Ed Mcbain: Mischief

CATALINA HERRERAwas in the waiting room of the Morehouse General Hospital morgue when Parker joined her. This was now two o’clock on that afternoon of March twenty-third. The sun was shining, but the temperature was still somewhere down there in the low-to-mid-thirties and more rain was expected tonight, some spring this was.

Catalina was in her late twenties, early thirties, Parker guessed, a diminutive woman with large brown eyes, dark hair, and the major hooters you found on all these spics. He guessed she’d got knocked up with young Alfredo when she was twelve, thirteen years old, they matured early down there in the tropics and it was difficult for all those macho caballeros down there to keep their hands off all those ripe boobs under the palms in the sand. Catalina’s eyes were luminous with tears. He was here only to ascertain that the dead kid in there was, in fact, Alfredo Herrera and not somebody who’d copped his I.D. Sobbingly, she told Parker that the kid on the slab in there was her son.

“He was a good boy,” she said.

Which is what they all said. Looked you straight in the eye after their kid had killed his grandmother, his four-year-old sister, his pet beagle, and his three goldfish, and told you without flinching, “He was a good boy.” Parker had already done a computer run on the late Alfredo Herrera and had come up with zilch. The kid was clean, albeit dead. Parker wondered if his mother knew how handy he’d been with a spray can. He also wondered if she knew whether or not her son had been into anything that might have invited two big ones in the face and another one in the chest. He decided to ask her to have a cup of coffee with him in the hospital coffee shop. He was thinking he might try taking her to bed, those boobs. Parker thought women found him irresistible.

In the coffee shop, with doctors and nurses sitting at tables all around them—some of them in green surgical gowns ostentatiously spattered with blood, green surgical masks hanging down around their throats like they’d just come from some tremendous lifesaving operation mere mortals couldn’t appreciate—Parker asked Catalina if she knew what her son was doing out in the middle of the night last night, which was presumably when he’d got shot.

“I don’ know wha’ he wass doing,” she said.

Thick Spanish accent that Parker found attractive on these Latino women but disgusting on the men, who should for Christ’s sake learn how to speak English.

“When’s the last time you saw him?” he asked, and ended the sentence there, without adding the word alive , thereby rescuing himself from another Seaman Shavorskyism.

“When I come home,” she said. “I was out.”

“What time was that?”

“Siss, siss-t’irty,” she said.

Very charming. Made him think of guitars and black lace, languid breezes playing. Made him think of fucking her, too.

“We ha’ supper together.”

Lilting to the ear. Lovely. You got used to it after a while, it almost sounded accent-free. He wondered if she’d ever made love in English. He almost asked her. Instead he said, “What’d you talk about during dinner?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Many things.”

“Like what?”

“He told me he wanted to buy a car.”

“Does he have money to buy a car?”

Parker immediately thought dope. Eighteen-year-old kid tells his mother he’s thinking of buying a car, where’s he gonna get the bread for the car? Dope, right? Besides, he was Hispanic. On Parker’s block, that meant he was into dope.

“His grandmother left him money when she died,” Catalina said.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It was my husband’s mother,” she said, dismissing the woman with a shrug.

She’s got a husband, Parker thought.

“What sort of work does your husband do?”

“We’re divorced, I don’t know what he does anymore. He went back to Santo Domingo. I haven’t seen him in maybe six months.”

But still counting, Parker thought.

“What time did your son leave the house last night?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I left before him.”

“Where’d you go?”

A boyfriend, Parker thought.

“To a movie,” she said.

She likes movies, he thought.

“Alone?” he asked.

She looked at him. He realized all at once that she thought he was asking her for an alibi, trying to make sure she hadn’t dusted her own kid and then painted him red afterward, which of course was a possibility, wet eyes or not.

“With a girlfriend,” she said.

He wondered if he should ask her to go to a movie with him tonight.

“What time did you get back?”

“Around midnight.”

“And he was gone.”

“He was gone,” she said, and burst into tears again.

Parker watched her.

Everywhere around them, all these medical people were discussing anything but medicine. It was as if there was an unwritten rule in the coffee shop that you didn’t talk about appendectomies or catheters or loose bowel movements or anything that had to do with work. This was break time, and you didn’t let blood and pus interfere with the enjoyment of your cheese Danish. Parker was a little embarrassed that some of the nurses had turned to look at Catalina crying. The doctors couldn’t care less, they were in a universe of their own, but some of the nurses had turned to stare at this tiny, very attractive brunette who was crying her eyes out, and Parker was afraid they might think he was the one who’d made her cry, not that he gave a shit. Besides, this was a hospital, there were people dying here every ten minutes, the nurses should’ve been used to seeing somebody crying, it wasn’t such a big deal. Still, it made him feel uncomfortable, the two or three nurses who turned to look at them, one of them wearing a green O.R. gown, she’d probably just come from looking inside somebody’s stomach or chest.

Awkwardly, he watched her.

“He was a good boy,” she said again, this time into her damp handkerchief.

He waited.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No, hey,” he said. He didn’t feel comfortable comforting people. He wanted to ask her if she’d ever seen any spray cans around the house, but he figured he’d better wait till she stopped crying. He also wanted to ask her if her son had been in any serious fights or arguments with anybody in the neighborhood recently, like somebody who might want to pump three shots into him because of it, and then paint him red besides. But she was still crying.

He kept waiting.

At last the crying stopped, sort of. She still kept dabbing at a stray tear every now and then, but the real storm had passed, she was in control of herself again. He asked her if she’d like another cup of coffee, and she looked at her watch, and it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps there was a job she had to get to, her son’s murder had consumed the major part of her day so far. But he’d reached her at home this morning, and that had been before lunchtime. He wondered if her husband in the Dominican Republic was paying alimony.

“More coffee?” he said again.

“I would like to, but…”

Another look at her watch. Tears welling in her eyes again. So frail, so beautiful.

“Do you have to get to work or something?” he asked.

“I work at home,” she said.

“Oh. What do you do?”

“Typing.”

“Ahh,” he said.

“Yes. But today…I want to help you. I want you to find whoever…”

And burst into tears again.

Jesus, he thought.

He signaled to one of the volunteer pink-lady waitresses and ordered two more cups of coffee, trying to disassociate himself from this woman bawling across the table from him, people looking at him now like he was a wife-beater or something. He felt like taking out the little leather fob holding his shield, flash the tin, let them know he was a fucking police officer here doing a job, trying to get some information from this woman here, whose dumb spic son went around writing on walls. Again, he waited. He was beginning to get a little irritated with her, busting into tears every thirty seconds.