Ed McBain - Tricks

"Somebody chopping up a body, leaving pieces of it all over town," Phipps said, and shook his head. "Bad enough you kill somebody, you got to chop him up in pieces afterward? Why you suppose he did that, Theo?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Abner, there're all kinds of nuts in this world."

"I mean, there're two rivers in this city, Theo. Why didn't he just throw the whole damn body in one of them?"

That's where the head is, he thought. And the hands.

"Still," Phipps said, "if you got a body to get rid of, I guess it's easier to dump in sections. I mean, somebody sees you hauling a corpse around, that might raise suspicion, even in this city. An arm, a head, whatever, you can just drop in a garbage can or down the sewer, nobody'll pay any attention to you, am I right, Theo?"

"I guess maybe that's why he did it."

"Well, who can figure the criminal mind?" Phipps said.

"Not me, that's for sure. I have a hard enough time selling insurance."

"Oh, I'll bet," Phipps said. "You know why? Nobody likes to think he's gonna kick off one day. You sit there tellin' him how his wife's gonna be sittin' pretty once he's dead, he don't want to hear that. He wants to think he's gonna live forever. I don't care how responsible a man he is, it makes him uncomfortable talkin' about death benefits."

"You hit it right on the head, Abner. I talk myself blue in the face, and half the time they're not even listening. Explain, explain, explain, they don't know what the hell I'm talking about."

"People just don't listen anymore," Phipps said.

"Or they don't listen carefully enough. They hear only what they want to hear."

"That's for sure, Theo."

"I'll give you an example," he said, and then immediately thought Come on, he's too easy. On the other hand, it might teach him a valuable lesson. Chatting up a stranger in a bar, no real sense of how many con artists were loose and on the prowl in this city. Teach him something he could take back home to Horse's Neck, Texas.

He reached into his pocket, took out a dime and a nickel.

"What have I got here?" he asked.

"Fifteen cents," Phipps said.

"Okay, open your hand."

Phipps opened his hand.

"Now I'm putting this dime and this nickel on the palm of your hand."

"Yep, I see that, Theo."

"And I'm not touching them anymore, they're in your hand now, am I right?"

"Right there on the palm of my hand, Theo."

"Now close your hand on them."

Phipps closed his hand. The bartender was watching now.

"You've got that fifteen cents in your fist now, am I right?"

"Still there," Phipps said.

"A dime and a nickel."

"A dime and a nickel, right."

"And I haven't touched them since you closed your hand on them, right?"

"You haven't touched them, right."

"Okay, I'll bet you when you open your hand, one of them won't be a dime."

"Come on, Theo, you're lookin' to lose money."

"Man's lookin' to lose money for sure," the bartender said.

"I'll bet you the twenty dollars under that peanut bowl, okay?"

"You got a bet," Phipps said.

"Okay, open your hand."

Phipps opened his hand. Fifteen cents still on his palm. Same dime, same nickel. The bartender shook his head.

"You lose," Phipps said.

"No, I win. What I said hellip;"

"The bet was that one of these coins wouldn't be a dime no more."

"No, you weren't listening. The bet was that one of them wouldn't be a dime."

"That's just what hellip;"

"And one of them isn't. One of them's a nickel."

He slid the twenty-dollar bill from under the peanut bowl, and tucked it into his jacket pocket. "You can keep the fifteen cents," he said, and smiled and walked out of the bar.

The bartender said, "That's a good trick to know, man."

Phipps was still looking at the fifteen cents on the palm of his hand.

Genero was a celebrity.

And he was learning that a celebrity is expected to answer a lot of questions. Especially if he shot four teenagers. There were two people waiting to ask questions now. One was a roving investigative reporter from Channel 6. The other was a Duty Captain named Vince Annunziato, who was filling in for the Eight-Seven's Captain Frick. The reporter was interested only in a sensational news story. Annunziato was interested only in protecting the Department. He stood by silently and gravely while the reporter set up the interview; one sure way to get the media dumping on cops was to act like you had something to hide.

"This is Mick Stapleton," the reporter said, "at the scene of a shooting on North Eleventh Street, here in Isola. I'm talking to Detective/Third Grade Richard Genero, who not forty-five minutes ago shot four teenagers who allegedly started a fire in the apartment building behind me."

Annunziato caught the "allegedly." Protecting his ass in case this thing blew up to something like the Goetz shootings in New York. Guy with a hand-held camera aimed at Stapleton, another guy working some kind of sound equipment, third guy handling lights, you'd think they were shooting a Spielberg movie instead of a two-minute television spot. Crowds behind the police barriers. Ambulances already here and gone, carting away the four teenagers. Annunziato was happy they weren't black.

"Detective Genero, can you tell us what happened here?" Stapleton asked.

Genero blinked into the lights, looked at the red light on the front of the camera.

"I was making a routine tour of the sector," he said. "This is Halloween night and the lieutenant put on extra men to handle any problems that might arise in the precinct."

So far, so good, Annunziato thought. Care and caution on the part of the commanding officer, concern for the citizenry.

"So you were driving past the building here hellip;"

"Yes, and I saw the perpetrators running into the premises with objects in their hands."

"What kind of objects?" Stapleton asked.

Careful, Annunziato thought.

"What turned out to be firebombs," Genero said.

"But you didn't know that at the time, did you?"

"All I knew was a roving band running into a building."

"And this seemed suspicious to you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Suspicious enough for you to draw your gun and hellip; ?"

"I did not unholster my revolver until fire broke out in the premises."

Good, Annunziato thought. Felony in progress, reason to yank the piece.

"But when you first saw these youngsters, you didn't know they were carrying firebombs, did you?"

"I found out when the fires went off inside there, and they came running out."

"What did you do then?"