Downtown

10

It was as if someone in the platoon had yelled “Charlie!”

His heart stopped.

He almost threw himself flat on the ground. But the ground was a thick white carpet, across which Gruber was now walking to the front door. Michael glanced quickly at Connie. Connie smiled back mysteriously. It occurred to him that Mary’s little hot rum toddy had done a real number on her.

Gruber opened the door.

There were two men standing there.

They were both wearing blue jackets with yellow ribbed cuffs and waistbands.

“Mr. Gruber?” one of the men asked.

He was about Gruber’s height and weight. He had curly red hair and blue eyes that matched his jacket.

“Yes?” Gruber said.

“Detective Harold Nelson, Seventh Precinct,” he said, and immediately turned his back to Gruber. Across the back of the blue jacket, in yellow script lettering, were the words SEVENTH PRECINCT BOWLING TEAM. He turned to face Gruber again. “I called a little while ago,” he said. “This is my partner, Detective Marvin Leibowitz.”

“How do you do?” Leibowitz said. He was taller than Nelson, with black hair and brown eyes. Together they looked like Car 54, Where Are You? In bowling jackets.

“Marvin is our captain,” Nelson said.

“An honor to meet you,” Gruber said.

“Not of the precinct,” Nelson said. “The team.”

“Still an honor,” Gruber said. “Come in, please.”

The way he was treating them, Michael figured Gruber had paid off a great many cops on the streets of New York while filming this or that wonderful motion picture. When he was still living in Boston, they had shot a movie titled Fuzz up there, which was about cops. Burt Reynolds had played the detective in it. Raquel Welch was in it, too, though they never got to kiss because Reynolds was already married to a woman who couldn’t hear or speak.

Michael went to see it later, it turned out to be a lousy movie. But while they were shooting this movie, there were so many real cops hanging around that Michael was sure the entire Boston P.D. was on the take. He suddenly wondered if Winter’s Chill, the new Arthur Crandall masterpiece, had been shot right here in New York City.

“The reason we’re here, sir,” Nelson said, “as I mentioned on the telephone, is we’re the detectives investigating this homicide which we caught in our precinct …”

“Yes, I realize that,” Gruber said.

“Although you wouldn’t know it from the jackets, would you?” Leibowitz said.

“We’re playing later tonight,” Nelson explained.

“The Ninth,” Leibowitz explained.

“Who’s conducting?” Connie asked.

Both Nelson and Leibowitz looked at her. Michael wished they weren’t looking at her that way. She still had the mysterious smile on her face, which made her look somehow insulting.

To cops, anyone smiling that way was either mentally retarded or trying to be a wise guy. He could sense both cops bristling at the way she was smiling. It never occurred to either of them that she might have had too much toddy. They merely saw this Oriental smiling in a superior manner, and they figured her for somebody challenging authority. In Vietnam, sometimes you got an American soldier questioning a native who either lowered his eyes or looked away, and the soldier figured he had something to hide. Couldn’t look you straight in the eye, then he had to be lying or something. Didn’t realize this was a sign of respect, not looking a superior directly in the eye. It caused a lot of trouble in Vietnam. In Vietnam, a lot of innocent people had got themselves shot because they wouldn’t look an American soldier in the eye when he was asking them questions. He wished Connie would stop smiling.

“Is there something comical, miss?” Nelson asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“May I ask what?”

“No,” she said, and kept smiling.

Nelson looked at her as if trying to freeze her solid with his icy blue stare. Leibowitz, standing behind him and to his left, was scowling now. Suddenly, they no longer looked like Car 54. Instead, they looked like two mean detectives who would kick Connie’s ass around the block as soon as look at her.

“At any rate,” Nelson said, dismissing her and turning to Gruber again, “we thought that since you are an associate, so to speak, of Mr. Crandall …”

“Yes, I am.”

“Who at first we thought was the dead man, but who isn’t …”

“Oh, thank God,” Mary said, “such a genius.”

Nelson looked at her.

