Ed McBain - Downtown (10 page)

Albetha Crandall had given him Jessica Wales's address, but he did not know this city's public transportation system and there did not seem to be any taxicabs on the street. It didn't seem to him that one-thirty was very late for Christmas morning; there were probably taxis on the street even in _Sarasota at this hour. He began walking. He knew that the address Albetha had given him was downtown because she'd mentioned that it was. After he'd come only a block, he knew he was headed in the right direction because the streets were still numbered up here and the one following West Tenth was West Ninth. He told himself that after tonight he would never again go downtown in this city, maybe in any city, he would forever after stay _uptown, where it was safe and well-lighted and patrolled by conscientious policemen. Meanwhile, he had to get to Jessica Wales's apartment because there were things he had to find out. Like, for example, why Crandall was now saying that Michael was the person responsible for the murder of the person who _wasn't Crandall. On television just a little while ago, Crandall had told the blond newscaster, "I can only believe that this Michael J. Barnes person is responsible." Exactly what he'd said. Go check it. Rerun the tape, Blondie. Michael J. Barnes. His dear mother in Boston had given him the middle name Jellicle, after the Jellicle Cats in T. S. Eliot's __Old Possum's Book of Practical _Cats, which

she'd read long before Andrew Lloyd

141 Webber was even a glimmer in an Englishman's eye. Michael Jellicle Barnes, a name his schoolmates had found enormously amusing, reciting over and over again as they beat him up, "Yellow Belly Jellicle, Yellow Belly Jellicle," he could have killed his mother. He had tried unsuccessfully to hide the name from the girls he met in high school and later in college, all of whom naturally found out mysteriously and at once and who dubbed him "Jellybean Barnes," which was better, but not much, than getting beat up, he supposed. In the army, he had become "Jelly-ass Barnes" because of the slight accident he'd had the first time the squad went into battle, a name everyone had called him--except Andrew. Dear, dead Andrew. Easy come, easy go, right?

The moment Michael got out of the army, he'd become plain old Michael J. Barnes, and that was the name he'd used when he'd applied for his driver's license and his library card in Florida. And later on, his credit cards. Michael J. Barnes. No middle name, just the initial. And that's what he'd been ever since, Michael J. Barnes, no Jellicle, just plain old Michael J. Barnes. This Michael J. Barnes person. Was what Crandall had said. This Michael J. Barnes person is responsible. For murder. He was suddenly lost.

Lost in thoughts as tangled as the Vietnam underbrush. Lost in time, because the Jellicle was out of his past and the present was an unknown man he had not killed. Lost in space as well, because the streets had run out of numbers and now there were only names and he did not know where in hell he was. Why was he all at once on Bleecker and then Houston and then King and Charlton and ... where the hell was he? He looked at the slip of paper upon which Albetha had scribbled the address for him.

He looked up at the street sign on the corner. He was on Vandam and Avenue of the Americas. So where was St. Luke's Place? Downtown, Albetha had told him. Between

Hudson and Seventh. But where was

143 Hudson? Or, for that matter, Seventh? He studied the empty avenue ahead as he would have studied a suspect trail, and then he looked to his right and looked to his left and decided it was six of one, half a dozen of the other, and began heading east, never once realizing that St. Luke's Place was to the north and west. He walked for what seemed like miles.

Not a numbered street anywhere in this downtown maze. Sullivan and West Broadway and Wooster and Greene and Mercer and now Broadway itself though it did not seem like the Great White Way down here in lower Manhattan except for the snow in the streets. Kept walking east, although he did not have a compass and did not in fact _know he was heading east. No sun up there in the sky. Just a cold, dead moon and stars that told him nothing. He turned corners, seemed at times to be doubling back on his own tracks, coming to the same street sign again and again, thoroughly lost now. He studied the sign on the corner. Mulberry and Grand. He looked up Mulberry. It was festively hung with welcoming arches of Christmas lights. Blinking. Beckoning. Surely there was a telephone somewhere on this beautifully decorated street. He began walking.

