87th Precinct - The Last Dance Part 16

"The piano player's here," he said.

"Good," Chapp said. "What's that in the corner there, Charlie?"

"A piano?" Charlie said cautiously.

"Good. Introduce it to the piano player. Who's our ten o'clock?"

"Girl named Stephanie Beers."

128.

"Send her right in."

"You heard him," Zimmer told the detectives.

"Just one more question," Carella said.

"Just."

"How'd Hale acquire those rights?"

"I have no time to go into that just now."

"When will you have time?" Carella asked.

"You said just one more question," Chapp reminded him.

The door opened again.

"Morning, morning!"

A man wearing a short overcoat, a long m.u.f.fler, and bright red woolen gloves walked directly to the upright piano angled into the corner, took off his overcoat and gloves, hurled them on top of the piano, yanked out the bench, and sat. A tall, redheaded woman walked in almost immediately behind him.

"Good morning, everyone," she said. "I'm Stephanie Beers."

"Hi," Chapp said. "I'm Rowland Chapp, director oi Jenny's..."

"I love your work, Mr Chapp."

"Thank you. Naomi Ja.n.u.s, our ch.o.r.eographer. And om two producers, Connie Lindstrom and . . . Norm? Sorry, but we really must..."

"Coming."

"We'll be back," Carella said.

"What are you going to sing for us?" Chapp asked, smiling.

A call to the Hack Bureau had revealed no pickups outside The Telephone Company at two A.M. or thereabouts on November 10. So you think, a black hooker, who gives a s.h.i.t? Then you think some guy dropped roofers in her beei or gingerale and stabbed her? That ain't fair, is what you 129.

Ed McBam think. So you start wondering how the girl got home that night if she didn' t take a taxi. Did somebody drive her home in his own car, which was the worst of all possibilities? Or did she take the subway or a bus? Not many girls wanted to risk the subway at two in the morning, even though it was faster than surface transportation. After midnight, a bus driver had to let you out anywhere along the route, and not just at designated stops, a peculiarly civilized option in a city often cited for barbarism. So Ollie figured maybe the girl did take a bus home the night she was killed. In which case it was possible she'd met whoever later killed her either on the bus or after she got off the bus, both magnificent speculations but better than nothing when all you had was nothing. If you went this route, you were thinking the two crimes were unrelated. The roofers in each crime were then just a coincidence, which Ollie did not rule out. No working cop ever ruled out coincidence. Only in Sweden did learned scholars scoff at coincidence. Ollie checked his bus schedules and discovered there was a bus that stopped on the corner of Stemmler and Lowell at 2:05 each weekday morning, which bus Althea probably couldn't have caught since the stop was three blocks from the club, which Ruby said she'd left at 2:00 A.M. approximate. There was another bus twenty-one minutes later at 2:26 A.M. which she could have caught easily enough. So Ollie went downtown three weeks after the murder of Althea Cleary, and stood in the bitter cold on the corner of Stemmler and Lowell, waiting for the 2:26 A.M. bus. There was one other person at the bus stop, a man carrying a black lunch pail. Ollie figured him at once for a regular. Guy carrying a lunch pail at two-thirty in the morning, was he going to a baseball game? No, he was going to work. And if he was going to work at this hour on a Tuesday night, chances are he was also going to work on a Tuesday night three weeks ago. Ollie waited till the bus arrived and they'd 130.

both boarded it before he struck up a conversation with the man.

"My name is Oliver Wendell Weeks," he said. "I'm a detective," and showed his shield.

The man said nothing.

Looked at the shield.

Nodded.

Said nothing.

"You ride this bus every night at this time?" Ollie asked.

"Mornings, actually," the man said. "This time of night, it's morning already."

"On my block," Ollie said, "if it's still dark, it's nighttime."

"Who can argue with that?" the man said. "My name's Jimmy Palumbo, I'm a short-order cook in a deli in Riverhead. We start serving at six, I have to be there at four-thirty to set up. I'm afraid to ride the subways, so I take a bus to work. Takes me two hours to get there from where I live. But at least I get there alive, am I right?"

Who asked you? Ollie wondered.

"Were you on this bus, at this time, three weeks ago?" he said.

"On a Tuesday, you mean?

"Yes. Three weeks ago tonight."

"I'm on this bus every Tuesday at this time. I'm prompt and punctual. I also make the best hash browns in the business. You want to know the secret of making great hash browns?"

"No," Ollie said. "I want to know do you remember seeing this girl on this bus three weeks ago at this time." He took from his jacket pocket a black-and-white print the Photo Unit had made from a picture recovered in Althea's apartment. "Black girl," he said, "nineteen years old, five-seven or eight, weighed about a nun' fifteen. Recall seeing her that Tuesday?"

Ed McBain "No," Palumbo said. "Why? What'd she do?"

"Did you ever see her on this bus? At any time?"

"Not that I recall. Usually the bus is empty till it hits the stop near the Sands Spit Bridge. Lots of people connect there. They come over the bridge, make the connection. Of course, when I say empty, I don't mean literally empty. I mean just a handful of people. Most people prefer the subway, but I value my life too highly. Two hours later, I'd risk it. But two-thirty in the morning? No way."