“I don’t believe I have met these other people, sir,” he said to Gruber.

“My wife, Mary,” Gruber said.

“How do you do?” Nelson said.

“Ma’am,” Leibowitz said, and almost touched the bill of a cap he was no longer wearing, a holdover from his days as a uniformed cop.

“Mr. Bond and Miss Keene of The New York Times,” Gruber said.

Michael said, “Nice to meet you.”

Connie smiled mysteriously.

“What’re you gonna do?” Nelson asked her. “Write about how incompetent the cops in this city are?”

“Because we ain’t got the killer yet?” Leibowitz said.

“You look familiar,” Nelson said to Michael.

“I don’t think so,” Michael said.

“You ever done a story up the Seventh Precinct?”

“No, sir, I’m sure I haven’t.”

“Me, neither,” Connie said.

“I could swear I know you,” Nelson said.

“How about the Two-Six uptown? You ever write about the Two-Six?”

“Never.”

“‘Cause I used to work up the Two-Six.”

“I’ve never been there.”

“Up in Harlem? On a Hun’ Twenny-sixth Street?”

“No, sir, I’m sorry.”

“Five-twenny West a Hun’ Twenny-sixth?”

“No.”

“Boy, I could swear I seen you someplace.”

“Me, too,” Leibowitz said, staring at him.

“Mr. Gruber,” Michael said, extending his hand for the book Gruber was clutching like a hymnal, “if you’ll just let me have that address …”

“When do you expect to catch him?” Gruber asked.

“Barnes? Who knows? The man’s from Florida, for all we know he’s already back there by now.”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” Michael said, bristling somewhat, “for all you know, he may not have killed that person at all. Whoever that person may be.”

“Oh, so that’s gonna be the Times approach, huh?” Nelson said, and nodded knowingly to his partner.

“Of course,” Leibowitz said. “The police in this city don’t know if Michael Barnes really done it …”

“… and we also don’t know who got killed.”

“Who did get killed?” Michael asked.

“We don’t know,” Nelson said.

“But that doesn’t mean …”

“That doesn’t mean Barnes didn’t kill him,” Nelson said.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll work it out,” Michael said. “Connie, let’s go. Mr. Gruber, if you’ll …”

“Okay, Michael,” Connie said.

“… let me have …”

“Michael, did you say?” Leibowitz asked.

Michael thought Uh-oh.

Leibowitz was looking at him.

“Mr. Who, did you say?” Nelson asked.

Nelson was looking at him, too.

Both of them trying to remember if this was the man they’d seen on television.

The picture on the license.

Not a very good likeness, but—

“Bond,” Michael said. It wasn’t going to wash.

“Mr. Bond,” Nelson said, reaching under his jacket for the gun holstered to his belt, “I wonder if you’d …”

Michael did two things almost simultaneously.

Three things, actually.

In such rapid succession that he might just as well have been doing them all at the same time.

He grabbed Connie’s hand; he yanked the address book out of Gruber’s hand; and he hit Nelson with his shoulder.

“Oh my God!” Mary yelled.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” Nelson yelled.

“Don’t!” Gruber yelled. “The paintings!”

The door seemed so very far away.

Moving through the jungle with Andrew in his arms, his life leaking away. The medical choppers so very far away. The jungle path a long, dark tunnel through overhanging leaves of green, vines of green, everything dripping green except Andrew, who kept spilling red. Behind Michael, someone called, “We no wanna hurt you, no run, Yank, we wanna help you,” and he wondered why every fucking Cong soldier in this country sounded like a Jap in a World War II— Nelson fired.

He didn’t hit any pictures.

What he hit was Michael.

In the left arm.

He dropped the address book.

He said, “Oh shit.”

Which sobered Connie at once. Or maybe the sudden sight of blood sobered her. She yanked open the door, picked up the book, grabbed the hand on Michael’s good arm, and pulled him through the doorway after her. Behind them, Nelson—or perhaps Leibowitz—fired a shot that sent splinters flying out of the jamb.

