Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

“Thank you,” Reardon said.

D’Annunzio went to the stove, where a coffee pot sat on a low gas flame. He took two cups from the cabinet, poured into each of them, and carried them to the table. “You take milk, sugar?” he asked.

“Black,” Reardon said.

D’Annunzio sat opposite him. Both men sipped coffee as the dust motes climbed tirelessly in the silent house. Somewhere a clock ticked emptily.

“What I wanted to know,” D’Annunzio said, “is how much longer they’ll be. I mean... we have to make funeral arrangements...”

“I understand,” Reardon said.

“I know it’s the law, I know they have to do the autopsy, but you don’t realize how upsetting this has been to my mother.”

“I called the Medical Examiner’s office before I came up here,” Reardon said, nodding. “They’ll be ready with their report sometime today. You can feel free to make whatever arrangements you have to, Mr. D’Annunzio. I’ll see that the bod... that your father... have you chosen a funeral home?”

D’Annunzio nodded bleakly. “Riverside,” he said. “On Canal Street.”

“I’ll have them contact the morgue. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

“The relatives, you know, they keep phoning, wanting to know when it’ll be.”

“Tell them it’ll be tomorrow.”

“So many relatives.” D’Annunzio said. “And friends. He had a lot of friends, my father. When something like this happens...”

He let the sentence trail.

Reardon listened to the ticking clock.

“How about enemies?” he said. “I know this was a robbery, on the face of it we’ve got a robbery here, but sometimes things aren’t exactly what they seem. And I keep thinking of what you said. That one of them asked you your name.”

“My father’s name, too.”

“They wanted his name, too?”

“Yes. Then they told him to move over near the bar, and while he was going they... they shot him in the back.”

“Would you know if your father ever received any threatening letters or phone calls?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Any trouble with the waiters? Or anybody else working for him? Anyone who might have been bearing a grudge?”

“No.”

“Did he owe money to anyone?”

“Paid all his bills on the dime,” D’Annunzio said. “Food and beverage suppliers, garbage collection, linen, all on the dime.”

“Who handled that for him, would you know?” Reardon asked. “Garbage collection and linens.”

“Why? Are you thinking the mob?”

“I’m just trying to touch all the bases.”

“No. I don’t think this was anything like that.” D’Annunzio said. “They used to come eat in the restaurant all the time, ever since we opened. There’s no reason the boys would’ve wanted to hurt my father, believe me.”

“Mr. D’Annunzio, I have to ask this, please forgive me.”

“What is it?”

“Were your mother and father happily married? Would there have been another man, or another woman, anyone who...”

“They’ve been married for almost forty years. My father never looked at another woman from the day he met her.” He shook his head. He lifted his coffee cup, seemed about to drink, and then put it down on the table again. “It doesn’t make sense, none of it. It was a robbery, like you say; on the face of it we had two guys coming in to stick us up. But then why didn’t they take anything? And why did they kill him? I was the one reaching for the gun under the bar, why did they...?”

“You had a gun on the premises?”

“A shotgun, I keep it under the bar. So when I’m reaching for it, the guy just says, ‘No.’ But when my father’s coming over to the bar, they shoot him. The guy tells him to move over there, go there, whatever he said, and my father starts over to the bar, he’s got his back to them, and they gun him down. It just doesn’t make sense, does it?”

No, Reardon thought, it doesn’t make sense at all.

“I’d like to take another look at the restaurant,” he said.

By two o’clock that Tuesday afternoon, it was snowing heavily, and the lights in the ground-floor living room of the Seventy-first Street brown-stone were on in defense against the gloom. The woman pacing the Bokharra was wearing high-heeled sandals and ruby-red, satin lounging pajamas that echoed the reds in the rug. The woman was angry. Her brown eyes flashed, and she tossed her long black hair with each stride she took. She was extraordinarily beautiful, but her fury contorted her face and her voice now was high and strident.

“I don’t give a damn what you want!” she shouted.

Olivia was not surprised by her half-sister’s tantrum. Although Jessica was twenty-four years old, she frequently behaved like a thirteen-year-old. Sitting calmly in a wingback chair near the fireplace, the fire crackling and spitting, Olivia watched her and said nothing.

“The suite is booked for the seventeenth!” Jessica said. “That’s tomorrow, and that’s when I’m leaving!”

“Postpone it,” Olivia said.

“No, I won’t postpone it!” Jessica shouted. “My plane leaves Kennedy at eight in the morning, I’ll be in Zurich late tomorrow night, and on the slopes in St. Moritz by Thursday — the same as I am every year!”

“Not this year, darling,” Olivia said.

“Yes, this year, and next year, and the year after that, and whenever I want to!” Jessica said, and stopped dead before Olivia’s chair, her hands on her hips, her lower lip thrust out challengingly.

Olivia shook her head.

“How’d you ever gel to be such a spoiled brat?” she said.

“It runs in the blood.” Jessica said.

“On your mother’s side, maybe.”

“Is it true that your mother was a barroom hooker?” Jessica said.

“Don’t press your luck, Jessie,” Olivia said. “We may share the same father...”

“Call him, go ahead, call him,” Jessica said. “Tell him you’re trying to get me to postpone my ski trip. See what he has to say about it.”

“I’m here on his instructions,” Olivia said.

“He wants me to postpone?”

“Or cancel entirely, you can take your choice.”

“I don’t believe it,” Jessica said. “You’re lying.”

“I’d allow you to call him. but he may be napping. You’ll have to take my word for it.”

“Your word!” Jessica said, rolling her eyes.

“Yes. Which, incidentally, has never...”

“I had your word that this apartment was mine. ”

“It is yours.”

“A lovely townhouse in the Seventies,” Jessica said, trying to mimic Olivia’s deeper voice. “Three whole floors of your own, here’s the key, Jessica. Just stay out of our hair in Phoenix.”

“I never said that,” Olivia said calmly.

“It’s what you meant,” Jessica said. “And I don’t consider something mine if you and Sarge have keys to it, and can walk in whenever you like, no matter who’s here with me. That’s not mine. Olivia, that’s only another holding in the fucking Kidd empire!”

“I stay at a hotel whenever I’m in New York,” Olivia said. “You know that. And I’ve never...”

“You walked in this afternoon, didn’t you?”

“I knocked first. Your privacy is sacrosanct, Jessie, you needn’t worry. You can entertain...”

“Only my friends call me Jessie.”

“Jessica then, fine. You can use this place to entertain as many of your adolescent disco pals as you care to, Jessica, provided you don’t frighten the horses. The Captain’s tired of bailing you out of trouble.”