Ed McBain (12 page)

The dealer threw two cards onto the table, and Lun Ching reached for them. I reached at the same time, clamping my fingers onto his wrist.

"I'm not through yet, Lun."

He shook his hand free, and shoved his chair back. "You better get the hell out of here, Mac," he said.

"Matt," I corrected. "I want to know who won here Monday night. You going to tell me?"

"What difference does it make?"

"I want to know."

Lun Ching gestured impatiently with his head. "Tommy won."

I turned to the husky-jowled Chinese. "Did you?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"A few bucks."

"Did Harry lose?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"I don't know. Two, three dollars."

"Who else won?"

"What?"

"You said you'd won a few bucks, Tommy. You also said Harry lost about three bucks. What did the rest of you do?"

Lun Ching stood up. "We broke even. Does that answer you?"

"Maybe," I said. I turned and started across the room. Over my shoulder, I said, "I might come back."

Someone from the table whispered, "Don't hurry."

The fat Chinese looked up when I stopped at the desk behind the wooden railing.

"I don't think I caught your name," I said.

"Wong. Sam Wong."

"Mr. Wong, did Harry leave here alone on Monday night?"

"Yes, he did."

"Did he say where he was going? Did he have to meet anyone?",

"No. He didn't say. I think he go home."

"I see."

Sam Wong looked at me curiously. "Harry no killed Monday night," he said, his voice puzzled. "Harry killed Tuesday night."

"I know," I said. "That's what's bothering me."

None of it fit.

I was banging my head against a stone wall, and I didn't like the feeling. It wasn't like the old days when someone shoved a fat retainer under my nose, held it out like a carrot to a rabbit, challenged me to find a missing husband or squelch a bit of blackmail.

There was no retainer now. There was only the thought of Joey lying dead in that small park, Joey about whom I knew practically nothing. We shared a big thirst, that was all, and we'd done our damnedest to quench it. I thought of the last bottle I'd shared with him. We'd sat on the corner of my flophouse cot a few days back, drinking the fifth of Imperial, forgetting the heated streets outside, forgetting everything but the driving desire to get blind stinking drunk.

Now Joey was dead, and Charlie had suggested a tie-in between that and the death of Harry Tse, a man I didn't know at all. A sensible man would have called it a day. A sensible man would have said, "All right, you stupid bastard, your first idea was wrong. Harry Tse didn't win any money, and that's not why he was killed. There was another reason, and it wasn't a cheating wife because her love is stamped all over her face. So give it up and go rustle a bottle of smoke, give it up and forget it."

I'd stopped being sensible a long time ago.

I'd stopped the night I took Garth's face apart.

I shook my head and bummed a dime from the next guy who passed. That bought me a glass of beer, and that cleared my head a little, and I was ready to play shamus again even though it was too hot to be playing anything.

I started walking through Chinatown, looking for an idea. I passed windows crammed with herbs and roots, crammed with fish and spice and fowl. I passed windows brimming with sandals and kimonos and jade and beads and boxes and figurines and fans. I passed newsstands displaying Chinese periodicals and newspapers. I passed restaurants, upstairs, downstairs, level with the street. I passed all these in a miasma of heat that clung to the narrow streets like a living thing.

And no idea came.

The heat stifled thought. It crawled around the open throat of my shirt, stained my armpits, spread sweat across my back muscles. It was too hot to walk, and too hot to think, and too damned hot to do anything but sidle up to a beer glass beaded with cold drops.

But I had to think, so I forced the heat out of my mind and I tried to remember what Mrs. Tse had told me about her husband, Harry.

Export-import.

I stopped in the nearest candy store, waded through two dozen Tses in the phone book, and finally located his business address, right in the center of Chinatown where I'd hoped it would be. I sighed against the heat, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and headed for his office.

It was upstairs. A small unimportant office with an important-looking title on the door:
HARRY TSE: EXPORTS-IMPORTS
. I tried the knob, half expecting the office to be closed. The door opened, and I found myself in a small reception room. A desk hugged the wall, and a Chinese girl hugged the desk. She stopped typing when I came in, her sloe eyes frankly appraising me.

