Ed McBain - Downtown

“No,” Michael said.

“Dr. Ling said you have to rest.”

“Dr. Ling isn’t wanted for murder. What I want to do is go see this Charlie Nichols person...”

“No. You can call him on the phone if you like, but I won’t let...”

“I don’t want to call him on the phone. Every time I talk to somebody on the phone, the police show up in the next ten minutes, I am wanted for murder, Connie! Can’t you...?”

“You’re yelling at me,” she said.

“Yes. Because you’re behaving like a...”

“We’re having our first argument,” she said, grinning.

“Let’s go see Charlie Nichols,” he said.

She did not want to ask Charlie Wong for the use of a limousine because she had already called to tell him she was sick. She did not want to go to a car rental place because she suspected the police would have contacted all such places and asked them to be on the lookout for the wanted desperado Michael Barnes. So she went to Shi Kai, who ran the restaurant downstairs.

Mr. Shi had a car he only drove during the summer months. The rest of the time, it sat idle in a garage he rented on Canal. That was because the car was a 1954 Oldsmobile convertible with a mechanism that had broken while the top was in the down position. Mr. Shi handed the keys over to Connie and told her not to freeze to death. Michael was beginning to understand that Connie had a great many friends in New York City’s Chinese community, all of whom seemed willing to perform all sorts of favors for her. This may have been only because she was Chinese, but he suspected it was because she was extraordinarily beautiful as well.

He loved the way she wore her beauty.

His former wife, Jenny, was beautiful, too, if you considered long blonde hair and green eyes and a spectacular figure beautiful, which apparently not only Michael had considered beautiful but all of Harvard’s football team while he was in Vietnam, and most recently the branch manager and God knew who else at Suncoast Federal. But Jenny flaunted her beauty, wearing it like a Miss America who was certain her smile would bring her fame, fortune, and a good seat at Van Wezel Hall, which was Sarasota’s big contribution to Florida culture, such as it was, It had sickened Michael every time Jenny gently placed her hand on someone’s arm and leaned in close to flash that incandescent smile of hers, and the person — male or female — melted into a gushing pool of gratitude and awe. Jenny knew without question that wherever she and Michael went, she was the most beautiful woman in the room. This was true. An indisputable fact. You could no more doubt that than you could doubt the certainty of the sun rising in the morning or the tides going in and out. Jenny was gorgeous. That she knew this and used this was not a particularly admirable trait.

Connie seemed not to know that she was extravagantly beautiful.

She wore her beauty like Reeboks.

Or galoshes.

It never occurred to her that Mr. Shi would feel honored when she asked to borrow his convertible with a top that could not be put up. She went to him as a supplicant, politely asking for the use of the car, generously offering to pay for the use of the car, eyes respectfully lowered when talking to this person who was older than she was, and Mr. Shi — recognizing the beauty and the grace and the modesty of this young woman who came to him as a dutiful daughter might have — handed her the keys and accepted her gratitude with a tut-tut-tut, and then cautioned her paternally against freezing to death.

Connie smiled so radiantly, it almost broke Michael’s heart.

He guessed he was beginning to love her a whole lot.

“One of the nice things about a convertible,” Connie said, “is you can see all the buildings.”

Michael was thinking that in this city you could drive a convertible with the top down in the dead of winter and nobody paid any attention to you. That was one of the nice things about this city, the way everyone respected everyone else’s privacy, Indifference, it was called.

He was beginning to learn the downtown area.

For example, he now knew that if you wanted to get out of Chinatown, you didn’t have to go very far until you were in Little Italy. And if you wanted to get out of Little Italy...

“This is all the Fifth Precinct,” Connie said.

“Thank you,” he said.

... you either drove east toward the East River or west toward the Hudson River. On the other hand, if you wanted to get to Charlie Nichols’s apartment in Knickerbocker Village, you first drove east on Canal, and then you made a left on Bowery and drove past the Confucius Plaza apartments and P.S. 124 all the way to Catherine, where you made another left that took you past PS. I on your right and then a Catholic church and school on your left — there were certainly a great many educational opportunities in this fine city — and then you made another left onto Monroe, which was a one-way street, and you looked for a parking space.

You could fit all of downtown Sarasota in Knickerbocker Village. That was another thing about this city. You could drive all over the downtown area, which was really just an infinitesimal part of New York, and you’d see more buildings and more restaurants and more movie theaters and more people than you would driving through the entire state of Florida. Michael found this amazing. He suddenly wondered if Connie planned to stay in New York for the rest of her life. He hoped not.

They were surrounded now by tall brick buildings.

They walked on paths shoveled clear of snow.

The evening was cold and brisk. Connie was wearing jeans and leg warmers and boots and the short black coat she’d had on last night when she’d followed him out of the fortune-cookie factory. Michael was wearing a brown leather bomber jacket he’d bought from a friend of Connie’s named Louis Klein who ran an Army & Navy store on Delancey Street, which he opened for Connie even though this was Christmas and he was leaving for Puerto Rico in the morning. He had also sold to Michael — with money borrowed from Connie — a pair of Levi jeans, a blue wool sweater reduced from sixty-four dollars to twenty-three ninety-five, and a pair of white woolen socks “to keep your feet warm,” he said paternally, It was amazing how Connie brought out the paternal instinct in all these fifty-, sixty-year-old men. When Klein clucked his tongue and asked Connie how her boyfriend had hurt his arm, Connie told him simply and honestly that he’d been shot. Klein said, “This city, I’m not surprised,” and threw in an extra pair of woolen socks free.

She clung to his right arm now as they wandered through the development, following signs that told them which building was which. Somehow there was no sense of urgency here in this cloistered enclave. It was close to five o’clock now. There was a hush on the city. The street lamps, already lighted, cast a warm glow on the snow banked along the paths. Window rectangles glowed with the warmth of rooms beyond, Christmas tree lights blinking red and blue and green and white. Strings of lights outlined windows and balconies. One window was decorated with a huge white star. It was still Christmas.

They found Nichols’s building, located his name in the lobby directory downstairs, and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. The corridor smelled of Christmas. Birds and beef that had been roasted, pies that had been baked. There was laughter behind one of the closed doors. Music behind another. They walked to the door for Nichols’s apartment and Michael pressed the bell button set into the jamb. He listened. Nothing. He looked at Connie. She shrugged. He rang the bell again. No answer.

“He’s out,” he said.

“Knock,” she said.