Ed McBain - Tricks

Everyone laughed. Even Peaches.

Sandra then blew out all the candles in a single breath, and pinched Parker on the behind and asked him if he'd like the candles on his cake blown. "Out," she added.

Everyone laughed. Except Peaches.

A little later on, encouraged by the attention a lot of these very interesting women were paying to ideas he'd never even known he'd had, Parker ventured a bit closer to home and suggested to a lady trial lawyer that anyone committing a murder was at least a little bit crazy and that therefore the "legal insanity" defense was meaningless. The lady lawyer said, "That's very interesting, Andy. I had a case last week where hellip;"

It was astonishing.

Parker said to a woman wearing horn-rimmed eyeglasses and no bra that he found pornographic movies more honest than any of the nighttime soaps on television, and the woman turned out to be a film critic who encouraged him to expand upon the idea.

Parker told a woman writer mdash;a real writer mdash;that he never spent more than five pages with any book if he wasn't hooked by then, and the woman expounded upon the importance of a book's opening and closing paragraphs, to which Parker said, "Sure, it's like foreplay and afterplay," and the woman writer put her hand on his arm and laughed robustly, which Peaches did not find at all amusing.

Peaches, in fact, was becoming more and more irritated by the fact that Sandra had invited her to a party where the women outnumbered the men by an approximate two-to-one and where Parker was suddenly the center of all this female attention. She had liked it better when they were a couple pretending to be a cop and a victim. They were sharing something then. Now Parker seemed to be stepping out on his own, the small-time flamenco dancer who'd been offered a movie contract provided he ditched his fat lady partner. This miffed Peaches because for Christ's sake she was the one who'd introduced him to show biz in the first place!

When the female midget walked in at twenty-five minutes to twelve, Peaches immediately checked out the man with her. Burly guy going a bit bald, but with a pleasant craggy face, and a seemingly gentle manner. Five-ten or -eleven, she guessed, merry blue eyes, nice speaking voice now that she heard him wishing Sandra a happy birthday. Sandra took their coats and wandered off, muttering something about mingling. Peaches moved in fast before the other sharks smelled blood on the water. She introduced herself to the man and the midget mdash;

"Hi, I'm Peaches Muldoon."

"Quentin Forbes. Alice hellip;"

mdash;and then took the man's arm before he could finish the midget's name, and said, "Come on, I'll get you a drink," and sailed off with him, leaving the midget standing there by the door looking forlornly and shyly into the room.

Parker had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.

He went over to her at once.

"Small world," he said.

And to his enormous surprise mdash;the night was full of surprises mdash;she burst out laughing, and said, "I feel like a fire hydrant waiting for an engine company. Where's the bar?"

Hal Willis came into the squadroom at twenty minutes to midnight. The teams usually relieved at a quarter to the hour, and so he was early mdash;which was a surprise. Nowadays, ever since he'd taken up with Marilyn Hollis, he was invariably late. And rumpled-looking. He was rumpled-looking tonight, too, giving the impression of a man who'd leaped out of bed and into his trousers not five minutes earlier.

"Getting a bit brisk out there," he said.

He was wearing a short car coat over slacks and a sports jacket, no tie, the top button of his shirt unbuttoned. At five-feet eight-inches tall, he was the shortest man on the squad mdash;even shorter than Fujiwara, who was of Japanese descent mdash;but Willis knew judo and karate, and he'd fooled many a cheap thief who'd figured him for a pushover. He took off the coat and hung it on the coatrack, glanced idly at the bulletin board, and then looked at the duty chart to see who'd be sharing the shift with him. He moved like a man underwater nowadays. Kling attributed his eternal weariness to Marilyn Hollis. Eileen said Marilyn Hollis was poison. Maybe she was right. Kling looked up at the clock.

"Let me fill you in," he said.

He told Willis about the four teenagers Genero had shot.

"Genero?" Willis said, amazed.

He told Willis about the four midgets who'd held up a series of liquor stores.

"Midgets?" Willis said, amazed.

He told Willis that Carella and Meyer had taken three bullets between them and were both at Buenavista Hospital.

"You going over there?" Willis asked.

"Maybe later. I have to run out to Calm's Point."

He looked up at the clock again.

"Brown and Hawes caught a homicide," he said, "all the paperwork is on Brown's desk. There's a picture of the victim, too, a magician. They found him in four separate pieces."

"Four pieces?" Willis said, amazed.

"Here's a number you can reach them at in Collinsworth, case anything breaks. They got an all-points out on a guy named Jimmy Brayne."

"Good evening, gentlemen," O'Brien said from the slatted rail divider, and then pushed his way through the gate into the squadroom. "Winter's on the way." He was indeed dressed for winter, wearing a heavy overcoat and a muffler, which he took off now and carried to the coatrack. Willis wasn't happy to be partnered with O'Brien. O'Brien was a hard-luck cop. You went on a call with O'Brien, somebody was bound to get shot. This wasn't O'Brien's fault. Some cops simply attracted the lunatics with guns. On Christmas Day, not too long ago mdash;well, not too long ago by precinct time, where sometimes an hour seemed an eternity mdash;O'Brien and Meyer had stopped to check out a man changing a flat tire on a moving van. A moving van? Working on Christmas Day? The man turned out to be a burglar named Michael Addison, who'd just cleaned out half a dozen houses in Smoke Rise. Addison shot Meyer twice in the leg. Brown later dubbed the burglar Addison and Steal. This was pretty funny, but the bullets in Meyer's leg weren't. Willis mdash;and everyone else on the squad mdash;was convinced Meyer had got himself shot only because he'd been partnered with O'Brien. Still, he'd been shot again tonight, hadn't he? And he'd been working with Carella. Maybe in this line of work, there were bullets waiting out there with your name on them. In any event, Willis wished O'Brien was home in bed, instead of here in the squadroom with him.

"Steve and Meyer took a couple, did you hear?" he said.

"What are you talking about?"

"Some midgets shot them," Kling said.

"Come on, midgets," O'Brien said.

Kling looked up at the clock again.

"I'll be checking out a car," he said to no one.

"You want a cup of coffee?" O'Brien asked Willis.

It was only fifteen minutes before the beginning of All Hallows' Day.

In the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, the first day of November is a feast day upon which the church glorifies God for all his saints, known or unknown. The word "hallow" derives from the Middle English halowen , further derived from the Old English halgian , and it means "to make or set apart as holy; to sanctify; to consecrate." All Hallows' Day and Hallowmass are now archaic names for this feast; today mdash;except in novels mdash;it is called All Saints' Day. But it has always been celebrated on the first day of November, which in Celtic times was coincidentally the first day of winter, a time of pagan witches and ghosts, mummery and masquerade. Wholly Christian in origin, however, are the vigil and fasting that occur on the day before.