Ed McBain - Downtown

“She may also be dangerous.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Connie, please go wait in the car for me, okay?”

“I’ll give you ten minutes,” she said. “If you’re not back by then, I’m coming up after you.”

“Okay. Good.”

He kissed her swiftly.

“I still think I ought to go with you,” she said.

But she was already walking out of the courtyard.

Michael pressed the button for Judy Jordan’s apartment.

“Yes?” a woman’s voice said.

He could not tell whether the voice was Helen Parrish’s or not. As a matter of fact, he’d completely forgotten what Helen Parrish had sounded like.

“Miss Jordan?” he said.

“Yes?”

“Charlie Nichols sent me,” he said.

“Look,” she said, “this is an inconvenient time. I was just dressing to...”

“I’d like to talk to you. Miss Jordan, if...”

“Oh, well, all right, come on up,” she said, and buzzed him in.

He climbed to the third floor, found her apartment just to the left of the stairwell, and was about to ring the bell set in the doorjamb when he hesitated.

If Judy Jordan did, in fact, turn out to be Helen Parrish, or vice versa, then the woman inside this apartment was the person who’d set the whole scheme in motion, the MacGuffin as she might be called in an Alfred Hitchcock film. Was he going to simply knock on the door and wait for the MacGuffin to answer it, perhaps to do him more harm than she’d already done? Michael did not think that was such a good idea. He reached into the right-hand pocket of his new bomber jacket, and took out the .32 he had appropriated from Arthur Crandall. He flipped the gun butt-side up, and rapped it against the door. Twice. Rap. Rap. And listened.

“Who is it?” a woman said. Same voice that had come from the speaker downstairs.

“Me,” he said.

“Who’s me?”

“I told you. Charlie sent me.”

“If it’s about the money, I still haven’t got it,” the woman said from somewhere just inside the door now. There was a peephole set in the door at eye level. She was probably looking out at him. He still couldn’t tell whether the voice was Helen Parrish’s.

“I’d like to talk to you, if I may,” he said, ducking his chin, trying to hide his face so that if this was Helen Parrish looking out at him, she wouldn’t get such a good look.

“Just a minute,” she said. “I’m still half-naked.”

He wondered if this really was Helen Parrish, half-naked inside there. He thought back to the beginning of their relationship together, their gentle, easy conversation, the way they’d held hands, the way they’d looked deep into each other’s eyes. He thought what a shame it was that she’d turned out to be a MacGuffin but maybe all beautiful women turned into MacGuffins sooner or later. He certainly hoped that wouldn’t be the case with Connie.

He looked at his watch.

What the hell was taking her so long in there?

He rapped on the door with the gun butt again.

Three times.

Rap. Rap. Rap.

“Miss Jordan?” he called.

No answer.

“Miss...”

“Put your hands up, Mr. Barnes.”

A man’s voice.

Behind him.

“Up!” the man said. “Now!”

The thing in Michael’s back felt very much like the muzzle of a gun.

Michael raised his hands over his head, the .32 in his right hand. The bandaged left arm hurt when he raised it. He almost said Ouch.

“Just let the gun fall out of your hand,” the man said. “Just open your hand and drop the gun.”

He opened his hand. The gun fell out of it. Dropped to the floor. Hit the floor with a solid thwunk.

“Thank you,” the man said. “Now stand still, please.”

Kneeling to pick up the gun now, Michael supposed. There was a small scraping sound as it came up off the tile floor. A hand began patting him down. All his pants pockets. Then the right-hand pocket of the jacket, and then—

“Well, well, another one,” the man said.

Frankie Zeppelin’s .45 came out of Michael’s pocket.

“Mr. Barnes?” the man said.

And hit him on the back of the head with at least one of the guns.

He heard voices.

A man’s voice. A woman’s voice.

“... blow the whole thing,” the man said.

“... other choice, do you?”

He opened his eyes.

A tin ceiling.

The shrink he had gone to in Boston had an office with a tin ceiling. Michael used to lie on his couch and look up at all the curlicues in his tin ceiling. He was not on a couch now. He was on a bed. An unmade bed. The bed smelled as if someone had peed in it. He wondered if it was a child’s bed. The bed had a metal footboard, which he could see by lifting his head. Wrought iron painted white. He was spread-eagled on the bed with his ankles tied to the footboard and his arms up over his head and tied to the headboard, which was also wrought iron painted white.

He had never seen this room in his life.

The room looked like the sort he imagined you’d find in any cheap hotel that catered to hookers and dope dealers. He figured this had to be a drug plot. Otherwise why would a man who’d known he was Michael Barnes — or at least Mr. Barnes — have hit him on the head with his own gun and then tied him to a bed in what was truly a very shitty room? A drug plot for sure. Paint peeling off the walls. A pile of dirty laundry in one corner of the room. No curtain or shade on the window leading to the fire escape. And — hanging crookedly on the wall beside the window — a framed and faded print of an Indian sitting on a spotted pony. Michael was really very surprised and disappointed by this totally shitty drug-plot room because the building itself had looked so nice from the street and the hallways had been so neat and clean, which proved you couldn’t always judge a book by its cover.

He lifted his head again.

A closed door. The voices beyond it.

“... in a garbage can someplace,” the woman said.

“... like behind a McDonald’s.”

“... drive the cops nuts.”

Three people in that other room. Two men and a woman. None of them sounded like anyone he’d ever met. All three of them were laughing now. They thought this would be comical. Driving the cops nuts.

“Or kill him and just leave him here,” one of the men said. “In Ju Ju’s bed.”

They all thought this would be even more comical. Killing him and leaving him here in Ju Ju’s bed. Was Ju Ju’s bed the one he was tied to? The one that stank of piss? Was Ju Ju a cutesy-poo name for Judy Jordan? Was this, in fact, Judy Jordan’s bedroom? Was Judy Jordan a bed-wetter? There was hysterical laughter in the other room now. It was contagious. Michael almost laughed himself. He had to stifle his laughter.

Michael wondered who Ju Ju was.

He hated movies with casts of thousands.

“We’d better wait till Mama gets here,” the woman said. Mama again.

The woman’s mother?

Or did everybody call her Mama?

Maybe Connie was right. Maybe Mama was a big, fat lady who everyone—

Connie!

She’d told him if he wasn’t back in ten minutes she’d come up and get him. How much time had gone by since he’d left her down there on the ground floor? Five minutes to climb to the third floor, another three minutes while he’d waited in the hallway for the naked woman to put on her—

The doorbell rang.

Oh, Jesus, he thought, Connie!

Or maybe Mama.

Either way, that ringing doorbell could only mean more trouble.

Because if the person doing the ringing was Connie, they would hit her on the head and then tie her up alongside him on the bed.

And then when Mama finally arrived, it would be so long to both of them. Shoot them both and leave them in Ju Ju’s bed, ha ha. Or else shoot them and drop them in a garbage can behind McDonald’s, which would be almost as amusing. Michael found neither choice acceptable. So he hoped against hope that it was not Connie ringing that doorbell. Because if they were going to shoot anyone at all, he much preferred it to be himself alone, leave Connie out of this entirely. The doorbell kept ringing. He began actively wishing that one of them would go answer the door and it would be big, fat Mama standing there. Hi, kids, it’s me.