Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir

He loved Bird, and he hightailed it to K.C. full of hope, thinking he could play, thinking what he’d learned in the basement of the Kingdom Hall-

Puckett’s shot took off the back of Maxie’s head.

Wick went to her knees, the red mist finding her easy, and Minthorn charged out of the safe to catch her, failing when he bumped the cart.

Maxie collapsed to the marble floor like somebody cut his strings.

Minthorn took Wick in his arms. “Muriel?”

She told him she was okay, and the color rushed back to her face.

Puckett holstered his gun and pushed back the swinging door.

Maxie’s blood was spreading fast.

Minthorn said, “Muriel, let’s get the girls into my office.” Looking at the ex-cop, “Frank, don’t trip the alarm. Just keep the front door locked and wait for them outside. I’ll make the call.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Minthorn,” he said as he turned, started toward the piano bench, the revolving door on Eighth, steam still rising from his coffee container.

Minthorn shepherded Wick and the quaking tellers, and then they were all inside, grateful they no longer had to see Maxie, the nasty bastard, with the side of his skull blown off, his blue, blue eyes rolled up into his head.

Minthorn pulled the blinds all around his office, cutting the light until he reached the desk lamp.

On cue, Maria took Maxie’s empty duffel bag from her drawer and went to the open vault, as Minthorn had agreed.

Minthorn, spent and on his side last night at the Hotel Martinique, and Maria, naked beneath his shirt on the chaise, telling him about Cuba. After a stopover in Miami, she said, they’d lounge on golden beaches, rum concoctions in their hands, and there wasn’t a banker on the entire island who would fail to believe he’d won the $202,000 at the casinos.

She stretched out her long legs, giving him a peek at the dark patch under the shirt front, and Minthorn quivered at the thought of her on white sheets after a day in the sun.

Referencing Maxie, she said, “He won’t know what to do when he has to face a man like you, Morris.”

There was no counting how many ways a line like that would work on a dope like Minthorn.

The 9:18 to Baltimore lurched forward, jostling the last of the passengers to board. Mitzi turned one last time to the rear. Maxie’s valise sat next to her atop the empty seat on the aisle.

She’s not coming, Mitzi thought, as she wrapped her kerchief around her finger, unwrapped it, all but tied it in knots. I’m sent off, again, only this time it’s to Baltimore with two dollars and change in my purse.

Ain’t it always the way?

She started thinking she’d get off in Newark, grab a couple of bucks on a refund, figuring they had a subway or some kind of ferry would take her back to Hell’s Kitchen, knowing Maxie was paid up until New Year’s.

As the clattering train began to find its pace, she thought, maybe there’s a guy in Baltimore. There’s got to be. A real nice guy, and she’s new in town, and he can see she’s had it rough. He’s got a job, something regular, and he’s kind. Buys her a drink, then the blue-plate special, a refill on the coffee, and everybody in the diner says he’s kind, a gentleman-

“Excuse me, miss. I can have this seat?”

Maria smiled, looking down.

She seemed awfully composed, considering.

“I can put your valise with mine,” she said.

Brand new, brown leather, and without a single scratch.

Mitzi figured the money was locked inside.

“Okay,” Mitzi said, and she watched Maria allow the porter to hoist the two pieces, and her coat, into the overhead compartment.

“Your coat now, miss?” asked the colored porter, sharp in a black bow tie and vest.

“No,” Mitzi said, as Maria nestled next to her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll keep it.”

They met sunlight in Jersey, and Mitzi leaned over, whispered, “Did you hurt him?”

Maria looked at the red trim on the seat in front of them. “No, chica , I did not.”

“The money…”

Outside, miles of tracks on all sides, maybe twenty ways to come and go.

Maria tapped Mitzi’s hand. She’d booked a sleeper for the overnight to Birmingham, and they’d count the dough on the bed, if the girl insisted.

Maria figured it was $200,000, seeing that she left the coins.

Minthorn thought she was waiting at the Hotel Martinique. He said he’d arrive around noon, passport in his pocket.

She told him she had a brother in Camagüey.

Her turn to whisper, Maria said, “The next tunnel I’m going to kiss you, Margarita. I’m going to kiss you until you no can breathe.”

Mitzi blushed.

“There is no one between us now, baby,” Maria added. “Now you are mine alone.”

They rode in silence for a stretch, pulling into Newark, pulling out. “Trenton next,” bellowed the roly-poly man.

Factories on either side, most of the way. Mitzi wondering if they had an ocean in Baltimore. Be nice to swim in an ocean.

She didn’t know what to call the feeling inside. No, but it was like it was all the other times at the start. She wondered if it could be different in the long run.

“Maria? Maria, will you be nasty?”

“ Que ? ”

“I mean, are you ever nasty?”

Maria looked at her with her black, black eyes.

“I told you, Margarita: Don’t think and don’t worry,” she said softly. “Leave everything to me.”

Mitzi studied her, trying to figure out how she could ignore the passing scenery, puffy smoke billowing from towering chimneys, a silver airplane growing bigger. Christmas lights, and little backyards with snowmen, coal buttons, carrots, corncob pipes.

Garment District

Sergeant Thomas Cippolo, desk sergeant at Midtown South, peers over his half-moon reading glasses at Detective Morrie Goldstein and his handcuffed prisoner as they enter the precinct.

“What’s up wit’ Charlie Chang?” he asks.

“Chang?”

“Yeah.” Cippolo starts his various chins in motion with a vigorous shake of his head. “Charlie Chang. The dude made all those movies with Number One Son.”

“That’s Chan, ya moron,” Goldstein replies without relaxing his grip on the arm of his prisoner. “Charlie Chan.” Goldstein is a massive man, well over six feet tall with broad sloping shoulders that challenge the seams of an off-the-rack suit from the Big & Tall shop at Macy’s. “Anyway, he’s not Chinese. He’s a Nip. Hoshi Taiku.”

“A Nip?”

“Yeah, like Nipponese. From Japan.” Goldstein notes Cippolo’s blank stare, and sighs in disgust. “The Japanese people don’t call their country Japan. They call it Nippon. Ain’t that right, Hoshi?”

Taiku does not speak. Though he’s been in the United States for three days and has only the vaguest notion of the American criminal justice system, he’s heard about Abner Louima and wouldn’t be surprised if the giant policeman strung him up by his toes.

Goldstein steers Taiku around Cippolo’s desk and up a flight of stairs to a large room jammed with desks set back-to-back. A few of the desks are occupied by detectives who look up from their paperwork to watch Goldstein direct his prisoner to a small interview room. They do not speak. The windowless interview room contains a table and two metal chairs, one of which is bolted to the floor. The table and chairs are gray, the floor tiles brown, the walls a dull institutional yellow. All are glazed with decades of accumulated grime, even the small one-way mirror in the wall opposite the hump seat.

“That feel better?” Goldstein removes Taiku’s handcuffs, then flips them onto the table where they settle with an echoing clang. “Okay, that’s your chair.” He points to the bolted-down chair. “Take a seat.”