Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

“Who?”

“ Fiona Gill.”

“Nobody here by that name.”

And then 381-4256…

And 381-4625…

And down the line till he came to the last possible combination, 381-4562, the phone ringing, ringing, ringing.

“Hello?”

A black woman.

“Fiona?”

“Who?”

“I’m trying to reach Fiona Gill.”

“Man, you got the wrong number.”

And click .

He sat there despondently, his pride in his fabled memory considerably shaken. Now listen, he thought, there has got to be some mistake here. Maybe she gave me the wrong number. Maybe she was so excited, she forgot her own telephone number, that is a distinct possibility. So how can I get the right number if it’s an unlisted one? He picked up the receiver again, punched the O for Operator, let the phone ring once, twice…

“Operator.”

“Detective Warren Chambers,” he said, “St. Louis Police Department.”

“Yes, Mr. Chambers.”

“We’re trying to locate the sister of a homicide victim here…”

“Oh, my, a homicide,” the operator said.

“Yes, her name is Fiona Gill, her number seems…”

“The victim.”

“No, the sister. She lives down there in Calusa. I was wondering…”

“How’s the weather up there?”

“Terrific. Lovely. Lovely summer weather. Fiona Gill, that’s G-I–L-L. I don’t have an address.”

“Just one moment, sir,” the operator said. She was off the line for what seemed ten seconds. When she came back, she said, “I’m sorry, sir, that’s an unpublished number.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“We’re not per—”

“This is a homicide here,” Warren said.

Which always worked.

“I’m sorry, sir, it’s our policy not to give out unpublished numbers.”

“Yes, I realize that. May I speak to your Service Assistant, please?”

“Yes, sir, one moment, please.”

Warren waited.

“Miss Camden,” a woman said.

“Detective Warren Chambers,” he said. “We’re working a homicide here in St. Louis, and I need to get in touch with a woman named Fiona Gill in your city. Can you please ask your Floor Manager to…?”

“Working a homicide where ?” Miss Camden said.

“St. Louis,” Warren said.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, and hung up.

Warren looked at the mouthpiece.

Okay, so sometimes it didn’t work.

He put the phone back on its cradle, thought for a moment, and then opened his personal directory. On the last case he’d worked for Matthew, he’d hired two rednecks from the Calusa P.D. to do some moonlight housesitting. One of them had got himself killed on the job, but the other one was still alive, and he and Warren still shared a sort of tentative relationship, the only kind a redneck could offer a black man in this town. He looked up Nick Alston’s home number, glanced at his watch — twenty past nine — and dialed.

“Hello?” a voice said.

“Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“Warren Chambers.”

“How you doin’, Chambers?”

Just overjoyed to be hearing from him again.

“I need a favor,” Warren said.

“Yeah?”

Still wildly enthusiastic.

“A phone number,” Warren said. “This case I’m working.”

“Where?”

“Here. Calusa.”

“The number, I mean.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, the number. It’s unlisted.”

“No shit? When do you need it?”

“Now.”

“I ain’t at work.”

“Can’t you get somebody up there to call it in for me?”

“Maybe. Where are you?”

“Home.”

“Where’s that? Newtown?”

Naming the colored section of Calusa.

“No, here on Hibiscus.”

“Give me the number there,” Alston said.

Warren gave him the number.

“What’s this person’s name?”

“Fiona Gill,” Warren said.

“She’s in the Tax Collector’s office, ain’t she?” Alston said.

“That’s right.”

“Motor Vehicles, right?”

“Right. I’m trying to get a line on a license plate.”

“So you have to call her at home, right?”

“Right,” Warren said.

“Yeah, right, shit,” Alston said. “I’ll get back to you.”

He got back some ten minutes later.

“The lady’s number is 381-3645,” he said.

“Ahhhh,” Warren said.

“Yeah, ahhhh,” Alston said. “Ahhh what ?”

“A three. Instead of a two.”

“Which is supposed to make sense, huh? I don’t usually run a dating service, Chambers. I hope you realize that,”

“I owe you one.”

“You bet you do.”

“I won’t forget. Thanks a lot, Nick, I really app—”

“You remember my partner?” Alston said. “Charlie Macklin? Who got shot when we was sittin’ that house on the beach?”

“I remember him, yes,” Warren said.

“I still miss him,” Alston said.

There was a silence on the line.

“Let’s have a beer sometime,” Warren said.

“Yeah,” Alston said.

There was another silence.

“I’ll talk to you,” Warren said. “Thanks again.”

“Yeah,” Alston said, and hung up.

Warren put the receiver back on the cradle. It was twenty-five minutes to ten; he wondered if it was too late to try her. While he was debating this, the telephone rang. He picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” he said.

“Warren?”

“Yes?”

“Hi,” she said. “This is Fiona Gill.”

In Calusa, Florida, the beaches change with the seasons. What in May might have been a wide strand of pure white sand will by November become only a narrow strip of shell, seaweed, and twisted driftwood. The hurricane season here is dreaded as much for the damage it will do to the condominiums as for the havoc it might wreak upon the precious Gulf of Mexico shoreline.

There are five keys off Calusa’s mainland, but only three of them — Stone Crab, Sabal, and Whisper — run north-south, paralleling the mainland shore. Flamingo Key and Lucy’s Key are situated like massive stepping-stones across the bay, connecting the mainland first to Sabal and then to Stone Crab — which normally suffers most during autumn’s violent storms, precisely because it has the least to lose. Stone Crab is the narrowest of Calusa’s keys, its once-splendid beaches eroded for decades by water and wind. September after September, Stone Crab’s two-lane blacktop is completely inundated, the bay on one side and the Gulf on the other joining over it to prevent passage by anything but a dinghy. Sabal Beach historically suffers least — perhaps because there is a God, after all. It was on Sabal that the law-enforcement officers of the City of Calusa looked the other way when it came to so-called nude bathing.

Well, not quite the other way.

The women on Sabal were permitted to splash in the water or romp on the beach topless. But let one genital area, male or female, be exposed for the barest fraction of an instant, and suddenly a white police car with a blue City of Calusa P.D. seal on its sides would magically appear on the beach’s access road and a uniformed minion of the law would trudge solemnly across the sand, head ducked, eyes studying the terrain (but not the offending pubic patch) to make an immediate arrest while citing an ordinance that went all the way back to 1913, when the city was first incorporated.

Tonight, Warren’s old Buick was the only car on the access road. The main parking lot was far off down the beach, adjacent to the public pavilion, where each night Calusa’s teenagers gathered to practice their peculiar tribal rites. Someone off there in the distance was playing an acoustic guitar; tattered snatches of an unintelligible tune drifted listlessly on the humid air. Not a breeze was stirring. Warren was very nervous.