Here we are again on the streets of Fabulous Downtown New York, Michael thought, with the fun just about to begin, folks, because my arm is bleeding very badly, and there are two cops chasing us with guns in their hands, and I can’t shoot at either one of them because I’m as innocent as the day is long, which so far happens to be the longest day in my life.

He told himself he could not afford to pass out, even though his arm was killing him—where was the address book, had Connie picked up the address book?

Charlie Nichols was in that book and Charlie just might know what the hell was going on here. If this were a War Movie, which with all this shooting it was beginning to resemble a lot, he’d have told the Chinese girl guiding him through enemy lines to go on without him, he was hurt too bad and he wasn’t going to make it. Or if this were a Show Biz Movie, he’d have told his Chinese dancing partner to accept the job Ziegfeld had offered because he himself was only a second-rate hoofer who didn’t want to stand in her way. But this wasn’t a movie at all, this was real life, and so he clung to Connie’s hand as if he were hanging outside a tenth-story window with nothing but her support between him and the pavement below. Behind him, he heard Nelson yelling like a fucking Cong Jap, “We don’t wanna hurt you, Barnes,” although he’d already hurt Michael pretty badly.

They had almost reached the sidewalk now.

“Police!” someone yelled. “Freeze!”

They both stopped dead in their tracks.

A green-and-white car was at the curb.

The lettering on it read SIXTH PRECINCT.

Two uniformed cops in what looked like padded blue parkas with fake-fur collars were running toward them.

“Freeze!” one of them shouted again.

“Police!” the other one shouted.

Still running toward them.

“Drop those guns!” one of them yelled.

What? Michael thought.

And then he realized that these nice police officers had heard gunfire, and had pulled their car to the curb and had seen a bleeding man and a nice Chinese woman running out of this nice little Welsh lane here, and chasing them were a menacing tall guy and an equally menacing short guy in bowling jackets, both of them screaming, and each of them with a gun in his hand.

Michael wondered if Nelson and Leibowitz would turn to flash the yellow SEVENTH PRECINCT BOWLING TEAM lettering on their jackets.

But Connie was rushing him away from the alley.

This was some city, this city.

Here was a man bleeding from a bullet wound in his left arm, the blood staining the sleeve of his overcoat—though admittedly the coat was a dark blue and the blood merely showed on it as a darker purplish stain—being rushed into a taxi by a gorgeous Chinese girl, and nobody on the street batted an eyelash. Michael found this amazing. In Sarasota, if you belched in public, you got a standing ovation.

The cab driver said, “What is that there? Is that blood there?”

“Yes, my husband just got shot,” Connie said.

“Sure, ha-ha,” the cabbie said.

Michael realized she had called him her husband.

He tried the name for size: Mrs. Michael Barnes.

Constance Barnes.

Connie Barnes.

“So what really happened?” the cabbie wanted to know.

“We were walking down the street minding our own business,” Connie said, “when this man came along from the opposite direction with a tiger on a leash.”

“Boy oh boy,” the cabbie said, shaking his head, watching her in the rearview mirror.

“So my husband told him he thought that was against the law, having a tiger on a leash …”

Again.

She’d said it again.

“… and the man said, `Sic him!`”

“To the tiger?”

“Yes.”

“Sheeesh,” the cabbie said. “What a city, huh?”

“You said it,” Connie said.

“So what’d the tiger do? This musta been a trained tiger, huh?”

“Oh, yes. He jumped on my husband.”

“An attack tiger, huh?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Mauled him, I’ll bet. Your husband.”

“Exactly what happened.”

“Sheeesh,” the cabbie said again. “What was his name?”

“I don’t know. He was a tall, dark man wearing …”

“No, I mean the tiger.”

“Why do I have to know the tiger’s name?”

“So you can report this to the police.”

“I don’t think I heard his name.”

“Then how you gonna identify him? All tigers look alike, you know.”

“I know, but …”

“So you have to know his name. If the police should ask you his name.”

“Well, why would they do that? I mean, I don’t think there are too many tigers on leashes in this city, do you?”

