McBain, Ed - Killer's Payoff

“Is he a good-looking man, Miss Lossing?”

“Phil? Not in the movie-star sense. But he’s very manly-looking.”

“Have a temper?”

“Not particularly violent, no.”

“Is he the kind of person who’d be likely to carry a grudge?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know him that well. We only dated for about four months, once a week. The only reason we exchanged rings is because we were drunk.”

“Did you go out to his home often?”

“I was there once. It’s a real suburban nothing. I ran for the hills.”

“Did he ever come here?”

“Of course.”

“Often?”

“To pick me up. Once a week. And to drop me off.” Alice Lossing studied Hawes for a moment. “What are you asking?”

“Only what I asked.”

“Are you trying to find out whether Phil and I—”

“No.”

“We didn’t.”

“Okay, but I didn’t ask.”

“You seemed like you wanted to.”

“Ask?”

“Yes.”

“About Phil? Or for myself?”

“One or the other,” Alice said.

“I’m not an asker,” Hawes said.

“No?”

“No. I have to report back to the squad when I leave here. I can do that by phone. Do you dance?”

“I dance.”

“Let’s.”

“Are you asking?”

Hawes smiled. Alice Lossing did not smile back.

“I’m a lady,” she said. “I like to be asked.”

“I’m asking. Would you like to go dancing with me?”

“You’re attractive,” she said. “I’d love to.”

“I keep wondering what a pretty girl like you is doing home all alone on a Friday night,” Hawes said.

“I was waiting for you,” Alice answered.

“Sure.”

“If you want to know the truth, I was stood up.”

“Okay.”

“You can call the squad from here, if you like. I’ll get changed.”

“Fine.”

“Are you off-duty once you make that call?”

“Technically, I’m never off-duty. But actually, yes, I am.”

“Then mix yourself a drink when you’re finished.”

“All right.”

Hawes made his call and mixed himself a drink. They left the apartment at nine-thirty. Alice thought Hawes was very attractive. She kept telling him so all night long. He thought she was very attractive, too. In fact, he fell in love with her while they were dancing.

They went for coffee afterward, and then he took Alice back to her apartment. It was still early, and so they sat and listened to records for a while. Her lips were very red and very inviting, and so he kissed her. It was too bright in the room, and so they turned off the lights.

And so…

15.

ARTHUR BROWN was tired of the virgins of Bali in full color. He was tired of the four wooden walls of the mock telephone-company shack. He was tired of the headset with which he monitored the tape. He was tired of the inane social drivel that passed back and forth between Lucy Mencken and her contacts in the world at large.

Arthur Brown was a most impatient man. He’d had the bad misfortune to be born with a name that emphasized his color. With Arthur Brown, the hatemongers had really had a field day. Because he was fair-minded and because he thought it might be better to give the haters an edge by giving himself a handicap, he had often thought of changing his name to Goldstein, thereby adding religion to color and offering the haters an opportunity to really flip their wigs. His impatience was born of expectation. Arthur Brown could look at a man and know instantly whether or not his color would be a barrier between them. And knowing, he would then expect the inevitable slur; and expecting it, he would then impatiently wait for it. He was a man sitting on a powder keg, the fuse of which had been lighted by the chance pigmentation of his skin.

The tap on Lucy Mencken’s phone had none of the characteristics of a powder keg, but it nonetheless filled Brown with itchy impatience. He could, by now, have told anyone interested exactly what the Mencken family would be having for dinner every night of next week, exactly what sniffles or sneezes the Mencken children had suffered during the past few days, the forthcoming social plans of the entire family, and even the bra size—a spectacular size, he admitted—of Lucy Mencken.

Arthur Brown was bored.

Arthur Brown was impatient.

He thought of his brothers of toil back at the 87th. Those lucky ones would be dealing with rapes and muggings and knifings and burglaries and robberies and homicides and all sorts of interesting lively criminal activities. He had to sit in a shack and listen to the proprietress of the women’s wear shop in Peabody—he knew her well by now; her name was Antoinette, and the shop was sickeningly called the Curve Corner—tell Lucy Mencken about the new line of bathing suits that had arrived, and wouldn’t she like to come down and try some on?

Brown devoutly wished she would go down and try some on. He wished she would take her son and daughter with her and allow them to try on some bathing suits, too. He hoped that Charles Mencken needed new swim trunks. He hoped the entire family would go down to the Curve Corner and enjoy an orgy of trying on svelte swimwear. Then the phone would be free for the afternoon. Then he would not have to listen to female gossip about a girl named Patricia Harper who danced too intimately with the husbands of Peabody; then he would not have to listen to plans for the next garden-club meeting (the club was called the Peabody Potters); then he would not have to listen to eight-year-old Greta’s telephone romance with a ten-year-old boy named Freckles.

In short, he would not have to invade the goddamn privacy of what seemed to be a normal, decent, clean-living family.

He knew, of course, that the telephone company itself maintained monitoring stations. The purpose of these stations was to keep a constant check on the efficiency of the almost entirely automatic equipment. There was no intention of maintaining a telephone tap in the strictest sense of the words. But there were loud-speakers, and men listened to those loud-speakers, and if anyone thought a telephone call was a private thing, he was sadly mistaken. Usually, the speaker was tuned down to a low mumble. Occasionally, and completely arbitrarily, it was turned up so that words became intelligible. A telephone call was about as private as a church auction, and this should have lessened the guilt Brown was feeling. Too, he was waiting for a call that might lead them to a criminal. But neither of these factors lessened the unpleasantness of his job, nor the impatience with which he attacked it.

When the call came, he girded himself for what he was certain would be another social exchange. The light flashed on the recording equipment as soon as the receiver was lifted from the cradle in the Mencken home. Brown put on his earphones. Before him, the tapes wound relentlessly. The bug in the base of the Mencken phone picked up every word.

“—wait a moment, I’ll see if she’s home.”

That was the Mencken maid. Brown knew her voice by heart. There was a long pause. Then…

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Mencken?”

Brown heard what could have been a short gasp from Mrs. Mencken.

“Yes?”

“You’ve had time to think over my last call, ain’t you?”

“Who is this?” Lucy asked.

“Never mind who this is. I told you this is a friend of Sy Kramer’s. I know all about the arrangement he had with you, and I’ve already told you there will be a few changes now that he is dead. Is that clear?”

“Yes, but…”

“You wouldn’t want that material released to the newspapers, would you?”

“What material?”

“Don’t bluff me, Mrs. Mencken. You know what material I’m talking about, so don’t try to bluff me.”