Ed McBain: Downtown

Q: All Charlie’s idea, huh?

A: Yes, I had nothing to do with anyone getting killed! I was trying to save my movie. If Charlie was alive, he’d—

Q: Yes?

A: Nothing.

Q: He’d what?

A: Nothing.

Q: Is Charlie dead, Mr. Crandall?

A: I don’t know what Charlie is.

Q: Well, as a matter of fact, he is dead, Mr. Crandall. But how did you know that?

A: I don’t know anything at all about Charlie’s condition, dead or alive.

Q: Then you don’t know he was killed with a P-38 Walther nine-mlllimeter Parabellum automatic pistol.

A: I have nothing more to say.

Q: Ballistics will have something more to say, I’m sure.

A: It was all Charlie’s Idea. If Charlie’s dead, that’s too bad, but...

Q: I thought you had nothing more to say.

A: All I have to say is that it was Charlie’s idea.

Q: Except for pinning the murder on Michael Barnes. That was your idea.

A: Yes.

Q: Why’d you change the script, Mr. Crandall?

A: Why?

Q: Please tell us.

A: Because I’m a director !

Q: Oh.

A: Yes.

Michael sensed her presence before he looked up.

Knew she’d be there.

Standing in the doorway.

Her right wrist was bandaged where Mama had cut her. There was a smile on her face. She stepped into the room. Into a bar of sunshine lying in a crooked rectangle on the floor. The sunlight touched her hair, touched her face.

“They have you listed as dead,” she said. “But Detective Orso told me you weren’t.”

“I’m glad I’m not,” he said.

“Me, too,” she said, and came to the bed.

He would have to call his mother, let her know he was still alive. Tell her he’d met a wonderful Chinese girl he wanted to marry. Mom? Are you there, Mom? Please take your head out of the oven, Mom.

“Let me see your cute little face,” Connie said, and sat on the edge of the bed, and cupped his face between her hands, and turned it this way and that, searching it. “I was so afraid he’d cut your face,” she said. “But you look beautiful. Could I kiss you?”

“We’ll have to ask the nurse,” he said.

“No, I don’t think we have to,” she said.

Mom? he would say. I’m alive, Mom.

I’m alive again.