“Who knows? There could be.”

“I mean, have you ever seen a tiger on a leash in this city?”

“I’m just now hearing about one, ain’t I?” the cabbie said.

“His name was Stripe,” Connie said.

Michael was thinking that everybody in this city was crazy.

“That’s a good name for a tiger,” the cabbie said.

“So what’s this address on Pell Street? A doctor?”

“No, it’s where I live,” Connie said.

“‘Cause don’t you think you ought to see a doctor?”

“I want to look at it first.”

“Are you perhaps a doctor, lady?”

“No, but …”

“Then what good is it gonna do, you looking at it?”

“Because if it looks bad, then I can call a doctor.”

“On Christmas Day? This is Christmas Day, lady.”

“I’ll call a Chinese doctor.”

“Do they work on Christmas Day?”

“Yes, if they’re Buddhists.”

“Look, suit yourself, lady,” the cabbie said.

“You want a Buddhist doctor, go get a Buddhist doctor.”

He was silent for the rest of the trip to her apartment. Michael guessed he was offended. When they got to Connie’s building, he pocketed the fare and her generous tip, and then said, “Also, they got rabies, you know. Them attack tigers.”

Michael himself was beginning to believe he’d really been attacked by a tiger. As he got out of the cab, he looked up and down the street in both directions, to make sure there weren’t any more of them around. He also looked up toward the roof to make sure one of them wasn’t going to jump down into the street from up there. He got a little dizzy looking up. He swayed against Connie, suddenly feeling very weak. But he did not pass out until they were safe inside the apartment.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the doctor said.

He looked like Fu Manchu.

A scarecrow of a man with a long, straggly beard and little rimless eyeglasses. He wasn’t wearing silken robes or anything, he was in fact wearing a dark suit and a white shirt and a tie with mustard stains on it, but there was something about his manner that seemed dynastic. He was bent over Michael, his stethoscope to Michael’s heart. Michael’s shirt was open. He had bled through the bandage Connie had put on his arm before calling the doctor. The sheet under him was stained with blood. The doctor moved the stethoscope. He listened to Michael’s lungs.

“Very good,” he said.

“Yes?” Connie said.

“Yes, the bullet did not go through his lungs.”

“Perhaps because he was shot in the arm,” Connie said respectfully.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the doctor said.

His name was Ling.

He took the bandage off Michael’s arm.

“Mmm, mmm, mmm,” he said.

“Is it bad?” Connie asked.

“Someone shot him in the arm,” Ling said.

“Is the bullet still in there?” Connie asked.

“No, no,” Ling said, “it’s a nice clean wound.”

Good, Michael thought.

“Good,” Connie said.

“You’ll be able to play tennis in a week or so,” Ling said, and chuckled. “Are you left-handed?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll be able to play tennis tomorrow,” he said, and chuckled again.

Michael watched as Ling worked on his arm. He was wondering if he planned on reporting this to the police. He felt certain that reporting gunshot wounds was mandatory.

“How did this happen?” Ling asked.

He was sprinkling what Michael guessed was some kind of sulfa drug on the wound. In the field, you stripped a sulfapak and slapped it on the wound immediately. In the field, people were spitting blood on you while you worked. In the field, everyone got to be a doctor. You lost a lot of patients in the field.

“We were walking down the street minding our own business,” Connie said, “when this man came along from the opposite direction with a gun in his hand.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Ling said.

“So Michael said to the man …”

“Excuse me, but is this your husband?” Ling asked.

“Not yet,” Michael said.

Connie looked at him.

Ling looked at them both.

“You must be cautious,” Ling said. “There are many problems in East-West marriages.”

“Like what?” Michael asked.

“Like food, for example,” Ling said.

“But I like Chinese food,” Michael said.

“Exactly,” Ling said.

“I see,” Michael said.

“So what did you say to this man?”

“Which man?”

“The one who shot you.”

“Oh.”

“What he said,” Connie said, “is that he thought it was against the law to be walking down the street with a gun in your hand.”