Italian restaurants, all of them already closed for Christmas. Hand-lettered signs in some of the windows, advising that they would not be open again till the fourth of January, which, come to think of it, was when Michael had planned to head back to Sarasota. If he'd ever made it to Boston. He decided that if he found an open restaurant or an open _anything, he would first call his mother to let her know he wasn't dead even though she didn't have any of his clothes she could give away prematurely, and then he would call China Doll Limo to see if Connie Kee was yet free to take him to St. Luke's Place, wherever the hell _that was. The awning over the restaurant read:

RISTORANTE BLUE MADONNA The sign in the door read:

CLOSED 145

But there were lights blazing inside, and the sound of music--the Supremes singing "Stop in the Name of Love." The early Sixties came back in a rush. Boston before he was drafted. Sixteen-year-old Jenny Aldershot sitting on a wall overlooking the Charles River, her blonde hair blowing in the wind. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He opened it a crack. The music was louder now. He opened the door fully and stepped inside, and then he almost ran right out into the street again because the place was full of cops!

Beautiful young women wearing garter belts, panties, seamed silk stockings, and high heels --which was just what Detective O'Brien had been wearing earlier tonight. Dancing with men in business suits. As he started for the door again, someone clapped a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see a short-roly-poly man who looked a lot like both Tony the Bear Orso and Charlie Bonano. "Help ya?" the man said.

"I'm looking for a telephone," Michael said. "This is a private party," the man said.

"I'm sorry," Michael said. "I thought this was a restaurant." "It _is a restaurant, but it's also a private party. Dinn you see the sign in the door? The sign says `Closed.`" "I'm sorry, I didn't see it."

"It says `Closed` whether you seen it or not." "All I want to do is make a phone call, it won't take a ..." "Are you a cop?" the man asked. "No," Michael said. The man looked at him. "What are you then?" "An orange-grower."

"My grandfather grew grapes," the man said. "I'm Frankie Zeppelin." He extended his hand to Michael. "What's your name?" "Donald Trump," Michael said. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Trump," Frankie said, and shook hands with him. "Come on, I'll get you a drink. What do you drink, Mr. Trump?" "You can call me Don," Michael said.

"Well, that's very nice of you, Don.

147 And you can call me Mr. Zepparino. What do you drink, Don?" "If you have a little scotch ..."

"We have a little everything," Frankie said, and grinned as if he'd made a terrific joke. Putting his arm around Michael's shoulders, he led him toward the bar. "You look familiar," he said. "Do I know you?" "I don't think so." "Are you from the neighborhood?"

"I'm from Minnesota," Michael said at once, just in case Frankie had seen the earlier news broadcast. "A lot of the girls here come from Minnesota," Frankie said. "These very dumb blonde girls with blue eyes, they must drink a lot of milk out there in Minnesota."

"Yes, it's called the Land of the Lakes," Michael said.

"I thought it musta been," Frankie said. "Kid," he said to the bartender, "pour Donny here some scotch." The bartender picked up a bottle of Dewar's Black Label, and poured generously into a tall glass. "Anything with that?" he asked. "Just a little soda," Michael said.

"Hello?" a voice said over the loudspeaker system. "Hello? Can you hear me? Hello? One, two, three, testing, can you hear me? Hello, hello, hello, hell ..."

"We can _hear you already!" Frankie shouted. Michael looked over to where a man wearing brown shoes and what looked like his blue confirmation suit was standing behind a microphone set up near a big copper espresso machine. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I want to wish you first, one and all, a very merry ... is this thing on?" "It's _on already!" Frankie yelled.

"Hello?" the man at the microphone said. "Can you hear me?" He began tapping the microphone. "Hello? If you can hear me, please raise your hands please. Hello? Can you hear me?" Frankie threw up both his hands. All around the hall, people were putting their hands up. "Looks like a police raid in here," the man at the microphone said, which not too many people found funny, including Michael.

A redheaded woman wearing a black

149 negligee over a black teddy and black garters and black silk stockings and black high-heeled patent leather shoes came over to the bar, said, "Hello, Frankie," and extended her glass to the bartender. "Just vodka," she said. "I think I can safely say, at this our annual Christmas party here," the man at the microphone said, "that this year was a better year than any year preceding it. And I think I can say without fear of contradiction that next year is going to be an even better one!" There were cries of "Tell us about it, Also!" and "Attaway, Also!" and "Let's hear the figures, Also!"

"Hi," the redhead said. "I'm Hannah." "How do you do?" Michael said.

