Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

“About what?”

“About another way of looking at this,” she said.

“And what’s that?”

“That the rape and the murder are totally unrelated.”

“That’s what our approach has been, actually.”

“Then you believe as I do,” she said. “That someone was telling the Vietnamese in Calusa to go back where they came from.”

He looked at her.

“This is the South, you know,” she said.

He kept looking at her.

“Where I understand crosses are sometimes burned on lawns.”

It took the jailer ten minutes to get Stephen Leeds to the telephone. When finally he picked up the receiver, he sounded cranky and irritable.

“I was napping,” he said.

Matthew looked at his watch. Three-twenty. He had left Mai Chim at two-thirty, and then had driven home to pick up his Sony tape recorder. It was sitting on his desk now.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he said, “but there are a few more questions I’d like to ask.”

“Have you been reading the papers?” Leeds said. “They’ve already tried and convicted me.”

“That may work in our favor,” Matthew said.

“I don’t see how.”

“Change of venue,” he said.

“Meanwhile, everyone in this town thinks I’m a murderer.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. How can you pick a jury when everyone’s already made up his mind?”

“Yeah, well,” Leeds said dubiously.

“Mr. Leeds, I want to check some things you told me. If I remember correctly, your own car is a Cadillac, is that right?”

“That’s right. A Cadillac Seville.”

“What color is it?”

“It’s got a black top and silver sides.”

“Could the color be mistaken for a dark blue? Or a green?”

“I don’t see how.”

“At night, I mean.”

“Even so. The silver is… well, it’s silver, it’s metallic. Dark blue or green? No. Definitely not.”

“What’s the license-plate number, do you know?”

“I’m not sure. W something. WR… I don’t remember. I always have to look at this little tag I have on my key ring.”

“Would the number be 2AB 39C?”

“No. Definitely not. It starts with a W, I’m sure of that. And I think the second letter is R. WR something.”

“Not 2AB…”

“No.”

“…39C?”

“No. Why?”

“One of the witnesses says he saw you getting into a car with that license plate.”

“When? Where?”

“Outside Little Asia. At a little past midnight on the night of the murders.”

“Good,” Leeds said.

“I gather it wasn’t you.”

“Damn right, it wasn’t. Do you know what this means?”

“Yes, of course,” Matthew said.

“If we can track down that car, we’ve got whoever killed them! Jesus, this is the first good news we’ve had on this case! I can’t wait to tell Jessie. The minute you hang up, I’m going to call her.”

“I’ll let you know what we come up with. Meanwhile, I want you to repeat something after me.”

“Huh?” Leeds said.

“First listen to all of it, and then repeat it when I give you the signal, okay?”

“Sure,” Leeds said, but he sounded puzzled.

“Hello,” Matthew said, “this is Stephen Leeds. I’ll be…”

In Calusa, Florida, you paid for your license plate in the Tax Collector’s office, either by mail or in person. And, similarly, you either picked up the plate or else it was mailed to you. The Tax Collector’s office was on the second floor of the new courthouse building, adjacent to the Public Safety Building and the city jail. At four o’clock that Tuesday afternoon, Warren Chambers was telling Fiona Gill — whose official title was Supervisor of Motor Vehicle Taxation — that his boss was looking for an owner identification on a license-plate number in his possession.

“Who are you working for these days?” Fiona asked.

She was an extremely good-looking black woman, her eyes the color of anthracite, her skin the color of mocha, her lips painted with a ruby-red gloss that caused them to shine wetly and invitingly here in the dim drabness of this unusually grim government office. She was wearing a bright yellow dress that Warren guessed was linen, buttoned up the front to the third button down, gold loop earrings, a gold chain hanging around her neck, the letter F nestling in the clefted shadow of her breasts, partially revealed in the open V of the dress. Warren thought she was an altogether fine piece of work. He wondered if she thought he was too young for her. Many women her age — he guessed she was forty-two or thereabouts — found men his age immature.

“Summerville and Hope,” he said. “Do you know them?”

“No,” she said. “Should I?”

“Not unless you’ve been in trouble lately,” he said, and smiled.

Fiona took this as innuendo, which it was.

She had worked with Warren Chambers before and had found him lacking in only one quality: age. Fiona was forty-six years old, and she guessed that Warren was in his mid-to-late thirties. But other than his callow youthfulness, she could find no fault with him. Except perhaps his new haircut, which made him look even younger than she suspected he was. But now — innuendo. Well, well, well.

“Not the kind of trouble requiring a lawyer,” she said. “Or a real estate agent, if that’s what they are.”

“No, you were right the first time.”

“Last time I needed a lawyer was when I got my divorce,” Fiona said.

Warren considered this unsolicited and welcome information.

“How long ago was that?” he asked.

“Fourteen years,” she said.

“And now you’re happily married again,” he said.

Which Fiona considered a fishing expedition.

Which it was.

“Nope,” she said. “I’m happily playing the field. Though, to tell you the truth, Warren…”

This was the first time she’d ever used his given name.

“… all the available men in Calusa are either married or gay.”

“Not me,” Warren said.

Fiona arched an eyebrow.

“Good-looking fella like you must be involved, though,” she said, and decided to lay her cards on the table. “With a woman more your own age.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, Fiona,” he said, using her given name for the first time. “I find most women my age a bit adolescent.”

“You do, huh?”

Eyes meeting.

“I prefer more mature women,” he said.

“Indeed,” she said.

“Indeed,” he said.

Both of them nodding. Slow nods in the afternoon stillness. Somewhere in the dim recesses of the room, a typewriter began clacking. And then fell abruptly silent again. Warren was wondering whether he’d get shot down if he asked her out to dinner. She was wondering whether she should suggest discussing his age preferences over a drink later this afternoon. Neither said a word. The opportunity hung there expectantly, hovering on the air like a Spielberg spaceship, all shining with promise. And then, unassailed, it drifted off into a galaxy of glittering dust motes, and the distant typewriter began clacking again, shattering the stillness, destroying the moment. It was Fiona who, embarrassed, broke eye contact.

“So what kind of license plate has your boss come up with?” she said.

Warren dug into his pocket and fished out his notebook. He leafed through it until he came to the page upon which he’d scribbled the number Matthew had given him on the phone.

“Here you go,” he said, and handed it across the counter to her. Fiona looked at it.

“No such animal,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t have plates beginning with a number. Not here in Florida.”

“This is what the man saw,” Warren said.