She was dressed like any girl you'd see in the subway. She was small, the way most Chinese women are, but there was nothing slight or delicate about her. She wore no makeup other than a splash of lipstick across her full mouth.

"My name is Matt Cordell," I said.

"Yes?" she said. "How may I help you, sir?"

"Mrs. Tse sent me," I lied. "What do you know about her husband?"

"You're investigating his murder?"

"More or less," I said.

She looked at me dubiously and then she shrugged, and her eyes met mine frankly and levelly.

"I don't know anything about his murder," she said.

"What about his habits?"

"What about them?"

"Do you know where he was going on the night he was killed?"

"Yes. One of his clients lives on West Seventy-second Street. I think he was going there. In fact, I'm sure he was."

"How do you know that?"

"He told me he was walking up to Fourteenth to catch the uptown subway there. He never reached it. He was stabbed outside Cooper Union."

"Where Joey was killed," I said. "Who? Oh yes, Joey. Charlie Loo's friend."

"You knew Joey?"

"No, I didn't know Joey," she said. "But Charlie told me what he said."

"What do you mean?"

"About seeing somebody."

"Is
that
what Joey said?"

"Well, not exactly."

"What
did
he say, exactly?"

"He said, 'So
that's
who it was.'"

"And that's what Charlie told you, is that it?"

"Yes. So I figured there might be some connection. To Mr. Tse getting stabbed."

"I see."

"So I passed it on to Mrs. Tse. She said she was going to look up Charlie and get him to point out this Joey person to her. She said she wanted to ask him what he'd seen."

"When was this? That you told Mrs. Tse?"

"Yesterday, I think. I don't really remember. There's been so damned much confusion around here..."

She shook her head.

"You've been very helpful," I said.

"Yeah," she said, and went back to her typing.

I'd been walking for two blocks before I realized I was being followed. I quickened my pace, hurried down narrow twisting streets, ducked into an alley, and sprinted for the other end. My followers knew Chinatown better than I did. Lun Ching and his pal Tommy were waiting for me at the other end of the alley.

"You son of a bitch," Lun shouted.

The sap in his hand went up over his head and came down on the side of my neck, knocking me flat against one wall of the alley. I grabbed at the bricks for support, but the sap went up and down again, and this time it peeled back a half inch of flesh from my cheek.

"You're going to the morgue, you bastard," Lun said. He brought back the sap again, swung it at my head. I fell to my knees and Tommy kicked me quickly and expertly. Lun bent over me, the sap a sledgehammer now, up and down, hitting me everywhere, on my shoulders, my face, my upraised hands and arms.

"Break up the card game, will you? Come acting tough, huh?"

And always the sap, up and down, viciously pounding me closer and closer to the cement until my head was touching it and Tommy's kick to my temple made everything go black.

The brick wall was a mile high. It stretched out above me and leaned dangerously against the sky. I watched it, wondering when it would fall; and after a while I realized it wasn't going to fall at all.

I stumbled to my knees then and touched the raw pain that was my face. I ached everywhere, and I ached more when I remembered Tommy and Lun. But I wasn't angry at them. They'd given me a hell of a beating, but they'd also given me an idea, and it was an idea any stupid bastard should have got all by himself. So I filed them away under unfinished business and stumbled my way out of the alley.

Lun Ching had said I was going to the morgue, and he was right.

It was cool inside the morgue.

I thanked the respite from the heat and followed the attendant down the long, gloomy corridor.

"This is it," he said. He pulled out the drawer and I looked down into Joey's lifeless face, at the flabby whiskey-sodden features that even death could not hide.

"That's him," I said.

"Sure, I know it's him," the attendant answered, his voice echoing off the windowless walls.

"I was wondering about his personal effects," I said.

"You a relative?"

"No. I don't think he had any relatives. I was his friend."

The attendant considered this.

"Not a hell of a lot there," he said at last. "Sent all of it up to Homicide because they're still investigating this. Got a list, though, and I can tell you what was on him."

"I'd appreciate that."

"Sure. No trouble at all." I followed him to a desk at the end of the corridor. He sat down and picked up a clipboard, and then began flipping the pages. "Let's see. Yeah, here he is, Joseph H. Gunder."

