Ed McBain - Tricks

"I'm not afraid to holler," Eileen said.

"Good. We ain't trying to prove nothing here, we only want to catch this guy."

"I'm the one who catches him," Alvarez said, "I'll cut off his balls."

Eileen looked at him.

"What'd these other girls tell you?" Annie asked.

She did not want Eileen to keep studying those pictures. Once around the park was once too often. She took them from her hand, glanced at them only cursorily, and put them back into the folder. Eileen looked up at her questioningly. But Alvarez was already talking.

"You familiar with the Canal Zone, you know most of the girls work on the street," he said. "A car pulls up, the girl leans in the window, they agree on a price, and she does the job while the trick drives them around the block. It's Have Mouth, Will Travel, is what it is. But there's a bar near the docks where you get a slightly better-class hooker. We're talking comparative here. None of these girls are racehorses."

"What about this bar?" Annie said.

"It's called Larry's, on Fairview and East Fourth. The girls working the cars go in there every now and then, shoot up in the toilet, fix their faces, whatever. But there's also some girls a little younger and a little prettier who hang out there looking for tricks. Again, we're talking comparative. The girls on the meat rack outside get only five bucks for a handjob and ten for a blow-job. The ones working the bar get double that."

"The point is," Shanahan said, "the three girls he ripped were working the bar."

"So that's where you're planting me," Eileen said.

"Be safer all around," Alvarez said.

"I'm not looking for safe," she said, bristling.

"No, and you're not a real hooker, either," Alvarez said, bristling himself. "You stand out there on the street, you keep turning down tricks, the other girls'll make you for fuzz in a minute. You'll be standing out there all alone before the night's ten minutes old."

"Okay," she said.

"I want this guy," he said.

"So do I."

"Not the way I want him. I got a daughter the age of that little girl in there," he said, wagging his finger at the folder.

"Okay," Eileen said again.

"You work the bar," Alvarez said, "you get a chance to call your own shots. You played hooker before?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so I don't have to tell you how to do your job."

"That's right, you don't."

"But there are some mean bastards down there in the Zone, and not all of them are looking to carve you up. You better step easy all around. This ain't Silk Stocking work."

"None of it is," Eileen said.

They both glared at each other.

"What'd they say about him?" Annie asked, jumping in.

"What?" Alvarez said.

Still angry. Figuring Homicide had sent him an amateur. Figuring she'd be spotted right off as a plant. Fuck you and your daughter both, Eileen thought. I know my job. And it's still my ass out there.

"These girls you talked to," Annie said. "What'd they say?"

"What?"

"About the guy, she means," Shanahan said. "This ain't gospel, Annie, this is maybe just hookers running scared, which they got every right to be. But on the nights of the murders, they remember a guy sitting at the bar. Drinking with the victims. The three he ripped. Same guy on three different Friday nights. Big blond guy, six-two, six-three, maybe two hundred pounds, dressed different each time, but blending in with everybody else in the joint."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning Friday-night sleaze. No uptown dude looking for kicks."

"Do you get any of those?" Eileen asked.

"Now and then," Shanahan said. "They don't last long in the Zone. Hookers ain't the only predators there. But this guy looked like one of the seamen off the ships. Which don't necessarily mean he was , of course."

"Anything else we should know about him?"

"Yeah, he had them in stitches."

"What do you mean?"

"Kept telling them jokes."

Eileen looked at him.

"Yeah, I know what you're thinking," Shanahan said. "A stand-up comic with a knife."

"Anything else?"

"He wears eyeglasses," Alvarez said.

"One of the girls thinks he has a tattoo on his right hand. Near the thumb. She's the only one who mentioned it."

"What kind of tattoo?"

"She couldn't remember."

"How many girls did you talk to?"

"Four dozen altogether," Alvarez said, "but only two of them gave us a handle."

"What time was this?" Annie asked. "When they saw him at the bar with the victims?"

"Varied. As early as nine, as late as two in the morning."

"Gonna be a long night," Annie said, and sighed.

Shanahan looked up at the clock.

"We better work out our strategy," he said. "So we can move when he does. Once he gets Eileen outside hellip;"

He let the sentence trail.

The clock ticked into the silence of the squadroom.

"Do they know you down there in the Zone?" Eileen asked.

Shanahan looked at her.

"Do they?"

"Yes, but hellip;"

"Then what the hell hellip; ?"

"I'll be hellip;"

"What good's a backup who hellip;?"

"You won't recognize me, don't worry."

"No? What does the bartender say when you walk in? Hello, Detective Shanahan?"

"Six-to-five right this minute, you won't know me when I walk in," Shanahan said.

"Don't take the bet," Annie said.

"Will I know you if I have to holler?"

"You'll know me then. Because I'll be there."

"You're on," Eileen said. "But if I make you, I go straight home. I walk out of there and go straight home. Understood?"

"I'd do the same. But you won't know me."

"I hope not. I hope I lose the bet."

"You will," Annie promised.

"I didn't like your shooting him," the blonde at the wheel of the station wagon said. "That wasn't at all necessary, Alice."

Alice said nothing.

"You fire the guns in the air to scare them, to let them know you mean business, that's all. If that man you shot is dead, the rest of the night could be ruined for us."

Alice still said nothing.

"The beauty part of this," the blonde said, "is they never expect lightning to strike twice in the same night. Are you listening, kiddies?"

None of the kids said a word.

The digital dashboard clock read 7:04.

They figure you do a stickup, you go home and lay low for a while. That's the beauty part. We play our cards right tonight, We go home with forty grand easy. I mean, a Friday night? Your liquor stores'll be open, some of them, till midnight, people stocking up for the weekend. Plenty of gold in the registers, kids, there for the taking. No more shooting people, have you got that?"