Ed McBain - Downtown

He supposed he would have to learn how to do their job.

He hadn’t wanted to learn how to avoid the punji sticks planted on a jungle trail, either, but he had learned. Had learned because if you stepped on one of those sharpened bamboo stakes it went clear through the sole of your boot and since Charlie had dipped the stakes in his own excrement—

Charlie.

Even in Vietnam, it had been Charlie.

For the Vietcong.

The V.C.

Victor Charlie.

And then just Charlie for short.

Good old Charlie.

Who had taught him to dance the light fandango along those jungle paths, live and learn. Or rather, learn and live. The way he had to learn now. Here in this city of New York, downtown here in this rotten city, his problem was a dead man. Arthur Crandall. And this was the dead man’s office, as good a place to start learning as any Michael could think of.

“Cahill and Parrish,” he whispered to Connie.

“Who?”

“We’re looking for anything that might tie them to Crandall.”

“Who are they?” Connie asked, sitting on the edge of the desk and crossing her long legs.

He explained who they were.

She listened intently.

She was so goddamn beautiful.

He kept wondering if she was wearing red silk panties.

Or any panties at all.

They began searching. The first thing they found in this office in holiday disarray, the first thing they found in this two-bit Sodom and Gomorrah show-biz office was a framed newspaper article on the wall alongside the blinking Christmas tree.

The article was written in French.

“Do you speak French?” he whispered.

“Chinese,” she whispered back. “And English, of course. Cantonese dialect. The Chinese. Do you speak French?”

“A little. The Vietnamese spoke French. And my mother, too, every now and then.”

The article was from a newspaper called the Nice Matin. In translation, the headline read:

The article told about the showing of the film War and Solitude at the International Film Festival in Cannes. The article also summarized the critical reaction to it. Apparently, the reaction had been excellent. Everyone had thought, in fact, that War and Solitude would walk away with all the honors. Michael suddenly wondered if Oliver Stone, the director of Platoon, had killed Crandall and left him in Michael’s car. The article had appeared in May, eleven years ago. Someone, probably Crandall himself, had inked in the newspaper’s date in the margin on the right-hand side of the article. The caption under the accompanying photograph read: Arthur Crandall before the showing of his film War and Solitude yesterday afternoon.

The man in the photograph was not Arthur Crandall.

Or at least not the Arthur Crandall who’d been so helpful to Michael before stealing his car.

This Arthur Crandall — the one in the photograph — had a little round pig face with a pug nose and plump little cheeks. He was short and stout and he looked more like Oliver Hardy than Abraham Lincoln.

“This is not Arthur Crandall,” Michael said. “I mean, this says he’s Arthur Crandall, but he’s not the man I met earlier tonight.”

“Who later got himself killed.”

“This isn’t that man.”

“Then who is he?”

“I don’t know who he is.”

“Let’s sec what’s in his desk.”

Together they went through the desk drawers. The red silk panties sat like a fallen poinsettia leaf not a foot from where they worked. He noticed that Connie smelled of oolong tea and soap, and he wondered if she knew she smelled so exotically seductive.

“I think we should take that picture with us,” she said. “In case we need it later. Whoever he is. Because sailors who measure the tide sail with the wisdom of seers, you know.”

He looked at her.

“Have you ever stuffed fortune cookies?” he said.

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondered. You smell of oolong tea and soap, did you know that?”

“Did you know that the word ‘oolong’ is from wu’ lung, which means black dragon in Mandarin Chinese?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Michael said.

“Yes,” she said. “Because oolong tea is so dark.”

“I see.”

“Yes.”

He was getting dizzy on the scent of her.

“Here’s his appointment calendar,” Connie said, taking it from the top drawer of Crandall’s desk.

“Do you think it’s safe to turn on this lamp?” Michael asked, and snapped on the gooseneck desk lamp. Connie sat in the swivel chair behind the desk, and he dragged over another chair and sat beside her. Their knees touched. The calendar was of the Day At-A Glance type. She flipped it open to the page for Tuesday, December 24, and then automatically looked at her watch.

“Still the twenty-fourth,” she said.

“Ten minutes to midnight,” he said.

“Ten minutes to Christmas,” she said.

There were several handwritten reminders on the page:

Call Mama

“Dutiful son,” Michael said.

Send roses to Albetha

“Who’s Albetha?” he asked.

“Who knows?” Connie said.

Mama @ Benny’s

8:00 PM

“Mama again,” Michael said. “But who’s Benny?”

“Who knows?” Connie said, and flipped the calendar back to the page for Monday, December 23.

There were three entries for that date:

Bank at 2:30

“Deposit?” Connie asked. “Withdrawal?”

Charlie @ 3:30

“Another Charlie,” Michael said.

“Huh?” Connie said.

“There are a lot of Charlies in this city.”

“Yes,” Connie said. “Now that you mention it.”

“But not too many Albethas, I’ll bet.”

Christmas party

4:00-7:00 PM

“Let’s find out why he went to the bank,” Connie said.

“How?”

“His checkbook. If we can find it.”

They began searching through the desk drawers again. In the bottom drawer, Michael found two large, ledger-type checkbooks, one with a blue cover, the other with a black one. The blue checkbook had yellow checks in it. Each check was headed with the names ALBETHA AND ARTHUR CRANDALL and an address on West Tenth Street.

“There’s Albetha,” Connie said.

“His wife.”

“The roses.”

“Nice.”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if she knows he’s dead.”

The black checkbook had pink checks in it. Each check was headed with the name CRANDALL PRODUCTIONS, LTD. and the address here on Bowery. Michael flipped through the business checkbook and found the stubs for the last several checks written, all dated December 23. There was a check to Sylvia Horowitz for a $20 °Christmas bonus...

“His secretary?” Connie asked.

“Could be.”

And a check to Celebrity Catering for $1,217.21...

“The party, must be,” Michael said.

“Some party,” Connie said.

And a check to Mission Liquors for $314.78.

“More party,” Connie said.

“Some party,” Michael said.

No checks beyond the twenty-third. They leafed backward through the stubs. The last payroll checks had been made out on December 20, the ones before that on December 6. The firm paid its employees — apparently only Crandall and the woman named Sylvia Horowitz — on a biweekly basis.

“Let’s try the personal checkbook,” Connie said.

In the personal book, they found only one stub for a check written on Monday, December 23.

It was made out to cash.

For $9,000.

They both fell silent.

Outside, there was only the keening of the wind. Snow broke off from the telephone wires, fell soundlessly to the backyards below.