Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

“Because it seems reckless, don’t you think? All it takes is one smart guy at the exchange to realize...”

“They’re not doing anything illegal. Joe. They’re just trying to pick up some loose change between now and Christmas, that’s all.”

“Loose change! Forty-two hundred contracts? With a three thousand dollar deposit on each contract? Do you know what that comes to? It comes to an outlay of twelve million, six hundred thousand dollars!”

“That’s right.”

“Five thousand ounces in each contract is twenty-one million ounces, Lowell. If it really goes to forty dollars an ounce, those contracts will be worth eight hundred and forty million dollars. That’s a profit of more than three quarters of a billion! In New York alone.”

“To the Kidds, that’s loose change. The question, Joe, is whether we want to follow their lead. That’s the question.”

“How much would you want to risk, Lowell?”

“Whatever we can raise. I personally would be m favor of hocking everything we’ve got. That’s how sure I am.”

“We could lose it all, you know.”

“I know.”

“All of it,” Phelps said. “Back to Sheepshead Bay.”

“Worse for me,” Rothstein said.

“How so?”

“If you start with nothing, and you go back to nothing, you haven’t lost anything. If you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth, Lowell Rothstein. son of Jacob Rothstein the financier, and you suddenly end up without a penny... that can hurt, my friend, that can really hurt.”

Phelps sipped at his wine.

“Chance of a lifetime here,” he said softly.

“Both come out of it multimillionaires,” Rothstein said. “We have to risk it, you know.”

“I know that.”

“Your glass is empty,” Rothstein said, and signalled to the waiter. The waiter lifted the bottle from the wine cooler. He poured into both men’s glasses.

“Thank you.” Phelps said.

The waiter padded off.

“What’d she mean?” he asked.

“What’d who mean?” Rothstein said.

“Olivia. When she said you’d already seen the purchasing schedule.”

“Did she say that?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Lots on her mind, who knows?” Rothstein said, shrugging. He swallowed a long draught of the wine. “Ahhhh,” he said.

“And who’s Dodge?” Phelps asked.

“I don’t know, who’s Dodge?”

“Someone taking a position, isn’t that what she said?”

“Who can follow- Olivia?” Rothstein said, and shrugged. “Are we going into this or not?”

“I guess so,” Phelps said. “I guess we’ve got to hope they know what they’re doing...”

“Can’t go wrong trusting the Kidds,” Rothstein said.

“God, we could make a fortune!”

“Millions and millions and millions.”

Phelps suddenly giggled.

“I’m going to ask for mine in silver dollars,” he said.

“Be appropriate,” Rothstein said.

“No, I mean so I can make a tremendous pile of them, and jump up and down on the pile, and pick up the coins, and let them trickle down on my head.”

“All those coins, yeah.”

“I love the smell of money. Do you love the smell of money?”

“I love it.”

“But it scares me,” Phelps said.

“No, don’t be scared,” Rothstein said, and raised his glass. “Joseph, my friend,” he said, “Mr. Inside...”

“Lowell, my friend,” Phelps said, raising his glass, “Mr. Outside...”

“Here’s to us. In a week’s time, we’ll either be flat on our asses in the gutter...”

“Or we’ll own the world,” Phelps said.

“We’ll own the world,” Rothstein said, nodding. “Or at least a goodly part of it.”

Solemnly, silently, the men clinked their glasses together.

Wednesday morning, December 17, dawned cold and gray and windy. The old coal-burning furnace in the basement of the Fifth struggled valiantly against the Arctic temperatures, but the police station was cold, and the squadroom — because it was on the second floor and the furnace’s fan wasn’t powerful enough to propel heat very far — was only slightly warmer than the streets outside. Gianelli, sitting at his desk typing, was still wearing his overcoat. Reardon was wearing a sweater under his suit jacket. He had put on long johns before leaving for work this morning. Lieutenant Farmer, hunched now over the report Hoffman had typed on the night of the murder, was in his shirtsleeves. Gianelli wondered if the lieutenant was some kind of polar bear or something.

“Where does it say anything in Chick’s report about them asking the old man what his name was?” Farmer asked.

“It doesn’t,” Hoffman said. He was standing at the water cooler, debating whether he wanted a drink of water or not. It seemed too cold in here to drink water. He was still wearing the mackinaw he’d worn to work this morning.

“I only found out last night,” Reardon said.

“Maybe that’s why they shot him,” Gianelli said, looking up from his typewriter. “Maybe they didn’t like the name Ralph.” Across the small room, Ruiz was talking to an old lady who had come to the precinct to report a disturbance the night before. Like all of the detectives except Farmer, he was dressed for the squadroom tundra, wearing a short car coat with a fake fur collar.

“Why shoot a man who’s doing everything you’re telling him to do?” Reardon said. “He was moving over to the bar. just the way they told him.”

“So what?” Farmer said.

“You say this happened at midnight?” Ruiz asked the old lady.

“Yes. twelve o’clock sharp,” she said. She was wearing a woolen hat pulled down over her ears. She was wearing a black cloth coat. She was wearing leg warmers over her pantyhose, but she didn’t look like a Broadway dancer.

“If you come in to rob a place, why do you shoot a man without robbing anything?” Reardon asked.

“He’s got a point, Loot,” Gianelli said.

“Knocked on the door and said he was your husband, huh?” Ruiz said.

“That’s right,” the old lady said.

“Stop looking for mysteries, Reardon,” Farmer said.

“I’m saying...”

“There are no mysteries in police work. There are only crimes and the people who commit those crimes.”

“Maybe it was your husband,” Ruiz said. “Was your husband home at the time?”

“My husband’s been dead for twenty years,” the lady said.

“Oh,” Ruiz said. “Okay, let’s take down some information, okay?”

“You’ve got two hungry punks here who tried to rip off a restaurant,” Farmer said. “And panicked. And killed the owner. That’s what you’ve got here.”

“If they were so hungry...” Reardon said.

“Run it by the book,” Farmer said. “Ask your questions, check your M O. file, find out which punks just got paroled after doing time for armed robbery. You got a man commits an armed robbery, he’s going to do it again and again ’cause it’s the only line of work he knows.”

The phone on Hoffman’s desk rang. He picked up the receiver.

“Fifth Squad,” he said. “Detective Hoffman.”

“ I wouldn’t have shot a man before I cleaned out the register,” Reardon said. “Not if I went in there to steal.”

“Me, neither,” Gianelli said.

“Uh-huh.” Hoffman said into the phone. “Just a second, okay?”

“Who says thieves have to make sense?” Farmer asked, and tossed the D.D. report onto Reardon’s desk. “Get a copy of this to Homicide,” he said. “And Reardon...”

“Bry? For you,” Hoffman said.

“Find those punks,” Farmer said, and limped into his office.