Ed McBain - Downtown

“Is there something comical, miss?” Nelson asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“May I ask what?”

“No,” she said, and kept smiling.

Nelson looked at her as if trying to freeze her solid with his icy blue stare. Leibowitz, standing behind him and to his left, was scowling now. Suddenly, they no longer looked like Car 54. Instead, they looked like two mean detectives who would kick Connie’s ass around the block as soon as look at her.

“At any rate,” Nelson said, dismissing her and turning to Gruber again, “we thought that since you are an associate, so to speak, of Mr. Crandall...”

“Yes, I am.”

“Who at first we thought was the dead man, but who isn’t...”

“Oh, thank God,” Mary said, “such a genius.”

Nelson looked at her.

“I don’t believe I have met these other people, sir,” he said to Gruber.

“My wife, Mary,” Gruber said.

“How do you do?” Nelson said.

“Ma’am,” Leibowitz said, and almost touched the bill of a cap he was no longer wearing, a holdover from his days as a uniformed cop.

“Mr. Bond and Miss Keene of The New York Times,” Gruber said.

Michael said, “Nice to meet you.”

Connie smiled mysteriously.

“What’re you gonna do?” Nelson asked her. “Write about how incompetent the cops in this city are?”

“Because we ain’t got the killer yet?” Leibowitz said.

“You look familiar,” Nelson said to Michael.

“I don’t think so,” Michael said.

“You ever done a story up the Seventh Precinct?”

“No, sir, I’m sure I haven’t.”

“Me, neither,” Connie said.

“I could swear I know you,” Nelson said. “How about the Two-Six uptown? You ever write about the Two-Six?”

“Never.”

“’Cause I used to work up the Two-Six.”

“I’ve never been there.”

“Up in Harlem? On a Hun’ Twenny-sixth Street?”

“No, sir, I’m sorry.”

“Five-twenny West a Hun’ Twenny-sixth?”

“No.”

“Boy, I could swear I seen you someplace.”

“Me, too,” Leibowitz said, staring at him.

“Mr. Gruber,” Michael said, extending his hand for the book Gruber was clutching like a hymnal, “if you’ll just let me have that address...”

“When do you expect to catch him?” Gruber asked.

“Barnes? Who knows? The man’s from Florida, for all we know he’s already back there by now.”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” Michael said, bristling somewhat, “for all you know, he may not have killed that person at all. Whoever that person may be.”

“Oh, so that’s gonna be the Times approach, huh?” Nelson said, and nodded knowingly to his partner.

“Of course,” Leibowitz said. “The police in this city don’t know if Michael Barnes really done it...”

“... and we also don’t know who got killed.”

“Who did get killed?” Michael asked.

“We don’t know,” Nelson said.

“But that doesn’t mean...”

“That doesn’t mean Barnes didn’t kill him,” Nelson said.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll work it out,” Michael said. “Connie, let’s go. Mr. Gruber, if you’ll...”

“Okay, Michael,” Connie said.

“... let me have...”

“Michael, did you say?” Leibowitz asked.

Michael thought Uh-oh.

Leibowitz was looking at him.

“Mr. Who, did you say?” Nelson asked.

Nelson was looking at him, too.

Both of them trying to remember if this was the man they’d seen on television.

The picture on the license.

Not a very good likeness, but—

“Bond,” Michael said.

It wasn’t going to wash.

“Mr. Bond,” Nelson said, reaching under his jacket for the gun holstered to his belt, “I wonder if you’d...”

Michael did two things almost simultaneously.

Three things, actually.

In such rapid succession that he might just as well have been doing them all at the same time.

He grabbed Connie’s hand; he yanked the address book out of Gruber’s hand; and he hit Nelson with his shoulder.

“Oh my God!” Mary yelled.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” Nelson yelled.

“Don’t!” Gruber yelled. “The paintings!”

The door seemed so very far away.

Moving through the jungle with Andrew in his arms, his life leaking away. The medical choppers so very far away. The jungle path a long, dark tunnel through overhanging leaves of green, vines of green, everything dripping green except Andrew, who kept spilling red. Behind Michael, someone called, “We no wanna hurt you, no run, Yank, we wanna help you,” and he wondered why every fucking Cong soldier in this country sounded like a Jap in a World War II—

Nelson fired.

He didn’t hit any pictures.

What he hit was Michael.

In the left arm.

He dropped the address book.

He said, “Oh shit.”

Which sobered Connie at once. Or maybe the sudden sight of blood sobered her. She yanked open the door, picked up the book, grabbed the hand on Michael’s good arm, and pulled him through the doorway after her. Behind them. Nelson — or perhaps Leibowitz — fired a shot that sent splinters flying out of the jamb.

Here we are again on the streets of Fabulous Downtown New York, Michael thought, with the fun just about to begin, folks, because my arm is bleeding very badly, and there are two cops chasing us with guns in their hands, and I can’t shoot at either one of them because I’m as innocent as the day is long, which so far happens to be the longest day in my life.

He told himself he could not afford to pass out, even though his arm was killing him — where was the address book, had Connie picked up the address book? Charlie Nichols was in that book and Charlie just might know what the hell was going on here, If this were a War Movie, which with all this shooting it was beginning to resemble a lot, he’d have told the Chinese girl guiding him through enemy lines to go on without him, he was hurt too bad and he wasn’t going to make it. Or if this were a Show Biz Movie, he’d have told his Chinese dancing partner to accept the job Ziegfeld had offered because he himself was only a second-rate hoofer who didn’t want to stand in her way. But this wasn’t a movie at all, this was real life, and so he clung to Connie’s hand as if he were hanging outside a tenth-story window with nothing but her support between him and the pavement below. Behind him, he heard Nelson yelling like a fucking Cong Jap, “We don’t wanna hurt you, Barnes,” although he’d already hurt Michael pretty badly.

They had almost reached the sidewalk now.

“Police!” someone yelled. “Freeze!”

They both stopped dead in their tracks.

A green-and-white car was at the curb.

The lettering on it read sixth precinct.

Two uniformed cops in what looked like padded blue parkas with fake-fur collars were running toward them.

“Freeze!” one of them shouted again.

“Police!” the other one shouted.

Still running toward them.

“Drop those guns!” one of them yelled.

What? Michael thought.

And then he realized that these nice police officers had heard gunfire, and had pulled their car to the curb and had seen a bleeding man and a nice Chinese woman running out of this nice little Welsh lane here, and chasing them were a menacing tall guy and an equally menacing short guy in bowling jackets, both of them screaming, and each of them with a gun in his hand.

Michael wondered if Nelson and Leibowitz would turn to flash the yellow SEVENTH PRECINCT BOWLING TEAM lettering on their jackets.