Ed McBain: The Big Bad City

"I get home most nights a little before six," she said.

"And last night?”

"The same.”

Did they think she was telling them she got home most nights a little before six because last night she'd got home at seven? What kind of mentality was that? Or was this just cops zeroing in on the facts, ma'am, as if she herself was the one who'd robbed her own apartment, burglarized it, whatever the hell. Where she worked was R&R Ribbons, which manufactured the shiny little red and blue and green and gold bows you peeled the backs off and stuck to all sorts of presents.

August was the busiest time of the year for R&R, which stood for Rosen and Riley. August was when all the Christmas orders came in. October was when they shipped. What she really needed was a friggin robber breaking into her apartment yesterday. "How'd the place look?" Meyer asked.

"Excuse me, but did you say Meyer Meyer?" Annie asked.

"Yes, ma'am, that's correct," Meyer said.

"That's unusual," she said, "Yes, it is," he agreed. J Nice gentle manner, like a dentist who treated mostly kids. She wondered again if he was married. Too bad he wasn't a dentist. Bring a cop home to her mother, oh boy, what a scene that would be. The blond one was looking at a framed picture on the wall, which showed Mr. Rosen and his wife in her mink coat sticking a giant bow onto a giant package outside the city's biggest department store seven Christmases ago, while it was snowing very hard. It hadn't snowed at all this past Christmas. Nor even this entire winter, for that matter. People had been grateful it was such a mild winter. Boy, are we lucky, people were saying all over the place. Now it was so hot you could melt in your panties and everybody was in the streets on their hands and knees, praying for a stray breeze, it just goes to show, she thought.

"That's Mr. Rosen," she said to him, by way of flirtation. "He's one of my bosses.”

"Nice," he said.

Typical big dumb cop remark.

Nice.

Bert Kling his name was. A name to match his obvious intelligence.

"So how'd the apartment look when you walked in?" Meyer asked.

"Same as always," she said.

If you're so curious about how the apartment looked, she thought, why didn't you come around last night, so you could see it right after it was robbed? No wonder you never catch anybody, she thought.

"Was there a mess or anything?" Kling asked. "No. Neat as a pin,”

Annie said.

"When did you realize someone had been in here?”

“When I found the bag of cookies.”

“On the bed?" Meyer asked.

Mind reader, she thought. Or had the two Keystone Kops from yesterday submitted a report on what she'd told them? "On the pillow, yes. Chocolate chip cookies.”

The cookies still infuriated her. The goddamn nerve.t Guy breaks in, steals all her jewelry and a red-fox jacket that had cost her two thousand dollars wholesale and then he had the audacity to leave a box of chocolate chip cookies on her pillow? Like spitting in her eye, wasn't it? Did he expect her to eat the damn cookies? Who knew what was in those cookies, what kind of poison he'd put inside them, the friggin lunatic? "We just want to make sure it's the same person," Meyer said. "He's been getting some play in the papers and on TV, he might be inspiring copycats.”

"Did they give you the list?" Annie asked.

"The officers who responded? Yes, they did. Thank you. We're working on it now.”

"They're calling him The Cookie Boy," Kling said. "Cute," she said, and pulled a face. "You ever catch him, I'll give him cookies." She hesitated for just an instant, and then she said, "Will you catch him?”

"We'll try," Meyer said. "Yes, but will you?”

"We'll be circulating the list to pawnshops all over the city, maybe we'll get a call, who knows?" Kling asked the air.

"Also," Meyer said, "we make a lot of unrelated arrests every day of the week. Someone we pull in may drop something about him, who knows?”

"What do you mean?”

"Thieves talk to each other, they learn things they sometimes use to bargain with us.”

"Like what?”

"Like this guy leaves cookies on the pillow, he mentioned he was in an apartment on South Twentieth two days ago, like that," Kling said.

"You actually had someone tell you this?”

"No, I'm just giving you an example.”

"So what you're saying is it's all a matter of luck, is what you're saying.”

"No, not at all," Kling said.

"Not at all," Meyer said.

"Must be an echo in here," Annie said. "Then what is it, if not luck? You send a list to pawnshops, you hope some pawnbroker'll spot my sapphire ring and give you a call. Or you arrest some rapist or whatever, some bank robber, and you hope he'll turn in his best friend, who happens to be The Cookie Burglar ...”

“The Cookie Boy.”

"Cute," she said again, and again pulled a face. "What's that if it isn't luck?”

"Well, there is a certain amount of luck involved," Meyer agreed. The good dentist.

"But we'll be doing a lot of investigative work as well," Kling said.

"Like what?”

"Well, it would take all day to explain.”

I'll bet, she thought.

"What it looks like to me," she said, "is I can kiss my stuff goodbye, right?”

"We may surprise you," Kling said, and smiled. "Surprise Mr. Cookie instead," she said.

The message from a woman named Annette Ryan was waiting on Carella's desk when they got back go the squad room It said that she could identify the dead nun whose picture she had seen on television this morning, and asked that he please call her. When he reached her at two that afternoon, he discovered that Annette Ryan was Sister Annette Ryan, who told him she'd been Mary Vincent's spiritual director ever since she'd come to this city from the order's mother house in San Diego. Carella asked if he might come to see her, and she gave him the address of her convent in Riverhead. He put the phone back on its receiver, and turned to where Brown was settling in behind his own desk.

"Don't get too comfortable," he suggested.

The Honda Sonny Cole was driving had been loaned to him by a nineteen-year-old girl he'd met three months ago. He'd been seem her on and off the past month or so, movies and such, all that datin shit.

She was willin to slobber the Johnson when her mama wasn't home, but fearful of doing the major push, fraid she'd get pregnant. So much easier with hookers, you didn't have to go through none of this courtship bullshit, none of these restrictions. One thing Sonny hated was rstrictions.

"Why do you need to follow this man?" Coral had asked him, The whole name put on her by her Southern mama was Coralee, but she'd shortened it to Coral the minute she got to be fifteen and learned where it was at. Coral was a sophomore at Ramsey University, studying to be a television broadcaster. Clean as a baby's first tooth. Do it clean, man, cause you the first one they goan come lookin for. Clean piece, no partners, in, out, been nice to know you.

"He owes me money," Sonny said. "He knows I'm after him, he'll skip town.”

"So you need to follow him in my car.”

"Any car, actually. Be nice if you lent me yours, though.”

"Why don't you just go up to him and ask him for the money?" Coral asked.

"Doesn't work that way, honey," he said.

"Why does he owe you this money, anyway?”

So Sonny had wrote a whole big story out of thin air, told her how the man was a police officer married to his first cousin ... "Your cousin's married to a cop ?" Coral said. "Was. They split up three months ago.”

“Gee," Coral said.

What it was, Sonny explained to her, his cousin had been in the hospital needing a costly operation and Sonny had gone to his bank and withdrawn practically his entire life savings to lend to the husband cause he'd saved his life out there in the desert during the fracas in the Gulf, all bullshit, and now the girl had recovered, Sonny's first cousin, and Sonny had asked him for the money back because he had a large business opportunity looming, but the man had since separated from her and Sonny was now trying to find out where he'd moved, or his cousin either, for that matter, because last time he'd gone to their apartment the landlady told him they'd both left for God knew where, all of it bullshit, which is why he was following him so he could maybe find where his cousin was, you see, the one had the thing done on her kidney, cost twenty thousand dollars of Sonny's hard-earned cash, maybe plead on her kindness to intercede with her husband, who Sonny thought until now was one of his closest friends on earth, all of which was merely blowin smoke up Coral's skirt. But it had got him the loan of the car.