Ed McBain - Downtown

“That was very good,” he said sincerely. “You sounded absolutely royal.”

“Do you really think so?” she asked.

“Positively majestic. Better than Bette Davis in Elizabeth and Essex ...”

“Honestly?”

“Even better than Hepburn in The Lion in Winter .”

“Oh dear,” she said.

“But would you happen to know a bar called Benny’s?”

“No. I’m not being too forceful, am I? Maybe I should temper the steel with a touch of lace.”

“No, I think you’ve got exactly the proper balance, really. On Christmas Eve, Crandall went to Benny’s to meet a man sent there by someone named Mama. Would you happen to know who Mama is?”

“Well, of course.”

“You do?”

“Mady Christians, am I right?”

“Who?” he said.

“That was in the original 1944 production, of course. When we did it fifteen years ago, a woman named...”

“Yes, but this Mama is an illegal alien. Would you know anyone...?”

“Oh,” she said. “ That Mama.”

He held his breath.

“Charlie’s crack dealer,” she said. “I’ve never met her, but he talks about her all the time.”

“Do you know where she lives?” Michael asked.

Only her last name was on the mailbox.

Rodriguez.

The match Michael was holding went out.

The hallway was very dark again.

“Somebody peed in here,” Connie said.

Michael was thinking it would be very dangerous to ring Mama’s bell and then go up there to see her. He wondered if they should go up the fire escape again. Apartment 2C. Was what it said under the name Rodriguez on the mailbox.

Michael rang the bell for apartment 3B.

There was no answering buzz.

He tried 4D.

No answer.

“Is this an abandoned building?” he asked Connie.

“Not that I noticed,” she said. “Why don’t you just kick the door in?”

He did not want to hurt the sole of his foot again by trying to kick in yet another door. And he didn’t want to throw his shoulder against the door, either, because his arm still hurt from getting shot and then hurling himself at Alice. He wondered if there were any medics here in this almost abandoned building.

What’s the matter, honey? Andrew asked.

Cute little baby girl, eight months old, not a day older. Crying her eyes out. Sitting the way the Orientals did. Squatting really. Legs folded under her, feet turned back. Bawling. Birds twittering in the jungle. The village not six hundred yards behind them. Friendlies. Charlie had left three days go, the old man had told Mendelsohnn. Took all the rice, moved out. Had to be miles and miles away by now. The baby crying.

Come to Papa, sweetie.

Andrew reached for her.

Michael kicked out at the doorjamb, just above the lock. The door sprang open, surprising him, catching him off balance. He stumbled forward, following the opening door into a small ground-floor rectangle directly in front of a flight of steps. Connie was immediately behind him.

“2C,” he said.

She nodded.

They began climbing the steps.

Four apartments on the second floor. 2A, B, C, and D. They stopped outside the door to 2C. He put his ear to the wood, listened the way Connie had told him cops did. He couldn’t hear a thing. He took the .22 out of the right-hand pocket of the bomber jacket. He wondered if he would need both pistols. Suppose Mama Rodriguez was sleeping inside there with a .357 Magnum under her pillow? In Vietnam, you slept — when you slept, if you slept — with your rifle in your hands. But sometimes...

Andrew’s rifle was slung.

His arms extended to the baby.

Come on, darlin’.

The baby blinking at him.

It had stopped raining.

A fan of sunlight touched the baby like a religious miracle.

“I don’t hear anything in there,” Michael said.

Birds twittering in the jungle. The leaves still wet. Water dripping onto the jungle floor. The baby had stopped crying. Fat tear-stained cheeks. Looking at Andrew wide-eyed as his hands closed on either side of her body, fingers widespread, lifting her, lifting her—

Michael was suddenly covered with sweat.

Terrified again.

Terrified the way he’d been that day in Vietnam when Andrew picked up the baby.

Afraid of what might be beyond that door. Afraid to enter the apartment beyond that door. Because beyond that door was the unknown. Mama. A woman named Mama who had ordered him murdered. Fat Mama Rodriguez inside there. Waiting and deadly. Like the baby.

Here we go, darlin’, Andrew said.

The baby in Andrew’s widespread hands, coming up off the jungle mat, the birds going suddenly still as—

Michael did not want to know what was behind this closed door.

Behind this door was something unspeakably horrible, something that went beyond fright to reach into the darkest corners of the unconscious, the baby going off in a hundred flying fragments, her arms and legs spinning away on the air, eyeballs bursting, bone fragments, tissue, blood spattering onto Andrew as the bomb exploded. A moment too late, Long Foot yelled, “She’s wired!” and a surprised look crossed Andrew’s face as the metal shards ripped through his body and blood spurted out of his chest. A piece of the dead baby was still in Andrew’s hands. The hands holding what had been the baby’s rib cage. But the hands were no longer attached to Andrew’s arms. The hands were on the trail some twelve feet away from him. And the stumps where his wrists ended were spurting blood. And a hundred smoking wounds in his jacket were spurting blood. “Oh, dear God,” Michael said, and dropped to his knees beside Andrew, and the RTO said, “Barnes, they’re...” and the jungle erupted with noise and confusion. They were flanked by Charlie left and right. Charlie had wired the baby, had stolen a baby from the village and wired it, and left it just off the trail for the dumb Americans to find, Come on, darlin’, here we go, and the baby exploding was the signal to spring the trap, Andrew hoisting her off the jungle mat and tripping the wire.

And in that instant, the true horror of the war struck home. The true senseless horror of it, they had wired a baby. And recognizing the horror, they had wired a baby, Michael was suddenly terrified. Running through the jungle with Andrew in his arms, and the Cong assuring him in their sing-song pidgin English that they did not want to hurt him. and the baby’s gristle and blood on Andrew’s face, and Andrew’s own blood bubbling up onto his lips, oh dear God his hands were gone, they had wired a baby, Michael knew only blind panic. Suddenly there was no logic and no sense there was only a wired baby exploding between the hands of a good dear friend and the friend was dying the friend’s blood was pumping out of his body in weaker spurts the friend was oh God dear God dear Andrew please, and he began crying. In terror and in sorrow. A sorrow he had never before known. A sorrow for Andrew and himself and for every American here in this place where he did not wish to be or choose to be and a sorrow, too, for a people that would use a baby that way because no cause on earth was worth doing something as terrible as that but behind him Charlie kept saying it was okay Yank no need to worry Yank nobody’s gonna hurt you Yank.

Andrew was already dead for half an hour when Michael found the medical chopper.

He would not let them take the body out of his arms.

He kept holding the handless body close, rocking it.

“Come on, man,” the black medic said. “Get a grip.”

Michael turned to him and snarled at him.

Like a dog.

Lips skinned back over his teeth.