Ed McBain - Downtown

He looked at her.

And felt suddenly foolish.

She was right, of course.

He’d found a telephone number in a dead man’s wallet, and he’d called that number, and the woman who’d answered the phone was named Judy Jordan.

So?

Why go see her?

He was tired. And beginning to feel that perhaps the best thing to do, after all, was ran on over to the police station and tell them he was the man they were looking for and could he please make a call to his lawyer, Mr. David Lang in Sarasota, Florida? Connie knew where all the precincts were, they could drive over to the nearest one in Shi Kai’s broken convertible. Or perhaps he should call Dave first, ask him to take the next plane up to New York, hole up in Connie’s apartment until he got here, and then go to the police togeth—

“Judy who, did you say?”

This from Connie.

Who not five minutes ago had been urging him to please get the hell out of here. But who now seemed to have a note of renewed interest in her voice.

“Jordan,” he said, and turned to look up at her.

Connie was looking at the wall.

Specifically, she was looking at a photograph of Charlie Nichols and a teenage girl. Charlie was a much younger man in the photograph; Michael guessed the picture had been taken at least fifteen years ago. The girl couldn’t have been older than sixteen or seventeen. She was wearing a white sweater and a dark skirt and she was grinning up into Charlie’s face. Charlie was holding both her hands between his own.

Written in blue ink across the girl’s sweatered breasts were the words To My Dear Daddy, With Love and beneath that the signature Judy Jordan.

Michael leaned in closer to the picture.

The young girl had long, dark hair.

But aside from that, she was a dead ringer for Helen Parrish.

“Also,” Connie said, “does Benny have to be a person?”

“What?” Michael said.

“Because there’s a place called Benny’s in SoHo, and maybe that’s where Crandall went to meet Charlie’s mother, in which case we should take Crandall’s picture there in case somebody might remember him from last night, don’t you think?”

Michael kissed her.

The bartender’s name was Charlie O’Hare.

“There are lots of Charlies in this city, you know,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” Michael said.

They were sitting at the bar. The place was unusually crowded for Christmas night, but then again Michael had never been in a bar on Christmas night, and maybe they were all this crowded. It was a very Irish bar. No frills. A utilitarian saloon designed for drinkers. Sawdust on the floor. No cut-glass mirrors, no green-shaded lamps like in the place last night where they’d set Michael up for theft and accusation. A nice friendly neighborhood saloon with a handful of people sitting in the booths or at the tables or here at the bar, all of them wearing caps and looking like nice friendly IRA terrorists.

“Here’s his picture,” Michael said, and showed him the eleven-year-old clipping from the Nice newspaper. He had taken it out of its frame. The back of the clipping was a story about a Frenchman who’d leaped into the Mediterranean to save a German tourist who should have known better than to be swimming in the sea in May. Crandall smiled out from his photograph.

“He’s even fatter now,” Michael said.

“No, I don’t know him,” O’Hare said. “Is this French here?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it say here under the picture?”

“Arthur Crandall before the showing of his film War and Solitude yesterday afternoon.”

“So what is he, an actor?”

“No, he’s a director.”

“Sheesh,” O’Hare said. “And this is a new movie?”

“No, it’s an old one.”

“Then how come they showed it yesterday afternoon?”

“They showed it eleven years ago.”

“I musta missed it.”

“Do you recognize him?”

“No.”

“Take a look at the picture again. He would’ve been here last night at eight o’clock.”

“I don’t remember seeing him.”

“Were you working last night?”

“Yeah, but I don’t remember seeing this guy.”

“He would’ve been meeting somebody’s mother.”

“Well, we get a lot of mothers in here, but I don’t remember this guy sitting with anybody’s mother,” O’Hare said.

“Were you working the bar alone?”

“All alone.”

“So he couldn’t have been sitting at the bar.”

“Not without my noticing him.” O’Hare looked at the newspaper clipping again. “This is a French movie?” he asked.

“No, it’s American.”

“Then why is this written in French?”

“Because that’s where they showed it.”

“I can understand why they never showed it here. That sounds really shitty, don’t it, War and Solitude ? Would you go see a movie called War and Solitude ?”

“They did show it here.”

“Here? In New York?”

“I think so.”

“I never heard of it. War and Solitude. I never heard of it. It sounds shitty.”

“A lot of people agreed with you,” Michael said.

“Don’t she speak English?” O’Hare asked, jerking his head toward Connie.

“I speak English,” she said.

“ ’Cause I thought maybe you spoke only Chinese, sitting there like a dummy.”

“I don’t have anything to say,” Connie said.

“You’re a very pretty lady,” O’Hare said.

“Thank you,” Connie said.

“She’s very pretty,” O’Hare said to Michael.

“Thank you,” Michael said. “Who would’ve been working the booths last night? And the tables.”

“Molly.”

Michael looked around. He didn’t see any waitresses in the place.

“Is she here now?”

“She was here a minute ago,” O’Hare said.

He craned his neck, looking.

The door to the ladies’ room opened. A woman who looked like Detective O’Brien, except that she was fully clothed, came out and walked directly toward where someone signaled to her from one of the booths. She had flaming red hair like O’Brien’s and she was short and stout like O’Brien, and she waddled toward the bar now with a sort of cop swagger that made Michael think maybe she was O’Brien in another disguise.

“Two Red Eyes,” she said. “Water chasers.”

O’Hare took from the shelf behind him a bottle of what looked like house whiskey, the label unfamiliar to Michael. He poured liberally into two glasses, filled two taller glasses with water, and put everything onto Molly’s tray.

“When you got a minute,” he said, “this gentleman would like a few words with you.”

Molly looked Michael up and down.

“Sure,” she said, and swaggered over to the booth.

“Molly used to wrestle in Jersey,” O’Hare said.

“Really?”

“They called her the Red Menace.”

“I see.”

“Because of the red hair.”

“Yes.”

“Which is real, by the way,” O’Hare said, and winked.

Molly came back to the bar.

“So?” she said. “What now?”

Michael showed her the newspaper clipping.

“Ever see this man in here?” he asked.

“You a cop?” Molly asked.

“No,” Michael said.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“’Cause I was thinking of calling the cops.”

“No, I don’t think we need...”

“Last night, I mean. When I heard what the two of them were talking about.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Mr. Crandall. And the Spanish guy with him.”

“You mean you know him?”

“No, I don’t know him. I only recognize him.”

“Arthur Crandall?”