Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (13 page)

“With Johnny Milton,” Kling said.

“Oh, yes, the agent. Yes, he was here. I didn’t know she was supposed to join him.”

“What time did he get here?” Carella asked.

“Let me check the book.”

He moved toward his little podium like a galleon under full plum-colored sail, flicked pages like a conductor leading an orchestra,
mumbling to himself as he scanned the reservation entries, “Johnny Milton, Johnny Milton, Johnny Milton,” and finally stabbing
at the page with a plump little forefinger, and looking up triumphantly, and saying, “Here it is, seven o’clock.”

“Was he
here
at seven?” Carella asked.

“Well, I don’t know,” the headwaiter said.

“Could you try to remember, sir?”

“He may have been a few minutes late, I don’t know.”

“How late?” Kling asked.

Michelle had stepped into that alley at a few minutes past seven. Say two, three minutes past seven. Add to that the five
minutes and forty-two seconds
it
took to walk here fast .. .

“Did he get here at
five
past seven?” he asked. ”

I don’t know.”

“Seven past?”

“Eight past?”

“Ten past?”

Both of them zeroing in.
Trying
to zero in.

“I have no way of knowing, really.”

“Would anyone
else
know?”

“One of your waiters?”

“Do you remember where you seated him?”

“Well, yes, I do. But I doubt anyone ...”

“Which table would it have been, sir?”

“Number six. There near the bar.”

“Would that waiter be here now?”

“The one who had that table last night?”

“Gentlemen, really .. .”

“At seven?”

“Or seven-fifteen?”

“Around that time?”

“Yes, he’s here. But, really, you can see how crowded we are. I can’t possibly pull him off the …”

“We’ll wait till lunch is over,” Carella said.

The waiter’s name was Gregory Stiles, and he was a thirty-two-year-old aspiring actor, which did not make him exactly unique
in this city. He remembered serving Johnny Milton, because he knew Milton was an agent, and he himself had been looking for
a new agent ever since his last one moved to Los Angeles. Stiles had straight black hair, dark brown eyes, and an olive complexion,
which made it difficult for him to get many acting jobs because everyone assumed he was Latino, and there weren’t too many
roles for Latino actors in this city—or in this country, for that matter—unless you were a Latino actor who also sang and
danced, in which case you could get a part in a summer stock production of
West Side Story,
maybe.

In the movie
Walk Proud,
which was about Chicano gangs in L.A., the starring Chicano role had been played by Robby Benson, a very good actor who happened
to be an Anglo. The Chicano community raised six kinds of hell about this, even though the film created more jobs for Chicano
actors than had previously been available since the Mexican Army stormed the Alamo and killed John Wayne. Unfortunately, Stiles
hadn’t been living on the Coast when the movie was made, and so he’d missed out on a career opportunity. He was still annoyed
that he looked so fuckin Hispanic when in fact his forebears were British.

He told all this to the detectives after the lunchtime hubbub had subsided, at ten minutes to three that afternoon, over coffee
at a small table near the doors leading to the kitchen, where the dishwashers were busily at work. The dishwashers at work
were almost as noisy as the businessmen had been at lunch, though not quite.

“He told me he was waiting for someone, but that he’d have a drink meanwhile,” Stiles projected over the clatter of dishes
and pots and pans and someone singing in what sounded like Arabic. “He ordered a Tanqueray martini on the rocks, with a twist.”

“What time was this?” Kling asked.

“Exactly fifteen minutes past seven,” Stiles said

Both detectives looked at him.

“How do you happen to know the exact time?” Kling asked.

“Because I’d just got off the phone with my girlfriend.” Which did not answer the question.

“Do you always call her at a quarter past seven?” Carella asked.

Which seemed a logical thing to ask.

“No,” Stiles said. “As a matter of fact,
she
called me.” “I see,” Carella said.

Which he still didn’t.

“What time did she call you?” Kling asked reasonably.

