Ed McBain - Fiddlers

‘Where were you last Friday night at eight o’clock?’

‘Right here. On Fridays I play here from eight at night to two in the morning.’

He looked Parker dead in the eye.

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

Parker took that to mean Good-bye.

* * * *

The two detectives from Narcotics thought dope was what made the world go round. They were convinced that 9/11 was all about dope. So was the Iraq War. Everything had to do with dope. If we really wanted to end the war on terrorism, if in fact we wanted to end all wars, for all time, then all we had to do was win the war on dope. Dope was evil. Dope dealers were evil. Even people who used dope were evil. This is why they had no sympathy for the sixteen-year-old girl who’d dropped dead from an overdose of Angel Dust in the alley outside Ninotchka.

‘She had it coming,’ Brancusi said.

He was the bigger of the two Narcotics dicks. You would not want to struggle with this man over a dime bag of shit.

‘You know what Angel Dust is?’ his partner said.

As tall as Brancusi, but not as broad in the shoulders or thick in the middle. Irishman named Mickey Connors. Meyer and Carella sensed a bit of condescension here; they both knew what Angel Dust was.

‘Angel Dust is phencyclidine,’ Connors explained.

‘PCP,’ Brancusi further elucidated.

‘It’s also called crystal, hog, or tic’

‘You forgot zoot,’ Meyer said.

‘Are we wasting our time with these guys?’ Connors asked his partner.

‘No, go ahead, enlighten us,’ Meyer said.

‘Go to hell,’ Connors said. ‘Let’s go, Benny.’

‘Stick around,’ Carella advised. ‘We’re talking a pair of homicides here.’

‘What is that supposed to do, the word “homicide”?’ Brancusi asked. ‘Make us wet our pants? You know how many drug-related murders we see every day of the week?’

‘That’s why we’re here,’ Carella said.

‘Yeah, why are you here?’ Connors asked.

‘Drug-related. Two of our vics may have been users. And one of them was killed outside the club where you guys caught a sixteen-year-old who overdosed on the peace pill.’

‘Her own hard luck,’ Connors said.

‘Also, the manager of Ninotchka took a fall for dealing ten years ago. So we’ve got a dead duster and now another vic outside the same club, who may or may not have been using, and the manager once dealt dope, so maybe there’s a connection, hmm? So we want to know all about this girl.’

‘Naomi Maines,’ Brancusi said.

‘She walked out of a club up the street, disassociating, that’s for sure, maybe hallucinating, too…”

‘Then La Paglia was giving us the straight goods.’

‘Who’s La Paglia?’ Brancusi asked.

‘Manager of Ninotchka. The ex-con.’

‘Oh yeah, him,’ Brancusi said, remembering. ‘A scumbag.’

‘Told us the girl just wandered by Ninotchka. We think she may have walked over from the other club,’ Meyer said.

‘Yeah, that checks out,’ Connors said. ‘Her sister and a girlfriend told us she dropped two tabs of dust inside there.’

‘That’ll do it, all right,’ Brancusi said.

‘Must’ve started convulsing as she came up the alley, dropped dead outside Ninotchka, the garbage cans out back there.’

‘Just stopped breathing,’ Brancusi said.

‘What’s this other club called?’ Meyer asked.

‘Grandma’s Bloomers.’

‘Cute.’

‘Clean, too. Naomi didn’t buy the stuff in there, that’s for sure.’

* * * *

There was a time not too long ago - five years? ten years? - when this stretch of turf was lined with rave clubs. These nocturnal dance clubs were characterized by pulsating, deafening, techno (or so-called ‘house’) music, blinking strobes, dazzling laser lights, and… oh yes… club drugs like Ecstasy, ephedrine, ketamine, GHB, methcathinone, LSD, magic mushrooms, methamphetamine, and - well, you name it, we’ve got it. A crusading mayor padlocked these rave joints all over the city, and the party scene today was a lot milder than it was back then: new mayor, new definition of what was bad for the health; as for example, smoking.

On Austin Street today, only two clubs remained: Ninotchka, dedicated to geriatric lovers of violin music, and Grandma’s Bloomers, a 30,000-square-foot space that used to be called The Black Pit when it attracted thirteen- to twenty-year-old ravers, lo, those many years ago. The manager of GB’s, as it was familiarly called, was a man named Alex Coombes. Pronounced it ‘combs,’ like what you use in your hair. He was in his forties, looked like the kind of father you’d want if you were about to ask for the use of the family car. Gentle brown eyes. Pleasant features. Nice smile. All-around good guy. But a sixteen-year-old had dropped two tabs of Angel Dust in his club six months ago.

‘I don’t even know how she got in here,’ Coombes said. ‘Our strict policy is no admission unless you’re twenty-one or over. We card at the door, search bags and bodies. No drugs in here. Not then, not now.’

Now was eleven fifteen on the morning of June twenty-second. Connors and Brancusi had given them Coombes’s home phone number, and he’d agreed to meet them at the club.

‘Was that your policy six months ago?’ Meyer asked. ‘Twenty-one or over?’

‘It’s been our policy always. In fact, nowadays the average age is even older than that. Late twenties, early thirties, a nice eclectic mix of straights, gays, and who-can-tell-whats. Two or three months ago, our DJs were spinning techno, reggae, and hip-hop, but now they’re moving more toward funkier stuff like the Rolling Stones, T-Rex, MC5, Iggy and the Stooges, all that. We sell alcoholic bevs, yes, mostly exotic, cutesy-poo drinks this age group seems to favor. But drugs? Nossir. Never. I can absolutely guarantee that Naomi Maines did not buy that dust here at GB’s. Nossir.’

‘We think she swallowed two tabs of it in here.’

‘You think wrong. I just told you. We don’t sell

‘Did you see her that night?’

‘Not that I would know.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means if she was here, if she somehow got past the door with a phony ID, I wasn’t aware of her.’

‘Would she have left the club at any time that night?’ Meyer asked.

‘She might have,’ Coombes said. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Who would know?’

‘Al. Bouncer at the back door. Aldo Mancino. He’d have stamped her hand.’

‘Is he here now?’

‘This is a nightclub,’ Coombes said. ‘He doesn’t come in till nine tonight. If you want to come back then…’

‘No, we want his home address,’ Carella said.

* * * *

Aldo Mancino’s landlady told them he usually went over to ‘the club’ this time of day. The club was the Italian American Club on Dorsey Street all the way downtown. This was now one in the afternoon. Mancino and some other men were sitting outside at round tables, enjoying the rest of this mild day, drinking espresso from the coffee bar next door. Inside the club, Carella could see a television set going, some men shooting pool.

Mancino fit the description his landlady had given them. Big and burly, thirty years old or so, with dark curly hair, bushy eyebrows, and brown eyes, he sat in a tank-top undershirt and blue jeans, muscles bulging, grinning as he delivered the punch line to a joke. The two men with him burst out laughing, then stopped abruptly when they saw Carella and Meyer approaching.

‘Mr. Mancino?’ Carella said.

Mancino looked up at him.

‘Detective Carella,’ he said, and showed his shield. ‘My partner, Detective Meyer. Few questions we’d like to ask, if you can spare the time.’