Not in Florida, Michael thought.

Florida was the Wild West these days.

Though not as much as New York seemed to be.

“So the man shot him,” Connie said.

“Tch, tch, tch,” Ling said.

“Are you going to report this?” Connie asked flatly.

Ling looked at her.

“Are we both Chinese?” he asked.

“I’m only walking wounded,” Michael said.

“And walking wounded are allowed to walk.”

Dr. Ling had bandaged his arm neatly and tightly, and it was no longer bleeding and certainly in no danger of becoming infected unless Michael went rolling around in the dirt someplace. Moreover, it hardly hurt at all now, so what he wanted to do …

“No,” Connie said. “What we’re going to do is I’ll go down for some food and we’ll eat here in the apartment and I’ll call Charlie Wong and tell him I’m not feeling good and won’t be able to work tonight. Then you’ll go to bed and get some …”

“No,” Michael said.

“Dr. Ling said you have to rest.”

“Dr. Ling isn’t wanted for murder. What I want to do is go see this Charlie Nichols person …”

“No. You can call him on the phone if you like, but I won’t let …”

“I don’t want to call him on the phone. Every time I talk to somebody on the phone, the police show up in the next ten minutes. I am wanted for murder, Connie! Can’t you …?”

“You’re yelling at me,” she said.

“Yes. Because you’re behaving like a …”

“We’re having our first argument,” she said, grinning.

“Let’s go see Charlie Nichols,” he said.

She did not want to ask Charlie Wong for the use of a limousine because she had already called to tell him she was sick. She did not want to go to a car rental place because she suspected the police would have contacted all such places and asked them to be on the lookout for the wanted desperado Michael Barnes. So she went to Shi Kai, who ran the restaurant downstairs.

Mr. Shi had a car he only drove during the summer months. The rest of the time, it sat idle in a garage he rented on Canal. That was because the car was a 1954 Oldsmobile convertible with a mechanism that had broken while the top was in the down position. Mr. Shi handed the keys over to Connie and told her not to freeze to death. Michael was beginning to understand that Connie had a great many friends in New York City’s Chinese community, all of whom seemed willing to perform all sorts of favors for her. This may have been only because she was Chinese, but he suspected it was because she was extraordinarily beautiful as well. He loved the way she wore her beauty.

His former wife, Jenny, was beautiful, too, if you considered long blonde hair and green eyes and a spectacular figure beautiful, which apparently not only Michael had considered beautiful but all of Harvard’s football team while he was in Vietnam, and most recently the branch manager and God knew who else at Suncoast Federal. But Jenny flaunted her beauty, wearing it like a Miss America who was certain her smile would bring her fame, fortune, and a good seat at Van Wezel Hall, which was Sarasota’s big contribution to Florida culture, such as it was. It had sickened Michael every time Jenny gently placed her hand on someone’s arm and leaned in close to flash that incandescent smile of hers, and the person—male or female—melted into a gushing pool of gratitude and awe. Jenny knew without question that wherever she and Michael went, she was the most beautiful woman in the room. This was true. An indisputable fact. You could no more doubt that than you could doubt the certainty of the sun rising in the morning or the tides going in and out. Jenny was gorgeous. That she knew this and used this was not a particularly admirable trait.

Connie seemed not to know that she was extravagantly beautiful.

She wore her beauty like Reeboks.

Or galoshes.

It never occurred to her that Mr. Shi would feel honored when she asked to borrow his convertible with a top that could not be put up. She went to him as a supplicant, politely asking for the use of the car, generously offering to pay for the use of the car, eyes respectfully lowered when talking to this person who was older than she was, and Mr. Shi —recognizing the beauty and the grace and the modesty of this young woman who came to him as a dutiful daughter might have—handed her the keys and accepted her gratitude with a tut-tut-tut, and then cautioned her paternally against freezing to death.

Connie smiled so radiantly, it almost broke Michael’s heart.

He guessed he was beginning to love her a whole lot.

