Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

“Surely you can trust your own sister with a secret,” she said. Right hand still moving. Rhythmic brush strokes. Breasts jiggling.

“Not this one,” he said.

“Tell me, Sarge.” she said, her eyes meeting his in the mirror.

“Can’t.”

“You used to tell me everything,” she said, a pouting look on her face. “Tell me, Sarge.”

He shook his head. “No use even asking, Jess.”

“Meanie,” she said, and smiled again. Putting down the brush, she turned suddenly on the stool, her long legs together, toes pointed, hands on her thighs. “When are you going back to Phoenix?” she asked.

“I’ve got to stay in New York.” he said. “Same as you.”

“For what?”

“The money from Sotheby’s, for one.”

“And your signature?”

“Well...”

“If needed?”

She rose, walked past him to the closet, selected a simple sheath, pulled it over her head, smoothed it over her hips. She knelt to pick up a pair of matching high-heeled shoes. She sat on the edge of the bed, crossed her legs, put on first one shoe, then the other.

“Want to go dancing with me some night this week?” she asked.

“I’m not much good at that disco stuff you do,” he said.

She rose again, walked to where he was standing.

“I’ll teach you,” she said, and kissed him dangerously close to his mouth.

This was the old city.

This was where the Dutch had been. Narrow streets lined with tall buildings, but Reardon could still visualize horse-drawn carts rumbling over these cobblestones. Historic New York. Now the bastion of high finance and the law.

The law offices of Martin Bennett (nee Berman) were in a building on Beaver Street, not far from the Fraunces Tavern. Bennett owned the building, and most of his time was spent supervising leases and collecting rents. Reardon had once done a favor for him, tracking down an errant client by using the Identification Section’s base file at Headquarters, and Bennett was now handling the divorce action gratis. Reardon was willing to take a freebie wherever and however it was offered — unless it was linked to criminal activity. But sometimes he wondered if he wouldn’t be better off with an attorney more skilled in matters matrimonial.

Bennett was a man in his late fifties, perpetually smiling, eternally puffing on one or another huge-bowled pipe with a curving stem. He rather resembled a sharp-nosed Sherlock Holmes, minus the deerstalker hat and the ability to reach conclusions on the basis of sparse information. His brows were thick and shaggy; Reardon suspected he never clipped them, further suspected he thought of them as a sort of trademark, like Michael Jackson’s white glove. His desk was always piled high with papers. Infallibly, he could reach to the bottom of any stack, or the middle, or a spot a third of the way down, and pull from the untidy sheaf the exact document he wanted. A conjuror’s trick. No Sherlock Holmes, but something of a magician in his own right. Sitting behind his barrier of yellowing papers, a cloud of thick smoke floating above his head, he puffed on his pipe and serenely reported on the latest development in the case of Reardon v. Reardon. The clock on the wall behind his desk read 2:10 P.M.

“Why didn’t you tell me this on the phone this morning?” Reardon asked.

“Because I didn’t have it this morning,” Bennett said. “Her lawyer called ten minutes ago.”

“And said they’ve got a court order?”

“Right. Forbidding you to see either Kathy or your daughter.” Bennett puffed on his pipe. “Have you been making a pest of yourself, Bry?”

“A pest?” Reardon said. “She ships my daughter to Jersey, her parents live way the hell over near the Pennsylvania border...”

“The order says you’ve been harassing her,” Bennett said.

“I haven’t. Who signed it?”

“A judge named Santangelo. We’ll have it here in half an hour. I sent a messenger for it.” Bennett paused. He puffed on his pipe again. He looked quizzically at the bowl, and then struck a wooden match and held it to the dottle. Great clouds of smoke surrounded his head, drifted up toward the old tin ceiling in the book-lined room. No, he wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, after all. He was somebody out of Great Expectations. “They found out about your rape case,” he said, puffing, the match still held to the bowl of the pipe, his eyes looking up over the bowl.

“What do you mean?” Reardon said. “Who found out? Found out what?”

“Kathy, her lawyer, who knows? About your roughing up that guy after...”

“What? Who the hell...?”

“It’s a matter of public record,” Bennett said.

“Public record? I testified I never laid a hand on that punk!”

Bennett shrugged and tossed the charred matchstick into an oversized ash tray brimming with pipe cleaners and other matchsticks and the gummy residue of dottles past. “Santangelo apparently read the record and believed what he wanted to believe,” he said. “As far as he’s concerned. you’re a violent man who’s been harassing a woman who wants a divorce. What can I tell you, Bry? He signed the order.”

“So what does that mean?” Reardon asked tightly.

“It means you stay away from them. Period.”

“No way.”

“Bry...”

“No fucking way!”

Reardon did not get to the funeral home on Canal Street until almost three o’clock. The shortest day of the year was still four days away, but because of the overcast it seemed as if darkness had already come. The feeling of gloom persisted inside the chapel, lined with sconces of artificial light pretending to be eternal flames or some damn thing, banks of flowers imitating spring, but neither flames nor flowers able to disguise the fact that this was a chamber of death.

At an Irish wake, you told the bereaved, “I’m sorry for your trouble.”

He was here to tell the D’Annunzio family that he was sorry for their trouble.

The chapel was crowded with family and friends. Ralph D’Annunzio’s body lay in an open coffin at the far end of the room. He had been shot four times, but in the back, and the undertaker’s cosmetic art had not been needed to cover any face wounds. He looked very dead, nonetheless. Whenever anyone at a wake said to Reardon, “He looks so natural,” or “He looks like he’s sleeping,” Reardon silently thought, Bullshit. They looked dead is what they looked. He hesitated in the doorway, searching for Mrs. D’Annunzio or her son. He spotted Mark D’Annunzio talking quietly with a small group of people, and as he started toward him, Mark saw him and came to him instead, his hand extended.

“Mr. Reardon,” he said, sounding surprised. “Thanks for coming by.”

“Are you all right?” Reardon asked, taking his hand.

“Well, you know,” Mark said.

“I brought these with me,” Reardon said, and handed Mark a manila Evidence envelope. “Your father’s personal effects. I thought you might like to have them.”

“Thank you,” Mark said, and took the envelope.

“Mr. Reardon?”

He turned. Marie D’Annunzio, the dead man’s wife, now the dead man’s widow, dressed in black, no makeup on her face, eyes vaguely out of focus, tear stains on her cheeks, hand extended. Reardon took her hand in both his own.

“ Signora, ” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

I’m sorry for your trouble, he thought.

“Thank you,” she said.

Awkwardly, he held her hand between his own.

“He brought Papa’s things,” Mark said.

“Thank you,” she said again. Her eyes met Reardon’s. “Have you learned anything yet?” she asked.