Эд Макбейн - Beauty and the Beast

“I dropped the hammer on the floor,” he tells us. “Another one for Georgie, I figured. My insurance.” He looks up. He stares first at Bloom and then at me, and then he says, “I really blew it, didn’t I? I mean, we had it all going for us, didn’t we? How else in this town can blacks and whites really get together? Except in bed? I mean, Jesus, we’d found the answer , am I right?”

And suddenly, he is weeping again.

The state’s attorney — Skye Bannister himself this time — arrived at the Public Safety Building a half hour after the typed confession had been signed by Davis. Bloom was still there, of course. So was I. He was an exceptionally tall man, Skye Bannister, perhaps six four or five, with the appearance of a basketball player, reedy and pale, with wheat-colored hair and eyes the color of his name. He read the transcript in silence. Then he looked up.

“I never did believe that fisherman’s identification,” he said. “Man with veins on his nose is a drinker for sure.”

“Will the confession hold?” Bloom asked.

“Can’t see why not,” Bannister said. “What are you thinking?”

“Entrapment,” Bloom said.

“No, you were both very clever,” Bannister said. He turned to me. “You thinking of entering the practice of criminal law, Mr. Hope?”

“Not particularly,” I said.

“Don’t,” Bannister advised. “Got enough trouble getting convictions as it is.” He smiled, and then turned back to Bloom.

“I’ll have a man here in half an hour or so, do the formal Q and A. Good-bye gentlemen. You did good.”

We were alone in the office again, Bloom and I.

“So,” he said, “it wasn’t Harper after all, was it? Davis was the beast we wanted.”

“Was he?” I said. “Or was the beast really beauty ?”

“What?”

“Michelle,” I said, and then I left for the airport to pick up my daughter and Dale.