Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

“Oh, yes. Very much.”

“Is he married?”

“Yes.”

“Happily?”

“Well… let’s say they’re still working on it.”

“Were you happily married?”

“No.”

“Which is why you got divorced.”

“Actually, it was more complicated than that.”

“That means there was another woman.”

“Yes.”

“And is there a woman now? In your life?”

“No one serious.”

“Someone un serious?”

“Just a few women I enjoy seeing.”

She had finished her steak and now she placed her fork and knife horizontally on her plate, the way someone had undoubtedly taught her to do here in America, and sat sipping her beer and looking out over the bay, where the sky had turned a violent purple. In moments, the sun would drop into the sea, and it would be dark. She was silent for what seemed a long time, the color of the sky growing steadily deeper behind her.

“You see,” she said at last, still staring out over the blackening water, “I’ve been wondering why you called.”

“Because I wanted to know you better,” he said.

She nodded.

And was silent again.

And then she turned to him and said, “Does that mean you want to go to bed with me?”

Her gaze demanded honesty.

He risked honesty.

“I guess so,” he said. “Eventually.”

“When is eventually?” she asked. “Tonight? Tomorrow? Next month? Next year?”

“Whenever,” he said. “ If ever.”

“And when is that?”

“Only if and when we both want to.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“Then we won’t.”

“And then we’ll never get to know each other better.”

“No, I didn’t say that.”

“I’m Asian,” she said.

“I know.”

“Is that why you want to go to bed with me? Because I’m Asian?”

“I haven’t asked you to go to bed with me,” he said. “I asked you to dinner. And that had nothing to do with your being Asian .”

“Because there are men who want to go to bed with me for that reason alone, you know. The fact that I’m Asian.”

He felt as if he’d been led down a jungle path by a beautiful woman who’d suddenly turned Vietcong, raising her hands high over her head to reveal primed hand grenades tucked under her arms.

He said nothing.

“I hope that isn’t the case with you,” she said.

He still said nothing.

“Because I’ve never been to bed with anyone in my life,” she said, and turned away again as blackness completely devoured the bay.

The old man was standing by the sidewalk railing some ten feet from the street lamp, looking out over the boats in their marina slips. On one of the boats, someone was playing a ukulele. The instrument sounded tinny on the night, something from another time and place, like the old man himself. There were lights on many of the boats. The lights reflected in the black water. There were soft voices on the night. The ukulele kept plinking its notes onto the sticky night air. The old man stood listening in seeming fascination, his head bent. Then, at last, he turned away from the railing and began moving away from the lamppost…

This way, come on.

… his hands behind his back again, head still bent, leaning slightly forward, moving well beyond the marina’s lighted orbit…

Yes, come on.

… coming closer and closer, the street lamp behind him now, the sidewalk ahead of him as black as the night, moving into the blackness of the night, moving into the blackness where the knife waited, where the knife…

Yes!

Framed photographs of the detective squad he’d commanded up north in Nassau County lined Morris Bloom’s office in the Public Safety Building. They shared the wall space with a citation plaque from the Nassau County Chief of Detectives; a pair of laminated front-page stories from the New York Daily News and Long Island’s Newsday , headlining the daring capture of two bank robbers in Mineola, Long Island, by a police officer named Morris L. Bloom; and several framed photographs of his wife. A boxing trophy he’d received while serving in the U.S. Navy sat on top of his bookshelf, alongside a Snoopy doll his nineteen-year-old son had given him last Father’s Day. Hanging around the beagle’s neck was a hand-lettered sign that read To the best bloodhound in the world. Love, Marc.

Bloom was looking at the headline of that morning’s Calusa Herald-Tribune .

The headline read:

“I thought World War III was starting,” Matthew said.

“Mmm,” Bloom said.

“The size of that type.”

“Mmm.”

The bylined story under the headline went on to reveal, somewhat hysterically, that the largest cocaine seizure ever made in southwest Florida had taken place yesterday morning, August 21, and that the arrests of twelve men in the so-called Bolivian sector of Calusa might very well have put an end to all trafficking in this part of the state. The article went on to say that the four-month-long investigation had been initiated by Skye Bannister, the State Attorney, and that detectives from his office had worked in conjunction with the DEA, the Calusa P.D., and the Calusa Sheriffs Department to bring about a successful conclusion to the covert operation. Together they had confiscated in the early-morning raid thousands of kilos of cocaine, millions of dollars in cash, and enough handguns, rifles, and automatic weapons to start a war in Central America. Skye Bannister was quoted as saying, “If you do drugs, you will be caught. And when you’re caught, you will be punished. These men will be going away for a long, long time. I’ll see to that personally. We will not tolerate drugs in this city. We will not tolerate drugs in this state.”

“So this is what was cooking,” Matthew asked.

“This is what was cooking,” Bloom said.

“Skye’s rocket to Tallahassee.”

“Let’s say it couldn’t hurt,” Bloom said.

“Which is why he wants to sweep the murder case under the rug.”

“So to speak.”

“Make an offer, get his conviction fast, and dance on home with Mama.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Because if he loses this one…”

“Big one to lose, Matthew.”

“Oh yes.”

“He loses this one, it’s goodbye, Tallahassee.”

“I’m going to make sure he loses it, Morrie.”

“ Aluvai ,” Bloom said. “But I don’t think you have a chance.”

“No, huh? Was my man out of jail and roaming the waterfront last night?”

“A copycat murder, Matthew. Plain and simple.”

“The party line,” Matthew said.

The murder was buried on page fourteen of the paper, in a brief story that ran for half a column on the left-hand side of the page, adjacent to an almost-full-page ad for the Curtis Brothers Department Store. The story reported that Trinh Mang Due, sixty-eight years old, an unemployed immigrant from Vietnam, residing at 1224 Tango Street, had been found dead on the North Tamiami Trail, near Marina Lou’s, at five minutes past two a.m. by the motorized police officer patroling that sector.

When certain apparent similarities were pointed out to Patricia Demming — the Assistant State Attorney prosecuting the sensational case involving the murder and mutilation of three Vietnamese immigrants recently acquitted of rape charges — the young prosecutor told reporters that such incidents were not uncommon. “It’s extremely unfortunate that so many murders are imitated by impressionable people who commit the same crime in the identical manner,” she said. “We call them copycat murders. The slaying of Mr. Trinh is just such a horrible tragedy. He was the innocent victim of a twisted person seeking dubious fame through the repetition of a previous murder — or murders, as the case happens to be here. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the murders are related only in that way. We already have the man who committed the earlier murders, and I’m certain the Calusa police will find the man or woman who committed this most recent outrage.”