“One of the nice things about a convertible,” Connie said, “is you can see all the buildings.”

Michael was thinking that in this city you could drive a convertible with the top down in the dead of winter and nobody paid any attention to you. That was one of the nice things about this city, the way everyone respected everyone else’s privacy.

Indifference, it was called.

He was beginning to learn the downtown area.

For example, he now knew that if you wanted to get out of Chinatown, you didn’t have to go very far until you were in Little Italy. And if you wanted to get out of Little Italy …

“This is all the Fifth Precinct,” Connie said.

“Thank you,” he said.

… you either drove east toward the East River or west toward the Hudson River. On the other hand, if you wanted to get to Charlie Nichols’s apartment in Knickerbocker Village, you first drove east on Canal, and then you made a left on Bowery and drove past the Confucius Plaza apartments and P.S. 124 all the way to Catherine, where you made another left that took you past P.S. 1 on your right and then a Catholic church and school on your left —there were certainly a great many educational opportunities in this fine city—and then you made another left onto Monroe, which was a one-way street, and you looked for a parking space.

You could fit all of downtown Sarasota in Knickerbocker Village. That was another thing about this city. You could drive all over the downtown area, which was really just an infinitesimal part of New York, and you’d see more buildings and more restaurants and more movie theaters and more people than you would driving through the entire state of Florida. Michael found this amazing. He suddenly wondered if Connie planned to stay in New York for the rest of her life. He hoped not.

They were surrounded now by tall brick buildings.

They walked on paths shoveled clear of snow.

The evening was cold and brisk. Connie was wearing jeans and leg warmers and boots and the short black coat she’d had on last night when she’d followed him out of the fortune-cookie factory. Michael was wearing a brown leather bomber jacket he’d bought from a friend of Connie’s named Louis Klein who ran an Army and Navy store on Delancey Street, which he opened for Connie even though this was Christmas and he was leaving for Puerto Rico in the morning. He had also sold to Michael—with money borrowed from Connie— a pair of Levi jeans, a blue wool sweater reduced from sixty-four dollars to twenty-three ninety-five, and a pair of white woolen socks “to keep your feet warm,” he said paternally. It was amazing how Connie brought out the paternal instinct in all these fifty-, sixty-year-old men. When Klein clucked his tongue and asked Connie how her boyfriend had hurt his arm, Connie told him simply and honestly that he’d been shot. Klein said, “This city, I’m not surprised,” and threw in an extra pair of woolen socks free.

She clung to his right arm now as they wandered through the development, following signs that told them which building was which. Somehow there was no sense of urgency here in this cloistered enclave. It was close to five o’clock now. There was a hush on the city. The street lamps, already lighted, cast a warm glow on the snow banked along the paths. Window rectangles glowed with the warmth of rooms beyond, Christmas tree lights blinking red and blue and green and white. Strings of lights outlined windows and balconies. One window was decorated with a huge white star. It was still Christmas.

They found Nichols’s building, located his name in the lobby directory downstairs, and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. The corridor smelled of Christmas. Birds and beef that had been roasted, pies that had been baked. There was laughter behind one of the closed doors. Music behind another. They walked to the door for Nichols’s apartment and Michael pressed the bell button set into the jamb. He listened. Nothing. He looked at Connie. She shrugged. He rang the bell again. No answer.

“He’s out,” he said.

“Knock,” she said.

He knocked.

No answer.

He knocked again.

He shook his head.

“Damn it,” he said.

“What do we do now?”

“I’d like to get in there,” he said.

“Do you know how to do something like that?” she asked.

“Something like what?”

“Opening a door with a credit card?”

“No. Anyway, they stole my credit cards.”

He was beginning to get angry all over again.

Just thinking about what had happened to him since seven o’clock last night made him angry. Not knowing why these things were happening to him made him angry. Not knowing who was doing these things to him made him angry. And now Nichols not being here made him even angrier.

“Do you have a credit card?” he asked.

“Yes, but you just said …”

“I can learn.”

