Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

“Starving.”

“Let me take in the wine.” she said, and went to the window. “Do you realize that when my grandparents first came here, they didn’t have a refrigerator, either?”

“Ice boxes,” Reardon said, nodding. “My grandmother had an ice box.”

“I almost bought one,” Sandy said. “But who’d deliver ice up to the third floor? Anyway, are there still ice men in this city?”

“I guess, yeah, but... well, I don’t know, actually.”

“It’s nice and cold,” she said, carrying the wine bottle to the passthrough and handing it to him. “If you want to put this on the table, too,” she said, indicating the salad bowl, “I think I can manage the cheese and the bread.” She picked up her tray, carried it around to the kitchen door, came into the living room, and went to the coffee table, where the Sterno can was flaming blue under the fondue pot.

“Good,” she said. “Nice fire.” She looked at him, and smiled suddenly. “This is fun, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

And meant it.

He thought about her all the way to Washington.

Wondered if he shouldn’t have tried hitting on her last night. Twice-divorced woman living alone — really alone — in a candlelit apartment, sipping wine, dipping bread in a cheese fondue, maybe she’d expected him to hit on her. The trouble was... well, she wasn’t Kathy, that was the trouble. Nice-enough-looking woman, expressive brown eyes and hair the color of her name, generous mouth, good figure — but not Kathy. None of them were Kathy.

A month after the separation, he’d struck up a conversation with a hooker Mazzi had brought in. Young Chinese girl. Mazzi was a hairbag who should have become a minister instead of a cop. Reardon hated whenever the schedule broke so that Mazzi was in the squadroom with him. Always spouting Moral Majority crap. Some majority, the Moral Majority. Majority of the lip was all. But there was Pope Mazzi the Third, as they called him, on his one-man crusade against immorality. Reardon suspected he liked arresting hookers, loved the short dresses tight across the ass and cut to show plenty of leg and breast, loved the heavy makeup and the dirty talk. He once suggested to Mazzi that he ask for a transfer to Vice, all these hooker busts he was making. Mazzi was shocked. Vice? Vice? He actually crossed himself. Twice for good measure.

The Chinese hooker was twenty-three, twenty-four, something in there. Mazzi had caught her soliciting two blocks from Headquarters, she had to be new at it. Or else dumb. This was still the summer, August, the latter part of August, she was wearing what she might have been wearing in Hong Kong or on Taiwan, red silk dress slit all the way to the thigh on her right leg, high-heeled red satin shoes, a stunner. While the Pope was typing up his report, Reardon started talking to her. He suspected she was an illegal alien, and he guessed she’d be in more trouble with Immigration than with the criminal court here, where hookers usually got off with a fine and a warning to keep it off the streets.

Not illegal at all, the way it turned out. Showed him her birth certificate, born right here on Bayard Street. Carried it with her because that was the first thing everybody thought, illegal Chink, ship her back to Shanghai or wherever. Not dumb, either. And not new in the life. She’d been hooking for three years, she told him. The money was good, certainly better than slinging moo goo gai pan in one of the restaurants down here. Said she’d been cruising near Police Plaza because she’d had good luck with cops lately. Cops understood hookers, she said. In a sense, cops understood all offenders better than they did straight civilians, wasn’t that so? A symbiosis, she said. Reardon didn’t know what the word meant. Also, cops were good tippers. Cops knew how hard you had to work to make a buck in this fuckin’ city. Did Reardon know how many cops ended up marrying hookers? He told her he didn’t know. He also told her she’d picked the wrong cop — “Hey, don’t I know it already?” — when she asked Mazzi if he wanted to have a good time. Mazzi thought a good time was playing bingo in church on his night off. Mazzi thought a good time was watching the Disney channel on his cable TV. Mazzi was the Pope of Chinatown — “Do you know the Pope story?” Reardon asked her. He felt comfortable with this girl, he didn’t know why. Figured he could risk telling her a dirty joke, even though Mazzi was sitting almost within earshot, his fingers flying over the typewriter keys. Separated for a month that August, hardly able to say two words in a row to any woman, and here he was talking to a hooker and actually enjoying himself.

“The Pope decides to take a walk outside the Vatican,” he said, lowering his voice because he didn’t want Mazzi to get up on the pulpit, “and as luck would have it, he runs into a hooker.”

“Uh-oh,” the girl said. Her brown eyes were wide in her face.

“The hooker says. ‘You want a blowjob, a hundred thousand lira,’ and the Pope throws up his hands and says, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know, no, I don’t know.’ and runs back to the Vatican. He sits in his office for a long time, thinking over what just happened, and then he buzzes the mother superior and asks her to come in. ‘Mother Superior,’ he says, ‘what’s a blowjob?’ And the mother superior says, ‘A hundred thousand lira, same as outside.’ ”

The girl burst out laughing.

Mazzi looked up from his typewriter.

“Come see me tomorrow,” she whispered to Reardon, “when all this bullshit is over with. It won’t cost you a hundred thousand lira.”

He went to see her the next day.

All business.

Cool as a cucumber.

First time he’d ever been to bed with anyone but Kathy in the past ten years.

Hardly said a word to him.

Well, yeah.

“Twenty-five,” she said, “ ’cause I like you. I usually charge fifty.”

Great head.

Went out of there feeling worse than when he’d gone in.

So last night, there he was with a good-looking woman who’d been around the park once or twice, and all they’d done was eat the fondue and drink the wine, and then he’d told her he had to catch a plane to Washington the next morning, and she’d said she had to get up early, too, and they’d shaken hands, and she’d said, “Goodnight, Bry, it was fun,” and he’d said. “I enjoyed it, Sandy,” and that was that.

And he’d gone home to his fleabag hotel, and lain awake half the night thinking of Kathy.

Plane rides are no fucking good, he thought. They make you wonder about too many things.

The Café de la Daine was in Georgetown, on Wisconsin Avenue near Dumbarton Street. Reardon wasn’t too familiar with Washington — he’d been here only once before, to give testimony in a Senate hearing — but he guessed this was one of the better parts of town. The restaurant at five to eleven that Saturday morning was alive with busboys setting the tables for lunch. One of them came over the moment Reardon walked through the front door.

Reardon showed him his potsie and his ID card. “Detective Reardon,” he said, “New York City Police. I’d like to see John D’Annunzio, please.”

“I don’t think he’s in yet,” the busboy said. “Let me check in back.”

He disappeared into what Reardon supposed was the kitchen. Reardon looked around. Plush banquettes, white linen table cloths, polished silver, sparkling crystal. The kind of place he could never afford. The kind of place he maybe wouldn’t ever set foot in even if he could afford it. The kitchen door opened again. A man in his late fifties, hair graying at the temples, brown eyes and shaggy brows, came walking swiftly toward him. He was wearing dark trousers and a white ruffled shirt, an untied bow tie hanging loose on its front. The resemblance between him and Ralph D’Annunzio was unmistakable. They could have been twins.