Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

“What can I do for you?” he said, extending his hand.

“Mr. D’Annunzio?”

“John D’Annunzio, yes.”

They shook hands briefly.

“I want to ask you a few more questions,” Reardon said. “About your brother’s visit.”

“You came all the way from New York for that?”

“I’ve been having difficulty getting you on the phone, Mr. D’Annunzio. Both here and at home.”

“Yeah, well, I took a few days off, went to Vegas,” D’Annunzio said, shrugging. “Anyway, I told you everything I know.”

“You said your brother came here to borrow money from you, is that right?”

D’Annunzio nodded. “Told me somebody was into him for seventy-five hundred bucks. Said he wanted to clear the debt because the interest rates were killing him.”

“How’d you react to that, Mr. D’Annunzio?”

“I told him to get lost.”

“You told your brother...”

“Some brother. I don’t see him for fifteen years, he shows up here and wants seventy-five hundred bucks. I work hard here, ten, twelve hours a day. You think that kind of money grows on trees?”

“Did he tell you who was holding the note?”

“I figured it was the shys, but who cares? Why? Was it them who killed him?”

“I don’t know who killed him.”

“Neither do I. This is what you came all the way here for?”

“I thought he might have mentioned something that...”

“Why? ’Cause I’m his long-lost brother? Bullshit. I mean, what kind of nerve is that, will you tell me? Fifteen years! He didn’t even invite me to his son’s confirmation, Mark, my nephew By rights, I shoulda been godfather, am I right? My only brother? His only son? Ralph shoulda asked me to be godfather Instead, he doesn’t even invite me. Then he comes here and wants seventy-five hundred bucks. I told him to take a walk.”

“How long was he here?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes? Who knows? As long as it took to say Hello, I need seventy-five hundred bucks, goodbye.”

“Just like that, huh? After fifteen years?”

“What’d you want me to do, hold a parade?” He shook his head. “It was raining, I called a taxi for him. This was around eight-thirty last Sunday night. That’s the last I saw of him.”

“When you say you called a taxi...”

“I phoned one of the cab companies, right.”

“Which one?” Reardon asked.

“Who remembers? I’ve got a dozen cards by the phone.”

A call to the local police put Reardon on to the capital’s equivalent of New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. It was called the Hack Office here in Washington, and it was located in room 2077 at 300 Indiana Avenue. But a phone call there netted only a tape recording saying that the office was closed on weekends and holidays. Reardon bought himself ten dollars’ worth of change in a tobacco shop, closeted himself in a phone booth with the telephone directory’s Yellow Pages open to Taxicabs, and began dialing every cab company in the city. Allied and Capitol and D.C. Express — the same question to each dispatcher — Dial and Globe and Mayflower — “Did you make an eight-thirty pickup last Sunday night at the Café de la Dame in Georgetown?” — Metropolitan and Omega and Potomac and finally, at a place called Regency Cab, he spoke to a dispatcher who seemed to remember a call from Georgetown around that time last Sunday night.

“Hold on a second, willya?” he said.

Reardon waited.

“This woulda been the fourteenth, am I right?” the dispatcher said.

“Last Sunday night, right,” Reardon said. He could hear papers rustling on the other end of the line.

“Today’s... what’s today?”

“The twentieth.”

“So that would’ve been last Sunday, right?” the clerk said.

“Right,” Reardon said patiently. “Last Sunday. The fourteenth.”

“Right,” the dispatcher said. “Pickup at the Café de la Daine, right?”

“Right.”

“To National Airport, right?”

“That’s what I want to know,” Reardon said.

“Right,” the dispatcher said. “So let me see here. It musta been raining last Sunday, we got a lot of calls here. Was it raining last Sunday?”

“Yes,” Reardon said.

“Which is why we got so many calls.” the clerk said. “Sunday, Sunday,” he said, riffling through the records, “Sunday, the fourteenth, right? Here we are.” He ran his finger down the page. “De la Daine, Sunday, the fourteenth. Here it is, right. De la Daine to National. Eight-thirty P.M. pickup. Two passengers.”

“Do you have the passengers’ names?” Reardon asked.

“Do they list passengers’ names in New York?” the dispatcher said.

“No, but...”

“Not here, neither,” the clerk said. “All I got is a pickup at the restaurant, a deposit at National. That’s what the man on the phone gave us.”

“Who was driving the cab?” Reardon asked.

He found the driver at a little past noon in the company garage on H and Third. He was eating a sandwich and sipping a Diet Pepsi. He told Reardon he always brought a sandwich from home, ate it here in the garage before he started his tour. He told Reardon he worked from one in the afternoon till ten at night. He didn’t like to work past ten because that was when the monkeys came out. The monkeys liked to hold up cab drivers here in D.C. The cabbie had a wife and three kids, and he didn’t want no monkey hitting him on the head with a lead pipe.

“Do you remember this particular call?” Reardon asked. “The Café de la Daine?”

“I get a lot of calls there,” the cabbie said. “Nice restaurant, though I never been in it.”

“Last Sunday night, around eight-thirty.”

“It was raining last Sunday,” the cabbie said.

“That’s right.”

“I’d have to look at my manifest,” the cabbie said. “Under Title 15, we gotta keep a manifest shows all our pickups and deposits.”

“Do you still have the one for last Sunday?”

“Oh, sure. What I do, I usually throw them away at the end of each month. I figure anybody’s gonna make a complaint, by then they’da made it. So let me take a look, huh?”

He looked at the manifest. Reardon watched his finger running down the list of calls.

“Yeah, here it is. Café de la Daine, eight-thirty pickup. Yeah, I remember it now,” he said, nodding. “But only because of the Arab.”

“What Arab?” Reardon asked at once.

“Guy with a beard and this long white sheet, you know, and this thing on his head — what do you call those things they wear on their heads, the Arabs?”

“A turban?”

“Yeah, a turban.”

“What about him?”

“He was one of the two guys I picked up at the restaurant.”

“And you drove both of them to National Airport?”

“Straight to National. It’s a ten-minute drive.”

“What airline?”

“Eastern.”

“Thanks.” Reardon said, and went immediately to the pay phone on the garage wall. He knew the number of the Café de la Daine by heart; he’d dialed it often enough from New York. He recognized D’Annunzio’s voice at once.

“Café de la Daine, good afternoon.”

“Mr. D’Annunzio?” he said.

“Who’s this, please?”

“Detective Reardon.”

“Yes, Mr. Reardon?”

“I’m sorry to bother you again, but I wonder if you can tell me...”

“Mr. Reardon, we have a very busy lunch hour here. Can you...?”

“Would you remember if there was an Arab in the restaurant last Sunday night?”

“A what?”

“An Arab. Man dressed in Arab garb, white robe, white turban. He would have taken the same cab your brother did.”

“Oh, yes,” D’Annunzio said. “He was here for dinner.”