Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

Kickers had opened at the beginning of June, not an auspicious month in that the tourists usually left shortly before Easter and the native trade down here could not in itself support a restaurant. If you hoped to get through the dog days of summer, you raked in your chips from November through April, and then either closed for part of the off-season or contented yourself with eking out a bare existence till the snowbirds flew down again. Opening at such a lousy time. Kickers should have followed the sad tradition of all the hard-luck joints that had come and gone on this spot, the exterior of the building remaining while the name and the interior decor changed every few months or so.

But against all odds, it seemed to be surviving, possibly because Salty Pete’s — a rowdy saloon favored by year-round residents of Whisper Key — had considerately burned to the ground shortly after Kickers threw open its doors. There were those who voiced suspicions that Michael Grundy, the owner of Kickers, had himself engineered the unfortunate blaze at Salty Pete’s, but neither the police nor the fire department had found the slightest proof of arson.

Smack on the Intercoastal, Kickers inhabited a big old white clapboard building with a huge outdoor deck overlooking the water and a dock that could accommodate some ten to twelve boats, depending on their size. It was the site, of course, that had encouraged all those previous entrepreneurs to rush right in where angels might have feared to tread. And with a splendid view like this one — the waterway at one of its widest bends, the bridge to Whisper in the near distance, lazy boat traffic constantly drifting by in a no-wake zone — the mystery was why all those other places had failed.

Grundy had opted for the casual air of a honky-tonk saloon, wisely recognizing Salty Pete’s (before it burned down) as his only competition for the key’s steady drinking crowd. He hired a flock of fresh-faced young barmaids — six of them altogether, four behind the long bar in the main dining room, two behind the circular bar on the deck — and dressed them in white blouses low enough and black skirts short enough to delight men while not offending women. And for balance he hired a horde of handsome young waiters and a piano player with a Gene Kelly grin, and he dressed them in black trousers and open-throated white shirts with puffy sleeves and red garters. And then he made damn sure he was serving generous drinks, choice cuts of meat, and the freshest fish he could buy, all at reasonable prices. And before you could shout eureka, he had himself a place that looked like a saloon but behaved like a restaurant, attracting customers day and night by land and by sea. A Calusa success story. Of which there were not too many these days.

When Frank Bannion arrived at noon that Monday, the place was already beginning to fill up for lunch, and many of the customers looked like banking people who had driven over from the mainland, a sure harbinger of longevity. He parked his car — prominently marked with the State Attorney’s seal on both front doors — alongside a silver Lincoln Continental that looked like a beached shark, and then he followed the sound of a whorehouse piano into an interior bright with sunshine but nonetheless managing to convey the look and feel of a friendly, bustling, happy, cozy joint that had been here for the past hundred years and would be here as long as good food and drink were being served anywhere in the state of Florida. No small accomplishment for this jinxed location.

Bannion nodded his head in appreciation and walked through the main dining room and out onto the deck, where round white tables shaded by huge brown umbrellas overlooked the water. A boat under sail was gliding past on the wind. Boats made you want to be on them, Bannion thought, until you actually got on them. He sat at the bar and began chatting up the redhead who took his order for a gin and tonic. He was here to talk about the night of the murders. He had a choice of coming right out and saying he was a detective working for the State Attorney, or else he could just pretend to be somebody curious about what had happened. Sometimes if you came on like the Law, they froze. On the other hand, if you came on like a snoop, they sometimes told you to fuck off. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. He decided to show his shield.

The girl was impressed.

“Wow,” she said.

Twenty-three years old, twenty-four maybe, with an amazing sun-tan for somebody with red hair. Bannion figured the hair color had been poured out of a bottle. Brown eyes. Little button nose. Her name was Rosie Aldrich, she told him.

“I hate the name Rosie, don’t you?” she said.

She’d come down from Brooklyn for a few weeks last winter, decided to stay awhile. She loved working here at Kickers, she told him. What she did, she alternated days and nights, which gave her a chance to spend time on the beach. She loved the beach. Loved the sun. Also, with a job like this, she got to meet a lot of interesting people. Like detectives from the State Attorney’s office, wow.

Bannion told her he had once bit a burglar on the backside.

Out of deference to her youth, he didn’t say ass.

He showed her the photograph of the burglar’s behind to prove it. His teethmarks on the burglar’s behind.

The girl shook her head in awe and admiration.

Bannion asked her if she’d been working here on Monday night, August thirteenth.

“Why, what happened then?” she asked.

Brown eyes saucer-wide.

“Routine investigation,” Bannion said. “Would that have been one of the nights you were working?”

“What night would that have been, the thirteenth?” she asked.

“A Monday,” Bannion said.

He was beginning to get the feeling she was kind of stupid. A sort of airheaded look in those brown eyes. Or maybe she was on something. A lot of kids these days, you figured them for dimwits, they were in fact stoned.

“Yeah, but which Monday?” she said.

Today was Monday, the twentieth of August. One of those flip-up calendars behind the bar displayed the date in big white numbers on a black background. So what Monday could the thirteenth have been if not last Monday?

“Last Monday,” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

He waited.

“When was that?” she said.

“Last Monday,” he explained. “The thirteenth. Last Monday night.”

He was thinking that even if she had seen anything, Demming would never put a dope like her on the stand.

“Were you working that night?” he asked.

“Gee, no,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, relieved.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Do you know who would’ve been working that night? Out here on the deck?”

“Why out here on the deck?” she asked.

“Would you know?” he asked, and smiled pleasantly and patiently.

“I’ll ask Sherry,” she said.

Sherry turned out to be the dark-haired girl serving drinks at the other end of the bar. She was very tall, five ten or eleven, Bannion guessed, giving the long-legged, high-heeled impression that her skirt was even shorter than it actually was. She listened intently to what Rosie was telling her, glanced down to where Bannion was sitting and nursing his gin and tonic, nodded, and then came over to him.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m from the State Att—”

“Yeah, Rosie told me. What’s this about?”

Intelligence flashing in her dark eyes, thank God; he hated stupid people. Sharp nose that gave her the look of a fox on the scent of a hare. Wide mouth, full lips. Actually, quite attractive, he thought. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old, in there. He wondered if she knew his teeth and his hair were still his own.