“About five after seven. She’d just been asked back for a second reading, and she wanted me to know about it.

She’s an actress, too. She also waits tables.”

“So she called you at five after seven ... ”

“Yes, and I took the call in the booth there ...

” Nodding toward a phone booth at the end of the bar. ... where I could see the room and also the clock over the bar. I saw
Mr. Milton when he came in, and I saw him when Gerard led him to the table. The headwaiter. Gerard.”

“What time did Mr. Milton come in?”

“I didn’t look at the clock when he came in. But
I did
look at it when Gerard led him to the table a few minutes later.”

“Why’d you look at the clock then?”

“Because I knew I’d be on in the next ten seconds. So I told Mollie I had to go, and I hung up, and the time on the clock
was a quarter past seven.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Positive.”

“So he sat down at a quarter after seven, and told you he was expecting someone, and ordered a Tanqueray martini .. .”

“On the rocks, with a twist.”

“Then what?”

“About ten minutes later, he went to the phone. Same phone over there. The booth at the end of the bar.”

“That would’ve been around seven twenty-five.”

“Around then. I didn’t look at the clock again. I’m just estimating.”

“Then what?”

“He came back to the table, threw down a twenty-dollar bill, and ran out.”

“Didn’t ask for a check?”

“Nope. Just assumed the twenty would cover it, I guess. Which it did, of course.
More
than.”

“Seemed in a hurry, did he?”

“Was Roadrunner in a hurry?”

“What time did he leave the restaurant, did you happen to notice?”

“I would say around seven-thirty. But again, that’s just an estimate.”

“But you’re absolutely certain ...”

“Was Nostradamus certain?”

“... that he sat down at the table at a quarter past seven?”

“Positive.”

“And came into the restaurant a few minutes before then?”

“Yes. Well, I took Mollie’s call at five after, and he hadn’t yet come in, I didn’t see him standing at the door with Gerard
till a few minutes later. If I had to make a guess, I’d say he got here about ten after.”

“Ten after seven.”

“Yes. And Gerard went through the greeting routine, and the shaking of hands, and all the maitre d’ bullshit, and then brought
him to the table and sat him down at a quarter past seven on the dot. Which is when I looked at the clock, and said goodbye
to Mollie, and hung up.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stiles.”

“De nada,”
he said, and grinned.

He had been on the phone with Mike the Whiner for almost forty minutes, and then had got involved in what seemed like a hundred
subsequent
phone calls, and then had gone out for a meeting with a producer who was doing a revival of a play called
The Conjuror,
which he’d seen at the University of Michigan some twenty-five, twenty-six years ago, but which had never made it to Broadway
… or anywhere
else,
for that matter. Why the producer wanted to revive it was something beyond Johnny’s ken, but he listened patiently as the
play was outlined and then took notes on the actors and actresses required for the cast. He got back to the office at a little
past five, called the theater and was told by the stage door guy that everyone had already quit for the day. So he’d called
Michelle at the apartment and got no answer there, and kept trying every ten minutes or so until finally he reached her at
close to six o’clock. She told him she’d just walked in the door.

“I was starting to get worried,” he said.

“Why?”

“The cops were here to see me,” he said.

The door to his office was closed, but Lizzie was still outside at her desk, and she had ears like a rabbit, so he automatically
lowered his voice to a whisper.

“When?” Michelle asked.

“This afternoon,”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did. As soon as I could. You’d already left the theater.”

“I didn’t leave the theater till five o’clock!”

“I had a meeting.”

“What’d they want?”

“Fishing expedition,” he said, and shrugged. “They think I’m the one who stabbed you.”

He heard her catch her breath. There was a long silence on the line. Then she said, “They accused you?”

“No, no, they’re not stupid
.
But they were asking how long we’ve known each other, how we got along ...”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, what time I ate dinner, what time I found out you’d been stabbed ...”

“This is very bad, Johnny.”

“No, I think I covered it nicely.”

“Don’t you see what they were trying to find out?”

