Эд Макбейн - Jigsaw

“What do you hope to accomplish?” Brown said.

“I hope to get what I want without having to make any cockamamie deals.”

“And when you’ve got it? Then what?”

“I move on to bigger and better things. Without you.”

“You’d better move far and fast,” Brown said. “I’m sure as hell going to find you.”

“Not if you’re dead, you won’t.”

“You’d cool me in your own apartment? Who’re you trying to kid?”

“It’s not my apartment,” Weinberg said, and grinned again.

“I checked the address with...” Brown started, and shut his mouth before he’d said, “the Identification Bureau.”

“Yeah, with what?”

“With your name in the phone book. Don’t try to con me, Weinberg. This is your pad, all right.”

“Used to be, only used to be. I moved out two months ago, kept the same phone number.”

“Then how’d you get in here tonight?”

“The super’s a wino. A bottle of Thunderbird goes a long way in this building.”

“What about whoever lives here now?”

“He’s a night watchman. He leaves here at ten and doesn’t get home until six in the morning. Any other questions?”

“Yeah,” Brown said. “What makes you think I’m in this alone?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I’ll tell you what difference it makes. You can take my piece of the snapshot — oh, sure, I’ve got it with me — but if I am in this with another guy, or two other guys, or a dozen other guys, you can bet your ass they’ve all got prints of it. So where does that leave you? I’m dead, and you’ve got the picture, but so have they. You’re right back where you started.”

“If there’s anybody else in it with you.”

“Right. And if there’s anybody else, they know who you are, pal, believe me. You pull that trigger, you’d better start running. Fast.”

“You told me nobody knew about this.”

“Sure. You told me we had a deal.”

“Maybe you’re full of shit this time, too.”

“Or maybe not. You ready to chance it? You know the kind of heat you’d be asking for? Oh, not only from the cops — homicide’s still against the law, you know. But also from...”

“The cops don’t bother me. They’ll go looking for the guy who lives here.”

“Unless one of my friends tells them you and I had a meeting here tonight.”

“It sounds very good, Stokes. But only if you’ve really got some friends out there. Otherwise, it ain’t worth a nickel.”

“Consider another angle then. You kill me, and you get my piece of the picture, sure. But you don’t get that name you want. That’s up here, Weinberg.” He tapped his temple with his forefinger.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Weinberg said.

“Think about it now,” Brown said. “I’ll give you five minutes.”

“You’ll give me five minutes?” Weinberg said, and burst out laughing. “I’m holding the gun, and you’re giving me five minutes.”

“Always play ’em like you’ve got ’em, my daddy used to tell me,” Brown said, and smiled.

“Your daddy ever get hit with a slug from a .38?”

“No, but he did get hit with a baseball bat one time,” Brown said, and Weinberg burst out laughing again.

“Maybe you wouldn’t make such a bad partner after all,” he said.

“So what do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Put up the gun. Give mine back, and we’ll be on equal terms again. Then let’s cut the crap and get on with the goddamn business.”

“How do I know you won’t try to cold-cock me?”

“Because maybe you’ve got friends, too, same as me.”

“Always play ‘em like you’ve got ‘em,” Weinberg said, and chuckled.

“Yes or no?”

“Sure,” Weinberg said. He took Brown’s gun from his waistband and handed it to him muzzle first. Brown immediately put it back into his holster. Weinberg hesitated a moment, and then put his own gun into a holster on his right hip. “Okay,” he said. “Do we shake hands all over again?”

“I’d like to,” Brown said.

The two men shook hands.

“Let’s see your piece of the picture,” Weinberg said.

“Let’s see yours,” Brown said.

“The Mutual Faith and Trust Society,” Weinberg said. “Okay, we’ll do it together.”

Together, both men took out their wallets. Together, both men removed from plastic compartments the glossy segments of the larger photograph. The piece Brown placed on the tabletop was the one he and Carella had found hidden in Ehrbach’s floor lamp. The piece Weinberg placed beside it was a corner piece unlike any the police already had in their possession.

Both men studied the pieces. Weinberg began moving them around on the tabletop. A grin cracked across his face. “We’re gonna make good partners,” he said. “Look at this. They fit.”

Brown looked.

Then he smiled. He smiled because the pieces sure as hell did fit. But he also smiled because, heh-heh, unbeknownst to his new partner and straight man, there were two additional pieces of the picture in the top drawer of his desk back at the squadroom, and two and two make four, and who knew what these two pieces and those two pieces together might reveal, who indeed? So Brown smiled, and Weinberg smiled, and everybody was having just a wonderful old time putting together the pieces of this old jigsaw puzzle.

“Now the names,” Weinberg said, sounding very much like the MC at the Annual Academy Awards Presentations.

“Eugene Edward Ehrbach,” Brown said, smiling.

“Geraldine Ferguson,” Weinberg said, smiling.

“Ehrbach’s dead,” Brown said, and the smile dropped from Weinberg’s face.

“What?” he shouted. “What the hell kind of...?”

“He was killed Wednesday night. The cops found...”

“Dead?” Weinberg shouted. “Dead?”

“Dead,” Brown said. “But the cops found...”

“Is this a double cross? Is that what this is? Some kind of a double cross?”

“You’ve got to learn to calm down,” Brown said.

“I’ll calm down! I’ll break your head in a million pieces, that’s what I’ll do.”

“He was carrying a piece of the picture,” Brown said softly.

“What? Who?”

“Ehrbach.”

“A piece of our picture?”

“That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you say so? Where is it?”

“The cops have it.”

“The cops! Jesus Christ, Stokes...”

“Cops can be bought,” Brown said, “same as anybody else. Ehrbach’s dead and anything they found on him is probably in a brown paper bag someplace being watched by a police clerk. All we got to do is find out where, and then cross a few palms.”

“I don’t like negotiating with fuzz,” Weinberg said.

“Who does? But to survive in this city, you got to deal with them every now and then.”

“Biggest fuckin’ thieves in the world,” Weinberg said.

“Look,” Brown said, “if even a felony can be squared for a couple of bills, we should be able to lay our hands on Ehrbach’s piece for maybe fifty, sixty bucks. All we got to do is find out where it is.”

“How do we do that? Call the cops and ask?”

“Maybe. I got to think about it a little. Now what about this Geraldine what’s-her-name?”