The Mugger (87th Precinct Series, Book 2 - By Ed McBain
INTRODUCTION
Away back in the dim, distant past, a magazine called Manhunt published a story about a former private eye named Matt Cordell, whose gun license had been revoked after he’d pistol-whipped his wife’s lover. Cordell was a drunk living on the Bowery and reluctantly solving cases for old friends who kept popping up to plague his blotto existence. I always thought of him as a defrocked shamus. The pseudonymous editor of Manhunt was someone named “John McCloud” (I know his real name but will not reveal it under threat of extreme torture) who fancied the Matt Cordell stories and bought some half-dozen of them. One of the stories was called “Now Die In It,” a wordplay twist on the expression, “You made your bed, now lie in it.” McCloud—in the trade the banter was, “He wandered lonely as McCloud”—ran the story in 1953. The byline on it was Evan Hunter.
You will be wondering by now what all of this has to do with The Mugger. Well, by the time I sat down to write the second book in the 87th Precinct series, I knew that I wanted to accomplish several things.
1) Cop Hater had used a classic smoke-screen plot as an introduction to the series, with cops the victims of a killer who seemed out to get cops—a way of bringing my full (at the time) complement of cops onstage as both investigators and potential victims. Having set up the characters who would be around, more or less, in every book, I now wanted to experiment with my theory that the squadroom itself could function as a “hero,” with different cops taking the spotlight in each book. Carella, who’d figured largely in the first novel, would be absent this time around—off on his honeymoon, in fact. A patrolman who’d put in a brief appearance in Cop Hater would become involved in a case that he would solve, thereby earning him a promotion and a leap into the squadroom as a rookie detective. To accomplish this, I needed a very strong plot. In fact, in order to elevate the status of the patrolman and keep alive the detectives already introduced in Cop Hater, I needed two strong plots. (Please stay with me; I’m getting there.)
2) The plot involving the detectives would derive from the title The Mugger. (To this day, I will often start a novel with only a title, winging it from there.) The plot involving the patrolman would focus on a murder—it had to be a serious crime in order to earn him his promotion—and it seemed to me that a perfectly serviceable and unusually strong murder plot had been used by me earlier in a story titled (you guessed it) “Now Die In It.”
At the time, I didn’t know if there were any laws about cannibalism, but it seemed to me that many writers before me had expanded short stories into novels or one-act plays into full theater pieces, and anyway I was a firm believer in wasting not, wanting not. Besides, my patrolman (who was Bert Kling, of course) was a far cry from Matt Cordell, who—in the hardboiled private eye tradition of the day—would as soon sock a woman as kiss her. It seemed to me that a new character would give added dimension to a plot I’d already used once. Seeing the same things through Kling’s eyes would make it all seem fresh and different.
As the book turned out, and I didn’t know this when I began writing it, the two plots merged—or seemed to merge. I can’t tell you more about either just now, or I’d spoil both for you. Let me say only that, for me, the combination seemed to work as a unified whole. I hope it still does. And I hope that Matt Cordell, lying in a gutter someplace with a bottle of cheap wine, will forgive me the petty theft.
“He who steals my purse”—but, after all, I didn’t steal his name.
—ED McBAIN
The city could be nothing but a woman, and that’s good because your business is women.
You know her tossed head in the auburn crowns of molting autumn foliage, Riverhead, and the park. You know the ripe curve of her breast where the River Dix molds it with a flashing bolt of blue silk. Her navel winks at you from the harbor in Bethtown, and you have been intimate with the twin loins of Calm’s Point and Majesta. She is a woman, and she is your woman, and in the fall she wears a perfume of mingled wood smoke and carbon dioxide, a musky, musty smell bred of her streets and of her machines and of her people.
You have known her fresh from sleep, clean and uncluttered. You have seen her naked streets, have heard the sullen murmur of the wind in the concrete canyons of Isola, have watched her come awake, alive, alive.
You have seen her dressed for work, and you have seen her dressed for play, and you have seen her sleek and smooth as a jungle panther at night, her coat glistening with the pinpoint jewels of reflected harbor light. You have known her sultry, and petulant, and loving and hating, and defiant, and meek, and cruel and unjust, and sweet, and poignant. You know all of her moods and all of her ways.
She is big and sprawling and dirty sometimes, and sometimes she shrieks in pain, and sometimes she moans in ecstasy.
But she could be nothing but a woman, and that’s good because your business is women.
