Ed McBain - Fat Ollie's Book

“Uh-huh.”

“She said her husband flew up to the state capital on Saturday…”

“Uh-huh.”

“…stayed the weekend at the Raleigh Hotel there…”

“Okay.”

“Probably flew back early Monday morning…”

“What do you meanprobably?”

“He didn’t come home. She thinks he must have gone directly from the airport to King Memorial.”

“What do you mean shethinks?”

“Ollie,” Carella said, “non mi rompere,okay?”

“What?”

“I’m trying to tell you what I’ve got here. The lady doesn’t know forsurewhere he was when. The last time she spoke to him was from the Raleigh. The next thing she knows he’s shot dead at King Memorial. So she’s assuming he flew back and went directly…”

“Okay, I get it, I get it,” Ollie said. “Did you call the airport?”

“There are two non-stop flights leaving here early in the morning, both on US Airways. Takes about an hour to get to the capital. Any connecting flight doesn’t pay, you can just as easily drive up these days, the long lines.”

“How about coming back?”

“Same thing. Two early morning flights. I called the hotel. Henderson checked out at six Monday morning. He could’ve caught either one of them, been here in the city by eight, eight-thirty. A cab from the airport would’ve put him at the Hall by eight-thirty, nine. Which is about right, more or less.”

“Where’s his suitcase?”

“What?”

“He had to have a bag, no? So if he went straight to the Hall, where’s the bag?”

“Good question.”

“We’ll find out tomorrow. Meet me up the precinct at eight o’clock.”

“Uh…Ollie…my boss wants me off this.”

“Oh? Why?”

“He thinks it’s too uptown for us.”

“We been uptown together before, my friend, ah yes.”

“The Loot isn’t sure he wants to go there again.”

“Even if we share the bust?”

“I just don’t think he wants any part of it.”

“You negotiating with me, or what?”

“Would I even dream?”

“We crack this one, we’re made men.”

“I thought only the Mob had made men.”

“The Police Department is a mob, too, believe it or not. Tell your loot we share the bust, we’ll all be glory boys.”

“How do you figure that, Ollie?”

“Guy about to run for mayor, he gets snuffed? Hey, this is big-time stuff, Steve-a-rino.”

“How do you know he was going to run for mayor?”

“His aide told me. Alan Pierce, Mr. Wasp from Waspville. Steve, I know it don’t mean nothing I saved your life…”

“Enough already, Ollie.”

“Talk to your loot. Tell him we’ll all get rich and famous.”

“He’s already rich and famous.”

“Sure. Like my Aunt Tillie. Tell him we’ll be on television and everything.”

“You know what we caught this morning, Ollie?”

“Tell me what you caught this morning, Steve.”

“A hundred-and-four-year-old lady drowned in her bathtub.”

“Not unusual. These old broads, they sometimes…”

“She was stabbed in the eye first, Ollie.”

“Extraordinary,” Ollie said. “But it ain’t gonna get your picture in the papers. You want the Eight-Seven to remain a shitty little precinct the rest of your life, or you want to step up to the plate and knock one out of the ball park?”

“I want to go say goodnight to my kids.”

“Call your loot instead, what’s his name? Bernstein?”

“Byrnes.”

“I thought he was a Yid, like my boss. Tell him does he want another juicy one like that money money case we caught around Christmastime…”

“Money moneymoney,” Carella said.

“Or does he just want another old lady moldering in a bathtub?”

“I think he might prefer the old lady.”

“Then he’s an old lady himself, your boss. Tell him you got to grab this city by the balls before it grabs you first. Tell him opportunity knocks but once, tell him it’s not every cop in the world gets invited to talk onLarry King.Tell him Oliver Wendell Weeks has spoken.”

“I’m sure he’ll be impressed.”

“Tell him.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Don’t forget the old lady metaphor,” Ollie said, and hung up.

DETECTIVE/SECOND GRADE EILEEN BURKEdid not know how she felt about being transferred to the Eight-Seven.

Lieutenant Byrnes voiced it for her.

“Eileen, you’re a good cop,” he said, “and I’m glad to have you with us. But there’s this thing with Bert.”

The lieutenant was referring to the fact that in the not too distant past, Eileen had enjoyed an arduous but brief (well, brief in the annals of the Eight-Seven) relationship with one of his detectives. The look on Byrnes’s face indicated he did not want problems related to ancient love affairs. Eileen read the look, and registered his words, and didn’t know quite what to say. She had not seen Bert Kling in a very long time, and she knew he was now involved with someone else.

Standing before her new boss’s desk, wearing brown slacks and brown low-heeled pumps, an olive-green crewneck sweater with a matching cardigan over it, sunshine streaming through the Loot’s corner windows and setting her red hair ablaze, she wondered what gave him the right to intrude on her personal life, wondered if he would give the male half of this prior romance the same warning, and was tempted to tell him to go to hell. He must have read the look in her green eyes, must have seen County Cork flaring; he was Irish himself, after all.

“Not that it’s any of my business,” he amended.

“I’m sure there won’t be any problem, sir,” Eileen said.

Byrnes noted the “sir.” They had worked together before, when Eileen had been loaned to him as an undercover decoy, and back then it had been “Pete.” Now it was “sir,” which meant he’d got off on the wrong foot with her, something he didn’t particularly wish. In apology, he said, “You’re the first woman I’ve had on my squad, Eileen.”

“I know that, sir.”

“Make it Pete, can you?”

“Pete,” she said, and nodded.

“You may find it quiet around here,” he said. “After Hostage Negotiating.”

“In this city, nothing’s quiet,” she said.

As a matter of fact, hostage-taking had cooled down a bit in recent years. Oh sure, you had the occasional nut who shot his wife and two of his kids and was holding the third kid at gun point in a ratty apartment someplace in Majesta while the cops promised him an airplane to Peru and three dozen Hershey bars, but for the most part the bad guys had bigger things on their minds. You didn’t—in fact, couldn’t—send a negotiator to talk to some fanatic who had taken over an airliner. Maybe the Eight-Sevenwouldseem a little tame after standing face to face with a hostage-taker holding an AK-47 on his grandma, but maybe Eileen needed a rest in the country. Besides, from the inter-departmental jive she’d heard, the boys up here had recently been involved in a very big case involving the Treasury Department, the CIA, and God knew what else.

Byrnes was thinking he should tell her he’d try his best not to partner her with Kling—but that sounded apologetic. He was thinking he’d tell her that very often the working relationship between two detectives made the difference between life or death—but that sounded corny.

“Eileen,” he said simply, “we’re a tight-knit family here. Welcome to it.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said. “Pete.”

Which was when a knock sounded on the lieutenant’s door.

“Come,” Byrnes said.

The door opened—and speak of the devil.

AT TWENTY MINUTESto nine that Wednesday morning—some fifteen minutes after he’d stepped into the lieutenant’s office to encounter a redheaded ghost—Bert Kling was at the wheel of an unmarked police sedan driving himself and Carella uptown to the Eight-Eight.