Ed McBain - Downtown (23 page)

Which was probably what Phyllis, who needed a shave, was wondering about him.

"What time did Connie say she'd be here?" he asked. "Soon as she does what she has to do," Gregory said. "What is it she has to do?" Michael asked. "Find out who the corpse is." "And how does she plan to do that?"

"At the Gouverneur Hospital morgue," Gregory said. "On Henry Street. 'Cause the corpse was found in the Seventh

Precinct, and that's the only hospital

347 in the Seventh, so she figured that's where they m/'ve took it. She knows a man there works with the stiffs."

"So that's where she is now," Michael said.

"Lucky her," Gregory said, and grinned. "Excuse me," Michael said, "but how do _you fit into all this?" "Oh, very comfortably," Gregory said, and looked around the room. "I been comin' here since it opened."

"I meant, how did you happen to get the job of rescuing me?" "Oh. Connie asked me to climb on up there." "Why you? Are you a burglar?" "No, I'm a dancer."

"I still don't understand how Connie knew I was in trouble." "Well, from what she told _me, she was waiting outside the Amalgamated when she saw this man carrying you out of the building. Unconscious. You, not the man. So she followed his car to this warehouse near the Fulton Market. The _fish market. On Fulton Street. And that's how come you're sitting here with me now, doll."

"Connie just ran into you, is that it? And asked you to ..."

"No, she called me on the telephone."

"And you ran on over with your satchel ..." "I borrowed the satchel from my brother-in-law." "Is he a dancer, too?"

"No, _he's a burglar. But he's white, you wouldn't _'spect him to have no rhythm." "So Connie called you ..." "Right, and asked me to meet her at this warehouse, where she was waiting outside." "How'd she know what apartment I was in?" "It isn't an apartment building, it's a warehouse. She watched the elevator needle. And I went up the fire escape to the fifth floor, where I found you, aren't you glad?"

"You mean to tell me Connie just picked up the telephone, and you ran on down to meet her?" "I owe her," Gregory said, and left it at that. "Well, I'm grateful to you." "_How grateful?" Gregory said, and was putting his hand on Michael's thigh when

Phyllis walked over.

349

"Won't you introduce me, Greg?" she said.

"Michael, this is Phyllis," Gregory said, and squeezed Michael just above the knee. "Care to dance, Michael?" Michael figured he could do worse. "Do you come here often?" Phyllis asked. She was a very good dancer. The jukebox was playing "It Happened in Monterey." Frank Sinatra was singing. "My first time," Michael said. "You have adorable buns," Phyllis said. "Has anyone ever told you that?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact," Michael said. "Oh my, she's modest as well," Phyllis said. Her beard was scratching against Michael's cheek. "Are you married?" Phyllis asked. "Divorced," he said. "Oh, good," Phyllis said. "But very serious about someone," Michael said quickly. "Oh, drat," Phyllis said.

"May I cut in, please?" someone asked. The someone was Connie. "I said the Green _Garden," she said.

13 The three of them sat in a booth. Connie was irritated because Gregory had taken Michael to the Green Garter instead of the Green Garden, which was a health food place on Orchard Street, and a hell of a lot closer to Gouverneur Hospital than Greenwich Avenue was. "It all gets down to a matter of precincts," she said. "The Sixth Precinct is _not the Seventh Precinct. If I'd wanted the Green _Garter in the _Sixth Precinct, I wouldn't have picked the Green _Garden in the _Seventh Precinct." "I'm contrite," Gregory said.

He wasn't being sarcastic, he really did sound enormously sorry for his error. Moreover, as Michael now reminded Connie, he was the one who'd charged to the rescue when--

"Well, not exactly _charged,"

351 Gregory said modestly.

"But Michael's right," Connie said. "I'm sorry I yelled at you." "It's the stink of the morgue," Gregory said. "Have you ever been inside a morgue?" he asked Michael. "Never."

"About two years ago," Gregory said, "a friend of mine OD'D on heroin, and I had to go to the morgue to identify him. It truly does stink in there. It can give you a headache in there. It can also make you very anxious. All those dead people stacked up on drawers that slide out." "Don't remind me," Connie said. Michael was thinking that at times the stench in Vietnam had been unbearable. He could not imagine any morgue in the world stinking more than a jungle clearing littered with three-day-old bodies.