She dug in her shoulder bag, found her wallet, and took from it an American Express card. He looked at the card, looked at the place in the jamb where the door fit snugly into it, grabbed the knob in his hand, slid the card between door and jamb, twisted the knob—and the door opened.

He looked at the door.

He looked at the credit card.

“Boy,” Connie said, “you’re some fast learner.”

He eased the door open the rest of the way. There were lights on in the living room. A lighted Christmas wreath in the living room window as well. He motioned Connie in, closed the door behind them. There was a deadbolt lock on the door. In the open position. Which meant he hadn’t worked any magic with the credit card, the door had been unlocked already. He turned the thumb bolt now. The tumblers fell with a small oiled click that sounded like a rifle shot in the silent apartment.

“This is breaking and entry, you know,” Connie said.

They stood just inside the entrance door.

There were two lamps on end tables in the living room, casting warm pools of illumination on a sofa and a pair of easy chairs. The wreath in the window glowed red and green. There was not a sound anywhere in the apartment.

“Let’s see if we can find a desk someplace,” Michael whispered.

“Why a desk?”

“See what’s in it.”

They moved out past the kitchen, and discovered off the hallway just beyond it a room that was furnished as a study. Big window on the wall across from the door. Bookcases on the wall to the right, an easy chair and a reading lamp in front of them. A desk and a chair on the opposite wall.

Michael went to the desk and snapped on the desk lamp. The wall above the desk was decorated with framed pictures, most of them in black and white, all of them showing the same man in various costumes and in various poses. But in whichever costume and whatever pose, he was definitely the man who’d stolen Michael’s car, and presumably the man whose apartment this was: Charles R. Nichols. It looked as if Nichols had once played Sherlock Holmes, if the deerstalker hat and pipe meant anything. Julius Caesar, too, judging from the toga and the laurel wreath. And either Napoleon or Hercule Poirot, it was difficult to tell from the photo. There were also photographs of him playing what appeared to be the leading man to various leading women. Holding the ladies’ hands, gazing into their eyes, grinning in a goofy juvenile manner. It was always embarrassing to see photographs of an essentially unattractive man who thought he was handsome and who posed like a lady-killer. Michael thought of himself as merely okay in a world populated by spectacularly handsome men. He sometimes wished he had the kind of nerve it took to pose for pictures like the ones here on Charlie’s wall.

“We’re looking for anything about Crandall,” he said. “Or Parrish or Cahill.”

“Okay,” Connie said.

She pulled out the bottom desk drawer and sat on the floor beside it, legs crossed Indian style. Michael sat in the chair and began looking through the drawer over the kneehole.

“Have you got enough light?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

It occurred to him that he liked the way they worked together.

They were getting good at working together. Last night in Crandall’s office had been the very first time they’d ransacked anyplace together. Now, working as a team, they …

“The check,” Michael said.

“What check?”

“The one Crandall wrote on Monday. For nine thousand dollars.”

“What about it?”

“He went to the bank at two-thirty. If that’s when he cashed it …”

“Uh-huh.”

“… then maybe he gave the cash to Charlie …”

“Uh-huh.”

“… when he came to the office at three-thirty. That’s all on Crandall’s calendar, Connie. The bank, and Charlie coming to the office.”

“Okay, so what are we looking for?” she asked. “Nine thousand dollars in cash?”

“Well, I guess so.”

“And if we find it? What will that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said, and sighed heavily.

They did not find nine thousand dollars in cash in any of the drawers in Charlie’s desk.

They found instead a tarnished penny in a tray containing rubber bands, paper clips, a roll of Scotch tape, and a pair of scissors. That was all the cash they found.

They did, however, find an address book and an appointment calendar.

And for Monday, the twenty-third of December, Charlie had listed his three-thirty meeting at Crandall’s office.

And for Tuesday, the twenty-fourth of December …

Last night …

The night this whole damn thing had started …

Charlie had written onto his calendar:

Call Mama

“Mama again,” Michael said.

“Let’s check his address book.”

