Ed McBain - Tricks

"So?" he said.

Parker was looking down at the headline.

"You want a paper?" the blind man said.

The headline read:

2 COPS SHOT

4 MIDGETS SOUGHT

The car in the driveway of the Sebastian! house was a 1979 Cadillac Seville, silver-sided with a black hardtop, still in seemingly excellent condition. The woman who got out of the Caddy was in excellent condition herself, tall and leggy and wearing a black cloth coat the color of her hair. Hawes and Brown watched her from the upstairs window of the garage as she went directly to the front door of the house and rang the bell.

Hawes looked at his watch.

A few minutes before one in the morning.

"Who the hell is that?" he said.

They came out of Larry's Bar at exactly 1:00 a.m., twenty minutes after Bobby had first suggested they leave. A strong wind was blowing off the canal. He had insisted that she continue wearing his jacket, and she still had it draped over her shoulders. She hoped it wouldn't get in the way when she yanked the gun. Her hand hovered over the open top of her bag, seemingly resting there close to the shoulder strap. But close to the butt of the gun, too.

Bobby had his right hand in his pants pocket.

On the knife, she thought.

He had slashed his first victim in a doorway two blocks from the bar.

The second one in an alleyway on East Ninth.

The third on Canalside itself, heavily trafficked with hookers.

"Pretty cold out here," he said. "Not exactly what I had in mind."

Annie was the first of the three detectives to spot them coming out of the bar.

She had hit the street the moment she'd left Eileen in the ladies room, and had taken up position in the darkened doorway or a closed Chinese noodle factory. It was very cold out here on the street, and she wasn't dressed for it. Skirt too damn short, blouse too flimsy. Eileen came out of the bar like a flare, red hair blowing on the wind, the guy's jacket draped over her shoulders, made an immediate left turn, walking on the guy's right, her own right hand on the curb side and resting on her bag. The guy's right hand was in his pants pocket.

Two of the lamp posts on Fairview had been vandalized, and there were wide stretches of darkness between the light on the corner and the third one up. On the distant corner, a traffic light turned to red as flaming as Eileen's hair. The red hair was a plus. Easy to keep her in view. Annie gave them a twenty-yard lead, and then fell into step behind them, keeping close to the buildings on her left, the guy's blind side because he was turned to the right as he walked and talked. She cursed the hooker heels she was wearing because they made such a clatter on the sidewalk, but the guy seemed unaware of her presence behind them, just kept chatting up Eileen as they dissolved into the darkness between the lighted lamp posts.

Eileen's red hair was the beacon.

Kling, scanning the street from a vantage point diagonally across from the bar, was the second detective to spot them.

The street was dark where he waited in the shadow of an abandoned tool works, the lamp post globe shattered, but the woman was unmistakably Eileen. Never mind the red hair, he'd have known her if she was wearing a blonde wig. Knew every nuance of her walk, the long stride, the swing of her shoulders, the rhythmic jiggle of her buttocks. He was about to move out, cross the street and fall in behind them, when he saw Annie.

Good, he thought, she's in place.

He stayed on the opposite side of the street, ten feet behind Annie who was working hard to keep up without showing herself. Eileen and the guy were walking very fast, up toward the traffic light on the corner, which changed now, throwing a green wash onto the roadway. The formation could have been a classic tailing triangle mdash;one cop behind the quarry, another cop ahead of them on the same side of the street, a third cop on the opposite side of the street mdash;except that it was lacking the third cop.

Or so Kling thought.

Shanahan was the third cop.

He had been tailing Kling from the moment he'd spotted him peering through the plate-glass window of the bar. Pacing the street impatiently, always circling back to the bar, checking out the front door from across the street, then drifting off again, and back again, behaving very much like a person waiting for somebody to come out of there. When Eileen finally came out of the bar with a second blond guy, Shanahan's blond took off after them. Annie was up ahead, she had Eileen and her blond covered and in sight. But this other blond guy was still showing too much interest. Shanahan gave him a lead, and then fell in behind him again.

Up ahead, Eileen and her blond turned left at the traffic light, and disappeared around the corner.

Shanahan's blond hesitated only a moment.

Seemed undecided whether to make his move or not.

Then he pulled a gun and started across the street.

Annie recognized Kling at once.

He had a gun in his hand.

She didn't know whether she was more surprised by his presence here or by the gun in his hand. Too many thoughts clicked through her mind in the next three seconds. She thought He's going to blow it, the guy hasn't made his move yet. She thought Does Eileen know he's here? She thought mdash;

But Eileen and her man were already around the corner and out of sight.

"Bert!" she shouted.

And in that instant Shanahan came thundering up yelling, "Stop! Police!"

Kling turned to see a man pointing an arm in a plaster cast at him.

He turned the other way and saw Annie running across the street.

"Mike!" Annie shouted.

Shanahan stopped dead in his tracks. Annie was waving her arms at him like a traffic cop.

"He's on the job!" she shouted.

Shanahan had earlier told Eileen that he and Lou Alvarez were just full of tricks. He hadn't realized, however, that Alvarez had sent another man to the Zone without telling him about it. That tricky, he didn't think Alvarez was. Shanahan's own little trick was a .32 revolver in his right hand, his finger inside the trigger guard, the gun and the hand encased in the plaster cast. He felt like an asshole now, the plaster cast still pointed at a guy Annie had just identified as a cop.

The realization came to all three of them in the same instant.

The traffic light on the corner turned red again as though signaling the coming of their mutual dawn.

Without a word, they looked up the street.

It was empty.

Eileen and her man were gone.

A minute ago, she'd had three backups.

Now she didn't have any.

Dolores Eisenberg was Frank Sebastiani's older sister.

Five-feet ten-inches tall, black hair and blue eyes, thirty-eight, thirty-nine years old. Hugging Marie to her when Brown and Hawes came over from the garage. Tears in the eyes of both women.

Marie introduced her to the cops.