Ed McBain - Long Time No See

“Yes, I did. Because I was embarrassed, you know, and I was thinking maybe I should leave the place.”

“But you didn’t leave.”

“No, my friend and I stayed to have a drink. They were holding hands.”

“Mr. Preston and Isabel?”

“Yes. Look, I don’t want to get him in trouble.”

“No, no, don’t worry about it,” Carella said. “These are just routine questions we’ve got to ask, no one’s about to arrest anybody for murder.”

“Well, I hope not. There’s no crime against... you know.”

“I know that.”

“Against holding a girl’s hand.”

“That’s right.”

“Or even... you know.”

“That’s right. Miss D’Amato, you’ve been very helpful, thank you for your time.”

“I just don’t want to get anybody in trouble,” she said.

“Goodnight, Miss D’Amato.”

“Goodnight,” she said.

South Edgeheath Road was in a section of Riverhead that was still relatively untouched by urban deterioration. The street itself was rather less rural than its name suggested, but it nonetheless gave the impression of somewhat more stately living than areas as close as two miles away. Apartment buildings lined both sides of the short street, but at the northern end there was a park with a public golf course and even in November there was a sense of wide-open green space and a sky uncluttered by sharp architectural angles.

The street at nine a.m. that Saturday morning seemed only half awake. Carella parked his car, and then walked toward the entrance doors of the redbrick building in which Frank Preston lived. In the lobby he passed a woman in a black coat carrying an empty cloth shopping bag in her right hand. She seemed already cold in anticipation of the weather outside, her face pinched in dire expectation. He searched out Preston’s name in the lobby directory, took the elevator up to the fifth floor, went down the corridor to apartment 55, and rang the doorbell.

The woman who opened the door was in her mid-fifties, Carella guessed, brown hair cut in a stylish bob, brown eyes inquisitive behind eyeglasses too small for her face. The face itself gave an impression of angular sharpness, pointed chin and pointed nose, slender oval exaggerated by the narrow glasses and squinting eyes behind them. Carella had once worked with an English cop who told him that in England a person with a “squint” was a person who was cross-eyed. The woman standing in the doorway was not cross-eyed. She was peering out at him from behind narrow eye-slits; she was squinting.

“Let me see your badge, please,” she said.

He showed her the badge and the I.D. card. She studied both carefully, and then nodded and said, “Yes, what is it?”

“I'm Detective Carella, I called—”

“Yes, I saw that on the card. What is it, Mr. Carella?”

“I’d like to talk to Frank Preston, if he’s here.”

“I thought you talked to him last night.”

“Are you Mrs. Preston?”

“I am.”

“Mrs. Preston, there are some things I’d like to ask him in person. Is he home?”

“He’s home. I’ll see if he can talk to you.”

“Thank you.”

She closed the door. He stood in the hallway for several moments. The building was silent. These old buildings with thick walls... The door was opening again.

“Come in,” Mrs. Preston said.

The apartment was shaped like an upside-down L. The door opened at the bottom of the long branch of the L, a corridor running its entire length, and then angling to the left at the far end. Carella followed Mrs. Preston down the corridor, passing a kitchen on his left, and then a living room, and then a bedroom on the right, where the short tail of the L began. At the end of this shorter corridor, there was a small room, its door open.

Preston was sitting in an easy chair watching television. He was wearing a maroon bathrobe and brown house slippers. He seemed to be in his early sixties, a massive man with a large head and enormous hands. A thin fringe of white hair clung to his head, around his ears and the back of his skull. He was bald above that. His eyebrows were white and shaggy over piercing blue eyes. His nose would have been large in any other face, but seemed perfectly proportioned for his. He might have made a good stage actor; most stage actors had large heads and prominent features. One of the early morning news-talk shows was on. Preston rose ponderously from the chair, went immediately to the television set, and turned it off.

“You’re here early,” he said.

“I didn’t want to miss you.”

“Why didn’t you call first?”

“I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d just stop by.”

“I thought we’d said everything there was to say last night on the phone.”

“Few more things I wanted to ask you.”

“Then go ahead and ask.”

“I’d rather talk to you privately. Mrs. Preston, would you mind...”

“I’ll leave you,” she said, and immediately turned and walked up the corridor.

Carella closed the door behind him. Preston looked suddenly worried. He fished in the pocket of his robe, came up with a crumpled package of cigarettes and offered one to Carella. Carella shook his head. Preston put a cigarette between his lips, fished again in the robe, found a matchbook. He struck a match, held the flaming end to his cigarette and then shook the match out and dropped it in an ashtray on the television set. There were two windows in the room. Through them Carella could see across the street and beyond to where the elevated train tracks ran above Barbara Avenue.

“Mr. Preston,” Carella said, “I want to ask you about your relationship with Isabel Harris.”

“My relationship?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you mean, my relationship? She worked for me.”

“Mr. Preston, is it true that you began crying yesterday morning when you learned she was dead?”

“Who told you that?”

“Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Is it also true that you and she met for a drink on at least one occasion?”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it, Mr. Preston. I simply want to know if it’s true.”

“Yes, it’s true.”

“When was this?”

“Last week.”

“You met her for a drink, is that right?”

“It wasn’t the way you make it sound.”

“How was it?”

“Something was bothering her. She wanted to talk about it. We went for a drink after work. Period.”

“What was bothering her, Mr. Preston?”

“Well, it was something personal.”

“Yes, what was it?”

“Well, really, I think that was her business, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, I think it was.”

“What was bothering her, Mr. Preston?”

“It doesn’t matter, that’s not the point. I was merely trying to explain that whatever you were suggesting—”

“What was I suggesting?”

“That Isabel and I were having an affair or something.”

“I didn’t suggest you were having an affair, Mr. Preston.”

“Well, all right. But if we were, I wouldn’t have taken her to a place just up the street from the office. There was nothing clandestine about our meeting. I had nothing to hide. An employee came to me with a problem, and I was trying to help her.”

“Don’t you have a private office at Prestige Novelty?”

“Yes. What’s that got to—”

“Couldn’t you have talked to her there?”

“This was something that couldn’t be handled in ten minutes.”

“All right, tell me what happened that afternoon.”

“She got there at about three, I was waiting for her in a booth at the back of the place. I saw her when she came in and went to meet her, and led her back to the booth.”