Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

A little moonlight spin.

Sure. All the time.

You understand what I mean, don’t you?

Sure. A little moonlight spin.

Warren hit the stop button.

“Recognize the voice?” he asked.

“I can’t say for sure. Let me hear some more.”

Warren started the tape again. It was not until twenty-seven seconds later that Weaver said the word alarmed .

Stubbs squinted at the tape recorder.

Six seconds later, Weaver said the word again,

“Play that section back for me,” Stubbs said.

Warren played it back:

But when there wasn’t a moon, if he took the boat out for a little moonlight spin when there wasn’t a moon — would that have alarmed you?

Alarmed me ?

Yes. Would that have alarmed you?

Nope.

How come? You know what I’m saying, don’t you?

Sure. Would I be alarmed.

Yes. Him being out in the dark and all.

Man knows how to —

Warren stopped the tape.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“That’s not the man who called,” Stubbs said.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. The man who called had a funny way of saying that word. Alarmed . I didn’t think of it at the time, maybe because he told me he was Mr. Leeds, but listening to that tape… this man just doesn’t say that word the same way. Alarmed . I can’t do it the way the man on the phone did, but…”

“Well, was it some kind of accent ? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, no.”

“Like a Spanish accent?”

“No.”

“Or an English accent?”

“No, nothing like…”

“French?”

“No, nothing foreign at all. I wish I could do it for you, but I’m no good at that sort of thing. It just sounded… different. The way he said that word. Alarmed .”

“Not the way this man on the tape said it, huh?”

“No, not at all like that.”

Wonderful, Warren thought.

“He sounded like somebody famous,” Stubbs said, “I wish I could remember who.”

“Yours is the rental car, right, sir?” the valet said.

“Yes,” Matthew said.

The kid’s a mind reader, he thought. There was nothing on the Ford to identify it as a rental, not a bumper sticker, not a windshield decal, not anything.

“They all know it’s a rental,” he said to Mai Chim. “It’s the mystery of the ages.”

“Maybe there’s something on the keys,” she said.

“Must be.”

But the man at the body shop this past Monday hadn’t seen the keys.

Who’s driving the rental?

Was what the man had said.

Could you please move it? I gotta get a car out.

Mai Chim was wearing a short beige skirt and a cream-colored, long-sleeved silk blouse buttoned up the front, the top two buttons undone to show a pearl necklace. High-heeled shoes, long legs bare; this was summertime in old Calusa and the formality of pantyhose or stockings seemed foolish in such withering heat. She had been chatty and relaxed all through dinner, perhaps because she’d drunk two tropical-looking, fruity confections laced liberally with rum, and had also shared with Matthew a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Dreamily, she looked out over the water now, her arm looped through his, her head on his shoulder, watching the lights of the boats cruising past on Calusa Bay.

The valet pulled the rented Ford up, hopped out, ran around to the passenger side, and opened the door for her.

“Thank you,” she said, and got into the car. Her skirt rode up onto her thighs. She made no motion to lower it.

Matthew gave the valet a dollar and came around to the driver’s side.

“Thank you, sir,” the valet said, and turned to a grey-haired man coming out of the restaurant. “Yours is the Lincoln, right, sir?” he said, doing his mind-reader act again.

Matthew closed the car door and immediately snapped on the overhead light. Reaching down for the keys, he looked at the plastic tag attached to them. Sure enough, the name of the rental company was on it. Which still didn’t explain the man at the body shop.

Who’s driving the rental?

“I hate mysteries,” he said to Mai Chim, and turned off the light.

“ I hate raccoons ,” she said mysteriously.

He wondered if she was slightly drunk.

“We didn’t have raccoons in Vietnam. We had a lot of animals, but not raccoons.”

Matthew drove the car around the circle in front of the restaurant entrance and then headed out toward the main road. One of the valets had switched the radio to another station. He hated when they did that. It conjured images of strangers sitting in his car listening to the radio and wearing out the battery while he was having dinner. He hit the button for the jazz station he normally listened to, the only jazz station in Calusa.

“Do you like jazz?” he asked.

“What’s jazz?” she said.

“What we’re listening to,” he said.

She listened.

Gerry Mulligan.

“Yes,” she said and nodded somewhat vaguely. “In Vietnam, there was only rock,” she said. “The streets of Saigon were full of rock music. I hate rock,” she said. “I hate raccoons, too. Raccoons look like big rats, don’t you think?”

“Only down here,” he said. “Up north they look cute and furry.”

“Perhaps I should move up north,” she said.

The word perhaps came out somewhat slurred.

“Lots of good cities up north,” he said.

She nodded again and then fell silent, as if seriously considering the move. “My father hated soldiers,” she said abruptly. The word soldiers also seemed a little thick. “Which meant he hated all men,” she said. “Because in Vietnam, that’s all there was . Soldiers. Our soldiers, their soldiers, your soldiers.” Having a lot of trouble with that word soldiers . “My father wouldn’t let a soldier come near me. He once got into a fight with an American corporal who smiled at me. That’s all he did was smile. My father actually hit the man. My father , can you imagine? This skinny little man, hitting this big, husky soldier. The soldier laughed.”

Soldier again. Tough word to wrap her tongue around.

“Could we go to my apartment, please?” she asked.

They drove in silence.

The sound of Mulligan’s saxophone flooded the automobile. Matthew was thinking he’d love to know how to play saxophone like that.

“I was afraid of them,” Mai Chim said. “Soldiers. My father taught me to fear them. He said they would rape me. They raped many Vietnamese girls, the soldiers. I was afraid they would rape me, too.”

Everything that goes around comes around, he thought.

Vietnamese girls being raped by American soldiers.

An American woman being raped by three Vietnamese men.

“But I’m not afraid of you,” she said.

“Good,” he said.

But he was thinking, Not so good. He was thinking she’d had too much to drink, and if what she’d told him earlier was true, he didn’t want to be the one who made love to her for the first time, not while she was drunk or close to it. Oscar Peterson’s piano burst into the rented Ford like a mortar explosion. He thought suddenly of Chicago and the backseat of his father’s steamy Oldsmobile where a sixteen-year-old girl named Joy Patterson lay back with her eyes closed and her breath heavy with the smell of booze, and her legs spread, either really drunk or feigning drunkenness while he explored the ribbed tops of her nylon stockings and the soft white thighs above them, and drew back his trembling hand when at last it touched the silken secret patch of her undefended panties. Pulled it back with the certain knowledge that if Joy was drunk, then this was rape.