Ed McBain - Downtown

The man was taking the telescopic sight off the rifle. He was putting the rifle and the scope into a gun case. He was snapping the case shut. He was, for Christ’s sake, quitting! Giving the whole thing up as a botched job!

He rested the gun case against the parapet. Angled it against the parapet so that the wider butt end of the case was on the snow, the muzzle end up. He reached into his jacket pocket. Took out a package of cigarettes. Lighted one. Nice moonlit night, might as well enjoy a cigarette here on the rooftops overlooking downtown New York. His back to Michael. Looking out over the lights of the city. Enjoying his little smoke. So he’d bungled the job, so what? Plenty of time to get the dumb orange-grower later on.

Unless the dumb orange-grower had something to say about it.

It was not easy moving across the snow-covered roof. Silence was the only advantage the snow gave Michael. He glanced behind him once to make sure Chen was still glued in place and out of sight. He saw no sign of the fat little Chinese. At the parapet, the man in black was still enjoying his moonlight smoke, his back to Michael, one foot on the parapet, knee bent, elbow on the knee. Not five feet separated them now. Michael hoped the cigarette was a king-sized one.

The man suddenly flipped the cigarette over the edge of the roof.

And reached for the gun case.

And was starting to turn when Michael leaped on him.

He caught the man from behind, yanking at the collar of his jacket, trying to pull him over backward onto the snow, but he was too fast and too slippery for Michael. He turned, saw the gun in Michael’s hand, knew that his own weapon was already cased and essentially useless, and used his knee instead, exactly the way Michael had used his knee on Charlie Wong last night, going for the money but coming up a little short, catching Michael on the upper thigh instead of the groin, and then looking utterly surprised when Michael threw a punch at him instead of firing his gun.

Michael went straight for the nose, the way he’d gone for Charlie Wong’s nose yesterday, because a hit on the nose hurt more than a hit anyplace else, even sharks didn’t like to get hit on their noses, ask any shark. The man all in black looked like a sixteen-year-old kid up close, but Michael had killed fourteen-year-old Vietnamese soldiers and this kid’s age didn’t mean a damn to him, the only thing that mattered was that he’d tried to kill Michael not twenty minutes ago. Peachfuzz oval face, slitted blue eyes, a very delicate Michael Jackson nose, which Michael figured wouldn’t look so delicate after he made it bleed, which was another nice thing about going for the nose. Noses bled easily, whereas if you hit a guy on the jaw, for example, with the same power behind the punch, he wouldn’t bleed at all.

The kid slipped the punch.

Ducked low and to the side and slipped it.

Michael’s momentum almost caused him to fall.

He grabbed for the kid, trying to keep his balance, clutched for the kid’s shoulders, and that was when the kid got him good, right in the balls this time, square on. Michael dropped the .32. Caught his breath in pain. The kid was turning, the kid was starting to run for the door of the roof. Michael reached out for him. clutched for his jacket, his head, anything, caught the black watch cap instead, felt it pulling free in his hands, and the kid was off and loping through the thick snow like an antelope.

Michael fell to his knees in pain.

Grabbed for his balls.

Moaned.

Did not even try to find the .32 where it had sunk below the snow some two feet away from him.

Did not even try to reach for the .45 in his jacket pocket.

The person running away from him across the rooftop was not Helen Parrish.

Nor was she Jessica Wales.

But she was a tall, long-legged, slender woman with blonde hair that glistened like gold in the silvery moonlight now that it was no longer contained by the black watch cap Michael still clutched in his hands close to his balls.

Maybe he didn’t try shooting her because he was in such pain himself.

Or maybe he’d shot and killed too many women.

In Vietnam.

Where anyone in black pajamas was Charlie.

The roof door slammed shut behind her.

And he was alone in pain in the moonlight.

“Are you sure she was blonde?” Connie asked.

She was asking about Helen Parrish.

“Yes, she was blonde,” Michael said.

“But Charlie’s daughter has dark hair.”

“She’s the same person, believe me.”

They were driving toward the address in Charlie Nichols’s book. Judy Jordan’s address. Judy Jordan who was also Helen Parrish whose dear dead daddy was Charlie Nichols. In the bar last night, Helen Parrish had told him she was thirty-two years old. Which was about right if the picture in Charlie’s study had been taken fifteen years ago and if she’d been seventeen at the time.

It was very cold outside, driving alfresco this way. The dashboard clock wasn’t working, which came as no surprise in a convertible with a broken top-mechanism. Michael waited to look at his watch until they stopped for a traffic light on a corner under a street lamp. It was almost ten o’clock.

He was very eager to see Miss Helen Parrish again.

The fake Miss Parrish, who was in reality—

Well, that wasn’t necessarily true.

It was possible that Judy Jordan was now married, although in that bar last night Helen Parrish had told him she wasn’t married, wasn’t divorced, she was just single. Well, she’d told him a lot of things. But if she was married, and if Helen Parrish was indeed her real name now, which she’d have been crazy to have given him, then her maiden name could have been Judy Jordan, the girl with the long brown—

But no.

Charlie Nichols was her father.

Isn’t that what she’d written on the photo?

To My Dear Daddy.

Then why had she signed her name Judy Jordan?

“What I’d like to know,” Connie said, “is if Judy Jordan is Helen Parrish, then how come she’s not Judy Nichols if Charlie Nichols is or was her father?”

“I love you,” Michael said, and kissed her fiercely.

The Amalgamated Dwellings, Inc., were cooperative apartments at 504 Grand Street, but the entrance to the complex was around the corner on a street called Abraham Kazan, no relation. You went down a series of low brick steps and into an interior courtyard that might have been a castle keep in England, with arches and what looked like turrets and a snow-covered little park with shrubs and trees and a fountain frozen silent by the cold. The lettered buildings — A, B, C, and so on — were clustered around this secret enclave. Judy Jordan lived in E. The name on the mailbox downstairs was J. Jordan.

“Women who do that are dumb,” Connie said. “Using an initial instead of a name. You do that, and a rapist knows right off it’s a woman living alone. You can bet I don’t have C. Kee on my mailbox.”

“What do you have?”

“Charlie Kee.”

“That’s a very common name in this city,” Michael said. “Charlie.”

“Which is why I put it on my mailbox,” Connie said, and nodded.

“Why?”

“So a rapist would think it was a common man named Charlie Kee up there.”

“How about the postman?”

“Mr. Di Angelo? A rapist? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I mean, how will he know where to deliver mail addressed to Connie Kee?”

“That’s his worry,” Connie said.

Michael looked at the name on the mailbox again.

J. Jordan.

“I’ll go up alone,” he said. “You go back to the car.”

“If this blonde is as beautiful as you say she is...”