Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (17 page)

“Because it would cost more to
keep
it,” Carella said.

“Only your pros think that way,” Ollie said.

“He was looking at fifteen on the assault, anyway,” Nellie said. “If he didn’t toss the knife
then …“

“Fifteen years isn’t life.”

“It ain’t chopped liver, either. Besides, the man’s an
agent,”
Ollie said scornfully. “What does he know about how much time you can get for what? This isn’t a pro here, this is an amateur.
”

“Steve,” Nellie said, “I wish I could agree with you on this one …”

“Just give us a chance to run it down, that’s all I’m asking. If we tell the arraigning judge we’re investigating a linked
homicide, he’ll set a juicy bail on the assault. That means Milton stays inside while we develop a good case. If there
is
one.”

“I’ve already got a good case,” Nellie said.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Nellie, if Milton
didn’t
kill
her, the
real
murderer …”

“What makes you … ?”

“… walks.”

“… think he didn’t kill her?”

“Gut instinct.”

The room went silent.

“What do you want?” Nellie asked.

“I told you. Lock him up on the assault, let us pursue the murder investigation. If we come up empty, you can always tack
on the second charge.”

“Today’s what?” she asked no one.

Byrnes looked at his desk calendar.

“The eighth,” he said.

“Okay, our 180.80 Day is six days from arrest. That means on the fourteenth, I
have
to indict Milton on one or more felony charges or else release him on his own recognizance. Here’s what I’m willing to do.
I’ll arraign him for both the assault
and
the murder …”

“Good,” Ollie said.

“… but I’ll ask my bureau chief to talk to the Chief of Trial Division …”

“What for?” Ollie askd.

“So he
can
go
to the Chief of Detectives and explain the situation to him.”

“What
situation?”

“That one of his best detectives has doubts and is still investigating the homicide.”

“I don’t
have
any goddamn doubts!” Ollie said.

“Steve, you’ve got till the morning of the fourteenth. Bring me something better by then, or I’ll indict Milton for the homicide.”

“Thanks,” Carella said.

“You meant
him?“
Ollie said.

B
ERT FLING DANCED LIKE A WHITE MAN.

Oh dear Lord, he was the
worst
dancer she had ever danced with in her life, even though it had been
his
idea to go dancing this Wednesday night. She’d said, Sure why not? A man asks you to go dancing, you figure he’s got to be
a good dancer, no? A lousy dancer doesn’t ask you to go dancing, he asks you to go bowling. But, oh my, was he
terrible!

She’d dressed up all slinky and smooth in the same smoky blue color he’d admired, a different dress but the same shade of
blue that matched her eye shadow—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The dress was very short and very tight, the only such outrageous
dress she owned, what she used to call a fuck me dress when she was still in medical school and trying to attract the attention
of any single eligible black man in D.C.; five to one the ratio was said to be in that town, women to men, that is; five to
one, honey, count ’em. Outrageous or not, the man had said the color was good for her, so why not accommodate him again? Besides,
the only other smoky blue outfit she owned was the suit she’d worn on their first date, so this was it, take it or—Ooops,
sorry. No, my fault.

She looked good in certain shades of green, too, come to think of it, maybe she should have dressed all verdant and vernal
tonight. But it wasn’t easy being green, you could so easily slip into looking like an uptown ho. Anyway, how did this get
to be all about
color?
But that’s what this
was
all about, wasn’t it? About whether there was anything more to this besides his being white and her being black and maybe
being attracted to each other only
because
he was white and she was black. It certainly wasn’t about him being Fred Astaire.