"He didn't even _look like Crandall," Connie said. "You saw him?" Michael asked.

"Yes. A tall, thin man. Pockmarked face. Tattoo on his arm." "White?" "Yes. But that's the only resemblance." "How old was he?" "My friend at the morgue guessed maybe forty, forty-five." "What's his name?"

"Max Feinstein. I know him from when he was driving an ambulance for ..." "No, I mean the corpse." "Oh. Julian Rainey. They finally identified him from his fingerprints. He has a record that goes back forever."

"Yes, he's a dealer," Gregory said, nodding.

"_Was a dealer," Connie corrected. "You mean you _know him?" "Oh, yes, he works this entire downtown area." "_Used to work," Connie corrected.

A drug plot, Michael thought. I knew it. "A red heart, am I right?" Gregory said. "The tattoo?" "Yes," Connie said. "On his left arm."

"The left arm, yes."

353

"And in the heart it says Ju Ju, am I right?" "I don't know what it said in the heart." "Ju Ju. That's his nickname."

"_Was his nickname," Connie corrected. Michael was looking at both of them. "I think we have to go back to that warehouse," he said. "Without me," Gregory said.

It was close to midnight when they got there. Christmas was almost gone. Not a light showed in the entire building. "That's because nobody lives here," Connie explained. "This is a _real warehouse, it's not like the buildings they're renting for lofts all over town. People actually store things here." "What do you suppose Ju Ju was storing here?" Michael asked. "Take a wild guess," Connie said. Michael looked up at the front of the building. It was seven stories high, with five evenly spaced windows on each floor. From the fifth floor down, huge white letters below the windows announced the building's original intent, stating its past like a huge poster that faced the East River:

WAREHOUSE

Wholesale-Retail

OFFICE FURNITURE

Broad Street Showrooms

NEW YORK--MIAMI--

LOS ANGELES The entire area smelled of fish.

"We're just a few blocks from the market," Connie said. The metal entrance door was locked. "It was open earlier tonight," she said. "It's on the fifth floor. I watched the needle." They were both getting very good at using fire escapes. Michael figured that if ever they were trapped in a burning building together, they'd know how to get out of it in a minute. He supposed it was good to know such things. On the fifth floor, they found the window Gregory had earlier jimmied open. It was closed now. Michael guessed the three pizza-eaters had closed it after they'd come

into the room and found only Ju Ju's

355 bed with no one in it. He hoped the pizza-eaters were not still here. He did not think they were; not a light was burning anywhere inside. But you never could tell; in Vietnam, Charlie could see in the dark. He eased the window open. Listened. Not a sound.

He climbed in over the sill, and then helped Connie into the room. They waited, eyes adjusting to the darkness, moonlight slowly giving shapes to objects ... First the bed with its white wrought-iron headboard and footboard ...

Then the bundle of clothes in the corner ...

And then the Indian sitting his spotted pony. Nothing else.

"I think somebody peed in this room," Connie whispered. It was not truly a _room, Michael now realized, but merely a space defined by a partition. The door to the other side of the partition was slightly ajar. No light beyond it. He went to the door and listened. He heard nothing. He nodded to Connie and opened the door wider. Together they moved into the space beyond the partition. And waited again while their eyes adjusted to what seemed a deeper blackness but only because of its vastness. When Michael felt certain they were alone, he groped along the wall for a switch, found one, and turned on the lights.

If he'd expected a cocaine factory, he was disappointed. From the evidence here on this side of the partition, you would never have guessed that Ju Ju Rainey was a drug dealer. For here was a department store of the first order, stocked with television sets and cameras, record players and home computers, typewriters and silverware, fur coats and jewelry, cellular telephones--

"A fence," Connie said. "Lots of dealers accept goods in exchange for dope."

A drug plot after all, Michael thought.

There were windows on the wall facing the street. Distant traffic lights below tinted the glass alternately red and green. It was still Christmas, but just barely. The wall opposite the windows was lined with clocks. They ticked in concert like a conglomerate time bomb about to explode. Grandfather

clocks ticking and tocking and swinging their

357 pendulums, smaller clocks on shelves whispering their ticks into the vast silent room.