You are a mugger.
Katherine Ellio sat in a hard, wooden chair in the detective squadroom of the 87th Precinct. The early-afternoon sunlight, burnished by autumn, tarnished as a Spanish coin, filtered through the long grilled windows, shadowing her face with a meshed-square pattern.
Her face would not have been a pretty one under any circumstances. The nose was too long, and the eyes were a washed-out brown, arched with brows that needed plucking. The lips were thin and bloodless, and the chin was sharply pointed. It was not pretty at all now, because someone had discolored her right eye and raised a swollen welt along her jawline.
“He came up so very suddenly,” she said. “I really don’t know whether he’d been following me all along or whether he stepped out of an alley. It’s hard to say.”
Detective 3rd/Grade Roger Havilland looked down at the woman from his six-foot height advantage. Havilland owned the body of a wrestler and the face of a Botticelli cherub. He spoke in a loud, heavy voice, not because Miss Ellio was hard of hearing, but simply because Havilland liked to shout.
“Did you hear footsteps?” he shouted.
“I don’t remember.”
“Miss Ellio, try to remember.”
“I am trying.”
“All right, was the street dark?”
“Yes.”
Hal Willis looked at the woman and then at Havilland. Willis was a small detective, barely topping the five-foot-eight minimum height requirement. His deceptive height and bone structure, however, gave no clue to the lethal effectiveness with which he pursued his chosen profession. His sparkling, smiling brown eyes added to the misconception of a happy gnome. Even when he was angry, Willis smiled. He was, at the moment, not angry. He was, to be absolutely truthful, simply bored. He had heard this story, or variations of it, many times before. Twelve times, to be exact.
“Miss Ellio,” he said, “when did this man hit you?”
“After he took my purse.”
“Not before?”
“No.”
“How many times did he hit you?” “Twice.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“Yes, he…” Miss Ellio’s face contorted with the pain of remembrance. “He said he was only hitting me as a warning. So that I wouldn’t scream for help when he left.”
“What do you think, Rog?” Willis asked. Havilland sighed and then half shrugged, half nodded.
Willis, in pensive agreement, was silent for a moment. Then he asked, “Did he give you his name, Miss Ellio?”
“Yes,” Miss Ellio said. Tears welled up into her inexpressive eyes. “I know this sounds silly. I know you don’t believe me. But it’s true. I didn’t make this up. I…I never had a black eye in my life.”
Havilland sighed.
Willis was suddenly sympathetic. “Now, now, Miss Ellio,” he said, “we believe every word you’ve told us. You’re not the first person who’s come to us with this story, you see. We’re trying to relate the facts of your experience to the facts we already have.” He fished into the breast pocket of his jacket and handed Miss Ellio a handkerchief. “Here now, dry your eyes.”
“Thank you,” Miss Ellio sobbed.
Havilland, bewildered and mystified, blinked at his chivalrous colleague. Willis smiled in his most pleasant A&P clerk manner. Miss Ellio, responding immediately, sniffed, dried her eyes, and began to feel as if she were buying a half pound of onions rather than being interrogated on the activities of a mugger.
“Now then,” Willis said kindly, “when did he give you his name?”
“After he hit me.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, he…he did something first.”
“And what was that?”
“He…I know this sounds silly.”
Willis smiled reassuringly, radiantly. Miss Ellio lifted her face and smiled back girlishly, and Havilland wondered if perhaps they weren’t falling in love.
“Nothing a mugger does sounds silly,” Willis said. “Tell us.”
“He hit me,” Miss Ellio said, “and he warned me, and then he…he bowed from the waist.” She looked up as if expecting shock and surprise to register on the faces of the detectives. She met level, implacable gazes. “He bowed from the waist,” she repeated, as if disappointed with the mild response.
“Yes?” Willis prompted.
“And then he said, ‘Clifford thanks you, madam.’”
“Well, that figures,” Willis said.
“Mmm,” Havilland answered noncommittally.
“Clifford thanks you,” Miss Ellio repeated. “And then he was gone.”
“Did you get any kind of a look at him?” Havilland asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“What did he look like?”
“Well…” Miss Ellio paused, thinking. “He looked just like anybody else.”
Havilland and Willis exchanged patient glances. “Could you be a little more definite?” Willis asked, smiling. “Was he blond? Dark-haired? Red-headed?”
“He was wearing a hat.”
“What color were his eyes?”
“He was wearing sunglasses.”