The band was pretty good, considering half the musicians in it were white, including the bass player, who she always figured
was the very heart and soul of any band. Six pieces up there on the bandstand in this small place down in the Quarter, a bit
too smoky for a surgeon’s comfort, but he seemed as much disturbed by the air quality as she was. Maybe the smoke was affecting
his dancing.
Something
had to be affecting his dancing, because in all truth she had never known a man or boy who was quite as stiff and awkward
as he was. Was he counting inside his head? Was that it? She was afraid to speak for fear she would throw off the count, welcome
to Transylvania. She was wearing high-heeled blue shoes fashioned almost entirely of straps. A single wafer-thin sole and
then straps, straps, straps. Showed off her legs to good advantage, she felt, come step into my parlor, let me bite you on
zee neck.

She thought it was very cute that he was such an awful dancer, but she wished he wouldn’t step quite so often on her feet
in their strappy shoes. “Ooops, sorry,” he would say each time, and she would say, “No, my fault,” and then she began wondering
if he really
thought
it was her fault, if somehow he believed that
she
was the lousy dancer .Well, no, surely, he
had
to know how clumsy he was. But then why had he asked her to go dancing?

At the table again—smoke drifting their way, the band playing a soft slippery tune that slithered on the air, low and rife
with funky tenor sax riffs—she put it in a kinder, gentler way. Didn’t say How come you chose to take me
dancing
of all things, you endearing oaf? Said instead, “How’d you happen to pick this place?”

“I thought it might be fun,” he said, and gestured around vaguely to include the entire room, which—she now noticed—was populated
with an uncommonly high mix of salt-and-pepper couples. Had he known this when he chose the spot?

“Where’d you learn to dance?” she asked.

“Oh, a bunch of guys used to … this was when I was a kid, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I grew up in Riverhead. When the neighborhood was still good.”

Meaning what? she wondered. That it was now
black?
And therefore
no
good?

“This guy Frank had a big basement in his house, a finished basement, and we used to go down there and dance.”

“Boys and girls, you mean?”

“I
wish.
No, it was just the guys. Frank was a very good dancer, he was teaching the rest of us to dance. We took turns leading and
following. It was good training.”

Yes, I can see the results, she thought.

“Where in Riverhead?” she asked.

“Cannon Road. Used to be black, Irish and Italian when I was growing up. Never any trouble there. Even when there was rioting
in Diamondback, we all got along fine in Riverhead. No more. That’s all changed.”

She nodded.

“I can remember my father telling me … this was at the time of the big riots, I was just a little boy … I remember him saying,
‘If you spread any of this filth, you won’t be able to sit for a week, Bert. I’ll fix you so you’ll be lucky if you can even
walk.’ “

Is that why you’re with a black woman tonight? she wondered.

“What happened Saturday was nothing compared to the trouble back then,” he said. “I’ll never forget it.”

“Do you still live in Riverhead?” she asked.

“No, no. I have a small apartment right here in Isola. Near the Calm’s Point Bridge.”

“When did you leave?”

“Riverhead? Right after the war. When I got back from the war.”

She did not ask him which war. In America, there’d been a war for any man coming of age at any given time. Most of these men
were trying to forget whichever war had occupied their time and consumed their youth. She had never once met a man who wanted
to talk about his wartime experiences. Which said a lot for recruiting posters.

“You’re a good dancer,” he said.

Us folks sho has rhythm, she thought.

“I’ll bet you could teach me more than Frank did.”

“Maybe I could,” she said.

“Next time we go out there,” he said, nodding toward the small dance floor.

“Okay.”

The waiter brought a fresh round of drinks. There was a two-drink minimum in the place. Plus a cover charge. She realized
this was costing him more than he could easily afford on his detective’s salary. Everywhere around them, mixed couples drank,
and talked, and danced, and held hands, and occasionally kissed. She wondered again how he’d happened to choose it.

“How’d you know about this place?”

“I asked Artie.”

“Who’s Artie?”

“Artie Brown. One of the guys on the squad. He’s black.”

“Brown is black, huh?”

“He thinks that’s how his great-great-grandmother got the name, in fact.”

“How do you mean?”

“She was a slave. He thinks her master gave her the name Brown because of her color. It’s just a theory, he doesn’t know for
sure.”

