Ed McBain - The Last Dance

had come from Oklahoma or Wyoming, but which he'd

bought off a pushcart at a street fair this summer. Blond

and hazel-eyed, with a complexion and lashes most women would kill for, he projected a country bumpkin air that worked well in Good Cop/Bad Cop scenarios. He was particularly well-paired with Brown, whose perpetual scowl could sometimes be intimidating. "Did Danny give you a clue?"

"Somebody named Harpo."

"It is a movie," Willis said.

"Harpo what?"

"Didn't say."

"He's gay," Meyer offered.

"White, black?"

"Didn't say."

"Where'd the card game take place?"

"Lewiston Av."

"The Eight-Eight."

"Yeah."

"Probably black," Parker said. "The Eight-Eight."

Brown looked at him.

"What?" Parker said. "Did I say something bothered

you?"

"I don't know what you said."

"I said a card game in the Eight-Eight, you automati

cally figure black players," Parker said, and shrugged. "Anyway, fuck you, you're so sensitive."

"What'd I do, look at you?" Brown asked.

"You looked at me cockeyed."

"Break it up, okay?" Byrnes said.

"Just don't be so fuckin sensitive," Parker said. "Everybody in the world ain't out to shoot you a hundred and twelve times."

"Hey!" Byrnes said. "Did you hear me, or what?"

"I heard you. He's too fuckin sensitive."

"One more time, Andy," Brown said.

"Hey!"

Byrnes shouted.

"All I'm sayin," Parker said, "is if this was a black card game, then Danny's friend Harpo, and the guy who hanged Hale, could both be black, is all I'm sayin."

"Point taken," Brown said.

"Boy," Parker said, and rolled his eyes.

"We finished here?" Byrnes asked.

"If we're finished," Parker said, "I'd like to talk about

settin up a bust on a . . ."

"I meant are you two finished with this bullshit here?"

"What bullshit?" Parker asked.

"Let it go, Pete," Brown said.

Byrnes glared at both of them. The room was silent for several moments. Hawes cleared his throat.

"It's possible, you know," he said, "that one of the two

shooters in the pizzeria was the guy who also did Hale."

"How do you mean?"

"He finds out Harpo told Danny about him, figures he'll take Danny off the board before he spreads the word. That's possible, too, you know."

"A hangman suddenly becomes a shooter?" Parker

said.

"It's possible."

"There's a twenty-five grand policy, huh?" Willis said.

"Daughter and son-in-law the sole beneficiaries," Carella said.

"They know about it?"

"Oh yes."

"They're alibied to the hilt," Meyer said.

"So you're figuring a contract job."

"Is what Danny said it was. He said the killer got five

grand to do the old man."

"Were those his exact words?" Byrnes asked.

"No, he said the old man had something somebody

else wanted real bad and he wouldn't part with it. Some

thing worth a lot of money."

"What'd he say about having him killed?"

"He said somebody was willing to pay five grand to

kill the old man and make it look like an accident."

"But why?" Willis asked.

"What do you mean why?"

"You said the old man had something somebody else

wanted . . ."

"Right."

"So how's this somebody gonna get it if he has the

old man killed?"

The detectives fell silent, thinking this over.

"Had to be the insurance money," Hawes said at last.

"Only thing anyone could get by having him killed."

"Which leads right back to the daughter and son-in-law."

"Unless there's something else," Carella said.

"Like what?"

"Was the guy tortured?" Hawes asked.

"No."

"Cause maybe the killer was trying to get whatever

it was, and when he couldn't. . ."

"No, he wasn't tortured," Meyer said. "The killer doped him and hanged him. Period."

"Smoked some pot with him, dropped roofers in his

drink . . ."

"Which is what the guy in the card game offered Harpo."

"Did these two guys know each other?" Parker asked.

"They met in the card game."

"Not them two. I'm talking about the old man and the guy who killed him."

Again, the room went silent. They were all looking

at Parker now. Sometimes a great notion.

"I mean, were they buddies or something? Cause otherwise, how'd he get in the apartment? And how come they were smoking pot together and drinking together? They had to know each other, am I right?"

"I don't see how," Carella said. "Danny told me the

killer was a hit man from Houston. Going back there tomorrow."

"Told you everything but what you wanted to know,

right?"

"Did the old man ever go to Houston?" Byrnes asked.

"Well, I don't know."

"What do you know about him?"

"Not much. Not yet."

"Find out. And soon."

"Did he leave a will?" Hawes asked.

"Left everything he had to the kids."

"Which was what?"

"Bupkes,"

Meyer said.

"What's that?" Parker asked.

"Rabbit shit."

Ed McBam

"So then what's this something somebody wanted bad

enough to kill for?"

"The MacGuffin," Hawes said.

"I told you," Willis said. "It's a fuckin movie."

"Movie, my ass," Byrnes said. "Get some composites

made from the witnesses in that pizza joint. Let's at least

find two guys who came in blazing in broad daylight,

can we? And find out where that poker game took place.

There has to be . . ."

"On Lewiston," Carella said. "Up in the . . ."

"Where

on Lewiston? Our man's leaving town tomor

row."

The room went silent.

"I want you to treat this like a single case with Danny

as the connecting link," Byrnes said. "One of the guys in

that poker game knew Danny, and another one may have

killed Hale. Let's find out who was in the damn game.

And find out who that old man really was. He didn't exist in a vacuum. Nobody does. If he had something somebody wanted, find out what the hell it was. If it was just the insurance policy, then stay with the Keatings till you nail them. I want the four of you who caught the squeals to work this as a team. Split the legwork however you like. But bring me something."

Carella nodded.

"Meyer?"

"Yeah."

"Artie? Bert?"

"We hear you."

"Then do it," Byrnes said.

"What about my dope bust?" Parker asked.

"Stay," Byrnes said, as if he were talking to a pit bull.

There were several training exercises at the academy,

each designed to illustrate the unreliability of eye witnesses. Each of them involved a variation on the same

theme. During a class lecture, someone would come into

the room, interrupting the class, and then go out again.

The cops-in-training would later be asked to describe the

person who'd entered and departed. In one exercise, the

intruder was merely someone who went to one of the

windows, opened it, and walked out again. In another,

it was a woman who came in with a mop and a pail, quickly mopped a small patch of floor, and went out again just as quickly. In a more vivid exercise, a man came in firing a pistol, and then rushed out at once. In none of these exercises was the intruder accurately described afterward.

Brown, Kling, and the police artist interviewed four

teen people that Tuesday morning. Only one of them— Steve Carella—was a trained observer, but even he had

difficulty describing the two shooters who'd marched

into the pizzeria at ten minutes past nine the day before.

Of all the witnesses who'd been there at the time, only

two blacks and four whites remembered anything at all

about the men. The white witnesses found it hard to say

what the black shooter had looked like. If they'd been