Ed McBain - Downtown

“False,” Gruber said. “Do you know how much this new movie cost to make?”

“How much?” Michael asked.

“Three times what Solitude cost.”

“Thirty-six million dollars,” Connie said at once. “This is very good, this toddy. Why do they call it a toddy?”

“Thirty-six million, correct,” Gruber said, “plus I have to figure at least another five, six million for prints and advertising, and it’ll come to forty, forty-five million before all is said and done. Now tell me something, Mr. Bond, how can a forty-five-million-dollar picture be crap? Can you tell me that, please? You don’t plan to print that, do you? His wife’s remark?”

“I mean, she is a bitch,” Mary said, shaking her head.

“What we planned to do,” Michael said, “was leave the review to the daily reviewer...”

“Who?” Gruber said at once. “Canby? Or Maslin? Don’t say Canby or I’ll have a heart attack.”

“I don’t think it’s been assigned yet.”

“It hasn’t been assigned yet? It’s opening on the second, we had screenings all last week, it hasn’t been assigned yet?”

“Not that I know of. But the Sunday section’s approach would be...”

“I’ll bet it’s Canby,” Gruber said to his wife.

“That prick,” she said.

“We thought we’d talk to Charlie Nichols, take an oblique approach to...”

“Why don’t you talk to Jessica Wales? She’s the star of the fucking thing,” Gruber said, “why don’t you talk to her?”

“Well, we wanted a unique approach...”

“I thought you said oblique.”

“And unique.”

“We’ve got some great stills of Jessica, you could use those with the story.”

“The scene where they’re coming at her with the knife, oooooo,” Mary said, and shuddered.

“The ghosts,” Gruber said.

“What she thinks are ghosts.”

“Don’t give it away, for Christ’s sake,” Gruber said.

“They aren’t really ghosts, don’t worry,” Mary said to Michael, as if trying to still the fears of a very small child.

“That’s right, tell him,” Gruber said, shaking his head. “Give away the whole fucking plot.”

“Are you really a rabbi?” Connie asked him.

“What?” he said.

“Because I didn’t know rabbis talked that way.”

Gruber blinked.

Mary rolled her eyes and said, “ Whatever you do, don’t mention Gaslight.”

“Very good, tell him not to mention Gaslight,” Gruber said. “That’s like telling somebody not to stare at somebody’s big nose. Did you see that picture?”

“No.” Michael said.

“The Martin picture.”

“Sheen?”

“Steve. Anyway, this isn’t Gaslight we did, this is an entirely new and original approach to psychological suspense. Jessica Wales gives the performance of her career and Arthur Crandall has never been...”

“I wonder, Mr. Gruber, do you think you could let me have Charlie Nichols’s address, please?”

“You’re determined to do this interview with Charlie, huh?”

“That’s my assignment, sir.”

“Who thinks up these crazy assignments? Gussow?”

“I’ll bet it’s Canby,” Mary said.

“Do we even have his address?” Gruber said. “I mean, he’s a bit player. Why the hell do you want to interview him ?”

“I just take orders,” Michael said.

“Oh, sure, everybody just takes orders,” Gruber said. “The Nazis just took orders, Canby just takes orders, you just take orders, where’s the address book?” he asked Mary.

“I’ll gel it,” she said, “don’t get excited. He gets so excited,” she said to Michael.

“Maybe I oughta just call Arthur, he’s probably got the address right at his finger...”

“No, I don’t think you should do that,” Michael said.

“Why not? You said you want to talk to Charlie...”

“We’d like to surprise Mr. Crandall.”

“Oh, he’ll be surprised, all right, don’t worry. An interview with Charlie Nichols? Oh, he’ll wet his pants, believe me. When’s this thing gonna be in the paper?”

“Next Sunday.”

“You work that close, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Here it is,” Mary said, and handed the address book to her husband.

The chimes suddenly began playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

“I love this song,” Mary said.

Gruber waited until the entire little song had played.

Then he said, “Who is it?”

And a man answered, “Police.”

It was as if someone in the platoon had yelled “Charlie!”

His heart stopped.

He almost threw himself flat on the ground. But the ground was a thick white carpet, across which Gruber was now walking to the front door. Michael glanced quickly at Connie. Connie smiled back mysteriously. It occurred to him that Mary’s little hot rum toddy had done a real number on her.

Gruber opened the door.

There were two men standing there.

They were both wearing blue jackets with yellow ribbed cuffs and waistbands.

“Mr. Gruber?” one of the men asked.

He was about Gruber’s height and weight. He had curly red hair and blue eyes that matched his jacket.

“Yes?” Gruber said.

“Detective Harold Nelson, Seventh Precinct,” he said, and immediately turned his back to Gruber. Across the back of the blue jacket, in yellow script lettering, were the words seventh precinct bowling TEAM. He turned to face Gruber again. “I called a little while ago,” he said. “This is my partner, Detective Marvin Leibowitz.”

“How do you do?” Leibowitz said. He was taller than Nelson, with black hair and brown eyes. Together they looked like Car 54, Where Are You? In bowling jackets.

“Marvin is our captain,” Nelson said.

“An honor to meet you,” Gruber said.

“Not of the precinct,” Nelson said. “The team.”

“Still an honor,” Gruber said. “Come in, please.”

The way he was treating them, Michael figured Gruber had paid off a great many cops on the streets of New York while filming this or that wonderful motion picture. When he was still living in Boston, they had shot a movie titled Fuzz up there, which was about cops. Burt Reynolds had played the detective in it. Raquel Welch was in it, too, though they never got to kiss because Reynolds was already married to a woman who couldn’t hear or speak. Michael went to see it later, it turned out to be a lousy movie. But while they were shooting this movie, there were so many real cops hanging around that Michael was sure the entire Boston P.D. was on the take. He suddenly wondered if Winter’s Chill, the new Arthur Crandall masterpiece, had been shot right here in New York City.

“The reason we’re here, sir,” Nelson said, “as I mentioned on the telephone, is we’re the detectives investigating this homicide which we caught in our precinct...”

“Yes, I realize that,” Gruber said.

“Although you wouldn’t know it from the jackets, would you?” Leibowitz said.

“We’re playing later tonight,” Nelson explained.

“The Ninth,” Leibowitz explained.

“Who’s conducting?” Connie asked.

Both Nelson and Leibowitz looked at her. Michael wished they weren’t looking at her that way. She still had the mysterious smile on her face, which made her look somehow insulting. To cops, anyone smiling that way was either mentally retarded or trying to be a wise guy. He could sense both cops bristling at the way she was smiling. It never occurred to either of them that she might have had too much toddy. They merely saw this Oriental smiling in a superior manner, and they figured her for somebody challenging authority. In Vietnam, sometimes you got an American soldier questioning a native who either lowered his eyes or looked away, and the soldier figured he had something to hide. Couldn’t look you straight in the eye, then he had to be lying or something. Didn’t realize this was a sign of respect, not looking a superior directly in the eye. It caused a lot of trouble in Vietnam. In Vietnam, a lot of innocent people had got themselves shot because they wouldn’t look an American soldier in the eye when he was asking them questions. He wished Connie would stop smiling.