kling's. He turned to look at her.

The blonde on television very calmly said, “I do not believe that any police officer in this city would maintain silence in the face of such a brutal beating. The police …”

“Oh, come off it,” Sharyn said.

“… simply don't
know
who went in there, that's all. If they knew …”

On the television set, the black man said, “The guy who let them
in
knows.”

“Every cop in this
city
knows,” Sharyn said.

“I don't,” Kling said.

And now there was a veritable Babel of voices pouring from the television set in a deluge of conflicting invective that rose higher and higher in volume and passion.

“Instead of maintaining their ridiculous posture of …”

“There are black cops, too, you know. I don't see any of
them
…”

“Would
you
come forward if …?”

“You're asking them to be
rats.”

“It's not informing if the person …”

“Milagros was in custody!”

“He's a criminal!”

“So are the cops who beat him up!”

“A murderer!”

“… almost killed him!”

“He's
black!
”

“Here we go,” Kling said.

“That's
why they beat him up!”

“Hang on, honey,” Sharyn said.

Together, they huddled against the angry voices.

At last, Kling said, “Wanna dance?”

Ed McBain is the only American to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association's highest award. He also holds the Mystery Writers of America's coveted Grand Master Award. His books have sold over one hundred million copies worldwide, ranging from his first bestselling novel,
The Blackboard Jungle,
to the recent bestseller
Privileged Conversation,
both written under his own name, Evan Hunter. He also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's
The Birds
. His most recent 87th Precinct novel was
The Big Bad City
. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Dragica.