Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

“Which I will,” she said. “Goodbye, Matthew.”

There was a click on the line. Matthew looked at his watch. He opened the telephone directory hanging from a plastic-shielded metal cord — miraculously still here in this day and age of pointless vandalism — found the number for Silvercrest Shell, deposited a quarter, and dialed it. The young kid who answered the phone told him that Jimmy Farrell was gone for the day and wouldn’t be back till tomorrow morning. Matthew left his name and said he’d call again.

He looked through the directory again.

He dug into his pocket for another quarter.

He hesitated.

What the hell, he thought, and dialed.

The old man was in the habit of taking a little stroll after dinner. Tradition. Gobble your rice, vegetables, and fish, and then take a little stroll along the levee. Look off to the mountains beyond Saigon. Except that this was Calusa, Florida, and the nearest mountains were in North Carolina. Plenty of water, though. If you walked the block and a half from Little Asia to the Tamiami Trail, and then took a left and followed U.S. 41 where it curved northward past the Memorial Gardens, you suddenly caught a view of Calusa Bay that was enough to make your heart stop dead. Sailboats out there on the water or in the slips at Marina Lou’s, the Sabal Key Causeway stretching out toward the barrier islands and the Gulf, the setting sun staining the sky and the burgeoning massed clouds — breathtaking.

The old man had to die.

Tonight.

“Actually, I was glad you called,” Mai Chim said.

“I’m glad you weren’t busy,” Matthew said.

“Oh, I’m never busy,” she said.

They were sitting at a window table in Marina Lou’s, not four or five blocks from where Trinh Mang Due was walking northward on U.S. 41, his hands behind his back, his head turned to the left as he looked out over the bay, a wistful smile on his face. Matthew and Mai Chim were looking out over this same vista, the short peninsula of the city park in the near distance, the bay beyond festooned with the colors of sunset and busy with evening boat traffic. The sun was just dipping behind the nearest barrier island, man-made Flamingo Key. Within the half hour, darkness would claim the bay and the night.

Matthew was wearing one of his Third World Outfits, the label his partner Frank gave to the assorted cotton trousers and shirts he bought in a shop not far from the house he was renting. Made in Guatemala, or Korea, or Malaysia, or Taiwan, the clothes were casual and lightweight, perfect for the summer heat. They were also loose-fitting and therefore perfect for a man who’d gained ten pounds stuffing his face with pasta in Venice, Florence, and Rome. This morning the scale showed that Matthew had lost two of those excess pounds. He hoped to get down to his fighting weight within the next two weeks. Tonight he had ordered a simple grilled fish. Low in cholesterol, fat, and calories.

Mai Chim was digging into a steak the size of her native country. She was wearing a pink skirt, low white sandals, and a pastel blue blouse cut in a V over her breasts. Her long black hair fell loose on either side of her face. Long silver earrings dangled from her ears. A thick silver bracelet circled her right wrist. She looked very American and very Asian. She also looked very beautiful. And she was eating like a truck driver. Her appetite continued to astonish him. But what astonished him even more was the fact that she was so slender. He wondered if she ate anything at all when she wasn’t with him. He wondered, too, what she’d meant about never being busy. A woman as beautiful as she was?

“It took me a long time to learn how to use a knife and fork,” she said. “I’ve learned pretty well, don’t you think?”

Commenting on her own voracious appetite, making a joke about it. He suddenly wondered if she’d ever gone hungry in Vietnam. Or afterward.

“I’m a pig, I know,” she said cheerfully, and forked another slice of steak into her mouth. Chewing, she said, “I was going to call you , in fact.”

“Oh?” Matthew said. “Why?”

“To teach you some Vietnamese,” she said, and smiled mysteriously.

The old man had been off by only a hair, but it wouldn’t be long before someone got him talking about that license plate he’d seen, got him rambling, and bingo! Someone would make the connection.

Seeing the car hadn’t been part of the plan.

The car was supposed to remain the big secret, pick it up at Kickers, drive it to Little Asia, park it in the shadows under the big pepper trees lining the street, and then go in all yellow and bright to do bloody murder. The car wasn’t meant to be seen. Only the yellow jacket and hat. In and out, slit your throats, good night, boys, sleep tight. Put out your eyes, cut off your cocks, oh what a horrible sight.

But the old man had seen the license plate.

Seen it wrong, as it happened, but seen it nonetheless, close but no cigar. So now the old man had to go. No witness, no license plate, no tracing it back to you know who. Goodbye and good luck, please give my regards to your recently departed countrymen.

There.

Walking past the marina entrance now.

Getting dark out there on the bay.

Wait.

Wait for blackness.

“Do you remember my telling you about diacritical markings?” Mai Chim said.

“Yes. The cedilla and the umlaut.”

“Which, by the way, I looked up. And you were right, that’s what they are.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you told me. But I thought our marks would be easier to understand if you could see them. Some of them, anyway. So I Xeroxed the Vietnamese alphabet from an old grammar I have. Which is why I was going to call you,” she said, and smiled. “Would you care to have a look?”

On her tongue, the words care to have a look seemed foreign somehow. Just a trifle off the money.

“Sure,” he said.

She put down her fork and knife and reached for the handbag hanging over the back of her chair. She unclasped the bag, took out a folded sheet of paper, unfolded it, said, “I copied it at work,” and handed it to him:

a ã â b c d đ e ê g h i k l m n o ô σ p q r s t u ú v x y

The alphabet seemed foreign, too, just a trifle off, even though the letters were written just as in English. Perhaps the marks accounted for that.

“Of course, this only shows the basic order,” she said. “There are also marks for tonal distinctions. I can draw them for you, if you like, but they would only look like chicken tracks.”

“Hen tracks,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s a very complicated language, I told you. A million marks in it. Well, not that many. But plenty. You can keep that, if you like.”

“Thank you,” he said, and refolded it and slipped it into his pocket.

“For your next visit to Saigon,” she said, and rolled her eyes heavenward to show how remote a possibility this was. She picked up her utensils again, cut another slice of steak, and was raising it to her mouth when she asked with sudden and genuine concern, “Is the fish okay?”

Okay.

The way she said it.

The lilt of it.

A bit strange. A bit foreign. Like everything else about her.

“Only so-so,” Matthew said. “My partner says it’s impossible to get a good fish anywhere in Florida. The boats have to go out too far for it, and by the time they come back in, the fish isn’t really fresh anymore. So speaks the oracle.”

“I never eat fish here,” she said. “In Vietnam, I ate fish all the time, but never here. The fish is not so good here. I think your partner is right.”

“So do I, actually. But please don’t tell him.”

“Do you like him, your partner?”