There was a listing for Arthur Crandall in Charlie’s address book.

For both his office and his home.

So that connection, at least, was clearly established.

There was no listing for either a Parrish or a Cahill.

“Is his mother listed?” Connie asked.

“Why his mother?” he asked.

“Mama,” Connie said, and shrugged.

“Why would Crandall have called Charlie’s mother `Mama`?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she’s a big, fat woman. People call big, fat women `Mama` even if they’re somebody else’s mother.”

“I don’t even call my own mother `Mama,`” Michael said.

“Sophie Tucker was big and fat and she was the last of the Red Hot Mamas,” Connie said.

“Who’s Sophie Tucker?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know. I drove somebody to see a play about her.”

Michael looked under Nichols.

He found a listing for a Sarah Nichols in New Jersey.

“Try her,” Connie said.

He debated this.

“Wish her a merry Christmas, ask her if she’s talked to her son lately.” Michael still hesitated.

“Go ahead,” Connie said.

He was thinking that the last time he’d talked to a strange woman on the telephone—Albetha Crandall, last night—the police had come up the fire escape the very next minute. Maybe talking to strange women on the telephone had a jinx attached. In Vietnam, you did all sorts of things to avoid jinxes. Jinxes could get you killed. You wrote all sorts of magic slogans on your helmet, you hung little amulets and charms from your flak jacket, anything to ward off a jinx, anything to stay alive. He did not want any more cops coming up the fire escape. He did not want to get shot by anyone else in this city, good guy or bad guy. But if the Mama in both Crandall’s and Charlie’s appointment calendars was in fact Charlie’s mother, then maybe she could tell him something about what was going on here. If he played his cards right. If he crossed his fingers and mumbled a bit of voodoo jive to keep away the jinx. In Vietnam, Andrew had taught him some voodoo jive. Andrew was from New Orleans, where they sometimes did that kind of shit.

He dialed the number.

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice.

“Sarah Nichols?” he said.

“Yes?”

“Merry Christmas,” Michael said.

“Who’s this, please?” Sarah said.

“A friend of Charlie’s.”

“Is anything wrong?” she asked at once.

“No, no. I’ve been trying to locate him, I wonder if you’ve talked to him lately.”

“Not since this morning,” she said. “He was supposed to come here for an early dinner, I told him I was having some friends in, but he never showed. Well, you know how Charlie is.”

“Oh, yeah, Charlie,” Michael said, and chuckled. “What time this morning?”

“Oh, around eleven, it must have been. The minute Charlie hears I want him to meet some girl, he runs for the hills.”

“That’s Charlie, all right,” Michael said.

“And you haven’t talked to him since, huh?”

“No. Would you like to leave your name? In case he does pop up? Though it’s really quite late, I doubt if even my brother would walk in at nine-thirty.”

“Your brother, uh-huh,” Michael said. “You don’t think he might be with Benny, do you?”

“Who’s Benny?”

“I don’t know. I thought you might know.”

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“Do you think your mother might know Benny? Do you have a mother?”

“Everyone has a mother.”

“I mean, she isn’t dead or anything, is she?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What do you call her?”

“I call her … who did you say this was?”

“Do you call her Mama?”

“Sometimes.”

“Is she spry? Does she get around?”

“Yes, she’s very spry. Excuse me, but …”

“Would you know if someone named Arthur Crandall took her to meet someone named Benny last night?”

“I have no idea. Can you tell me who this is, please?”

“Michael.”

“Michael who?” she asked.

“Bond,” he said. “No relation. Please tell Charlie I called.”

“I will,” she said. “Good night, Mr. Bond.”

“Good night,” Michael said. He put the receiver back on the cradle. He was beginning to like that name.

Maybe he’d take it on as a middle name. It was certainly a hell of a lot better than Jellicle.

“His sister,” he said.

“I gathered,” Connie said.

“Let’s see if there’s anything in the bedroom,” he said.

Charlie Nichols was in the bedroom.

On the bed.

All bloody.