“The bright night lights blind him,” Havilland said sarcastically. “Either that, or he’s come up with a rare eye disease.”
“Maybe,” Willis said. “Was he clean-shaven? Bearded? Moustached?”
“Yes,” Miss Ellio said.
“Which one?” Havilland asked.
“The man who attacked me,” she said.
“I meant which one of the thr—”
“Oh. Clean-shaven.”
“Long nose or short nose?”
“Well…I guess a medium nose.”
“Thin lips or fat lips?”
“Medium, I guess.”
“Was he short or tall?”
“He was medium height,” Miss Ellio said.
“Fat or thin?”
“Medium,” she said again.
Willis, somehow, was no longer smiling. Miss Ellio regarded his face, and her own smile disintegrated.
“Well, he was,” she said defiantly. “I can’t help it if he didn’t have a big strawberry mark on his cheek or a mole on his nose or anything. Listen, I didn’t ask for him to be an average person. I didn’t ask for him to steal my purse, either. There was a lot of money in that bag.”
“Well,” Havilland shouted, “we’ll do what we can to apprehend him. We have your name and address, Miss Ellio, and if anything comes up, we’ll notify you. Do you think you’d be able to make a positive identification if you saw the man again?”
“Definitely,” Miss Ellio said. “He took a lot of money from me. There was a lot of money in that purse.”
Willis bit. “How much, exactly, was in the purse?” he asked.
“Nine dollars and seventy-two cents,” Miss Ellio answered.
“Plus a fortune in rare gems,” Havilland added in one of his choicer attempts at wit.
“What?” Miss Ellio said.
“We’ll call you,” Havilland answered, and he took her elbow and escorted her to the slatted railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor. When he got back to the desk, Willis was doodling on a sheet of paper.
“What do you make of Miss Ellio?” Willis asked.
“I think she invented the story.”
“Come on, Rog.”
“I think she’s been reading in the newspapers about the mugger named Clifford. I think she’s an old maid who lives in a two-room apartment. I think she looks under the bed every night and finds nothing but the chamber pot. I think she tripped over the chamber pot last night, bruised herself, and decided to make a bid for a little excitement.” Havilland caught his breath. “I also think you and her would make a good couple. Why don’t you ask her to marry you?”
“You’re very comical on Tuesdays,” Willis said. “You don’t believe she was mugged?”
“The sunglasses part was a stroke of real genius! The lengths people will go to when they’re lying.”
“He may have been wearing sunglasses,” Willis said.
“Sure. And Bermuda shorts, too. Like I said, he’s suddenly contracted pink eye.” Havilland snorted. “‘Clifford thanks you, madam.’ Straight out of the papers. There ain’t a citizen of this city who hasn’t heard about Cliff the Mugger and his punch in the mouth and his bow from the waist.”
“I think she was telling the truth,” Willis said.
“Then you type up the report,” Havilland answered. “Just between you and me, Cliff’s beginning to give me a big pain in the behind.”
Willis stared at Havilland.
“What’s the matter?” Havilland shouted.
“When’s the last time you typed up a report?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I do,” Willis said.
“When did you become police commissioner?”
“I don’t like the way you goof off,” Willis answered. He wheeled over the typing cart, opened the desk drawer, and took out three sheets of the DD report form.
“Everybody else is goofing off, ain’t they?” Havilland asked. “What’s Carella doing if he’s not goofing off?”
“He’s on his honeymoon, for Pete’s sake,” Willis said.
“So? What kind of an excuse is that? I say this Ellio broad is a nut. I say this doesn’t call for a report. I say if you feel like typing one up, go ahead.”
“Do you feel strong enough to take another look at the Lousy File?”
“Under what?” Havilland mocked. “Muggers named Clifford who wear sunglasses and Bermuda shorts?”
“We may have missed something,” Willis said. “Of course, the cabinet’s at least four feet away. I don’t want you to strain yourself.”
“I been through the file and back again,” Havilland said. “Every time this Clifford character hits another broad. There’s nothing, nothing. And what this Ellio broad gave us ain’t gonna add one bit to the picture.”
“It might,” Willis said.
“No,” Havilland said, shaking his head. “And you know why? Because that mugging didn’t take place in the street, like she said it did.”
“No? Then where did it take place?”
“In her head, pal,” Havilland said. “All in Miss Ellio’s head.”
The shoulder didn’t hurt at all now.
