Ed McBain - Downtown

But it wasn’t Judy Jordan.

Or even Helen Parrish.

Instead, it was—

“You!” Michael shouted.

The man looked at him. His mouth fell open, his eyes opened wide in his head.

“You!” Michael shouted again.

And the man turned and started running downstairs.

Michael took off after him.

The streets were deserted. It would have been impossible to lose him, anyway, because he was wearing a yellow ski parka that served as a beacon, which Michael thought was extremely considerate of him. He was fast for a big man, but Michael was faster; he’d had practice chasing Charlie Wong all the way from the subway kiosk on Franklin to the fortune-cookie factory someplace in Chinatown on Christmas Eve, and it seemed to him he’d been running ever since. He wanted very badly to get his hands on this son of a bitch in the yellow ski parka, and so he ran faster than he’d ever run in his life, arms and legs pumping, eyeglasses steaming up a bit, but not so much so that he couldn’t see the yellow parka ahead, the distance closing between them now, ten feet, eight feet, six feet, three feet, and Michael hurled himself into the air like a circus flier, leaping off into space without a net, arms outstretched, reaching not for a trapeze coming his way from the opposite direction, but instead for the shoulders of Detective Daniel Cahill, who had called him a thief after stealing his money, his driver’s license, his credit cards, and his library card to boot.

His hands clamped down fiercely on either side of Cahill’s neck, the weight and momentum of his body sending the man staggering forward, hands clawing the air for balance. They fell to the sidewalk together, Michael on Cahill’s back, the big man trying to shake Michael off. Michael was tired of being jerked around in this fabulous city, tired of being shaken up and shaken off. He allowed himself to be shaken off now, but only for an instant. Rolling clear, he got to his feet at once, and then immediately reached down for Cahill and heaved him up off the sidewalk. His hands clutched into the zippered front of the yellow parka, he slammed Cahill against the wall of the building, and then pulled him off the wall and slammed him back again, methodically battering him against the bricks over and over again.

“Cut it out,” Cahill said.

“I’ll cut it out, you son of a bitch!”

“Are you crazy or something?”

“Yes!” Michael shouted.

“Ow!” Cahill shouted.

“Detective Daniel Cahill, huh?”

“Damn it, you’re hurting me!”

“Let’s go down the precinct, huh?”

“Ow! Damn it, that’s my head !”

Michael pulled him off the wall.

“Speak,” he said.

“You’re a very violent person,” Cahill said.

“Yes. What’s your name?”

“Felix. And I don’t have your money, if that’s why you’re behaving like a lunatic. Or anything else that belongs to you.”

Felix. Big burly man with hard blue eyes and a Marine sergeant’s haircut. On Christmas Eve, he’d sported a Miami Vice beard stubble, but now — at a little past one A.M. on Boxing Day — he was clean-shaven. On Christmas Eve, he’d been wearing a tweed overcoat and he’d been carrying a detective’s blue-enameled gold shield, and he’d sounded very much like a tough New York cop. Tonight he was wearing a yellow ski parka over a brown turtleneck sweater, and he sounded like a frightened man protesting too loudly that he did not have Michael’s—

But didn’t he know that Michael’s identification had been planted alongside the dead body of Ju Ju Rainey?

“Felix what?” Michael asked.

“Hooper. And I’m telling you the truth. I gave everything to Judy. And she still hasn’t paid me, by the way. I mean, I think it’s demeaning for a person to have to come to another person’s apartment at one in the morning to ask for his money, don’t you?”

“I assume you mean Judy Jordan,”

“Yes, of course, Judy Jordan. Your friend Judy Jordan who owes me a thousand bucks.”

“How do you happen to know her?”

“We’ve worked together in the past.”

“Stealing things from people?”

“Ha-ha,” Felix said.

Michael looked at him.

“I am an actor, sir,” Felix said, proudly and a trifle indignantly. In fact, he tried to pull himself up to his full height, but this was a little difficult because Michael still had his hands twisted into the throat and collar of the parka. “I was asked to play a police detective,” Felix said. “I’d never played one before. I thought the role would be challenging.”

“You thought stealing my...”

“Oh, come on, that was for a good purpose.”

“A good...”

“In fact, you should have been delighted.”

“Delighted? Do you know what Judy did with those things? My credit cards and my license and my...?”

“Yes, she had them blown up as posters.”

“She what?”

“For your birthday party.”

“My what?”

“How terrible it must be,” Felix said.

“What?”

“To be born on Christmas Day, do you think you could let go of my collar now?”

“Born on...?”

“It’s like being upstaged by Christ, isn’t it?” Felix said. “I really think you’re closing off an artery or something. I’m beginning to feel a bit faint.”

Michael let go of the collar.

“Thank you,” Felix said.

“So that’s what she told you. Judy.”

“Yes.”

“That my birthday was on Christmas Day...”

“Well, her friend’s birthday. She didn’t tell me your name.”

“And she was going to have my credit cards blown up as posters.”

“Yes, and your driver’s license, too. To hang on the walls. For the party.”

“Which is why you went to this bar with her...”

“Yes. And waited for her signal.”

“Her signal?”

“She said she would signal when she wanted me to move in.”

“I see.”

“She would hold out her hand to you, palm up.”

Asking for the ring back, Michael thought.

The ring. Please, I don’t want any trouble.

“And that was when you were supposed to come over and do your Detective Cahill act.”

“Yes.”

“Where’d you get the badge?”

“A shield. We call it a shield. I bought it in an antiques stop on Third Avenue.”

“You were very convincing.”

“Thank you. I thought so, too. Did you like it when I said, ‘This individual is a thief?’ That’s the way policeman talk, you know. They will never call a person a person, he is always an individual.”

“Yes, that was very good.”

“Thank you.”

“But why’d you steal my money? If Judy wanted the...”

“I don’t know why she wanted the money. She said your money and all your identification. Which is all I took.”

“Which was only everything in my wallet.”

“Well, that was the job.”

“Which you did for a thousand dollars.”

“Yes, but I’m between engagements just now. How was the party?”

“Mr. Hooper, do you know where all that stuff ended up?”

“No. All I know is that I still haven’t got my thousand dollars.”

“That stuff ended up alongside a dead man.”

“That’s a shame,” Felix said. “But I’m sure it had nothing to do with my performance.”

“Do you know who Mama is?”

“No. Is that a riddle?”

“Did Judy Jordan ever mention a woman named Mama?”

“No. Mama who?”

“She didn’t say, did she, that it was Mama who wanted that stuff taken from my wallet?”

“No.”

“Did she ever mention a man named Arthur Crandall?”