On a table near the metal entrance door on the right-angled wall, there was a tomato-stained and empty pizza carton and three empty Coke bottles. A green metal file cabinet was on the wall near an open door that led to the toilet. On the other side of the door, there was a huge black safe with the word MOSLER stamped on its front.

Michael went to the file cabinet and pulled open the top drawer. A glance at one of the folders told him that this was where Ju Ju Rainey kept his inventory records. A methodical receiver of stolen goods. The bottom drawer was locked. "Do you know how to do something like that?" Connie asked. "Like what?" "Like pick a lock?" "No," Michael said.

"Let's see if anybody brought in a set of tools," Connie said.

They began rummaging through the stolen goods as if they were at a tag sale. It was sort of nice. Shopping this way, you could forget that dead bodies were involved. Like that day in the jungle. With the baby. Not a thought of danger, Charlie was miles and miles away. Just strolling in the jungle. Birds twittering in the treetops. Andrew smoking a cigarette, the baby suddenly-- He turned off all thoughts of the baby. Click. Snapped them off.

Connie had stopped at a pipe rack from which hung at least a hundred fur coats. The baby crying. Click. "This is gorgeous," Connie said.

She was looking at a long red fox coat.

Michael moved away from her, deeper into what looked like a smaller version of the _Citizen _Kane storehouse. There was a makeshift counter --sawhorses and planks--covered entirely with Walkman radios. There had to be at least a thousand Walkman radios on that counter. All sizes and all colors. Michael wondered if all those radios had come from a single industrious thief. Or had a thousand less ambitious

thieves each stolen one radio?

359 Another counter was covered entirely with books. It looked like a counter in a bookshop. Very big and important books like _Warday and _Women's _Work and _Whirlwind were piled high on the counter. Michael could easily understand why someone would want to steal these precious books and why Ju Ju had been willing to take them in trade for dope. He'd probably planned to resell them later to a bookseller who had a blanket on the sidewalk outside Saks Fifth Avenue.

Connie was lingering at the fur-coat rack. In fact, she was now trying _on one of the coats, which he hoped she didn't plan to steal. The temptation to steal something from a thief was, in fact, overwhelming. The goods, after all, were not the thief's. The thief, therefore, could not rightfully or even righteously claim that anything of his had been stolen, since the stolen goods had already been stolen from someone else. Moreover, the transaction by which the thief had come into possession of the property was in itself an illegal one, the barter of stolen goods for controlled substances, and the thief could expect no mercy on that count. Especially if he was dead, which Ju Ju Rainey happened to be. On the other hand, if it was okay to steal stolen goods from a dead thief, then maybe it was also okay to have _caused that thief's death, and to have put another man's identification on his corpse, and to have laid the blame on a third person entirely, which third person happened to be Michael himself. It was all a matter of morality, he guessed. The coat Connie was trying on happened to be a very dark and luxuriant ankle-length sable.

The coat was screaming, "Steal Me, Steal Me!" He hoped she wouldn't. The baby screaming. Click.

"I would love a coat like this," Connie said.

Michael was at a counter covered with musical instruments now. There were violins and violas and cellos and bass fiddles and even lyres. There were piccolos and oboes and saxophones and clarinets and English horns and bassoons and flutes. There was an organ. There were acoustic guitars and electric guitars and banjos and mandolins and a pedal steel guitar and a synthesizer and a sitar and an Appalachian dulcimer. There was a set of drums. And three bagpipes. And

fourteen harmonicas and a book called

361 __How to Play Jazz _Harp, which had wandered over from the book display across the room. There were trumpets and Sousaphones and tubas and French horns and cornets and bugles and seventy-six trombones. Michael guessed it was profitable to steal musical instruments. The next counter was covered with tools. More tools than he had ever seen in one place in his entire lifetime. He guessed it was profitable to steal tools, too. On the other hand, maybe it was profitable to steal _anything. There were hammers and hatchets and mallets and mauls. There were pliers and wrenches and handsaws and drills. There were planes and rasps and chisels and files. There were circular saws and scroll saws and electric sanders and electric chain saws. Michael picked up one of the electric hand drills and a small plastic case with bits in it, and carried them to where Connie was now standing at a table covered with weapons. "Look at all these guns," she said. "Yes," he said.