It was funny. You figure you get shot in the shoulder, it’s going to hurt for a long, long time. But it didn’t. Not at all.
As a matter of fact, if Bert Kling had had his way, he’d be back on the job, and the job was working as a patrolman out of the 87th Precinct. But Captain Frick was the boss of the uniformed cops at the house, and Captain Frick had said, “Now, you take another week, Bert. I don’t care whether the hospital let you go or not. You take another week.”
And so Bert Kling was taking another week, and not enjoying it very much. “Another week” had started with Monday, and this was Tuesday, and it seemed like a nice brisk autumn day outside, and Kling had always liked autumn, but he was bored silly with it now.
The hospital duty hadn’t been bad in the beginning. The other cops had come up to see him, and even some of the detectives had dropped around, and he’d been something of a precinct celebrity, getting shot up like that. But after a while, he had ceased to be a novelty, and the visits had been less frequent, and he had leaned back against the fat hospital mattress and begun his adjustment to the boredom of convalescence.
His favorite indoor sport had become the crossing off of days on the calendar. He had also ogled the nurses, but the joy of such diversion had evaporated when he had realized his activities—so long as he was a patient, at any rate—could never rise higher than the spectator level. So he had crossed off the days, one by one, and he had looked forward to returning to the job, yearned for it with almost ferocious intensity.
And then Frick had said, “Take another week, Bert.”
He’d wanted to say, “Now, look, Captain, I don’t need any more rest. I’m as strong as an ox. Believe me, I can handle two beats.”
But knowing Frick, and knowing he was a thickheaded old jerk, Kling had kept his peace. He was still keeping his peace. He was very tired of keeping his peace. It was almost better getting shot.
Now, that was a curious attitude, he realized, wanting to get back to the job that had been responsible for the bullet in his right shoulder. Not that he’d been shot doing his job, actually. He’d been shot off duty, coming out of a bar, and he wouldn’t have been shot if he hadn’t been mistaken for someone else.
The shot had been intended for a reporter named Savage, a reporter who’d done some snooping around, a reporter who’d asked too many leading questions of a teenage gang member who’d later summoned all his pals and colleagues to the task of taking care of Savage.
It happened to be Kling’s misfortune that he’d been coming out of the same bar in which Savage had earlier interrogated the kid. It was also his misfortune that he was blond, because Savage, inconsiderately, was blond, too. The kids had jumped Kling, anxious to mete out justice, and Kling had pulled his service revolver from his back pocket.
And that’s how heroes are made.
Kling shrugged.
Even when he shrugged, the shoulder didn’t hurt. So why should he be sitting here in a stupid furnished room when he could be out walking a beat?
He rose and walked to the window, looking down toward the street. The girls were having trouble keeping their skirts tucked against the strong wind. Kling watched.
He liked girls. He liked all girls. Walking his beat, he would watch the girls. He always felt pleased when he did. He was twenty-four years old and a veteran of the Korean fracas, and he could remember the women he’d seen there, but never once connected those women with the pleasure he felt in watching the girls in America.
He had seen women crouched in the mud, their cheeks gaunt, their eyes glowing with the reflected light of napalm infernos, wide with terror at the swishing roar of the jet bombers. He had seen underfed bodies hung with baggy quilted garments. He had seen women nursing babies, breasts exposed. The breasts should have been ripe and full with nourishment. They had been, instead, puckered and dried—withered fruits clinging to starved vines.
He had seen young women and old women clawing in the rubble for food, and he could still remember the muted, begging faces and the hollow eyes.
And now he watched the girls. He watched the strong legs, and the firm breasts, and the well-rounded buttocks, and he felt good. Maybe he was crazy, but there was something exhilarating about strong white teeth and sun-tanned faces and sun-bleached hair. Somehow, they made him feel strong, too, and never once did he make any connection with what he had seen in Korea.
The knock on the door startled him. He whirled from the window and called, “Who is it?”
“Me,” the voice answered. “Peter.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Peter. Peter Bell.”
Who’s Peter Bell? he wondered. He shrugged and went to the dresser. He opened the top drawer and took his .38 from where it lay alongside a box holding his tie clasps. With the gun dangling at his side, he walked to the door and opened it a crack. A man can get shot only once before he realizes you don’t open doors too wide, even when the man outside has already given his name.
“Bert?” a voice said. “This is Peter Bell. Open the door.”
“I don’t think I know you,” Kling said cautiously, peering into the darkened hallway, half expecting a volley of shots to splinter the door’s wood.
