Ed McBain - Ax

He shouldn’t have stolen the wood business from me.

On his way home that night, Steve Carella stopped into the bookstore called The Bookends in Riverhead. It was close to 7:00, and they were getting ready to close the shop, but he found Allie the Shark Spedino sitting behind his cash register and watching the few remaining customers in the store.

“Uh-oh,” Spedino said. “Trouble.”

“No trouble,” Carella answered.

“Then what brings the law here?” Spedino asked.

“Three things.”

“Like?”

“Like one, we found the killer. You can stop worrying.”

“Who was worrying?” Spedino said. “I don’t know what you thought, but I knew I didn’t do it.”

“Number two, no more crap games in our precinct, Spedino.”

“What crap games? I haven’t been to a crap game in—”

“Spedino, don’t snow me. We know you were there. I’m telling you no more crap games or I go straight to your wife. Okay?”

“Okay, okay.” Spedino shook his head. “Boy.”

“And number three, I’d like to buy a rhyming dictionary.”

“A what?”

“A rhyming dictionary,” Carella said.

“What for?”

“I promised somebody I’d find a rhyme.”

“Okay,” Spedino said, and he shook his head again. “Boy.”

Carella left the shop with the dictionary under his arm. Night had come upon the city suddenly, and the streets were dark and bitter cold. He walked to where he had parked his car, and then he sniffed deeply of the brittle air and opened the car door and slid onto the seat.

For a moment he sat looking through the windshield at the city, locked in upon itself, the barren January streets, the flickering neon, the black sky behind the silent buildings. For a moment— only for a moment—the city overwhelmed him and he sat in almost stunned silence and thought of the poor goddamn janitor in a slum building who’d killed another man for what amounted to a few dollars a week.

He hunched his shoulders against the cold. He started the engine and turned on the heater, and slowly edged the car out into traffic.