Ed McBain - Lullaby

'Did your husband kill her?'

'I don't want to talk about it.'

'Did he?'

'You know, there are some things . . .' Melissa said, almost to herself, and shook her head. 'I mean, we'd be getting half when Daddy died, so why . . . ?' She shook her head again. 'Half to me, half to Joyce,' she said. 'Plus the trust. Which is why the baby was so important. So ... why get so greedy? Why go for it all?'

'Mrs Hammond, did your husband kill Joyce Chapman?'

'You'll have to ask him. I don't want to talk about it.'

'Was he going for all of the inheritance ? . Is that what you're saying?'

'I loved my sister,' Melissa said. 'I didn't care about the baby, I didn't even know the baby, but my sister . . .'

She shook her head.

'I mean, the baby meant nothing to me. And my husband was right, you know. Why should all that money go to a child that was . . . well, a bastard? I mean, Joyce didn't even know who the father was.'

'All what money?' Nellie asked.

'I could understand that, it made sense. But my sister ... I didn't know he was going to do that to her, I swear to God. If I'd known . . .'

'But you did know he was going to kill the baby.'

'Yes. But not my sister. I'd have been happy with half, I swear to God. I mean, there are millions, why'd he have to get so damn greedy all at once? the other money, okay. Why should it go to a baby my sister never wanted? But then to ...'

'What other money?' Nellie asked again.

'It's all in the will,' Melissa said. 'You'll have to look at the will.'

'Has someone already contacted you about it?'

'About what?'

'The will. I understand your father died early this morning. Has his attorney . . . ?'

'No, no.'

'Then . . .'

Nellie looked suddenly puzzled.

'Are you saying . . . ?'

'We knew what was in the will,' Melissa said. 'We found out almost a year ago.'

'How did you find out?'

'Mr Lyons told my husband.'

'Mr Lyons?'

'Geoffrey Lyons. Who used to be my father's attorney.'

Nellie looked appalled.

'Told your husband the provisions of his client's will?' she said.

'Well, he was very fond of Dick,' she said. 'His own son was killed in Vietnam, they'd grown up together, gone to school together, I suppose he looked upon Dick as a sort of surrogate son. Anyway, there was nothing illegal about what he did. Or even unethical. My father was trying to make sure the family wouldn't just die out. He was trying to provide some incentive. Mr Lyons gave Dick a friendly tip, that was all. Told him what was in the will. Said we'd better get going, you know?'

'Get going?'

'Well, you know.'

'No, I don't know.'

'Well, get on with it.'

'I still don't know what you mean.'

'Well, you'll have to look at the will, I guess,' Melissa said, and turned away from Nellie.

And then, for some reason Carella would never understand, she looked directly into his eyes, and said, 'I did love her, you know. Very much.'

And buried her face in her hands and began weeping softly.

* * * *

The apartment Herrera was using for the testing and tasting was only three blocks east of the one he had rented on Vandermeer. Both apartments were normally rented by the hour to prostitutes turning quickie tricks, and so the separate landladies had been happy to let Herrera have them at weekly rates that were lower but more reliable than the come-and-go, on-the-fly uncertain hooker trade.

Herrera had walked here with Zing and Zang. He was carrying fifty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in a dispatch case that made him feel like an attorney. The five kilos of cocaine would go into that dispatch case once the deal was consummated. The three of them would then go back to the apartment on Vandermeer, where Zing and Zang expected to take possession of their half of the coke. Two and a half keys for them, two and a half for Herrera. Just as they'd all agreed. Gentlemen. Except that Herrera planned to kill them.

It was all a matter of having been born in this city, he figured.

You take two pigtailed Chinks from Hong Kong, they did not know that the minute the door to the apartment on Vandermeer closed behind them, he would shoot them in the back.

They did not understand this city.

You had to be born here.

They stopped now at the steps to 705 East Redmond.

'I have to go up alone,' Herrera told them.

'Yeh,' Zing said.

'Because that's the way Miami wants it.'

'Yeh,' Zang said.

'It may take a while. Make sure they ain't selling us powdered sugar.'

'We be here,' Zing said.

* * * *

Kling saw Herrera go into the building.

The two Chinese men stayed outside, hands in the pockets of their overcoats. Both wearing long dark blue coats. No hats. Sleek black hair combed straight back from their foreheads. Neither of them had ever seen Kling before, he could move in closer for a better look.

Walked right past them on the same side of the street.

Brothers for sure.

Twins, in fact.

Didn't even seem to glance at them. But got enough on them in his quick fly-by to be able to spot them later, anytime, anywhere.

He continued on up the street. Walked two blocks to the west, crossed over, came back on the other side, this time wearing a blue woolen watch cap that covered his blond hair. The one thing you could count on in any slum neighborhood was a dark doorway. He found one three buildings up from the one Herrera had entered. Across the street, the Chinese twins were flanking the front stoop like statues outside a public library. Ten minutes later, a man with a mustache walked past the Chinese and into the building. Like Herrera, he, too, was carrying a dispatch case.

* * * *

The man from Miami was a hulking brute with a Pancho Villa mustache. He said 'Hello,' in Spanish, and then 'You got the money?'

'You got the shit?' Herrera asked.

No passwords, no code words, no number sequences. The time and the place had been prearranged. Neither of them would have known when and where without first having gone through all the security bullshit. So now they both wanted to get on with it and get it done fast. The sooner they got through with the routine of it, the safer the exchange would be.

There were people who said they could tell by a little sniff up the nose or a little speck on the tongue whether you were buying good coke or crap. Herrera preferred two simple tests. The first one was the old standby cobalt thiocyanate Brighter-the-Blue. Mix the chemical in with the dope, watch it dissolve. If the mix turned a very deep blue, you had yourself high-grade coke. The brighter the blue, the better the girl. Meaning if you got this intense blue reaction, you were buying cocaine that was purer than what you'd get with, say, a pastel blue reaction. What you had to watch out for was coke that'd been stepped on maybe two, three times before it got to you.

For the second test, Herrera used plain water from the tap.

The man from Miami watched in utter boredom as he scooped a spoonful of the white dust out of its plastic bag, and dropped a little bit of it into a few ounces of water. It dissolved at once. Pure cocaine hydrochloride. Herrera nodded. If the powder hadn't dissolved, he'd have known the coke had been cut with sugar.

'Okay?' the man from Miami said, in English.

'Bueno,' Herrera said, and nodded again.

'How much of this are you going to go through?' the man asked, in Spanish.

'Every bag,' Herrera said.

* * * *

From where he stood in the doorway across the street, Kling saw the man with the mustache coming out of the building, still carrying the dispatch case. He did not look at the two Chinese, and they did not look at him. He walked between them where they were still flanking the stoop, made a left turn and headed up the street. Kling watched him. He unlocked the door to a blue Ford station wagon, got in behind the wheel, started the car, and then drove past where Kling was standing in the doorway. Florida license plate. The numerals 866 - that was all Kling caught. The street illumination was too dim and the car went by too fast.