“You don’t know me? Hey, kid, this is Peter. Hey, don’t you remember me? When we were kids? Up in Riverhead? This is me. Peter Bell.”
Kling opened the door a little wider. The man standing in the hallway was no older than twenty-seven. He was tall and muscularly built. He wore a brown leather jacket and yachting cap. In the dimness, Kling could not make out his features clearly, but there was something familiar in the face, and he began to feel a little foolish holding a gun. He swung the door open.
“Come in,” he said.
Peter Bell walked into the room. He saw the gun almost instantly, and his eyes went wide. “Hey!” he said. “Hey, Bert, what’s the matter?”
Holding the gun loosely, finally recognizing the man who stood before him in the center of the room, Kling felt immensely ridiculous. He smiled sheepishly. “I was cleaning it,” he said.
“You recognize me now?” Bell asked, and Kling had the distinct impression that his lie had not been accepted.
“Yes,” he said. “How are you, Peter?”
“Oh, so-so, can’t kick.” He extended his hand, and Kling took it, studying his face more carefully in the light of the room. Bell would have been a good-looking man were it not for the prominence and structure of his nose. In fact, if there was any one part of the face Kling did not recognize, it was the massive, craggy structure that protruded incongruously between sensitive brown eyes. Peter Bell, he remembered now, had been an extremely handsome youth, and he imagined the nose had been one of those things that, during adolescence, simply grow on you. The last time he’d seen Bell had been fifteen years ago, when Bell had moved to another section of Riverhead. The nose, then, had been acquired sometime during that span of years. He realized abruptly that he was staring at the protuberance, and his discomfort increased when Bell said, “Some schnoz, huh? Eek, what a beak! Is it a nose or a hose?”
Kling chose that point in the conversation to return his revolver to the open dresser drawer.
“I guess you’re wondering what I want,” Bell said.
Kling was, in truth, wondering just that. He turned from the dresser and said, “Well, no. Old friends often…” He stopped, unable to complete the lie. He did not consider Peter Bell a friend. He had not laid eyes on him for fifteen years, and even when they’d been boys together, they’d never been particularly close.
“I read in the papers where you got shot,” Bell said. “I’m a big reader. I buy six newspapers every day. How do you like that? Bet you didn’t even know there was six papers in this city. I read them all, cover to cover. Never miss anything.”
Kling smiled, not knowing what to say.
“Yes, sir,” Bell went on, “and it certainly came as a shock to me and Molly when we read you got shot. I ran into your mother on Forrest Avenue a little while after that. She said her and your dad were very upset about it, but that’s to be expected.”
“Well, it was only a shoulder wound,” Kling said.
“Only a scratch, huh?” Bell said, grinning. “Well, I got to hand it to you, kid.”
“You said Forrest Avenue. Have you moved back to the old neighborhood?”
“Huh? Oh, no, no. I’m a hackie now. Got my own cab—medallion and everything. I usually operate in Isola, but I had a Riverhead call, and that’s how I happened to be on Forrest Avenue, and that’s how I happened to spot your mom. Yeah, sure.”
Kling looked at Bell again, realizing the “yachting cap” was simply his working headgear.
“I read in the papers where the hero cop got discharged from the hospital,” Bell said. “Gave your address and everything. You don’t live with the folks no more, huh?”
“No,” Kling said. “When I got back from Korea—”
“I missed that one,” Bell said. “Punctured eardrum—how’s that for a laugh? I think the real reason they rejected me was because of the schnoz.” He touched his nose. “So the papers said where your commanding officer ordered you to take another week’s rest.” Bell smiled. His teeth were very white and very even. There was an enviable cleft in his chin. It’s too bad about the nose, Kling thought. “How does it feel being a celebrity? Next thing you know, you’ll be on that television show, answering questions about Shakespeare.”
“Well…” Kling said weakly. He was beginning to wish that Peter Bell would go away. He had not asked for the intrusion, and he was finding it tiresome.
“Yep,” Bell said, “I certainly got to hand it to you, kid,” and then a heavy silence fell over the room.
Kling bore the silence as long as he was able. “Would you like a drink…or anything?” he asked.
“Never touch it,” Bell said.
The silence returned.
Bell touched his nose again. “The reason I’m here…” he said at last.
“Yes?” Kling prompted.
“Tell you the truth, I’m a little embarrassed, but Molly figured…” Bell stopped. “I’m married now, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. Molly. Wonderful woman. Got two kids, another on the way.”