“Oh, sure. They were running a timetable in their heads. Trying to figure did I have time to stab you and then run over to
O’Leary’s.”

“Which is just what you did.”

“Yeah.”

“So what’d you tell them?”

“I told them I had a seven o’clock reservation. Which, by the way, I did.”

“What’d they say?”

“They wanted to know what time I
got
there, never mind what time the reservation was for.”

“Johnny, we’re in trouble.”

“No, no. I told them I got there a little before seven.”

“They’ll check. We’re in trouble, Johnny.”

“Who’s gonna remember exactly what time I got there? Come on, Meesh.”

“Someone’ll remember. You shouldn’t have lied, Johnny. It would’ve been better to tell the truth.”

“The restaurant is my
alibi!“

“Some alibi, if you weren’t there.”

“What’d you want me to say? That I didn’t know
where
I was? You’re getting stabbed in a fuckin alley, and I can’t account for where I was?”

“You could’ve said you were home. Getting
ready
to go to the restaurant. Or you could’ve said you were trying to catch
a cab
to the restaurant. There’s no way they can check on a man standing on a street corner waving at taxis. Anything would’ve
been better than telling them you were already in the restaurant, which they can check in a minute. They’ll be back, Johnny,
you can bet on it. They’re probably on their way back right this minute.”

“Come on, Meesh, stop tryin’a get me nervous.”

“You’d better start thinking up another story. For when they come back and ask you how come the people at the restaurant don’t
remember seeing you there at seven.”

“I’ll tell them my watch was running fast.”

“Then you better set it fast right this minute.”

“Meesh, you’re really getting all upset about nothing. They bought my story. There’s no
reason
for them to ...”

“How do you know they bought it?”

“They both thanked me for my time.”

“And that means they bought your story, huh?”

“What I’m saying is they didn’t seem suspicious.”

“Then why were they asking you all those questions?”

“Routine.”

“What else did they ask you?”

“Who remembers?”

“Try
to remember.”

“They wanted to know where we live, and how long you’d ...”

“Did you tell them?”

“Yes.”

“You gave them the
address
here?”

“I told them Carter and Stein.”

“Oh, Jesus, they’ll find me! They’ll come here!”

“No, no.”

“What else did you tell them?”

“I told them you’d been my client since you were ten years old, and that we’ve known each other for thirteen years. They wanted
to know if either of us was seeing anyone else …”

“That’s good.”

“It is?”

“Sure. It means they were thinking it could’ve been somebody else. Not you, a third party. What’d you tell them?”

“That it was the same as being married, and that we had a very good relationship.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, I thought so. And then they wanted to know did I have any clients who did Jack Nicholson, and why you’d waited so long
to go to them about the calls, you know ...”

“Yeah.”

“… and how it was my idea that you go see them. They wanted to know …”

“That was stupid.”

“What was?”

“Telling them it was
you
who sent me to the police. Makes it sound like you masterminded the whole fucking thing. Johnny, we’re in trouble, I know
it.”

“No, they were just trying to find out who the guy
was,
the guy making the calls. Wanted to know if
I’d
ever talked to him …”

“Sure, because they were already thinking the calls were bullshit … ”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Was all this
before
or
after
they asked about the restaurant?”

“Before.”

“Sure, they were closing in.”

“No.

“They’ll be back, Johnny.”

“I’m telling you no.”

“I’m telling you yes.”

“Why would they? When I asked them were they gonna catch this guy, the blond one—you remember the blond one?”

“What about him?”

“He said he hoped so. That they’d catch him.”

“Yeah,
you.
He was talking about
you.
”

“No, he was talking about the guy who stabbed you in the alley.”

“Yeah, who was
you.“

“Yeah, but they don’t know that.”

“I’ll tell you, Johnny, if they come here asking questions, I’m gonna say I don’t know a fucking thing about it.”

“Good, that’s exactly what you should say.”

“No, you’re not hearing me.”

“What am I not hearing?”