Ed McBain - Downtown

“Here it is,” he said.

He bent over the drawer and looked into it.

Scotch-taped to the back of the panel was a slip of paper. It was fastened upside down, so that the writing on it could be read easily from above. It read:

4 L 28

3 R 73

2 L 35

Slow R Open

“You’re so smart,” Connie said. “Do you know it’s almost midnight?”

“Is it?”

“Only a minute left.”

He looked at his watch.

“Yes,” he said.

“And then Christmas will be gone. Forty seconds, actually.”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what we did last night at this time?”

“I remember.”

“I think we should do it again, don’t you?” she said, and put her arms around his neck. “Make it a tradition.”

Their lips met.

And even as bells had sounded when they’d kissed last night in Crandall’s office, and even as bells had sounded when Michael left the Mazeltov All-Nite Deli, so did bells sound now. This time, however, the bells were not on a ringing telephone, and they weren’t attached to a trip mechanism on an emergency door, they were instead the bells and gongs and chimes on the multitude of stolen clocks that lined the wall opposite the windows. This was a symphony of bells. This was bells pealing out into the vastness of the warehouse, floating out over the rows and rows of stolen items, reverberating on the dust-laden air, enveloping Connie and Michael in layers and layers of shimmering sound where they stood in embrace alongside a stolen Apple IIe computer, their lips locked, bong bong went the bells, tinkle tinkle went the chimes, bing bang bong went every clock in the place, announcing the end of Christmas Day, heralding the twenty-sixth day of December, a bright new Thursday morning in a world of abundant riches, witness all the shiny new merchandise here in the late Ju Ju Rainey’s storeroom. And suddenly the bells stopped. Not all at once since the clocks weren’t in absolute synchronization, but trailing off instead, a bong clanking heavily, a chime chinging tinnily, a dissonant bing here, a reluctant tink there, and then stillness.

“It’s Boxing Day, you know,” she said.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “The day after Christmas. It’s called Boxing Day.”

“I see.”

“I know because it’s celebrated in Hong Kong, which is still a British colony.”

“Why is it called Boxing Day?”

“Because they have prizefights on that day. Throughout the entire British Empire.”

“I see,” he said.

They were still standing very close to each other. He wondered if anyone had ever made love to Connie on a counter bearing stolen Cuisinarts.

“Listen,” she said.

He remembered that she had terrific ears.

“The elevator,” she said. “Someone’s using the elevator.”

He listened.

He could hear the elevator whining up the shaft.

The baby sitting just off the trail.

Crying.

The elevator stopped.

He heard its doors opening.

Footsteps in the corridor now.

Voices just outside the metal entrance door to Ju Ju’s bargain bazaar.

When you were outnumbered, you headed for the high ground. The highest ground here was the rack holding all those expensive fur coats. He took Connie’s hand, and led her silently and swiftly across the room, moving past a table bearing a sextant, an outboard engine, an anchor, a compass, and a paddle, and then past another table upon which there were...

A key turning in the door lock.

... seven baseball bats, three gloves, a catcher’s mitt and mask, a Lacrosse stick, and a pair of running shoes...

Tumblers falling with a small, oiled click.

...and reached the end of the rack where a seal coat with a raccoon collar was hanging.

The door opened.

“Who left these lights on?” a woman said.

Michael knew that voice.

He could not see her from where he was hunched over behind what looked like a lynx jacket, but this was Alice the Pizza Maven, who was also the lady who owned the Mannlicher-Schoenauer carbine with its Kahle scope, which she’d fired from the rooftop at them earlier today — or yesterday, as it now was officially — which gun was now snug in its case in Connie’s bedroom closet, which was where Michael now wished he was. Because the next voice he heard belonged to Silvio, who had earlier thought it would be hilarious to kill Michael and leave him either in Ju Ju’s piss-stinking bed or else in a garbage can behind McDonald’s. And the voice after that was Larry’s, both men now vigorously denying that either of them had left the lights on.

“In which case,” Alice wanted to know, “how come the lights are on?”

There was a dead silence.

Michael wondered if he and Connie should have gone to hide in the bathroom.

“Check out the toilet,” Alice said.

He guessed it was good they hadn’t gone to hide in the bathroom.

Silence.

The sound of metal rings scraping along a shower rod as the curtain was thrown back.

More silence.

“So?” Alice asked.

“Nobody in there.”

“Check out the whole floor,” Alice said.

And suddenly there were more voices.

A man said, “All this stuff has to go, huh?”

“All of it,” Alice said.

“The piano, too?” a second man said. “’Cause we ain’t piano movers, you know.”

“That’s good,” Silvio said, “’cause it ain’t a piano.”

“Then what is it, it ain’t a piano?”

“It’s an organ.”

“Take this organ,” the man said.

“If you don’t mind,” Larry said, “there’s a lady present here.”

“So?”

“So stop grabbing your balls and telling us what’s an organ.”

“I’m telling you we ain’t piano movers.”

“And I’m telling you it’s an organ.”

“And I’m telling you take this organ.”

“Just shoot him in the balls.” Alice said calmly.

“Some lady,” the man said, but presumably he let go of his balls.

A third man said, “Okay, where’s all this stuff has to go?”

A fourth man said, “Look at this joint, willya? What’s this, a discount store?”

A fifth man said, “You want this stuff boxed?”

“What’s breakable,” Alice said. “And wrapped, too.”

“What’s that?” the third man asked. “A piano?”

“I already told them,” the second man said.

“’Cause we don’t move pianos,” the third man said.

“It’s an organ,” Silvio said, “and don’t reach for your balls.”

“My father used to play drums,” the fifth man said.

The first man said, “Why don’t Mama move in the daytime, like a normal human being?”

Larry said, “Whyn’t you go take that up with Mama, okay?”

“No, thank you,” the man said.

“Then get to work,” Larry said.

“Where’s that combo?” Alice asked somebody.

“I got it,” Silvio said.

“If he was gonna give you the combo, anyway,” Larry said, “why you suppose he wet the bed?”

They all began laughing.

Even the moving men.

“’Cause if you wet the bed,” Silvio said, laughing, “then a person won’t shoot you.”

“It’s a magic charm,” Alice said, laughing. “You wet the bed, the bad guys’ll go away.”

“First time I ever had a man wet the bed before I shot him,” Silvio said, still laughing.

“Give me the combo,” Alice said.

“I tell you,” one of the moving men said, “this wasn’t Mama, I wouldn’t go near that piano.”

“You could get a hernia from that piano,” another one of the men said.

“It’s an organ,” Silvio said, but his voice was muffled and Michael guessed he was standing at the safe with his back turned. From where Michael crouched behind the furs with Connie, he felt like Cary Grant in Gunga Din, the scene where the three of them are hiding in the temple and all the lunatics are yelling “Kali!”