“That’s nice,” Kling said, his feeling of awkwardness increasing.
“Well, I might as well get right down to it, huh? Molly’s got a sister, nice kid. Her name is Jeannie. She’s seventeen. She’s been living with us ever since Molly’s mom died—two years now, it must be. Yeah.” Bell stopped.
“I see,” Kling said, wondering what Bell’s marital life had to do with him.
“The kid’s pretty. Look, I might as well level with you, she’s a knockout. Matter of fact, she looks just the way Molly looked when she was that age, and Molly’s no slouch—even now, pregnant and all.”
“I don’t understand, Peter.”
“Well, the kid’s been running around.”
“Running around?”
“Well, that’s what Molly thinks, anyway.” Bell seemed suddenly uncomfortable. “You know, she doesn’t see her dating any of the local kids or anything, and she knows the kid goes out, so she’s afraid she’s in with the wrong crowd, do you know what I mean? It wouldn’t be so bad if Jeannie wasn’t such a pretty kid, but she is. I mean, look, Bert, I’ll level with you. She’s my sister-in-law and all that, but she’s got it all over a lot of older dames you see around. Believe me, she’s a knockout.”
“Okay,” Kling said.
“So Jeannie won’t tell us anything. We talk to her until we’re blue in the face, and we don’t get a peep out of her. Molly got the idea of getting a private detective to follow her, see where she goes, that kind of thing. Bert, on the money I make, I can’t afford a private dick. Besides, I don’t really think the kid is doing anything wrong.”
“You want me to follow her?” Kling asked, suddenly getting the picture.
“No, no, nothing like that. God, would I come ask a favor like that after fifteen years? No, Bert, no.”
“What then?”
“I want you to talk to her. That way, Molly’ll be happy. Look, Bert, when a woman is carrying, she gets goofy ideas. Pickles and ice cream, you know? Okay, so this is the same thing. She’s got this nutty idea that Jeannie is a juvenile delinquent or something.”
“Me talk to her?” Kling was flabbergasted. “I don’t even know her. What good would it do for me to—”
“You’re a cop. Molly respects law and order. If I bring a cop around, she’ll be happy.”
“Hell, I’m practically still a rookie.”
“Sure, but that don’t matter. Molly’ll see the uniform and be happy. Besides, you really might help Jeannie. Who knows? I mean, if she is involved with some young toughs.”
“No, I couldn’t, Peter. I’m sorry, but—”
“You got a whole week ahead of you,” Bell said, “nothing to do. Look, Bert, I read the papers. Would I ask you to give up any spare time if I knew you were pounding a beat during the day? Bert, give me credit.”
“That’s not it, Peter. I wouldn’t know what to say to the girl. I just…I don’t think so.”
“Please, Bert. As a personal favor to me. For old time’s sake. What do you say?”
“No,” Kling answered.
“There’s a chance, too, she is in with some crumbs. What then? Ain’t a cop supposed to prevent crime, nip it in the bud? You’re a big disappointment to me, Bert.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Okay, okay, no hard feelings,” Bell said. He rose, seemingly ready to go. “If you should change your mind, though, I’ll leave my address with you.” He took his wallet out of his pocket and fished for a scrap of paper.
“There’s no sense—”
“Just in case you should change your mind,” Bell said. “Here, now.” He took a pencil stub from the pocket of the leather jacket and began scribbling on the paper scrap. “It’s on De Witt Street, the big house in the middle of the block. You can’t miss it. If you should change your mind, come around tomorrow night. I’ll keep Jeannie home until nine o’clock. Okay?”
“I don’t think I’ll change my mind,” Kling said.
“If you should,” Bell answered, “I’d appreciate it, Bert. That’s tomorrow night. Wednesday. Okay? Here’s the address.” He handed Bert the paper. “I put the telephone number down, too, in case you should get lost. You better put it in your wallet.”
Kling took the paper, and then, because Bell was watching him so closely, he put it into his wallet.
“I hope you come,” Bell said. He walked to the door. “Thanks for listening to me, anyway. It was good seeing you again, Bert.”
“Yes,” Kling said.
“So long now.” Bell closed the door behind him. The room was suddenly very quiet.
Kling went to the window. He saw Bell when he emerged from the building. He watched as Bell climbed into a green-and-yellow taxicab and then gunned away from the curb. The cab had been parked alongside a fire hydrant.