Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

“ Rental cars?”

A rental car, he thought. A goddamn rental car! No wonder the killer had to…

“Hertz, Avis, Dollar, what-have-you,” Fiona said. “The plates on all those cars begin with either a Y or a Z. Check it out.”

“I will,” he said. “Thank you very much. Miss Gill, I really appreciate this.”

“Not at all,” she said. “Did you still want Warren to call you?”

“Not unless he wants to.”

“I’ll tell him. Good night,” she said.

“Good night,” he said, and put the receiver back on the cradle.

A rental car, he thought. That’s how those mind readers knew what I was driving, they looked at the license plate. He pulled the telephone directory to him, opened it to the yellow pages, and was running his finger down the page with the listings for Automobile Renting & Leasing when the phone rang. He picked up the receiver.

“Warren?” he said.

“Mr. Hope?” a man’s voice said.

“Yes, who’s this, please?”

“Charlie Stubbs. I’m sorry to be bothering you at home, but I tried to reach that other feller and there’s no answer there. I remember now who that voice sounded like. Remember I said it sounded like somebody famous? Or did he tell you?”

“Yes, he told me.”

“Well, I remember who it was.”

“Who was it, Mr. Stubbs?”

“John F. Kennedy,” Stubbs said.

He lived in one of those little shacks up on stilts that lined the beach just north of Whisper Key Village. At this time of year, and especially at this time of night, there was a ghostly silence shrouding the strip of wooden structures standing in a row on the edge of the sea. During high season, there would be music into the empty hours of the night, laughter, the sounds of young people flexing their muscles and their hormones. Tonight, all was still. The shacks stood on their stilts like tall wading birds, silhouetted against the shoreline sky. It was almost midnight, but a light was burning in the second-story apartment. Matthew climbed the steps and knocked.

“Who is it?”

The distinctive voice, plainly evident when you were listening for it. The John F. Kennedy voice.

“Me,” he said. “Matthew Hope.”

“Just a minute, please.”

Puzzlement in that voice now; it was almost midnight.

The door opened.

He was wearing only tennis shorts. Barechested, barefooted. Forty-one years old, but still looking like a boy, the way many athletes that age looked, the well-defined muscles on his arms, legs, and chest, the tousled blond hair, the welcoming grin. Your average, garden-variety All-American Boy. Who had only done murder five times over.

“Hello, Kit,” Matthew said. “Sorry to be stopping by so late.”

“No, that’s okay,” he said. “Come on in.”

Matthew stepped into the apartment. A studio with a tiny kitchen area and a closet space defined by a rod with a hanging curtain on it. Double bed against the windows on the ocean side. Framed photographs on the walls. Most of them of Christopher Howell in action on a tennis court. One of them of Christopher Howell in an army uniform, posing with half a dozen other American soldiers, all of them grinning into the camera, all of them wearing combat helmets and bandoliers, some of them holding assault weapons. In the corner, several tennis rackets stood on end against the wall. There was a thriftshop easy chair slip-covered in a paisley pattern. A telephone on a nightstand beside the bed. A lamp on the nightstand. The lamp was on. There was no air conditioning, the windows were wide open. Outside, the ocean rushed in against the sand.

“I think I’ve worked out a game plan,” Matthew said.

Howell blinked.

“Would you like to hear it?”

“Well…”

This is midnight , his face said.

“Sure,” he said.

“Did you know,” Matthew said, “that in the state of Florida, all rental-car license plates begin with either a Y or a Z?”

Howell looked at him.

“No, I didn’t know that,” he said.

“A little-known fact,” Matthew said, and smiled. “But true.”

“I see,” Howell said.

“Did you further know that rental-car companies keep records on all the cars they rent? Names of renters, addresses, and so on.”

“Uh… excuse me, Mr. Hope,” Howell said, “but it is late, and…”

“Later than you think,” Matthew said.

Outside, an incoming wave broke with a thunderous crash. There was the whispering sound of the ocean retreating. And then silence again.

“I made some phone calls before coming here,” Matthew said. “To all the rental-car companies in town. Well, not all of them, I struck pay dirt on the sixth call.”

“Mr. Hope, I’m sorry, really…”

Blue eyes wide with innocence. Puzzled boyish look on his face.

“… but I just don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you know what I’m talking about, Kit.”

“No, really, I…”

“I’m talking about the car you rented.”

“Car?”

The way he said that single word. The regional dialect. Caah. Paak the caah in Haavaad Yaad. The same way he must have said alarmed when he was talking on the phone to Stubbs. Alaaamed.

“The one you rented on August thirteenth,” Matthew said. “An Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with the license plate ZAB 39…”

The racket was in Howell’s hand before Matthew could complete the sentence. His right hand. Shake hands with the racket. The racket firm in his grip. He had a powerful forehand and a devastating backhand, and moreover he was ambidextrous. Matthew suddenly knew which blunt instrument had crushed Frank Bannion’s skull.

“So let me hear your game plan,” Howell said, and swung the racket at Matthew’s head.

Matthew had no game plan.

The racket came at him edgewise. Howell wasn’t trying to hit a ball, he wasn’t concerned about meeting a ball solidly on the strings, never mind a sweet spot, the sweet spot was Matthew’s head. Howell was concerned only with inflicting damage. The aluminum frame of the racket, for all its lightness, was thick enough and dense enough and strong enough to knock plaster out of the wall. Which is exactly what it did in the next second because Matthew did the only thing he could do, he sidestepped and ducked. The plaster flew out in a large solid chunk, exposing naked lath and what looked like chicken wire behind it. Howell danced away, positioning himself for his next shot.

“Guess which hand?” he said, and grinned, and tossed the racket into his left hand and then immediately tossed it back to the right. He was bouncing on his bare feet. Priming himself for the big match. Matthew did not want his skull to become the U.S. Open.

If your opponent is armed, and you’re not…

Bloom’s voice. In the gym this past Tuesday. Teaching him the tricks of the trade. Teaching him a game plan.

Don’t try to disarm him. You’II be dead before you figure out how.

Howell was bouncing. Circling. Tossing the racket back and forth between his hands. Guess which hand? Where will it be coming from? The right or the left?

Forget the weapon.

But the next one was going to be an ace.

The next one was going to crush Matthew’s skull.

Go for the man.

Howell was pulling the racket back for the shot. It was going to be a left-handed shot, and it was going to be a backhand shot. Matthew had seen that backhand in action. Its force could tear off his head. Arm crossing Howell’s chest now, racket coming back, mouth set in a tight line, eyes blazing, arm coiled like a spring, in a moment he would unleash the shot, the arm would unfold, the edge of the racket…