I hadn't even known Joey's last name. The anonymity of the Bowery is almost complete.

"Yeah, he didn't have much," the attendant said. "Want me to read this off?"

"Yes, please."

"A dollar bill, and thirty-five cents in change. Want that broken down?"

"No, that's fine."

"Okay, let's see. Handkerchief, switchblade knife, pint of Carstairs, almost empty, some rubber bands, package of Camels, two butts in it. Wallet with identification. That's it."

"A pint of Carstairs?"

I was thinking of the fifth of Imperial Joey had brought to me and how we'd killed it.

"Yep, that's right."

"And ... a switchblade knife?"

"Yeah."

"And money, too?"

"Say, you want me to repeat the whole damn list?"

"No, that's fine. Thanks." I paused. "Did they decide what killed him?"

"Sure. Hole in the head. Want to see him again?"

"No. I meant, what caliber pistol?"

".22. Why?"

"Just curious. I'll be going."

"Drop in again sometime," he said. I walked out into bright sunshine. For me, the beginning was in the morgue, after all, and I owed Lun Ching a debt. But the end was somewhere else, and I headed there now.

The door opened when I knocked and gave my name.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I just came across something."

"That's all right."

"May I come in?"

"Certainly."

I followed her into the living room again, and I sat down in the same easy chair. I didn't look at the floor or my clasped hands this time. I looked directly at her.

"Ever walk through the Bowery, Mrs. Tse?"

Her eyes were still troubled. "Yes?" she said.

"Often?"

"I know the neighborhood."

"Do you own a gun, Mrs. Tse?"

She hesitated. "Why ... yes. Yes, I do."

"A .22 maybe?"

She hesitated again, for a long time. She sighed deeply then and lifted her eyes to mine. There was no expression on her face, and her tone was flat.

"You know," she said.

"I know."

She nodded.

"He deserved what he got," she said.

"Joey?"

"Yes. Joey. He was your friend, wasn't he?"

"My drinking companion, Mrs. Tse. A man doesn't get to know much about anyone in the Bowery. Nor about what makes them tick."

"How did you know? How did you know I ... killed him?"

"A few things. A bottle of Imperial, for one. When Joey brought it to me, I never thought to ask where he'd got the money for it. That kind of money doesn't come easy to a bum. When I saw his stuff at the morgue, there was another pint there, and more money. I knew then that Joey had hit it rich recently and his switchblade knife told me how."

"Harry was stabbed," she said tonelessly.

"Sure. Joey didn't even know who his victim was. When Charlie mentioned it to him, Joey was probably drunk. He said, 'So
that's
who it was,' without even thinking. Charlie thought Joey had only
seen
your husband's murderer. He didn't know Joey
was
the murderer."

"And me? How did you come to me?"

"A guess, and a little figuring. A .22 is a woman's gun."

"I have a permit," she said. "I go through the Bowery often. Harry thought ... he thought I should have one."

"What happened, Mrs. Tse? Do you want to tell me?"

"All right," she said, and paused. "Charlie pointed out your ... friend to me. Joey. I followed him to Cooper Square. I asked him what he'd meant by 'So
that's
who it was.' He got terribly frightened. He said he hadn't meant to kill Harry. I think he was drunk, I don't know. He said he'd asked Harry for a dime and Harry refused. He pulled a knife and when Harry started to yell, he stabbed him. For a ... a dime. He stabbed him for a dime."

"He got more than just a dime, Mrs. Tse."

"I couldn't believe it, Mr. Cordell."

She still couldn't.

"For a
dime\
" she said again, and shook her head. "I took the gun from my purse and shot him. I shot him only once. Just once. Because he'd stabbed Harry, you see."

"Yes, I understand."

"So I shot him," she repeated. Her voice was very small now. "Will you take me to the police?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"But..."

I got to my feet.

"Mrs. Tse," I said, "we've never even met."

I walked to the door, leaving her alone in the living room that faced a blank wall, leaving her alone because once upon a time I'd lost someone I loved, and I knew exactly how it felt.