Ed McBain - Eighty Million Eyes

“By the time you call it in, the man may kill someone,” Vollner suggested.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Fairchild said hesitantly, thinking that if he didn’t call this in and ask for help, the person who got killed might very well be himself. He paused outside the door to Vollner’s office. “In there, huh?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Well, okay, let’s go.”

They entered the office. Vollner walked directly to the man, who had taken his seat on the bench again, and said, “Here he is, officer.”

Fairchild pulled back his shoulders. He walked to the bench. “All right, what’s the trouble here?” he asked.

“No trouble, officer.”

“This man tells me you won’t leave his office.”

“That’s right. I came here to see a girl.”

“Oh,” Fairchild said, ready to leave at once now that he knew this was only a case of romance. “If that’s all…”

“What girl?” Vollner said.

“Cindy.”

“Get Cindy out here,” Vollner said to his receptionist, and she rose immediately and hurried down the corridor. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a friend of Cindy’s?”

“You didn’t ask me,” the man said.

“Listen, if this is just a private matter—”

“No, wait a minute,” Vollner said, putting his hand on Fairchild’s arm. “Cindy’ll be out here in a minute.”

“That’s good,” the man said. “Cindy’s the one I want to see.”

“Who are you?” Vollner asked.

“Well, who are you ?”

“I’m Miles Vollner. Look, young man—”

“Nice meeting you, Mr. Vollner,” the man said, and smiled again.

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t think I’d like to tell you that.”

“Officer, ask him what his name is.”

“What’s your name, mister?” Fairchild said, and at that moment the receptionist came back, followed by a tall blonde girl wearing a blue dress and high-heeled pumps. She stopped just alongside the receptionist’s desk and said, “Did you want me, Mr. Vollner?”

“Yes, Cindy. There’s a friend of yours here to see you.”

Cindy looked around the reception room. She was a strikingly pretty girl of twenty-two, full-breasted and wide-hipped, her blonde hair cut casually close to her head, her eyes a cornflower blue that echoed the color of her dress. She studied Fairchild and then the man in gray. Puzzled, she turned again to Vollner.

“A friend of mine ?” she asked.

“This man says he came here to see you.”

“Me?”

“He says he’s a friend of yours.”

Cindy looked at the man once more, and then shrugged. “I don’t know you,” she said.

“No, huh?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Listen, what is this?” Fairchild said.

“You’re going to know me, baby,” the man said.

Cindy looked at him coldly, and said, “I doubt that very much,” and turned and started to walk away. The man came off the bench immediately, catching her by the arm.

“Just a second,” he said.

“Let go of me.”

“Honey, I’m never gonna let go of you.”

“Leave that girl alone,” Fairchild said.

“We don’t need fuzz around here,” the man answered. “Get lost.”

Fairchild took a step toward him, raising his club. The man whirled suddenly, planting his left fist in Fair child’s stomach. As Fairchild doubled over, the man unleashed a vicious uppercut that caught him on the point of his jaw and sent him staggering back toward the wall. Groggily, Fairchild reached for his gun. The man kicked him in the groin, and he fell to the floor groaning. The man kicked him again, twice in the head, and then repeatedly in the chest. The receptionist was screaming now. Cindy was running down the corridor, shouting for help. Vollner stood with his fists clenched, waiting for the man to turn and attack him next.

Instead, the man only smiled and said, “Tell Cindy I’ll be seeing her,” and walked out of the office.

Vollner immediately went to the phone. Men and women were coming out of their private offices all up and down the corridor now. The receptionist was still screaming. Quickly, Vollner dialed the police and was connected with 87th Precinct.

Sergeant Murchison took the call and advised Vollner that he’d send a patrolman there immediately and that a detective would stop by either later that day or early tomorrow morning.

Vollner thanked him and hung up. His hand was trembling, and his receptionist was still screaming.

In another part of the 87th Precinct, on a side street off Culver Avenue, in the midst of a slum as rank as a cesspool, there stood an innocuous-looking brick building that had once served as a furniture loft. It was now magnanimously called a television studio. The Stan Gifford Show originated from this building each and every Wednesday night of the year, except during the summer hiatus.

It was a little incongruous to see dozens of ivy-league, narrow-tied advertising and television men trotting through a slum almost every day of the week in an attempt to put together Gifford’s weekly comedy hour. The neighborhood citizens watched the procession of creators with a jaundiced eye; the show had been on the air for three solid years, and they had grown used to seeing these aliens in their midst. There had never been any trouble between the midtown masterminds and the uptown residents, and there probably never would be—a slum has enough troubles without picking on a network. Besides, most of the people in the neighborhood liked the Stan Gifford Show , and would rush indoors the moment it took to the air. If all these nuts were required to put together the show every week, who were they to complain? It was a good show, and it was free.

The good show, and the free one, had been rehearsing since the previous Friday in the loft on North Eleventh, and it was now 3:45 P.M. on Wednesday afternoon, which meant that in exactly four hours and fifteen minutes, a telop would flash in homes across the continent announcing the Stan Gifford Show to follow, and then there would be a station break with commercial, and then the introductory theme music, and then organized bedlam would once again burst forth from approximately twenty million television sets. The network, gratuitously giving itself the edge in selling prime time to potential sponsors, estimated that in each viewing home there were at least two people, which meant that every Wednesday night at 8:00 P.M., eighty million eyes would draw a bead on the smiling countenance of Stan Gifford as he waved from the screen and said, “Back for more, huh?” In the hands of a lesser personality, this opening remark—even when delivered with a smile—might have caused many viewers to switch to another channel or even turn off the set completely. But Stan Gifford was charming, intelligent, and born with an intuitive sense of comedy. He knew what was funny and what was not, and he could even turn a bad joke into a good one simply by acknowledging its failure with a deadpan nod and a slightly contrite look at his adoring fans. He exuded an ease that seemed totally unrehearsed, a calm that could only be natural.

“Where the hell is Art Wetherley?” he shouted frantically at his assistant director.

“Here just a minute ago, Mr. Gifford,” the AD shouted back, and then instantly yelled for quiet on the set. The moment quiet was achieved, he broke the silence by shouting, “Art Wetherley! Front and center, on the double!”

Wetherley, a diminutive gag writer who had been taking a smoke on one of the fire escapes, came into the studio, walked over to Gifford, and said, “What’s up, Stan?”

Gifford was a tall man, with a pronounced widow’s peak—he was actually beginning to bald, but he preferred to think of his receding hairline as a pronounced widow’s peak—penetrating brown eyes, and a generous mouth. When he smiled, his eyes crinkled up from coast to coast, and he looked like a youthful, beardless Santa Claus about to deliver a bundle of goodies to needy waifs. He was not smiling now, and Wetherley had seen the unsmiling Gifford often enough to know that his solemn countenance meant trouble.