Ed McBain - Downtown

Little girl, little boy. Two kids, that would’ve been nice.

Name the girl Lise, after his mother.

Well, maybe not.

But shit, Mom, it really wasn’t my fault he died.

Name the boy Andrew for sure.

But if you can’t sleep you can’t dream, and anyway all the dreams died forever — or so he’d thought — nine months and six days ago, seven days ago now. but who was counting? All the dreams had drowned in the Gulf of Mexico on that blustery March day, drowned together with his sorrows.

But tonight...

He could see snow beginning to fall again outside the window on his side of the bed. Fat fluffy flakes drifting down in the light of the lamppost.

He held Connie in his arms.

She felt so small and delicate.

He held her close and watched the snow coming down.

And almost instantly, he fell deeply asleep.

And for the first time in years, he dreamed again.

It was Christmas Day.

Cooking smells from the restaurant downstairs drifted up the stairwell and seeped under the door and wafted across the apartment into the bedroom where he lay with Connie Kee in his arms. It was still snowing. He guessed there had to be eight feet of snow out there by now. Maybe ten feet. It had to be Minnesota out there by now.

He had fallen asleep instantly, but now he was wide awake and a bit leery of waking up Connie, who might discover there was a stranger here in bed with her and go running out into the snow naked. The last time he’d been to bed with anyone was with a woman named Zara with a Z Kaufman in Miami, where he’d gone to an orange-growers’ convention. That was in September, it was still hurricane season down there in Florida, there were in fact hurricane warnings posted for southeast Florida and the Keys. He had not been to bed with anyone since the divorce in March, but there he was with the palms rattling outside his motel window and the wind blowing at forty miles an hour and a fifty-year-old woman who grew oranges in Winter Haven teaching him a few tricks he hadn’t learned in Saigon.

Zara with a Z Kaufman.

A very lovely person.

He had never seen her again after that night.

So here he was now with a Chinese girl dead asleep in his arms, afraid to wake her up because whereas last night there had been only two of them here in this bed, this morning there were three of them if you counted his hard-on, which Connie suddenly seized in her right hand, leading him to believe she hadn’t been asleep after all.

They kissed.

It was like their kiss last night under the stars in that snowbound backyard where telephone poles grew from an endless field of white and snow-capped fences ran forever. Except better. Because although last night there had been the attendant if remote possibility that their lips might in fact freeze together — she always seemed to be worried about freezing, he now realized — the bed today was quite warm under the quilt, thank you, and there was in fact steam banging in the radiators, and no one was about to freeze, not today when Christmas was upon the world.

And whereas last night someone up there in a fourth-floor window had asked them what the hell they were doing and had threatened to call the police, which he or she had in fact later done, the bastard, there was now no one here in this radiator-clanging, steam-hissing room to hurl a challenge or to dial 911 to report a dire emergency. There was no dire emergency in this room. Unless the urgency of their mutual need could be considered an emergency of sorts, and a dire one at that. He could not recall ever wanting a woman as much as he wanted this one. Nor could he recall any woman ever wanting him as much as Connie seemed to want him.

They could not stop touching each other.

They could not stop kissing.

Her murmuring little sounds hummed under his lips.

His hands were wet with her.

When at last he entered her—

“Oh, Jesus,” they whispered together.

It was Christmas Day.

There were four Charles Nicholses listed in the Manhattan telephone directory, but none of them had an R for a middle initial.

Which meant that none of them was the Charles R. Nichols who was no relation to Jack Nichols the big movie star.

Charles R. Nichols, who had been on Mister Ed years ago, and who had played a ghost’s voice in Crandall’s latest, as-yet-unreleased film. Winter’s Chill.

Connie suggested that perhaps the Nichols they wanted was listed in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, or Staten Island directories instead. In which case, she and Michael could run over to Penn Station and check out the phone books there.

“The police will be watching the railroad stations,” Michael said.

“Then I’ll go alone.”

“The police know what you look like, they saw you driving me away from Crandall’s office,” he said. “Connie... maybe I...”

“No,” she said.

“What I’m trying to say...”

“You’re trying to say you love me.”

“Well...”

“And you’re worried about me. That’s so nice, Michael. You say the sweetest things, really.”

“Connie, the point...”

“But I’m not afraid,” she said. “So you don’t have to...”

“I am,” he said.

She looked at him.

“Afraid,” he said.

She kept looking at him.

“The time to be afraid,” he said, “is when you don’t know what’s happening. And when you feel helpless to stop whatever is happening.”

“Then what we have to do is find out what’s happening. And stop it from happening. Then you won’t be afraid anymore and we can just make love all the time.”

He took her in his arms. He hugged her close. He shook his head. He sighed. He hugged her again.

“What was that other man’s name?” she asked.

“What man?”

“The one Crandall’s wife told you about. The one who put up all the money for his war movie.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“She told you he looked like a rabbi...”

“Yes, tall and thin and hairy...”

“Magruder!” Connie said.

“No.”

“Magruder, yes!”

“Connie, there are no rabbis named Magruder.”

“Then whose name is Magruder?”

“I have no idea. But that’s not his name.”

“Then what is his name?”

“I don’t remember. It had something to do with the movie.”

“Yes, he put up the money for...”

“Yes, but not that. Something about War and — Solly’s War! His first name is Solly! No, Solomon! Solomon something!”

“Magruder!”

“No!”

“I’m telling you it’s Solomon Magruder!”

“And I’m telling you no!”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gruber!” she shouted.

“Yes!”

“Solomon Gruber!”

“Yes!”

“The phone book!” she said.

“Be there,” he said. “Please be there.”

There were no Solomon Grubers listed in the Manhattan directory. There were a lot of S. Grubers, but no way of knowing which of them, if any, might be a Solomon. There was, however, a listing for a Gruber Financial Group, and another listing for a Gruber International, and yet another for a Gruber Foundation, all of which sounded like companies that might have had twelve million dollars to invest in a flop movie eleven years ago. Michael tried each of the three numbers. No answer. This was Christmas Day. But in studying the S. Gruber listings a second time—

“Look!” Connie said.

“I see it.”

“This S. Gruber has the same address...”

“Yes.”

“... as the Gruber Financial Group.”

“But a different phone number,” Michael said. “Let’s call him.”