“When did you ask him?”

“I never did. He just happened to mention it one time.”

“I meant about this place.”

“Oh. Yesterday. I told him I was dating a black girl, and I asked him if he knew anyplace where we’d feel comfortable. While
we were getting to know each other.”

“What’d he say?”

“He recommended this place.”

“And
do
you feel comfortable here?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Do you?”

“I don’t know. It seems to be trying too hard, maybe.”

“Maybe so.”

“How’d he feel about your dating me?”

“Artie? How
should
he feel?”

“The black-white thing, I mean.”

“It didn’t come up.”

“How do
you
feel about it?”

“The black-white thing?”

“Yes.”

“I’m hoping it works for us.”

She looked at him.

“I’m hoping we can one day go wherever we want to go, and just be us, without having to worry about looking like everyone
around us.”

“Is Brown your partner?”

“Sometimes. We work it a little different at the Eight-Seven than in some other precincts. We team up with different people
all the time. Makes it more interesting. Also, it gives us an opportunity to exchange information about the bad guys and what
they’re doing.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, Shaar,” he said, shortening her name, rhyming it with the first syllable in Paris, “I thought you
might feel uncomfortable in a place where there were only white people.”

“How about a place where there are only
black
people?”

“Like in Diamondback, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I think
I
might feel uncomfortable in a place like that,” he said.

“So you asked Brown to recommend a place where we would
both
feel comfortable.”

“Yes. But I didn’t know everything would be divided right down the middle. Three white guys in the band, three black guys.
One white bartender, one black. A black girl for every white guy, a black guy for every white girl.”

“Like painting by the numbers,” she said.

“Yeah. Would you like to get out of here?”

“Where would you suggest?” she asked.

“Top of the Hill,” he said.

The Hill Building was in midtown Isola on Jefferson Avenue. They had taken a taxi uptown, and now—at ten o’clock on a wide-awake,
big-city, middle-of-the-week night—they walked into the lobby and stood behind a red velvet rope, where a man in a green uniform
and a green hat kept parceling eight or ten people at a time into an express elevator that ran to the fifty-eighth floor of
the building. They had no reservations. Kling was worried. Big-shot detective, How about Top of the Hill? How about when we
get
there a haughty headwaiter takes one look and sends us on our way, Sorry, buster, no room at the inn.

Well, how could that possibly happen? Handsome blond detective in a dark blue suit, beautiful black woman in a complementary
blue dress, anyone should be
delighted
to have us in their midst, add a touch of elegance to the joint.
Come in, come in,
sir,
come in, miss
,
would you care for a table by the window where
you
can look out over the entire city? Lovely night, isn’t it, sir?
Otherwise, just flash the tin and slip him a few bucks … did people
do
that in fancy places like Top of the Hill?

He kept planning strategy all the way up to the fifty-eighth floor, where they transferred to another elevator going up to
the sixty-fifth floor and the roof of the building. The elevator doors opened onto a plush reception area at one end of which
were the glass entrance doors to the restaurant and lounge, beyond which a twinkling nest of lights beckoned romantically.
He knew at once that he’d made the right spontaneous choice. But …

Oh, God, there he was, a stout penguin, all white and black, standing at a podium just inside the entrance doors. Kling would
rather have faced a bank robber with a nine in each fist. Boldly, he led Sharyn to the doors, opened one for her, and allowed
her to precede him into a view of the city that was utterly dazzling, lights stretching from here to the farthest tip of the
island and beyond, bridges that seemed to span continents, stars racing to the planets and beyond, to solar systems yet unimagined.
He almost caught his breath. There was the sound of music coming from somewhere deep in the room, soft and danceable. There
were lighted votive candles in crystal holders in the center of round tables with polished black tops. There were waitresses
in white blouses and long black skirts slit up the leg to the thigh, everyone and everything in black and white, when you
were in love, the whole universe was black and...