Ed McBain - Downtown

“Let’s eat first,” Connie said.

The S. Gruber whose address was identical to that of the Gruber Financial Group lived in Washington Mews, which was a gated little lane that ran eastward from number 10 Fifth Avenue to University Place. Connie explained that they were still in what she considered downtown Manhattan.

“As far as I’m concerned,” she said, “it’s all downtown till you get up to Forty-second Street. Then it starts to be mid town. This is the Sixth Precinct here. Driving a limo, I like to know where all the precincts are, in case I get some weirdo in the back. The precincts are funny in this city. For example, the First starts at Houston Street on the north and ends at Battery Park on the south. Which means if you get killed, for example, on Fulton Street, you have to run all the way uptown and crosstown to Ericsson Place to report it. Anyway, this is the Sixth, which is mostly silk stocking.”

They were walking up what could have been a little cobble-stoned lane in a Welsh village. Doors that only appeared to be freshly painted flanked the pathway, their brass knockers and knobs gleaming in the noonday light. The cobblestones had been shoveled clean of snow. There were wreaths in the windows, electrified candles in them. The twinkling multicolored glow of illuminated Christmas trees behind diaphanous lace curtains. Classical music wafting through a street-level window opened just a crack. Swelling violins. And now a clarinet. Or maybe a flute. Dying with a dying fall on a Christmas Day already half gone. Michael wished he could identify the composition. Or even its composer. There were so many things he wished. Down in Sarasota he read The New York Times all the time, and he listened to WUSF 89.7, which was the public radio station, but he never could tell one piece of classical music from another. To him, they all sounded like somebody practicing.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Connie said,

“I was just vamping till ready,” Michael said.

“I hope you’re ready now,” she said, “because here it is.”

A black door.

A brass escutcheon on it.

Solomon Gruber, engraved in script lettering.

To the right of the door, set into the doorjamb, a heavy brass bell button.

Michael pressed his forefinger against it.

Inside, chimes began playing a tune you didn’t have to be Harold Schonberg or even Newgate Callendar to recognize.

The tune was “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

They listened to it. It sounded nice on the frosty Christmas air.

When the chimes reached “fleece as white,” the door opened.

The man standing there in the doorframe was not tall and thin and hairy, and he did not look like a rabbi, either. The man standing there was wearing a red turtleneck sweater with a black velvet smoking jacket over it. He had a very bushy handlebar moustache, which may have been why Albetha Crandall had thought he was hairy. Otherwise, he wore his hair in a crew cut that made him look like a German U-boat commander. Why she’d thought he was tall and thin was anyone’s guess. Perhaps she’d meant in comparison to her husband, who was short and chubby. Solomon Gruber, if that’s who this man turned out to be, was of medium height and build. Compact, one might say. Chunky. Like a bulldog.

“Yes?” he said.

He looked as if he expected them to start singing Christmas carols. He looked as if he would close the door in their faces if they did. Or run up to the roof to pour boiling oil on them.

“Mr. Gruber?” Michael asked.

“Yes?” he said again.

“My name is Michael Bond. I’m with The New York Times, I wanted to talk to you about Winter’s Chill. This is Constance Keene, my assistant.”

Gruber blinked.

“Come in,” he said at once, and stepped aside to allow them entrance. “ Mary!” he shouted. “Come quick, it’s The New York Times!. Come in, come in, please,” he said.

Michael wondered if it was a crime to impersonate a person from The New York Times.

Gruber’s townhouse was furnished the way Michael hoped one day to furnish the house in Sarasota, now that Jenny was out of it and living with her fucking branch manager. In recent months, he had browsed through enough home furnishing magazines to know that the extremely modern furniture here in Gruber’s living room was either Herman Miller or Knoll, all leather and glass and chrome and wood. The house in Sarasota was at the end of a dirt road that ran alongside the groves. Behind the house was a man-made lake that had been dug by the former owner of the groves. Sliding glass doors opened onto the lake. Modern furniture would look good in that house. He knew Connie liked modern because of the way her apartment was furnished. Now he wondered if she’d like the Sarasota house.

The walls in the Gruber living room were done in rough white plaster, except for the fireplace wall, which was done in black marble, with a chrome surround for the hearth. A painting that looked like a genuine Matisse hung on one of the white walls. Another that looked like a real van Gogh hung on the wall adjacent to it. A Christmas tree was in the far corner of the room, near the windows facing the lane outside. A woman came in through a rosewood swinging door that led to the kitchen. She was wearing a long red gown that matched Gruber’s red turtle-neck sweater. She was taller than Gruber, and she had blonde hair — but she was not the woman who’d conned Michael in the bar last night. It occurred to Michael that there were a lot of blondes in the city of New York. Just as there seemed to be a lot of Charlies. Which was why he was here.

“Mr. Gruber,” he said, “I...”

“Mary, this is Michael Bond,” Gruber said, “and his assistant, Constance Keene.”

“How do you do,” Mary said.

Which was why the doorbell played “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Michael guessed.

“Can I get you something to drink, Mr. Bond?” Gruber said.

“Some hot toddy?” Mary said.

She was smiling like one of the women in The Stepford Wives. Michael wondered if she had wires and tapes inside her.

“Mary makes a great hot toddy,” Gruber said.

He was smiling like a shark approaching a Sarasota beach at the height of the season. Probably because The Hew York Times was in his living room.

“I’d like to try a hot toddy,” Connie said. “I’ve never had one.”

“One hot toddy coming up,” Mary said. “Mr. Bond, what will you have?”

“A diet Coke, if you’ve got one.”

“Will a diet Pepsi do?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“One hot toddy and one diet Pepsi coming up,” she said, and went out into the kitchen.

“From what I understand,” Michael said, “the Gruber Group put up all the financing for Arthur Crandall’s new film.”

“Boy oh boy oh boy, The New York Times,” Gruber said, shaking his head. “On Christmas Day, no less. You guys have sources not to be believed.”

“That’s true, though, isn’t it?”

“Yes, the Gruber Financial Group — it’s Gruber Financial Group, not Gruber Group.”

“Yes, sir, Gruber Financial Group.”

“Maybe you ought to jot that down.” Gruber said.

“Yes, sir, have you got a pencil and some paper?”

“I’ve got some,” Connie said, and reached into her shoulder bag and took from it a bill pad with the lettering CHINA DOLL LIMOUSINE across its top. She handed this to Michael together with a ballpoint pen that had tobacco shreds clinging to its tip.

“Gruber Financial Group, yes, sir,” Michael said, and wrote it onto the pad.

Mary came out of the kitchen. She was carrying a tray with a mug and a glass on it. The mug had a cinnamon stick poking up out of it like the periscope on a miniature submarine.