Ed McBain - Tricks

It was easier to believe he couldn't possibly be the killer.

You're tricking yourself, she thought.

And yet hellip;

There really were a lot of likable things about him.

Not just his sense of humor. Some of his jokes were terrible, in fact. He told them almost compulsively, whenever anything in the conversation triggered what appeared to be a vast computer-bank memory of stories. You mentioned the tattoo near his thumb, for example mdash;the killer had a tattoo near his thumb, she reminded herself mdash;and he immediately told the one about the two girls discussing the guy with the tattooed penis, and one of them insisted only the word Swan was tattooed on it, whereas the other girl insisted the word was Saskatchewan, and it turned out they were both right, which took Eileen a moment to get. Or you mentioned the sudden change in the weather, and he immediately reeled off Henry Morgan's famous weather forecast, "Muggy today, Toogy tomorrow," and then segued neatly into the joke about the panhandler shivering outside in the cold and another panhandler comes over to him and says, "Can you lend me a dime for a cup of coffee?" and the first guy says, "Are you kidding? I'm standing here bare-assed, I'm shivering and starving to death, how come you're asking me for a dime?" and the second guy says, "Okay, make it a nickel," which wasn't very funny, but which he told with such dramatic flair that Eileen could actually visualize the two panhandlers standing on a windy corner of the city.

Outside, the city beckoned.

The night beckoned.

The knife beckoned.

But inside, sitting here at the bar with the television set going, and the sound of voices everywhere around them, the world seemed safe and cozy and warm, and she found herself listening intently to everything he said. Not only the jokes. The jokes were a given. If you wanted to learn about him, you had to listen to his jokes. The jokes were some sort of defense system, she realized, his way of keeping himself at arm's distance from anyone. But scattered in among the incessant jokes, there were glimpses of a shy and somewhat vulnerable person longing to make contact mdash;until another joke was triggered.

He had used up his first twenty dollars five minutes ago, and was now working on the second twenty, which he said should take them through to twelve-forty.

"After that, we'll see," he said. "Maybe we'll talk some more, or maybe we'll go outside, depends how we feel, right? We'll play this by ear, Linda, I'm really enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Yes," she said, and guessed she meant it.

But he's the killer, she reminded herself.

Or maybe not.

She hoped he wasn't.

"If you add up these twenties," he said, "a dollar a minute, you'll be getting a third of what my dad gets in L.A., he gets a hundred and fifty bucks for a fifty-minute hour, which ain't bad, huh? For listening to people tell you they have bedbugs crawling all over them? Don't brush them on me, right? Well, I guess you know that one, I guess I've already told that one."

He hadn't told that one. But suddenly, as he apologized for what he'd mistakenly thought was repetition, she felt oddly close to him. Like a married woman listening to the same jokes her husband had told time and again, and yet enjoying them each time as if he were telling them for the first time. She knew the "Don't-brush-them-on-me" joke. Yet she wished he would tell it, anyway.

And wondered if she was stalling for time.

Wondered if she was putting off that eventual moment when the knife came out of the pocket.

"My father was very strict," he said. "If you have any choice, don't get raised by a psychiatrist. How's your father? Is he tough on you?"

"I never really knew him," she said.

Her father. A cop. On the beat, they used to call him Pops Burke. Shot to death when she was still a little girl.

In the next instant, she almost told him that her uncle and not her father was the one who'd had the most telling influence on her life. Uncle Matt. Also a cop. Whose favorite toast was, "Here's to golden days and purple nights." An expression he'd heard repeated again and again on a radio show. Recently, Eileen had heard Hal Willis's new girlfriend using the same expression. Small world. Even smaller world when your favorite uncle is sitting off-duty in his favorite bar making his favorite toast and a guy walks in with a sawed-off shotgun. Uncle Matt drew his service revolver and the guy shot him dead. She almost told Bobby she'd become a cop because of her Uncle Matt. She almost forgot in that instant that she herself was a cop working undercover to trap a killer. The word "entrapment" flashed into her mind. Suppose he isn't the killer? she wondered. Suppose I blow him away and it turns out mdash;

And realized again that her mind was playing tricks.

"I grew up in a world of don't do this, don't do that," Bobby said. "You'd think a shrink would've known better, well, I guess it was a case of the shoemaker's children. Talk about repression. It was my mother who finally helped me to break out. I make it sound like a prison, don't I? Well, it was. Do you know the one about the lady walking along the beach in Miami?"

She shook her head.

She realized she was already smiling.

"Well, she sees this guy lying on the sand, and she goes up to him and she says, 'Excuse me, I don't mean to intrude, but you're very white.' The guy looks up at her and says, 'So?' The lady says, 'I mean, most people they come down to Miami, they lie in the sun, they get a nice tan. But you're very white.' The guy says, 'So?' The lady says, 'So how come you're so white?' The guy says, 'This is prison pallor, I just got out of prison yesterday.' The lady shakes her head and says, 'How long were you in prison?' The guys says, 'Thirty years.' The lady says, 'My, my, what did you do, they put you in prison for thirty years?' The guy says, 'I killed my wife with a hatchet and chopped her up in little pieces.' The woman looks at him and says, 'Mmmm, so you're single?' "

Eileen burst out laughing.

And then realized that the joke was about murder.

And then wondered if a murderer would tell a joke about murder.

"Anyway, it was my mother who broke me out of prison," Bobby said, "and she had to die to do it."

"What do you mean?"

"Left me a lot of money. Do you know what she said in her will? She said, 'This is for Robert's freedom to risk enjoying life.' Her exact words. She always called me Robert. 'Robert's freedom to risk enjoying life.' Which is just what I've been doing for the past year. Kissed my father off, told him to shove it, told him I'd be happy if I never saw him again, and then left L.A. forever."

She wondered if there were any warrants out on him in L.A.

But why would there be any warrants?

"Went to Kansas City, had a good time there hellip; got the tattoo there, in fact, what the hell, I'd always wanted a tattoo. Then on to Chicago, lived it up there, too, plenty of money to take risks, Linda. I owe that to my mother." He nodded thoughtfully, and then said, "He's the one who killed her, you know."

She looked at him.

"Oh, not literally. I mean he didn't stick a knife in her or anything. But he was having an affair with our housekeeper, and she found out about it, and it broke her heart, she was never the same again. They said it was cancer, but stress can induce serious illness, you know, and I'm sure that's what caused it, his fooling around with Elga. The money my mother eventually left me was the money she'd got in the divorce settlement, which I think was poetic justice, don't you? I mean, him raising me so strictly mdash;while he's fooling around with that Nazi hooker, mind you mdash;and my mother giving me his money so I could lead a richer life, so I could risk enjoying life. I think that was the key word, don't you? In the will? Risk. I think she wanted me to take risks with the money, which is what I've been doing."