Ed McBain - Tricks

"Tell him."

"You ever date a nurse?" Parker said.

"Me?" Genero said.

"You, you. You ever date a nurse?"

"No. And I never dated a sixty-year-old lady, either."

"Tell him," Brown said.

"There is nothing like a nurse," Parker said. "It's a fact that in the book business if you put the word nurse in a title, you sell a million more copies."

"Who told you that?"

"It's a fact. A publisher told me that. In this office where they stole all his typewriters, this was maybe a year ago. A nurse in the title sells a million more copies."

"I'm gonna write a book called The Naked and the Nurse ," Brown said.

"How about Gone with the Nurse ?" Meyer said.

"Or Nurse-22 ?" Carella said.

"Kid around, go ahead," Parker said. "You see me tomorrow morning, I'll be a wreck."

"I think you'd better stick around," Brown said. "Cotton's all alone out there."

"Bert can go hold his hand, soon as he finishes writing his book there."

"What book?" Kling asked, looking up from his typewriter.

"Me," Parker said, "I'm gonna go do a follow-up on a homicide investigation."

"Ten years old," Brown said.

"I thought you said eleven," Carella said, puzzled.

"The homicide. Ten years ago. He arrested a nut was killing priests. The nurse is his mother."

"The kids are eleven years old," Meyer said. "The ones who did the liquor store guy. Or twelve."

"That's what I thought," Carella said. He still looked puzzled.

"Any further objections?" Parker asked.

They all looked at him sourly.

"In that case, gentlemen, I bid you a fond adoo."

"You gonna leave a number where we can reach you?" Brown asked.

"No," Parker said.

The phone rang as he went through the gate and out into the corridor.

Watching him go, Brown shook his head and then picked up the phone receiver.

"Eighty-Seventh Squad, Brown."

"Artie, this is Dave downstairs," Murchison said. "You're handling that body in the garbage can, ain't you?"

" Piece of a body," Brown said.

"Well, we just got another piece," Murchison said.

CHAPTER 4

Hawes had to keep telling himself this was strictly business.

Bermuda had been one thing, Bermuda was a thousand miles away, and besides he'd asked Annie to go along with him. This was another thing. This was the big bad city, and Annie lived here and besides he had a date with her tomorrow night, and furthermore Marie Sebastiani was married.

As of the moment, anyway.

The possibility existed that her husband had run off on his own to get away from her, though why anyone would want to abandon a beautiful, leggy blonde was beyond Hawes. If that's what had happened, though mdash;Sebastian the Great tossing his junk all over the driveway and then taking off in the Citation mdash;then maybe he was gone forever, in which case Marie wasn't as married as she thought she was. Hawes had handled cases where a guy went out for a loaf of bread and never was heard from since. Probably living on some South Sea island painting naked natives. One case he had, the guy told his wife he was going down for a TV Guide. This was at eight o'clock. The wife sat through the eleven o'clock news, and then the Johnny Carson show, and then the late movie, and still no hubby with the TV Guide. Guy turned up in California six years later, living with two girls in Santa Monica. So maybe Sebastian the Great had pulled the biggest trick of his career, disappearing on his wife. Who knew?

On the other hand, maybe the lady's concern was well-founded. Maybe somebody had come across Frank Sebastiani while he was loading his goodies in the car, and maybe he'd zonked the magician and thrown his stuff out of the car and took off with the car and the magician both. Dump the magician later on, dead or alive, and sell the car to a chop shop. Easy pickings on a relatively quiet Halloween night. It was possible.

Either way, this was strictly business.

Hawes wished, however, that Marie wouldn't keep touching him quite so often.

The lady was very definitely a toucher, and although Hawes didn't necessarily buy the psychological premise that insisted casual body contact was an absolute prerequisite to outright seduction, he had to admit that her frequent touching of his arm or his shoulder or his hand was a bit unsettling. True enough, the touching was only to emphasize a conversational point mdash;as when she told him again how grateful she was that he was taking her to dinner mdash;or to indicate this or that possible restaurant along the Stem. He had parked the car on North Fifth, and they were walking westward now, heading downtown, looking for a place to eat. At seven thirty-five on a Friday night there were still a lot of restaurants open, but Marie had told him she felt like pizza and so he chose a little place just south of the avenue, on Fourth. Red-checkered tablecloths, candles in Chianti bottles, people waiting in line for tables. Hawes rarely pulled rank, but now he casually mentioned to the hostess that he was a detective working out of the Eight-Seven and he hadn't had anything to eat since he came on at four o'clock.

"This way, officer," the hostess said at once, and led them to a table near the window.

As soon as the hostess was gone, Marie said, "Does that happen all the time?"

"Does what happen?"

"The royal treatment."

"Sometimes," Hawes said. "You sure you only want pizza? There's plenty other stuff on the menu."

"No, that's what I really feel like. Cheese and anchovies."

"Would you like a drink?" he asked. "I'm on duty, but hellip;"

"Do you really honor that?"

"Oh, sure."

"I'll just have beer with the pizza."

Hawes signaled to the waiter, and then ordered a large pizza with cheese and anchovies.

"Anything to drink?" the waiter asked.

"A draft for the lady, a Coke for me."

"Miller's or Michelob?"

"Miller's," Marie said.

The waiter went off again.

"This is really very nice of you," Marie said, and reached across the table to touch his hand briefly. A whisper touch. There, and then gone.

"As soon as we get back to the squadroom," Hawes said, "I'll call Auto again, see if they turned up anything on either of the vehicles."

He had made a call to Auto Theft from the custodian's office at the high school, reporting both the Citation and the Econoline, but he knew what the chances were of finding either vehicle tonight. He didn't want to tell her that.

"That would be a start," she said. "If they found the cars."

"Oh, sure."

A pained look crossed her face.

"I'm sure he's okay," Hawes said.

"I hope so."

"I'm sure."