Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47
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Authors: Romance
Tags: #Police Procedural, #Detective and Mystery Stories, #Police, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction, #87th Precinct (Imaginary Place) - Fiction, #Police - Fiction, #87th Precinct (Imaginary Place), #General
Copyright © 1995 by Hut Corporation
All rights reserved.
WARNER BOOKS
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
First eBook Edition: April 2005
ISBN: 978-0-446-56028-3
Contents
ALSO BY ED McBAIN
The 87th Precinct Novels
Cop Hater
•
The Mugger
•
The Pusher (1956) The Con Man
•
Killer’s Choice (1957) Killer’s Payoff
•
Killer’s Wedge
•
Lady Killer
(1958) ’Til
Death
•
King’s Ransom (1959) Give the Boys a Great Big Hand
•
The Heckler
•
See Them Die (1960) Lady, Lady, I Did it! (1961) The Empty Hours
•
Like Love (1962) Ten Plus One (1963) Ax (1964) He Who Hesitates
•
Doll (1965) Eighty Million Eyes (1966) Fuzz (1968) Shotgun (1969) Jigsaw (1970) Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here (1971) Sadie When She Died
•
Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man (1972) Hail to the Chief (1973) Bread (1974) Blood Relatives (1975) So Long as You Both Shall Live (1976) Long Time No See (1977) Calypso (1979) Ghosts (1980) Heat (1981) Ice (1983) Lightning (1984) Eight Black Horses (1985) Poison
•
Tricks (1987) Lullaby (1989) Vespers (1990) Widows (1991) Kiss (1992) Mischief (1993) And All Through the House (1994) Romance (1995)
The Matthew Hope Novels
Goldilocks (1978) Rumpelstiltskin (1981) Beauty and the Beast (1982) Jack and the Beanstalk (1984) Snow White and Rose Red (1985) Cinderella (1986) Puss in Boots (1987) The House That Jack Built (1988) Three Blind Mice (1990) Mary, Mary (1993) There Was a Little Girl (1994)
Other Novels
The Sentries (1965) Where There’s Smoke
•
Doors (1975) Guns (1976) Another Part of the City (1986) Downtown (1991)
AND AS EVAN HUNTER
Novels
The Blackboard Jungle (1954) Second Ending (1956) Strangers When We Meet (1958) A Matter of Conviction (1959) Mothers and Daughters (1961) Buddwing (1964) The Paper Dragon (1966) A Horse’s Head (1967) Last Summer (1968) Sons (1969) Nobody Knew They Were There (1971) Every Little Crook and Nanny (1972) Come Winter (1973) Streets of Gold (1974) The Chisholms (1976) Love, Dad (1981) Far From the Sea (1983) Lizzie (1984) Criminal Conversation (1994)
Short Story Collections
Happy New Year, Herbie (1963) The Easter Man (1972)
Children’s Books
Find the Feathered Serpent (1952) The Remarkable Harry (1959) The Wonderful Button (1961) Me and Mr. Stenner (1976)
Screenplays
Strangers When We Meet (1959) The Birds (1962) Fuzz (1972) Walk Proud (1979)
Teleplays
The Chisholms (1979) The Legend of Walks Far Woman (1980) Dream West (1986)
This is for
my son and daughter-in-law,
Mark Hunter
and
Lise Bloch-Mohrange Hunte
The city in these pages is imaginary.
The people, the places are all fictitious.
Only the police routine is based on established
investigatory technique.
K
LING MADE HIS CALL FROM AN OUTSIDE PHONE BECAUSE HE
didn’t want to be turned down in a place as public as the squadroom. He didn’t want to risk possible derision from the men
with whom he worked day and night, the men to whom he often entrusted his life. Nor did he want to make the call from anyplace
at
all
in the station house. There were pay phones on every floor, but a police station was like a small town, and gossip traveled
fast. He did not want anyone to overhear him fumbling for words in the event of a rejection. He felt that rejection was a
very definite possibility.
So he stood in the pouring rain a block from the station house, at a blue plastic shell with a pay phone inside it, dialing
the number he’d got from the police directory operator, and which he’d scribbled on a scrap of paper that was now getting
soggy in the rain. He waited while the phone rang, once, twice, three times, four, five, and he thought, She isn’t home, six,
sev …
“Hello?”
Her voice startled him.
“Hello, uh, Sharon?” he said. “Chief Cooke?”
“Who’s this, please?”
Her voice impatient and sharp. Rain pelting down everywhere around him. Hang up, he thought.
“This is Bert Kling?” he said.
“Who?”
The sharpness still in her voice. But edged with puzzlement now.
“Detective Bert Kling,” he said. “We … uh … met at the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
“Earlier this week. The hostage cop shooting. Georgia Mowbry.”
“Yes?”
Trying to remember who he was. Unforgettable encounter, he guessed. Lasting impression.
“I was with Detective Burke,” he said, ready to give up. “The redheaded hostage cop. She was with Georgia when …”
“Oh, yes, I remember now. How are you?”
“Fine,” he said, and then very quickly, “I’m calling to tell you how sorry I am you lost her.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“I know I should have called earlier …”
“No, no, it’s appreciated.”
“But we were working a difficult case …”
“I quite understand.”
Georgia Mowbry had died on Wednesday night. This was now Sunday. She suddenly wondered what this was all about. She’d been
reading the papers when her phone rang. Reading all about yesterday’s riot in the park. Blacks and whites rioting. Black and
whites shooting each other, killing each other.
“So … uh … I know how difficult something like that must be,” he said. “And I … uh … just thought I’d offer my … uh … sympathy.”
