Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

She shook another cigarette free. Her hands were trembling.

“Look at this,” she said, “look what you’re doing to me. Will you please get out of here?”

He came up behind her as she searched in the bag for her lighter.

“Kathy,” he said, “what’s done is done.”

He gently touched her shoulder.

“The important thing...”

She whirled on him. her eyes blazing. A gun was in her right hand.

“Where’d you get that?” he said.

“Where do you get guns in this city?” she said. “You’re the cop. Bry, you tell me.”

“Put it down,” he said.

“No.” The gun was shaking in her fist. “I carry it in my bag all day long, and I sleep with it under my pillow at night. If any man ever comes near me again...”

“I’m not any man,” he said softly. “I’m me.”

“You’re any man,” she said. “Don’t touch me again, Bry, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

They stood not four feet apart, staring at each other. It could be four thousand miles, he thought.

“So that’s where it’s at,” he said.

He hadn’t thought that’s where it was at. Not until now.

“That’s exactly where it’s at,” she said.

The gun was steady now. It was pointed at his head.

She’ll shoot me, he thought. Jesus, she’ll shoot me.

They kept looking at each other.

He thought. I’m a stranger to her.

“Okay,” he said at last, and started for the door.

“Don’t come back, Bry,” she said.

“I won’t,” he said.

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

He reached for the door knob. He opened the door.

“Kathy,” he said, “good luck, honey.”

He stepped into the hallway.

So softly that she could not possibly have heard him, he said, “Goodbye, honey.”

He was shaving when the telephone rang. In the mirror, he could see his lathered face and the room behind him. Single bed. A scarred dresser. A naked light bulb hanging in the center of the room. A torn shade on the window. Another light bulb over the sink. His face covered with lather, a razor in his hand. He put the razor down on the sink and went to the phone.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hi, it’s Sandy.”

He nodded. “Hello, Sandy,” he said. He had drunk too much last night after leaving Kathy. Far too much. There was a sand turtle in his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot. The Monday morning blahs. Exacerbated by almost a full fifth of bourbon. He did not want to be talking to Sandy Sanderson. He did not want to be talking to anyone. This was his day off. He planned to go to the library and check out the newspaper stories on the unknown Arab who’d been shot at La Guardia and spirited off to Christ knew where. He planned to visit the law offices of Lewis and Dodge. He planned to come back to the hotel and finish off the rest of the bourbon.

The case was getting to be a pain in the ass.

He didn’t know what D’Annunzio had to do with the Arab who’d been shot too many times in the chest and whose body had been stolen from a meat wagon on the way to the morgue. He didn’t know what D’Annunzio’s murder had to do with the murder of his lawyer. Peter Dodge, who’d been stabbed to death all the way up on Central Park West on the same day he’d had lunch at the Luna Mare.

“I had a tough time tracking you down.” Sandy said.

“My day off,” he said.

“Who’s the man at the precinct who kept calling me ‘Your Honor?’ ”

“Must’ve been Alex Ruiz.”

“Wouldn’t give me your home number till I told him you were investigating a burglary for me. I don’t think he believed me, actually.”

“But he gave you the number.”

“He gave it to me. Where’s the Lorimar Hotel?”

“Twenty-sixth and Broadway.”

“Sounds charming.”

“Oh, yes, lovely.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“The reason I’m calling,” she said, and hesitated. “I always seem to be apologizing to you.” Another pause. “I’m sorry about the other night.”

“Well. I would have called before coming over,” he said, “but...”

“I know. No telephone. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

“It was my fault,” he said.

Why the hell was he apologizing to her? She was the one who’d had somebody in the apartment with her. Shit, he thought.

“Here we go again,” she said. “Apologizing to each other. Let’s make a deal, okay? No more sorrys.”

“Sure,” he said.

Another long silence. So what now? he thought. Get off the phone, lady. I got shaving cream all over my face.

“Want to have a drink later?” she asked.

He hesitated. He shrugged. “Sure,” he said.

“Your place or mine?”

“Have you given up on Ringo’s?”

“I got stood up there once,” she said. “My place at six, okay?”

He almost said forget it. Instead, he said, “I’ll bring the wine.”

“Never mind wine, just bring a flashlight,” Sandy said. “See you later.”

There was a click on the line. He looked at the receiver. He shook his head, put the receiver back on the cradle, and then went to the sink.

He looked at himself in the mirror for a long time.

Then he began shaving again.

He did not get to see Phillipa Lewis until almost two o’clock that afternoon. Repeated calls to the law firm of Lewis and Dodge netted only the information that she was out of the office and would not return until alter lunch sometime. He spent his own lunch hour in the Forty-second Street Library, reading through the back issues of last week’s newspapers.

The Times story on the dead Arab told him nothing he didn’t already know. Unidentified man shot at La Guardia Airport, body hijacked from the ambulance on the way to Queens General. A longish story, but buried at the back of last Monday’s newspaper. Both the Post and the News had made bigger deals of the shooting and the subsequent hijacking of the body. MYSTERY ARAB KILLED, the News headline read. ARAB SLAIN, CORPSE STOLEN, blared the Post headline. Now, with both newspapers in front of him, he recalled having seen them last Monday. But the Jurgens trial had started that morning, and he’d been too busy to read either paper. And that night, of course, he’d caught the D’Annunzio murder. In this city, your corpses fell all around you, like cold rain. A cop needed an umbrella, was all. He expected the story would make the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the immediate future. Hot story like this one, he was surprised it wasn’t on the stands already. He often wondered if Time and Newsweek were in secret partnership. Otherwise, how could you explain the same cover stories week after week after week, even when the issue wasn’t a strictly topical one? Sometimes the world got too difficult for Reardon. Sometimes he thought it was all a big fucking conspiracy.

If, for example, Senator Bailey had in fact dined with the unknown Arab on the night of his murder, why hadn’t he come forward to identify him?

Or had there been two Arabs on the nine o’clock shuttle from Washington?

Or three? Or a dozen?

None of them the one who got shot.

But Bailey had asked him, “How on earth did you ever make the connection?”

And then had said, “Between what happened at La Guardia and me.”

They’d been talking about homicide. They’d been talking about the Arab.

So Bailey came up with La Guardia.

And now it turns out an Arab was shot and killed at La Guardia, and his body was still drifting around out there someplace, and Bailey didn’t know anything about anything.