Ed McBain - Downtown

“No.”

“ ’Cause you look familiar,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a scraper, would you?” he asked Connie.

“In the trunk,” Connie said, and went around to the back of the car.

“Haven’t I seen you on television?” Freddie asked.

“No,” Michael said.

“In a series about Florida?”

“No.”

“You sure look familiar.”

“I have a very common face,” Michael said.

“Ah, thank you,” Freddie said, and accepted the scraper from Connie. “This should do the trick.”

She was no longer wearing the green satin, high-heeled pumps she’d had on a few minutes ago. Black galoshes were on her feet now, the tops unbuckled. She looked like pictures Michael had seen of flappers in the Twenties, except that she was Chinese. She saw him looking down at the galoshes.

“I changed my shoes,” she said.

He looked up into her face. So goddamn beautiful.

“I bought these in a thrift shop,” she said, “to keep in the trunk. For inclement weather.” On her lips, the word “inclement” sounded Chinese. She shrugged, and turned to where Freddie was already scraping the windshield. “You want to watch the car for me?” she asked.

“No, ma’am, I don’t wash entire cars,” he said, “I only do windshields.”

“You keep an eye on the car for me, I’ll give you that dollar you wanted.”

“Make it two dollars.”

“Two dollars, okay,” she said, and locked the car and then turned back to Michael and said, “Let’s go.”

Michael looked at the Bowery Palace Hotel. He nodded, and then started toward its entrance door. Connie followed immediately behind him.

“Ask for room five-oh-five,” Freddie called after them. “It has a mattress.”

The hotel lobby was done in what one might have called Beirut Nouveau. Plaster was crumbling from the walls, electrical outlets hung suspended by dangling wires, the bloated ceiling bulged with what was certainly a water leak, wooden posts and beams seemed on the imminent edge of collapse, wallpaper was peeling, framed prints of pastoral scenes hung askew, and ancient upholstered furniture exposed its springs and stuffing. Altogether, the place looked as if it had recently been attacked by terrorists with pipe bombs. The clerk behind the scarred and tottering desk looked like a graying, wrinkled Oliver North who had just made his last covert deal with the Iranians.

“Good evening. Merry Christmas,” Michael said to the clerk, and walked directly past the desk, and then past a hissing, clanging radiator that seemed about to explode and then past two men in long overcoats who were flipping playing cards at a brass spittoon against one of the flaking walls. It took Michael a moment to realize the spittoon wasn’t empty. Behind him, he heard Connie clanking along in her unbuckled galoshes. “Merry Christmas,” she said to the clerk, and he replied, “Merry Christmas,” sounding somewhat bewildered, and then — as Michael approached a door under a red-and-white EXIT sign — “Excuse me, sir, may I ask what you think you’re...?”

“Building inspector.” Michael said gruffly, and would have flashed his driver’s license or something if he’d still had it in his possession.

“Merry Christmas,” the clerk said at once, “I’m sure you’ll find everything in order.”

“We’ll see about that,” Michael said, and opened the exit door, and stepped out into the backyard. Telephone poles grew from the snow-covered ground, their sagging wires wearing narrow threads of white. Fences capped with snow spread raggedly north, south, east, and west. Where tenements rose to the starry night, there were clotheslines stiff with frozen clothes. Not a breeze stirred now. Moonlight tinted the backyard world a soft silvery white.

“It’s beautiful,” Connie said beside him.

“Yes,” he said.

He sighed then, and looked up at the back of the hotel, getting his geographical bearings, and then turned his scrutiny to the building on its left. A fire escape zigzagged up the snow-dusted, redbrick wall.

“You’d better wait for me here,” he said.

“I’ll go with you,” Connie said.

He looked at her.

“There’s no reward, you know,” he said, and was sorry the instant the words left his mouth.

“Is that what you think?” she asked.

“I don’t know what I...”

“I mean, is that what you think?”

“All I know is that a very beautiful girl...”

“Yes, I know.”

“... has latched onto a stranger...”

“Yes.”

“... who she thinks killed someone, which by the way I didn’t. Not tonight, anyway.”

“Then when?” she said at once.

“A long time ago. I’ve been living a very quiet life since I...”

“Are you married?” she asked.

“Divorced.”

“Then what’s wrong with my latching onto you?”

“I find it peculiar, that’s all.”

“You have a very low opinion of yourself, don’t you?”

“No, I happen to have a very healthy ego, in fact.”

“What happened? Did they break your spirit in jail?”

“Jail? Why would I...?”

“For killing somebody.”

“It was my job to kill those people.”

“More than one?” she asked, astonished.

“Yes, but...”

“How many?”

“Eleven or twelve.”

“Which? I mean, a person gives you a contract, you ought to know whether it’s for eleven people or...”

“A contract? What con...?”

“For eleven, twelve, fourteen, however many people you killed.”

“It certainly wasn’t fourteen.”

“Then how many?”

“The figure was disputed...”

“Who disputed it? The defense attorney?”

“No, the RTO.”

“The what?”

“The company radioman. He claimed he was the one who got the...”

“Listen, do you have a tattoo?” she asked.

“No, I...”

“Because forty-three percent of all convicts have tattoos, you know.”

“I’m not a convict.”

“Well, an ex- con.”

“I’ve never been in jail in my life.”

“You beat the rap, huh?”

“What rap? I was in the...”

“Listen, if a jury found you innocent, that’s good enough for me.”

“Connie, I never...”

“Do you have any children?”

“No.”

“Do you think our lips would freeze together if you kissed me?”

He looked at her again.

“I know you didn’t kill anyone,” she said.

He kept looking at her.

“I knew it long ago,” she said. “Because you stayed for Harry. A man who killed somebody doesn’t hang around like that. Not to bring another person luck. That’s a kind and gentle person who does something like that. That’s not a murderer. Anyway, I like your cute little face,” she said, and raised her arms and then draped them on his shoulders, and stepped in closer to him. “So let’s try it,” she said.

And kissed him.

He had not kissed anyone this way since the divorce, which was exactly nine months and six days ago, the eighteenth of March, in fact, a very blustery Monday in Sarasota, Florida, he knew because he’d taken the boat out into the Gulf the moment the papers were signed, sailing off into a four-foot chop and drinking himself into oblivion the way he very often had in Vietnam, a wonder he’d got back to shore alive. Hadn’t kissed anyone this way since the last time he’d kissed Jenny — well, no, that wasn’t true.

The whole reason for the divorce, in fact, was that Jenny hadn’t been kissing this way anymore, or at least not kissing him this way. It turned out that she’d been kissing the man who was the branch manager at the bank where she worked as a teller, kissed him a lot, in fact, fucked him a lot, too, in fact. Told Michael she was madly in love with the man — whose name was James Owington, the fat bastard — married him a month after the divorce became final, easy come, easy go, right?