“Thank you,” she said.
There was a silence.
Then:
“Uh … Sharon …”
“By the way, it’s Sharyn,” she said.
“Isn’t that what I’m saying?”
“You’re saying Sharon.”
“Right,” he said.
“But it’s
Sharyn.“
“I know,” he said, thoroughly confused now.
“With a ‘y,’ ” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Right. Thank you. I’m sorry.
Sharyn,
right.”
“What’s that I hear?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“That sound.”
“Sound? Oh. It must be the rain.”
“The rain? Where are you?”
“I’m calling from outside.”
“From a phone booth?”
“No, not really, it’s just one of these little shell things. What you’re hearing is the rain hitting the plastic.”
“You’re standing in the rain?”
“Well, sort of.”
“Isn’t there a phone in the squadroom?”
“Well, yes. But …”
She waited.
“I … uh … didn’t want anyone to hear me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I … I didn’t know how you’d feel about … something like this.”
“Something like what?”
“My … asking you to have dinner with me.”
Silence.
“Sharyn?”
“Yes?”
“Your being a chief and all,” he said. “A deputy chief.”
She blinked.
“I thought it might make a difference. That I’m just a detective/third.”
“I see.”
No mention of his blond hair or her black skin.
Silence.
“Does it?” he asked.
She had never dated a white man in her life.
“Does what?” she said.
“Does
it make a difference? Your rank?”
“No.”
But what about the other? she wondered. What about whites and blacks killing each other in public places? What about
that,
Detective Kling?
“Rainy day like today,” he said, “I thought it’d be nice to have dinner and go to a movie.”
With a white man, she thought.
Tell my mother I’m going on a date with a white man. My mother who scrubbed white men’s offices on her knees.
“I’m off at four,” he said. “I can go home, shower and shave, pick you up at six.”
You hear this, Mom? A white man wants to pick me up at six. Take me out to dinner and a movie.
“Unless you have other plans,” he said.
“Are you
really
standing in the rain?” she asked.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Have other plans?”
“No. But …”
Bring the subject up, she thought. Face it head-on. Ask him if he knows I’m black. Tell him I’ve never done anything like
this before. Tell him my mother’ll jump off the roof. Tell him I don’t need this kind of complication in my life, tell him
…
“Well … uh … do you think you might
like
to?” he asked. “Go to a movie and have dinner?”
“Why do you want to do this?” she asked.
He hesitated a moment. She visualized him standing there in the rain, pondering the question.
“Well,” he said, “I think we might enjoy each other’s company, is all.”
She could just see him shrugging, standing there in the rain. Calling from outside the station house because he didn’t want
anyone to hear him being turned down by
rank.
Never mind black, never mind white, this was detective/ third and deputy chief. As simple as that. She almost smiled.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but do you think you could give me some kind of answer? Cause it’s sort of wet out here.”
“Six o’clock is fine,” she said.
“Good,” he said.
“Call me when you’re out of the rain, I’ll give you my address.”
“Good,” he said again. “Good. That’s good. Thank you, Sharyn. I’ll call you when I get back to the squadroom. What kind of
food do you like? I know a great Italian …”
“Get out of the rain,” she said, and quickly put the phone back on the cradle.
Her heart was pounding.
God, she thought, what am I starting here?
The redheaded woman was telling him that she’d been receiving threatening phone calls. He listened intently. Six phone calls
in the past week, she told him. The same man each time, speaking in a low voice, almost a whisper, telling her he was going
to kill her. At a table against one wall of the room, a short man in shirtsleeves was fingerprinting a bearded man in a black
T-shirt.
“When did these calls start?”
“Last week,” the woman said. “Monday morning was the first one.”
“Okay, let’s take down some more information,” the man said, and rolled an NYPD Detective Division complaint form into his
typewriter. He was wearing a .38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. Like the man taking fingerprints at the table against
the wall, he too was in shirtsleeves. “May I have your address, please?”
“314 East Seventy-first Street.”
“Here in Manhattan?”
“Yes.”
“Apartment number?”
“6B.”
“Are you married? Single? Div … ?”
“Single.”
“Are you employed?”
“I’m an actress.”
“Oh?” Eyebrows going up in sudden interest. “Have I seen you in anything?”
“Well … I’ve done a lot of television work. I did a
Law & Order
last month.”
“Really? That’s a good show. I watch that show all the
time.
Which one were you in?”
“The one about abortion.”
“No kidding?
I
saw that. That was just last
month!
”
“Yes, it was. Excuse me, Detective, but …”
“That’s my
favorite
show on television. They shoot that right here in New York, did you know that? Will you be doing any more of them?”
“Well … right now I’m rehearsing a Broadway play.”
“No kidding? What play? What’s it called?”
“Romance.
Uh, Detective …”
“What’s it about?”
“Well, it’s sort of complicated to explain. The thing is, I have to get back to the theater …”
“Oh, sure.”
“And I’d like to …”
“Hey, sure.” All business again. Fingers on the typewriter keys again. “You say these calls started last Monday, right? That
would’ve been …” A glance at the calendar on his desk. “December …”
“December ninth.”
“Right, December ninth.” Typing as he spoke. “Can you tell me exactly what this man said?”
“He said, ’I’m going to kill you, miss.’ ”
“Then what?”
“That’s all.”
“He calls you ‘miss’? No name?”
“No name. Just ’I’m going to kill you, miss.’ Then he hangs up.”
“Have there been any threatening letters?”
“No.”
“Have you seen anyone suspicious lurking around the building or … ?”
“No.”
“… following you to the theater or …”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll tell you the truth, miss …”
