Ed McBain - Fat Ollie's Book

“Where were you?”

“At the podium, I told you. Looking up at the guy in the booth, waiting for the councilman to…”

“What guy in the booth?”

“The guy on the follow spot.”

“One of your people?”

“No.”

“Then who?”

“I have no idea. My guess is he works here at the Hall.”

“Who would know?”

“You got me.”

“I thought you supplied everything. The sound, the lighting…”

“Theonstagelighting. Usually, when we do an auditorium like this one, they have their own lighting facilities and their own lighting technician or engineer, they’re sometimes called, a lighting engineer.”

“Did you talk to this guy in the booth? This technician or engineer or whatever he was?”

“No, I did not.”

“Who talked to him?”

“Mr. Pierce was yelling up to him—Henderson’s aide—and so was the councilman himself. I think the college kid was giving him instructions, too. From up in the balcony.”

“Was the kid up there when the shooting started?”

“I think so.”

“Well, didn’t you look up there? You told me that’s where the shots came from, didn’t you look up there to see who was shooting?”

“Yes, but I was blinded by the spot. The spot had followed the councilman to the podium, and that was when he got shot, just as he reached the podium.”

“So the guy working the spot was still up there, is that right?”

“He would’ve had to be up there, yes, sir.”

“So let’s find out who he was,” Ollie said.

A uniformed inspector with braid all over him was walking over. Ollie deemed it necessary to perhaps introduce himself.

“Detective Weeks, sir,” he said. “The Eight-Eight. First man up.”

“Like hell you are,” the inspector said, and walked off.

WHEN OLLIE GOT BACKto his car, the rear window on the passenger side door was smashed and the door was standing wide open. The briefcase withReport to the Commissionerin it was gone. Ollie turned to the nearest uniform.

“You!” he said. “Are you a cop or a doorman?”

“Sir?”

“Somebody broke in my car here and stole my book,” Ollie said. “You see anything happen, or were you standin here pickin your nose?”

“Sir?” the uniform said.

“They hiring deaf policemen now?” Ollie said. “Excuse me. Hearing-impairedpolicemen?”

“My orders were to keep anybody unauthorized out of the Hall,” the uniform said. “A city councilman got killed in there, you know.”

“Gee, no kidding?” Ollie said. “Mybookgotstolenouthere!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the uniform said. “But you can always go to the library and take out another one.”

“Give me your shield number and shut up,” Ollie said. “You let somebody vandalize a police vehicle and steal valuable property from it.”

“I was just following orders, sir.”

“Follow this a while,” Ollie said, and briefly grabbed his own crotch, shaking his jewels.

DETECTIVE-LIEUTENANT ISADORE HIRSCHwas in charge of the Eight-Eight Detective Squad, and he happened to be Jewish. Ollie did not particularly like Jews, but he expected fair play from him, nonetheless. Then again, Ollie did not like black people, either, whom he called “Negroes” because he knew it got them hot under the collar. For that matter, he wasn’t too keen on Irishmen or Italians, or Hispanics, or Latinos, or whatever the tango dancers were calling themselves these days. In fact, he hadn’t liked Afghanis or Pakis or other Muslim types infiltrating the city, evenbeforethey started blowing things up, and he didn’t much care for Chinks or Japs or other persons of Oriental persuasion. Ollie was in fact an equal opportunity bigot, but he did not consider himself prejudiced in any way. He merely thought of himself as discerning.

“Izzie,” he said—which sounded very Jewish to him, the name Izzie—“this is the first big one come my way in the past ten years. So upstairs is gonna take it away from me? It ain’t fair, Izzie, is it?”

“Who says life has to be fair?” Hirsch said, sounding like a rabbi, Ollie thought.

Hirsch in fact resembled a rabbi more than he did a cop with more citations for bravery than any man deserved, one of them for facing down an ex-con bearing a grudge and a sawed-off shotgun. Dark-eyed and dark-jowled, going a bit bald, long of jaw and sad of mien, he wore a perpetually mournful expression that made him seem like he should have been davening, or whatever they called it, at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, or Haifa, or wherever it was.

“I was first man up,” Ollie said. “That used to mean something in this city. Don’t it mean nothing anymore?”

“Times change,” Hirsch said like a rabbi.

“I want this case, Izzie.”

“It should be ours, you’re right.”

“Damn right, it should be ours.”

“I’ll make some calls. I’ll see what I can do,” Hirsch said.

“You promise?”

“Trust me.”

Which usually meant “Go hide the silver.” But Ollie knew from experience that the Loot’s word was as good as gold.

Like a penitent to his priest, or a small boy to his father, he said, “They also stole my book, Iz.”

HE TOLD THISto his sister later that night.

“Isabelle,” he said, “they stole my book.”

As opposed to her “large” brother, as she thought of him, Isabelle Weeks was razor-thin. She had the same suspecting expression on her face, though, the same searching look in her piercing blue eyes. The other genetic trait they shared was an enormous appetite. But however much Isabelle ate—and right this minute she was doing a pretty good job of putting away the roast beef she’d prepared for their dinner—her weight remained constant. On the other hand, anything Ollie ingested turned immediately to…well, largeness. It wasn’t fair.

“Who stole your book?” Isabelle said. “What book?” she said.

“I told you I was writing a novel…”

“Oh yes.”

Dismissing it. Shoveling gravied mashed potatoes into her mouth. Boy, what a sister. Working on it since Christmas, she asksWhatbook? Boy.

“Anyway, it was in the back seat of the car, and somebody spotted it, and smashed the window, and stole it.”

“Why would anyone want to steal your book?” she asked.

She made it sound as if she was saying “Why would anyone want to steal youraccordion?” or something else worthless.

Ollie really did not wish to discuss his novel with a jackass like his sister. He had been working on it too long and too hard, and besides you could jinx a work of art if you discussed it with anyone not familiar with the nuances of literature. He had first titled the bookBad Money,which was a very good title in that the book was about a band of counterfeiters who are printing these hundred-dollar bills that are so superb you cannot tell them from the real thing. But there is a double-cross in the gang, and one of them runs off with six million four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of the queer bills and stashes them in a basement in Diamondback—which Ollie called Rubytown in his book—and the story is all about how this very good detective not unlike Ollie himself recovers the missing loot and is promoted and decorated and all.

Ollie abandoned the titleBad Moneywhen he realized the word “Bad” was asking for criticism from some smartass book reviewer. He tried the titleGood Money,instead, which was what writers call litotes, a figure of speech that means you are using a word to mean the opposite of what you intend. But he figured not too many readers out there—and maybe not too many editors, either—would be familiar with writers’ tricks, so he abandoned that one, too, but not the book itself.