Who asked you? Ollie thought again.

"Where would she have got off, this girl?" Palumbo asked.

"What difference does it make where she got off," Ollie asked, "if she didn't get on in the first place?"

"Cause maybe I noticed her getting off, but not on," Palumbo said. "Lots of times, people don't notice things till later."

"She woulda got off at Hanson Street. Or maybe she signaled the driver to let her off between Slade and Hanson."

"I don't even know where that is. Hanson Street."

"It's up in Diamondback."

"That where you work?"

"Yes."

"What's that precinct up there?"

"The Eight-Eight."

"Oh yeah, right."

"You know it?"

"No."

Ollie figured there was no use talking to this jacka.s.s. He changed his seat and watched the silent city pa.s.sing by outside. This was the time of day he liked best, the empty hours between midnight and dawn, a time when the sleepless city lay coiled with menace and surprise. If he were not a cop, he would never venture outdoors at this time of night, however safe the Mayor said it was. Let the 132.

Mayor take a little stroll out there where blurred figures cl.u.s.tered under street lamps and cars cruised slowly past on the night. Let him.

Through his own image reflected darkly in the window, he could see the city beyond, changing from white to Latino in the wink of an eye, and then Latino to black as the bus lumbered farther uptown through forsaken streets where steam drifted up from sewer lids and rats scurried in packs from sidewalk to sidewalk. Let the Mayor take his stroll, the f.u.c.k.

He signaled for a stop where he supposed Althea would have if she'd taken the bus home that night. It was close to three-thirty. The short-order cook was dozing as Ollie made his way to the front of the bus. The door opened. The driver asked, "You be all right up here, man?"

"I'm a cop," Ollie said, and stepped out into the night.

There was an arrogance in his girth and his waddle, an insolence in his gaze that advertised his profession a mile away. If you didn't know this man was a cop, you had no right being out on the street at this hour. And if you recognized him as such, you'd be a d.a.m.n fool to mess with him. Ollie knew the shield wasn't much protection these days; in some instances it would as easily encourage a slug as dissuade one. But the demeanor that said he was a cop also warned that there was a nine-millimeter semi-automatic in a holster under his jacket. He walked the empty hours of the night with not-quite immunity, but with something as close to it as anyone deserved.

At three-thirty in the morning, Althea deary's street was a lot livelier than Ollie expected it would be. An all-night Korean grocery store stood ablaze with light on one corner. An all-night diner, equally incandescent, occupied the corner opposite. In a way, these two bustling places of business were good news. They widened the field of possible suspects beyond the invisible John Bridges; Althea could have left the club alone, got on and off the 133.

Ed McBain bus alone, and-in either the diner or the grocery store- met the man who'd later killed her. On the other hand, did Ollie really need or want a wider field? Why not expand the number of suspects to include the entire city, the entire state, the entire nation? Why not work this f.u.c.king case for the rest of his life?

He almost went home to bed.

This was, after all, just a little black hooker here.

Instead, he went into the grocery store, and sauntered over to the cash register with his coat open and his belly and the b.u.t.t of the nine showing, hoping the smiling idiot behind the counter would think he was about to hold up the joint, heh heh. Inject a little humor here, right? Throw a minor scare into these slopes here, while never forgetting the magnitude of the mission, ah yes.

"Let me talk to the manager," he said.

The manager or the owner or whoever he was came over grinning nervously.

"You know this girl?" Ollie asked.

The man looked at the picture.

"She live aroun corner," he said.

"Right. Ever see her?"

"She killed," he said.

"When's the last time you saw her?" Ollie asked.

"Before kill."

"When before?"

"Night before. She come in, buy milk."

"What time was that?"

"Same now."

"Three-thirty, around then?"

"T'ree-t'irty, yes."

"Was she alone?"

"Alone, yes."

"Say anything to you?"

"Say h.e.l.lo, goodbye."

"Did you thank her for buying the milk?"

134.

"What?"

"Forget it. How long was she in here?" "Fi' minute. Go across street diner." "Thanks," Ollie said, and winked. "English word," he explained, and walked out.

The diner at this hour was packed with what Ollie called "denizens," which in his dictionary-but no one else's- was the antonym of "citizens." Here were the predators, the occupiers of the night, the people who woke up at midnight and began stalking the city like the wild animals they were. White, black, Latino, they all talked too loud and looked too tough till you shoved a nine in their face. The minute Ollie walked in, they knew he was a cop. To make the point clearer, he tossed open his coat and jacket, flashing the nine again. He didn't want to sit on a stool with his back to the door. He took a booth in the corner instead, where he could watch the counter as well as anyone coming in or going out. He lifted a menu from where it was nesting between the napkin holder and the salt and pepper shakers, studied it briefly, and signaled to the waitress. She was thirty-three or -four, Ollie guessed, not a beautiful woman, but there was something very s.e.xy about her weariness.

"Bring me two burgers and a large order of fries," he told her.

"We only got one size order of fries," she told him.

"What size is that?"

"It don't have a designation. It's just the fries we serve as a side order."

"Okay, bring me two of them."

"They're just the normal size of the side order."