"You look familiar," she said. "Have I ever seen you on television?" "No," he said at once. "Aren't you the one who used to do the Carvel commercials?" "Yes," he said, "come to think of it." "No kidding? I _love your Cookie Puss cakes."

"As an example," Also said, "in hotel encounters in the mid-town area of Manhattan alone, revenues were up seven percent from last year for a total of ..." "Who's this?" a voice at Michael's elbow said.

He turned. He was looking at a very large man wearing a brown tweed suit, a yellow button-down shirt, a green knit tie, and an angry scowl.

"Jimmy, this is the man used to do the Carvel ice cream commercials," Hannah said.

"No kidding?" Jimmy said, immediately disarmed. He took Michael's hand, began pumping it vigorously. "I love your Black Bear cakes," he said. "I'm Jimmy Fingers." "How do you do, Mr. Fingers?" Michael said. "It's Finnegan, actually. But that's okay, everybody knows me as Jimmy Fingers." "Especially the cops," Hannah said. "Yeah, _them," Jimmy said. "Mobile encounters," Also said into the microphone, "by which I'm referring only to passenger automobiles and not vans or pickup trucks--and, mind you, I'm not even

including figures for the Holland

151 Tunnel or the George Washington Bridge --were up a full fifteen percent over last year." "That's very good," Jimmy said appreciatively.

"Good? That's sensational," Frankie said.

"But it can give you backaches," Hannah said. "Does anyone know where I can find a telephone?" Michael asked. "Why you need a telephone?" Frankie said. "I want to call a friend of mine. She may be able to take me to St. Luke's Place."

"Why you wanna go to St. Luke's? What's the matter with here?" "Here is very nice, but ..."

"... know I speak for all of us," Also said at the microphone, "when I extend our sincere appreciation and gratitude to our fine mayor, David Dinkins, and our excellent police commissioner, Lee Brown, and also the good Lord above us, thank you one and all!" "Hear, hear," Jimmy Fingers said.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to ask you to please enjoy the food and the beverage and the music and to stay as long as you like, although some of us may have made previous arrangements. To one and to all, to those of us in management, and to you--the rank and file in the front lines--I wish you a merry Christmas and a new year even more financially and spiritually rewarding than this one has been. Enjoy!" he shouted, and extended both arms in the V gesture Richard Nixon had made famous. "You wanna go to St. Luke's, I'll take you to St. Luke's," Frankie said. "It's Christmas, I feel like Santa Claus. Anyway, it's on my way home." "Well, thank you, that's very kind of you," Michael said.

"I got the car right outside," Frankie said.

At the microphone, four women began singing, "Deck the whores with boughs of holly, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la. Look-in' for a good-time Charlie, fa-la-la ..."

The moment they were seated in Frankie's red Buick Regal, he turned to Michael and said, "So they want you for murder, huh?"

Michael's hand shot out for the door

153 handle.

"Relax, relax, maybe I can help you." "I think you have the wrong party," Michael said. "I seen you on television, I ain't got the wrong party. Relax."

"It's the kind of face I have, I'm often mistaken for ..." "Relax, willya please? I'm only tryin'a help here." "Well, thanks, but how can you possibly ...?was "I can hide you out for a coupla days," Frankie said. "But I didn't kill anybody," Michael said.

"Well, of _course you didn't, nobody _ever killed anybody. But this is _me you're talkin' to." "Well ..." "So you want to go under or not?" Frankie asked. "You surface again sometime next week, the cops'll forget you even existed." "Excuse me," Michael said, "but I don't think that's the way to go." "Then what _is the way to go?" Frankie said, sounding a bit irritated. "I mean, no offense meant, but you're the fuckin' guy _murdered somebody, not me." "I think I've got to find out who got killed."

"Who got killed is this guy Crandall." "No, it wasn't Crandall." "On television, they said he was the dead guy. And they said _you killed him. Which, by the way, your name ain't Donald Trump." "That's right, it isn't."

"I mean, nobody in this whole fuckin' _world could be named Donald _Trump. I mean, if you had to pick a phony name ..."

"It's Michael Barnes," Michael said.

"Which also sounds phony. I'm tryin'a help you here, and you keep layin' this bullshit on me. Is it that you don't trust me? I mean, I spent all my life in this fuckin' downtown community, tryin'a build a reputation for honesty and trust, so if there's one thing you can do, it's trust me." "I do trust you," Michael said.