Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

Rothstein broke out in a cold sweat.

He went immediately to the wall phone and dialed the Park Lane hotel.

In the Plymouth sedan parked outside the apartment building on Sutton Place, Ruiz asked, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” Reardon said.

“Does he live here, or is he visiting somebody?”

“Could be either one.”

Ruiz looked at his watch.

“I’m getting hungry,” he said.

Reardon looked at his watch.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Want to check with the doorman, see he’s got a Phelps here?”

“He might call upstairs, blow the tail.”

“Maybe we oughta go upstairs,” Ruiz said.

“Without a warrant?”

“What do we want with this guy. anyway?” Ruiz said.

“I’m not sure.”

“So we just sit here?”

“See where he’s going next,” Reardon said.

“Where do you expect him to go?”

“I don’t know,” Reardon said.

“Your Honor,” Ruiz said, “I beg your pardon, but I never been on a dumb fuckin’ stakeout like this in my life. You don’t know what the fuck you want with the man, you don’t know why we’re sitting here...”

“He ran in one hell of a hurry, Alex. I tell him his partner’s lying, and the next thing you know he’s on his bicycle. Don’t you think that’s interesting, Alex?”

“Yeah, very interesting,” Ruiz said drily.

They kept watching the front of the building.

Ruiz looked at his watch again.

“I know a great Italian joint near here,” he said.

Reardon said nothing.

People walked past the car.

A lady in a mink coat came out of the building and looked up at the sky.

The doorman looked at his watch.

Ruiz looked at his watch.

“You looking forward to Christmas?” he asked Reardon.

“No,” Reardon said.

“Me, neither,” Ruiz said. “I hate Christmas.”

A kid went by on roller skates.

The doorman took off the glove on his right hand and began picking his nose.

“Pick me a winner,” Ruiz said.

“Hey!” Reardon said, and sat bolt upright.

Ruiz followed his glance.

“Well, hello,” he said.

A brown Mercedes-Benz sedan was pulling up in front of the building.

The door of the Mercedes opened. Three dark-skinned men stepped out of the car and began moving swiftly toward the entrance door. Reardon threw open the door on the curb side of the Plymouth, his gun in his hand. “Police!” he shouted. “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Ruiz came around the other side of the car in that instant, running in a low crouch, gun drawn.

The three men stopped dead on the sidewalk, not four feet from where the doorman was holding open the door for them. One look was enough to tell Ruiz they weren’t Latinos. He didn’t know what they were, but you could cross off Puerto Rican, Colombian, Cuban, Mexican, whatever. Reardon didn’t know what they were, either. But Sadie had labeled them Puerto Ricans, and he was willing to go along with her appraisal, especially since two of them had little flamenco-dancer mustaches. Actually, he didn’t care what they were. They had arrived in a brown Mercedes-Benz. They had gotten out of the Benz and had started walking toward a building Joseph Phelps had entered not forty minutes ago. Joseph Phelps. Whose firm had sold silver to a man named Peter Dodge. Who’d been killed by three men who’d been seen in a brown Mercedes-Benz. Three men who were here now. That was all that mattered. They were here. Except—

They were no longer here.

In the three seconds it took for all those scrambled thoughts to rocket through Reardon’s head, the three men were gone. Zip, zap, easy come, easy go, now you see ’em, now you don’t.

The two guys with the mustaches had taken a quick look at Reardon’s gun and a quicker look at Ruiz’s and split for the Fifty-fifth Street corner of Sutton Place. The cleanshaven guy hadn’t looked at anything. He’d ducked his head like a bull charging a red flag and began running uptown toward the Queensboro Bridge, arms and legs pumping.

Reardon took off after him.

Ruiz took off after the ones with the mustaches.

This was not a good day for chasing suspects.

Actually, not very many days were good days for chasing suspects because detectives — except in movies — were normally not in very good physical shape, whereas suspects were guys who’d maybe just got out of prison where they’d been lifting weights when they weren’t buggering cellmates. Ruiz, being a little younger than Reardon, was in better condition, but First Avenue was packed virtually curb to curb with Christmas shoppers and the two guys with the mustaches had a sizable lead on him. It suddenly occurred to Ruiz that the two guys might be Arabs. This was a brilliant deduction, considering the fact that he was pounding along the pavement and trying to keep sight of them, and deductions do not come too easily in the midst of a movie chase. But the guy on the plane had been an Arab, right? It seemed to make sense.

So he concentrated on not losing them.

On East Fifty-ninth Street, Reardon was concentrating on the same thing, but he was considerably more breathless than Ruiz. Reardon didn’t like chasing people. Cop movies were a pain in the ass because they made your average citizen think cops went around chasing people in alleyways and over fences and in subway tunnels and Christ knew where, when what a cop liked to do instead was have a beer and watch some television. Times like this, Reardon wished he could quit smoking. Times like this, Reardon wished he was nineteen again. God, how he could run when he was nineteen! That guy up ahead there, running now in the shadow of the bridge, had to be in his early twenties. Puffing, Reardon pounded along behind him.

On First Avenue, Ruiz got stopped by a traffic light. Or rather, he got stopped by the goddamn crowd standing on the corner waiting for the light to change. The crowd and a Santa Claus.

“Something for the needy, sir?” Santa said.

“Fuck off, Santa!” Ruiz said, and started shoving his way through the crowd. “Police officer!” he shouted. “Move it, move it!”

A truck came around the corner.

Ruiz swore he would never buy Budweiser beer again.

The truck moved.

Across the street, the two Arabs were halfway up the block.

“Shit!” Ruiz said, and sprinted after them.

It’s now or never, Reardon thought. Close on him now, tackle him or shoot him, but take him out either way. ’Cause, man, he is running your ass off, and he’s gonna get away if you don’t make your move.

He made his move.

He came within an ace of throwing up, running as hard as he was, came that close to it, but didn’t. He couldn’t fire because there were pedestrians on the sidewalk, parting like the Red Sea as he came galloping up with the pistol in his hand, the little cleanshaven, dark-skinned man turning the corner, make your move, he’s gonna disappear, make your fuckin’ move, and he turned the corner and hurled himself into the air like a tackle for the Jets and whammo, he hit the little fucker in the middle of the back, knocking him flat to the sidewalk, throwing the gun on him as the man rolled over, starting to rise, arms stiff behind him to shove himself off the sidewalk, legs already braced to run again.

“No, don’t,” Reardon said breathlessly.

The man looked at the gun.

“Really,” Reardon said.

The man did not run.

On First Avenue, the Arabs were tangled in a knot of Hare Krishna kids banging their tambourines and singing “Oh My Lord.” The Arabs tried to push through, flailing out at bald pates and top knots, saffron robes and sandals, but Ruiz was on them now, and he grabbed the closest one by the lapels of his suit and threw him against the brick wall of a building behind him, and then whirled as the other one rushed him. Ruiz was just turning, his gun hand was blind-sided. He drew back his left hand, fingers straight, palm flat, and unleashed a backhanded karate-chop at the Arab’s head.