Ed McBain - Fiddlers

‘I know of no such…”

‘Either at St. Ignatius

‘No.’

‘Or before that? At Our Lady of Grace?’

‘I can’t think of anyone like that,’ Father Joseph said.

‘Where’s Our Lady of Grace, anyway?’ Ollie asked. ‘Might be worth a visit, see if anybody up there has a longer memory than yours. Are you going to eat your dessert, Father? It’s a sin to let food go to waste, you know.’

* * * *

According to Paula Wellington, her good friend Helen Reilly was a recent widow when she’d moved from Calm’s Point, three years ago. Husband the innocent victim of a drive-by shooting. Biggest part of the city, Calm’s Point. The area map showed two or three dozen precincts there - well, thirty-four, when Hawes actually counted them. By his modest estimate, at least that many drive-bys took place in Calm’s Point every day of the week. Well, that was probably exaggeration. But trying to pinpoint a drive-by that had taken place more than three years ago… when there were thirty-four precincts to check…

Well, he supposed he could just run the name MARTIN REILLY through his computer, go back some five years or so, do a HOMICIDE check, he’d probably get lucky that way. But it would probably be easier and quicker, wouldn’t it, to just talk to Ms. Paula Wellington again? Sure it would. So he called her at four that Friday afternoon, and asked if he might stop by, few questions that had come up, wondered if she could help him. She told him it was probably still tea time, anyway, so why not drop in, did he remember the address? He remembered the address.

* * * *

South Waverly Street downtown was packed with humanity when Hawes got there at a quarter to five. Kids in swimsuits running through the spray from open fire hydrants; this was now four days after the official start of summer. Men in tank-top undershirts playing checkers or chess on upturned orange crates. Dozens of women in cotton housedresses knitting on front stoops like so many Mesdames Defarges. White ice-cream trucks trolling the streets like predators. Tweeny girls flashing long legs in short skirts, precipitate breasts in recklessly low-cut tops. Macho young men strutting their testosterone. And the cotton was high.

Hawes climbed past three women on Paula’s front stoop. They gave him the once-over, figured him for a cop, and went back to their gossip. On the third floor, he knocked on the door to apartment 31. Paula called, ‘Just a sec,’ and then came to open it.

He wondered what the hell he was doing here.

She was wearing lime-colored bell-bottomed cotton pants and a white cotton tank top, no shoes. White hair pulled back into a ponytail fastened with a ribbon the color of the pants. Lipstick, no other makeup.

‘You’re early,’ she said. ‘Come on in.’

‘Sorry to break in on you this way.’

‘Hey, you gave warning,’ she said, and led him into the living room. It was decorated in what he guessed was Danish modern, all blond woods and nubby fabrics. A big mirror on the wall behind the couch made the room appear to be twice its size. ‘Did you really want tea?’ she asked. ‘Or would you prefer a drink?’

‘I’m still on duty,’ he said.

‘So tea it is,’ she said, and went to where a kettle was already steaming on the stove. He watched as she prepared two cups. Outside, he could hear the street sounds of summer. She brought the tea and a tray of cookies to where he was sitting on the couch. In late afternoon sunlight, they sipped their tea and nibbled at their cookies.

‘What I wanted to know,’ he said, putting down his cup, ‘when I was here earlier, you mentioned a drive-by shooting

‘Yes.’

‘Said Helen Reilly’s husband was killed coming down the steps from a train station…”

‘Yes, the elevated station on Cooper and Duane.’

‘Cooper and Duane. That would make it the Nine-Seven Precinct.’

‘If you say so,’ Paula said, and smiled. ‘Is the tea all right?’

‘Delicious,’ he said, and picked up his cup again.

‘You said some questions had come up…”

‘Yes. Well. Actually, that was the question. I wanted to know in which precinct the incident had occurred. The shooting. The murder, actually.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes.’

‘So I guess it was easier to find out by coming here to ask me,’ Paula said. ‘Instead of going to the computer or whatever.’

‘Well, then I wouldn’t have got the tea and cookies.’

‘I suppose not. Is that why you came here, Detective Hawes? For the tea and cookies?’

‘No, I came here to ask if you’d like to have dinner with me tonight.’

‘I see.’

‘Would you?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

* * * *

Dutch Schneider was the Nine-Seven detective who’d caught the drive-by shooting three years ago. His precinct, and his squadroom, were in the shadow of the elevated structure that carried emerging subway trains from the city proper out here to Calm’s Point. Every few minutes, a train would rumble past the open squadroom windows, reminding both detectives of the city’s constant rattle and roar, causing Schneider to pause in his recitation and roll his eyes heavenward.

‘At first, we thought Reilly himself was the target,’ he told Hawes. ‘Guy coming down the steps from the train platform, all at once a car zooms by, and bango, he’s dead on the sidewalk? We figured the perp was somebody familiar with his habits, knew he was taking the train to the city that day, knew when he’d be coming back, was waiting to ambush him. Matter of fact, for a while we considered the wife herself a suspect. Thought maybe she’d hired somebody to ace the husband when he got off the train…’

‘How’d that turn out?’ Hawes asked.

‘Loved him to death. Second marriage for her, the first was a lemon. Couldn’t have been happier than she was with this guy, no reason at all to want him dead. We got off that kick right away.’

‘When did you figure it for a gang drive-by?’

‘Not for a while, actually. I mean, this wasn’t a bunch of street hoods sitting on a front stoop, flaunting their colors, rival gang drives by, opens fire. The shooting wasn’t directed at anything but the steps coming down from the platform. And Reilly was the only vie. So we concentrated on the usual suspects for a long time.’

‘Who would they be?’

‘Guys he used to work with… this was an old fart, you understand, seventy-eight years old, retired. Other guys he played poker with. Nobody had any reason to kill him. Then, out of the blue-’

Then, out of the blue, a train rattled by on the tracks outside the squadroom windows. Schneider rolled his eyes, tapped his fingers impatiently on the desktop. Hawes was suddenly grateful for the relative peace and quiet of his own turf.

‘Where was I?’ Schneider asked.

‘Out of the blue,’ Hawes prompted.

‘Out of the blue, this little Spanish girl comes up the squadroom, tells us somebody’s gonna kill her boyfriend. Turns out this is right out of West Side Story, only it’s two Puerto Rican gangs, not one white, one Spanish. But the same Romeo-Juliet plot, you understand? The girl’s boyfriend is a member of the Royals and her brother is a member of the Hearts. Her brother warned her to break it off with him, she refused, so now they’re gonna kill him. Well, who gives a shit? Why bother us with this gang shit? Figure it out for yourselves, okay? One less Royal on earth, gee what a pity. But, oh ho,’ Schneider said, and glanced toward the windows, as if expecting another interruption from the rapid-transit system.

‘Oh ho,’ he said again, when he realized the coast was clear, ‘she then tells us that six months earlier, they tried to get her boyfriend when he was coming home from the city…’