Ed Mcbain: Nocturne

too. It never hurt to make the same point twice. " "Police officers," he said.

Must be an echo in this place, Carella thought.

"Is Miss Stetson in some kind of trouble?" Georgie's twin asked. Two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and bone draped in Giorgio Armani threads. No broken nose, but otherwise the stereotype was complete.

"Miss Stetson's grandmother was killed," Hawes said calmly. "Everything's under control here. Why don't you just go back to your table, hm?"

A buzz was starting in the room now. Four big guys surrounding the room's star, looked like there might be some kind of trouble here. One thing people in this city didn't much care for was trouble. First whiff of trouble, people in this city picked up their skirts and ran for the hills. Even out-of-towners in this city (which some of the people in the room looked like),

even foreigners in the city (which some of the other people in the room looked like), the minute they caught that first faint whiff of trouble brewing, they were out of here, man. Miss Priscilla Stetson, Now Appearing 9:00 P.M.-2:00 A.M. was in imminent danger of playing her last set to an empty room. She suddenly remembered the time. "I'm on," she said. "We'll talk later," and left the four men standing there with their thumbs up their asses. Like most macho fools who display their manhood to no avail, the men stood glaring at each other a moment longer, and then mentally flexed their muscles with a few seconds of eye lock before the two cops went back to the bar and the two gun-toting whatever-they-weres went back to their table. Priscilla, professionally aloof to whatever masculineness were surfacing here, warmly sang a setting of 'My Funny Valentine," "My Romance," I Loved You" and "Sweet and Lovely." A woman at one of the tables asked her escort why they don,t write love songs like that anymore, and he said,

now they write hate songs." It was 2:00 A.M.

Either Georgie (or his twin brother Frankie or or Dominick or Foongie) asked Priscilla why she hadn't played the theme song from The Godfather

She sweetly told them no one had requested it, them both on their respective cheeks and kissed them off. Big detectives that were, neither Carella nor Hawes yet knew they were bodyguards or wiseguys. Priscilla the bar.

"Too late for a glass of champagne?" she asked the bartender.

He knew she was kidding; he poured one in a flute. Dispersing guests came over to tell Priscilla how terrific she'd been. Graciously, she thanked them all and sent them on their early morning way. Priscilla wasn't a star, she was just a good singer in a small cafe in a modest hotel, but she carried herself well. They could tell by the way she merely sipped at the champagne that she wasn't a big drinker. Maybe her grandmother had something to do with that. Which brought them back to the corpse in the shabby mink coat.

"I told you," Priscilla said. "All her friends are dead. I couldn't give you their names if I wanted to."

"How about enemies?" Carella asked. "All of them dead, too?"

"My grandmother was alonely old woman livin alone. She had no friends, she had no enemies. Period."

"So it had to be a burglar, right?" Hawes asked. Priscilla looked at him as if discovering him for the first time. Looked him up and down. Red hair white streak, size twelve gunboats.

"That's your job, isn't it?" she asked coolly "Determining whether it was a burglar or not?"

"And, by the way, she did have a friend," he corrected.

"Oh?"

"Woman down the hall. Played her old records to her."

"Please. She played those old 78s for anyone who'd listen."

"Ever meet her?"

"Who?"

"Woman named Karen Todd. Lived down the hall from your grandmother."

"No."

"When's the last time you saw her alive?" Hawes asked.

"We didn't get along."

"So we understand. When did you see her last?" "Must'a been around Eastertime." "Long time ago."

"Yeah," she said, and fell suddenly silent. I guess

'i'll have to call my mother, huh?" she asked. "Might be a good idea," Carella said. "Let her know what happened." "Mm."

"What time is it in London?"

"I don't know," Carella said.

"Five or six hours ahead, is that it?"

Hawes shook his head, shrugged.

Priscilla fell silent again.

The champagne glass was empty now. "Why'd you hate her?" Carella asked. "For what she did to herself."

"She didn't cause the arthritis," Hawes said. "She caused the alcoholism." "Which came first?"

"Who knows? Who cares? She was one of the

She ended up a nobody."

"Enemies," Carella said again.

don't know of any."

it had to be a burglar," Hawes said again.

"Who cares what it was?" Priscilla asked. "We do," Carella said.

It was time to stop the clock.

Time was running by too fast, someone out there had killed her, and time was on his side, her side, whoever's side. The faster the minutes went by, the greater would become the distance between him, her, whomever and the cops. So it was time to stop the clock, hardly a difficult feat here in the old Eight-Seven, time to pause for a moment, and reflect,

time to make a few phone calls, time to call time out. Carella called home.

When he'd left there at eleven last night, his son Mark was burning up with a hundred-and two-degree fever and the doctor was on the way. Fanny Knowles,

the Carella housekeeper, picked up on the third ring. "Fanny," he said, "hi. Did I wake you?" "Let me get her," Fanny said.

He waited. His wife could neither speak nor hear. There was a TDD telephone answering device in the house, but typing out long messages was time consuming tedious, and often frustrating. Better that Teddy should sign and Fanny should translate. He waited.

"Okay," Fanny said at last.

"What'd the doctor say?"

"It's nothing serious," Fanny said. "He thinks it's the flu."

"What does Teddy think?"

"Let me ask her."

There was a silence on the line. Fanny signing,

Teddy responding. He visualized both women in their nightgowns Fanny some five feet five inches tall, a stout Irish woman with red hair and gold-rimmed eyeglasses, fingers flying in the language Teddy had taught her. Teddy an inch taller, a beautiful woman with raven-black hair and eyes as dark as loam, fingers flying even faster because she'd been doing this from when she was a child. Fanny was back on the line.

"She says what worried her most was when he started shakin like a leaf all over. But he's all right now. The fever's come down, she thinks the doctor's right, it's only the flu. She's going to sleep in his room, she says, just in case. When will you be home, she wants to know." "Shift's over at eight, she knows that." "She thought, with the lad sick and all ..." "Fanny, we've got a homicide. Tell her that." He waited.

Fanny came back on the line.

"She says you've always got a homicide."

Carella smiled.

I'll be home in six hours," he said. "Tell her I love her."

"She loves you too," Fanny said.

"Did she say that?"

"No, I said it," Fanny said. "Its two in the mornin, mister. Can we all go back to bed now?"

"

"Not me, Carella said.

Hawes was talking to a Rape Squad cop named Annie Rawles. Annie happened to be in his bed. He was telling her that since he'd come to work tonight, he'd

met a beautiful Mediterranean-looking woman and also a beautiful piano player with long blond hair.

"Is the piano player a woman, too? "Annie asked. Hawes smiled.

"What are you wearing?" he asked.

"Just a thirty-eight in a shoulder holster," Annie said.

"I'll be right there," he said.

"Fat Chance Department," she said.

The clock began ticking again.

Every hour of the day looks the same inside a morgue. That's because there are no windows and the glare of fluorescent light is neutral at best. The stench, too, is identical day in and day out, palpable to anyone who walks in from the fresh air outside, undetectable to the assistant medical examiners who are carving up corpses for autopsy.