Ed Mcbain: Nocturne

The streetlamps are on. Traffic lights blink their intermittent reds, yellows and greens into the empty hours of the night, but the city seems dark. Here and there, a bathroom light snaps on. In the otherwise blank face of an apartment building, a lamp burns steadily in the bedroom of an insomniac. The commercial buildings are all ablaze with illumination, but the only people in them are the office cleaners, readying the spaces for the workday that will begin at nine Monday morning. Tonight it still feels like night even though the morning is already an hour and a half old the cables on the bridges that span the city's river are festooned with bright lights that reflect in the

black waters below. Yet all seems so dark, perhaps because it is so empty.

At one-thirty in the morning the theater crowd has been home and in bed for along time, and many of the hotel bars have been closed for a half hour already. The clubs and discos will be open till four A.M." the outside legal limit for serving alcoholic beverages, at which time the' delis and diners will begin serving breakfast. The underground clubs will grind on till six in the morning. But for now and for the most part, the city is as still as any tomb.

Steam hisses up from sewer lids.

Yellow cabs streak like whispered lightning through deserted streets.

A black-and-white photograph of Priscilla Stetson was on an easel outside the entrance to the Cafe Mouton at the Hotel Powell. Like an identifying shot in a home movie, the script lettering above the photo read Mrs. Priscilla Stetson. Below the photo, the same script lettering announced:

Now Appearing

9:00 P.M. - 2:00 A.M.

The woman in the photo could have been Svetlana Dyalovich on the cover of Time magazine. The same flaxen hair falling straight to her shoulders and cut in bangs on her forehead. The same pale eyes. The same high Slavic cheekbones. The same imperial nose and confident smile.

The woman sitting at the piano was perhaps thirty years old, dressed in along black gown with a risky decolletage. A creamy white expanse of flesh from bosom to neck was interrupted at the throat by a silver choker studded with black and white stones. She was singing "Gently, Sweetly" when the detectives came in and took stools at the bar. There were perhaps two dozen people sitting at tables scattered around the smallish candlelit room. It was twenty minutes to two in the morning.

Here with a kiss

In the mist on the shore Sip from my lips And whisper

I adore you... Gently, Sweetly,

Ever so completely, Take me, Make me Yours.

Priscilla Stetson struck the final chord of the song, bent her head, and looked reverently at her hands spread on the keys. There was a spatter of warm applause. "Thank you," she whispered into the piano mike. "Thank you very much." Raising her head, tossing the long blond hair. "I'll be taking a short break before the last set, so if you'd like to order anything before closing, now's your chance." A wide smile, a wink. She played a lithe signature riff, rose, and was walking toward a table where two burly men

sat alone, when the detectives came off their stools to intercept her.

"Miss Stetson?" Carella said.

She turned, smiling, the performer ready to greet an admirer. In high-heeled pumps, she was perhaps five-eight, five-nine. Her blue-grey eyes were almost level with his.

"Detective Carella," he said. "This is my partner,

Detective Hawes."

"Yes?"

"Miss Stetson," he said. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but..."

"My grandmother," she said at once, looking certain rather than alarmed.

"Yes. I'm sorry. She's dead."

She nodded.

"What happened?" she asked. "Did she fall in the bathtub again?"

"No, she was shot." "Shot? My grandmother?" "I'm sorry," Carella said.

"Jesus, shot," Priscilla said. "Why would... ?" She shook her head again. "Well, this city," she said. "Where'd it happen? On the street someplace?"

"No. In her apartment. It may have been a burglar." Or maybe not, Hawes thought, but said nothing, just allowed Carella to continue carrying the ball. This was the hardest part of police work, informing the relatives of a victim that something terrible had happened. Carella was doing a fine job, thanks, no sense g him. Not at a quarter to two in the when the whole damn world was asleep.

"Was she drunk?" Priscilla asked.

Flat out.

"There hasn't been an autopsy yet," Carella said. "She was probably drunk," Priscilla said.

"We'll let you know," Carella said. It came out more harshly than he'd intended. Or maybe it came out exactly as he'd intended. "Miss Stetson," he said, "if this is what it looks like, a burglar surprised during the commission of a felony, then we're looking for a needle in a haystack. Because it would've been a random thing, you see."

"Yes."

"On the other hand, if this is someone who wanted your grandmother dead, who came into the apartment with the express purpose of killing her..."

"Nobody wanted her dead," Priscilla said.

"How do you know that?"

"She was already dead. No one even knew she existed. Why would anyone go to the trouble of shooting her?"

"But someone did, you see."

"A burglar then. As you said."

"The problem with that is nothing was stolen." "What was there to steal?" "You tell us." "What do you mean?

"There didn't seem to be anything of value in the apartment but was there? Before he broke in?"

"Like what? The Imperial Czar's crown jewels? My grandmother didn't have a pot to piss in. Whatever she got from welfare, she spent on booze. She was drunk morning, noon and night. She was a pathetic, whining

old bitch, a has-been with nothing of value but her memories. I hated her."

But tell us how you really feel, Carella thought.

He didn't much like this young woman with her inherited good looks and her acquired big-city, wise ass manner. He would just as soon not be here talking to her, but he didn't like burglaries that turned into murders, especially if maybe they weren't burglaries in the first place. So even if it meant pulling teeth, he was going to learn something about her grandmother, anything about her grandmother that might put this thing to rest one way or another. If someone had wanted her dead, fine, they'd go looking for that someone till hell froze over. If not, they'd go back to the squad room and wait until a month from now, a year from now, five years from now, when some junkie burglar got arrested and confessed to having killed an old lady back when you and I were young, Maggie. Meanwhile... "Anyone else feel the way you do?" he asked. "How do you mean?" "You said you hated her."

"Oh, what? Did I kill her? Come on. Please." "You okay, Priss?"

Carella turned at once, startled. The man standing at his elbow was one of the two Priscilla had been heading to join when they'd intercepted her. Even before he noticed the gun in a holster under the man's arm

Carella would have tapped him for either a or a mobster. Or maybe both. Some and weighing in at a possible two-twenty, he advanced on the balls of his feet, hands dangling

half-clenched at his sides, a pose that warned Carella he could take him out in a minute if he had to. Carella believed it.

"I'm fine, Georgie" Priscilla said.

Georgie, Carella thought, and braced himself when he saw the other man getting up from the table and moving toward them. Hawes was suddenly alert, too. "Because if these gentlemen are disturbing you..." Carella flashed the tin, hoping to end all discussion. "We're police officers," he said.

Georgie looked at the shield, unimpressed.

"You got a problem here, Georgie?" the other man said, approaching. Georgie's twin, no doubt. Similarly dressed, down to the hardware under the wide-shouldered suit jacket. Hawes flashed his shield,