Ed McBain - Long Time No See

“Where’d you go when you left here?” Meyer said.

“Coffee shop up the street. I don’t know the name of it, everybody from the gym rolls in there. It’s right on the corner of Holman and 76th. They know me there, you ask them was I in there last night.”

“We’ll ask them,” Meyer said. “What’s your middle name?”

“None of your fuckin business,” Clarke said.

They checked around the gymnasium and learned that at least half a dozen people had seen Clarke on the premises the night before, between the hours of seven and midnight. They checked with the owner of the coffee shop up the street, and he told them Clarke and his fighter came in shortly after midnight last night, sat around talking till at least one in the morning, maybe one-thirty. According to the coroner’s report, Jimmy Harris had been slain sometime between six-thirty and seven-thirty p.m. He had been able to pinpoint the time so narrowly because the body was discovered almost immediately after the murder; rigor mortis, in fact, had not yet set in. With Isabel Harris, the latitude was wider; the coroner guessed she’d been killed sometime between ten p.m. and one a.m. In order to have killed Jimmy in Hannon Square at six-thirty, and then get uptown to the gym in Diamondback by seven o’clock, Charlie Clarke had to have moved faster than a speeding bullet. The logistics were impossible. Nor could he have got downtown again to the Harris apartment during the time span the coroner had estimated for Isabel’s murder.

This meant nothing.

In this city you could get somebody killed for fifty dollars. There was a possible twenty-five thousand dollars at stake here, and for a tenth of that you could hire a battalion of goons. They did not yet know whether the lab boys had lifted any good prints in the Harris apartment. In the meantime, and against that eventuality, they decided to request an I.D. run on Charles C. Clarke in the morning. It was almost eight o’clock when they left Diamondback. Carella dropped Meyer at the nearest subway station, and then drove home to Riverhead.

The front door to the house was locked.

Night like tonight, the goddamn door would be locked and he’d have to stand out there in the cold fumbling for keys. He rang the doorbell, and indeed began fumbling for keys, muttering under his breath. His fingers were stiff, they rummaged awkwardly through the loose change in his right-hand pocket. He took out his key ring. There were enough skeleton keys on it to have convicted a burglar of possession of tools. The house was a huge old rambling monster near Donnegan’s Bluff, purchased by the Carellas shortly after the twins were born, a house that had undoubtedly quartered a large family and an army of servants in the good old days. These were the bad new days, however. It was only Fanny who finally opened the door for him.

“Well, well, it’s himself,” she said.

Fanny was their housekeeper, a big woman in her late fifties, wearing a white blouse and bright green slacks that spread wide over a hundred and forty pounds of girth, bleached red hair flaming like neon, mellow Irish brogue spilling from her lips like aged whiskey. “I thought you’d never get here, to tell the truth of it,” she said.

“Fanny,” he said, “I’m cold and I’m hungry.”

“Don’t be threatenin me, y’bully,” she said. “Theodora’s in the living room. Come in, you’ll catch your death.”

“If you’ll step out of the doorway...”

“Aye, I’ll step out of the doorway,” she said, and moved aside to let him in.

She had come to the Carellas years ago, as a month-long gift from Teddy’s father, who’d felt his daughter needed at least that much time to recuperate after the birth of twins. In those days Fanny’s hair was blue, and she wore a pincenez and weighed ten pounds less than she did now. The prepaid month had gone by all too quickly, and Carella had regretfully informed her that he could not afford a full-time housekeeper on his meager salary. But Fanny was an indomitable broad who had never had a family of her own, and who rather liked this one. So she told Carella he could pay her whatever he might scrape up for the time being, and she would supplement her income with night jobs, she being a trained nurse and a very healthy woman to boot. Carella had flatly refused. Fanny had put her hands on her hips and said, “Are you going to throw me out into the street, is that it?” and they’d argued back and forth, and Fanny had stayed. She was still with them.

“Theodora’s in the living room,” she said again. “Shall I bring you a drink, or are you still on duty?”

“I’d like a Scotch and soda, please, very strong,” Carella said, and took off his coat and hung it on the hallway rack.

“You should wear a hat, this weather,” Fanny said.

“I don’t like hats,” Carella said.

“Gentlemen wear hats,” Fanny said, and went out into the kitchen, where there was a wet sink and bar recessed into what had long ago been a dumbwaiter shaft. In the spare room, the ten-year old twins were watching television. Carella stopped in the doorway and said, “Hi.”

“Hi, Dad,” April said.

“Hi,” Mark said.

“No kisses?”

“Wait till she wins the money,” April said.

“Who?”

“Shh, Dad, there’s five thousand dollars at stake here,” Mark said.

“See you later,” Carella said, and started toward the living room, and then turned back and said, “Have you eaten yet?”

“Yes, Dad, shhhh,” April said.

Carella went down the corridor to the living room. Teddy was sitting by the fire. She had not heard the doorbell ringing, she had not heard the conversation with Fanny or the twins, she did not now hear her husband approaching; Teddy Carella was a deaf-mute. She sat by the fire, looking into the flames, the firelight touching her midnight hair with reds and oranges and yellows, as though it had been sprinkled with sequins. He hesitated in the doorway, watching her face, the dark luminous brown eyes staring into the flames, the full mouth and finely sculpted cheekbones. As always, his heart soared. He stood watching her speechlessly, feeling as he had the very first moment he’d met her. That would never change. He could guarantee that. In a world he sometimes did not understand, he understood completely his love for Teddy. He went to her. She sensed his approach now, and turned, and her face changed in the tick of an instant from meditative privacy to shared intimacy. There was nothing hidden on that face, her eyes and her mouth declared all her tongue could not. She rose from the easy chair and went into his arms. He held her close. He stroked her hair. He gently kissed her lips.

Her hands fluttered with questions, which he answered with his own hands, using the sign language she had taught him, occasionally lapsing into speech, her eyes searching his mouth. When Fanny came into the room with his drink, she did not interrupt their animated conversation. He told her about the second victim, and Teddy’s eyes clouded, and she watched as his hands and his face and his voice defined his outrage. He told her about Sophie Harris and Charles C. Clarke, whose middle name they still did not know, and Maloney from Canine, and she asked him what would happen to the dog, and he said he didn’t know. They ate dinner alone in the wood-paneled dining room, and later the children came to be kissed before going off to bed. April said the lady on television had blown it. Mark said any dope could have answered the question. April, not realizing what she was saying, said, “ I couldn’t have answered it,” and they all burst out laughing.

It was almost nine-thirty, it had been a long day. They sipped their coffee in silence, holding hands across the table. Insidiously, the case began to intrude again. Carella found himself hurrying through the last of his coffee. When he rose abruptly from the table, Teddy looked up at him in puzzlement.