McNair pushed past his son and then me. We reached the famous landing. He went to press the buzzer beside the apartment door but I stepped in fast. “Don’t touch a thing, Rick. Terry, you go back to the stairs, keep watch.”
I just wanted him well out of the way. Any fool could tell that the brownstone was deserted, waiting for the wrecker’s ball. That store at street level had been shut for weeks and the ex-owner hadn’t bothered to haul the window-display merchandise away. Street people had been using the hallway for a rest room; the odor up here wasn’t so much worse than lower down, just different...
The lock was strictly five-and-dime; I slipped it with a credit card.
We didn’t have to go in.
The woman was just inside. She hadn’t been much in life and was even less now. I couldn’t tell whether she had been strangled or what, the corpse was far gone. Maybe it had been there for a week. The rats hadn’t helped anything but themselves, the way rats will.
“Jesus,” Rick McNair groaned, and it wasn’t taking holy names in vain. “Let’s get out of here.”
The apartment, as I’d expected, was empty. The floor was fluffy tan underlay, the final tenant had ripped up the carpet. Unfaded places on the walls showed where furniture must have stood. I stood firm as McNair yanked my arm.
“Stuff to do,” I told him.
“Say what?” He didn’t realize it, but he was shouting.
“Terry’s wallet must be around here.” He blinked at me and I got mad. “Come on, Rick! Terry couldn’t kill a fly and somebody suckered him here next a body.” Then I heard that yowl-whoop-yowl cutting off suddenly, maybe a block away.
Great.
Now there was all of sixty seconds to do a day’s work. The stairway had no windows but the apartment couldn’t get by without them. I yelled for Terry to get in there with us — he went green and started to take off at the sight of the dead lady but McNair grabbed him.
I wrestled the nearest window open. “Fire escape,” I told McNair. “Don’t go down! Go up and over the roof, far as you can get. Use cover, go quiet, think Nam. Terry, this kid Mike — what car he drive? Quick, boy!”
He was nauseous, fighting it, eyes rolling. I shook him. “What car?”
“Uh... uh... Toyota. Silver, black roof.”
“Go!” I whacked McNair’s rump, nearly threw Terry out after him onto the rusty iron escape route of the fire stairs.
The apartment being stripped cut searching time. Terry’s wallet was half under the body, shoved there. I ripped it out, frantically checking the contents. Money, tickets for a rock concert, some clippings from Sports Illustrated.
Either he’d been cool enough to leave his ID at home, which I doubted, or Terry simply kept it separate from his dough. Adding my cash to the wallet, I slipped it into my jacket pocket, using the now-empty money clip, a hammered silver-dollar sign, to fix tie to shirt.
I just finished when two cops burst in. You can climb stairs fast or quiet; they’d tried both at once and could be heard on the final flight. So I was reaching way up, grabbing air, a fraction before they made the scene.
They said I was in a lot of trouble and a bad person to boot. Not hardly, I said, but polite.
What it was, I told them, I’d been hanging out on the corner and noticed this white teenager, maybe high school, in a silver Toyota with a black roof. He’d been in and out of the brownstone here, half a dozen times in a matter of hours. Made a fellow think...
Just now, I said, I’d gone into the hallway of the building to take a leak, and the same kid came barreling down the stairs, never seeing me in the shadows. So I’d decided to snoop around, see what drew him upstairs, day after day.
Sure, I’d opened the window. Had they noticed the smell in there? No, I didn’t know the dead lady from Adam, and neither would anyone, bar her Maker, thanks to those rats. But I did know that yellow simulated leather coat. Belonged on a street lady I’d seen from time to time, on the next block to here...
Finally the brightest cop ran out to their car, got on the switch about his comrades looking out for a black-and-silver Toyota driven by a kid. Later this cop told me he’d been covering all the bases and figured the vehicle and driver to be figments of my imagination.
Only while he was still leaning into the police car, he saw a black-and-silver Toyota cruise past; stayed cool, and observed it was driving round and round the block.
Which was how Terry’s friend Mike, who knew the Limit so well, came to be detained as well as me.
Mike’s story ran that he happened to be driving past, that was all. He denied pointing out the building to Terry McNair or telling him a hooker was there.
But as I’d gambled, Rick McNair had just enough smarts to take off on a sudden visit to Vermont with Terry. Well, I hadn’t figured Vermont, just far and fast until the mud settled. Okay, it was schooltime. Then again, it’s the American way, Pop and Junior going off to fish and hunt. Rick McNair was an impulsive father, what can I tell you?
Until they caught up with father and son, the cops had to be satisfied with me and Mike the Toyota driver. Even with his dad’s lawyer present, Mike made an uneasy witness. Then they matched his voiceprints to the anonymous call on 911, claiming a murder at the brownstone, and the prints matched.
This made Mike an uneasier witness. His lawyer had a long talk with him, in private. Then the plea bargaining began, Mike ’fessed up — he’d hit on the street lady, greased her in a panic when she refused to get out of the car again, wanting extra cash — and I was released. My fine car had been towed, like to wrecked the transmission. The Good Samaritan never had that breed of static, but then again, I guess in those Bible times he’d have ridden a mule.
About two days later Rick McNair phoned me, kind of high-strung and guarded in his talk. “Relax, come on home,” I said. “No problem anymore.”
In the middle of the night, Rick McNair and Terry were hammering at my door. Thank you, thank you, how in the world did you figure it, so forth. How in the world could anyone not figure it, I nearly came back at them.
Mike had been on the prod for Terry to go to the apartment where he’d dumped the body. From the speed the cops turned up, somebody had been watching the place, ready to tip them when we went in. It was such a rinky-dink, schoolyard plotting affair...
As such, there was a good chance, far better than drawing to a straight, that the someone who’d called the cops would hang around the neighborhood to see how his caper worked out. Amateurs always want to make sure, that’s how they stay amateurs, right?
Which was why I needed to know what sort of car Mike drove. If I’d been wrong about Mike, then it was my grief. Any fool could tell the street lady had been dead more than forty-eight hours, and I’d only been back in the city for a day — before that, I’d been in Vegas for nine days. Very firmly in, thank you: in jail, to be exact. The worst the cops could have done was give me a hard time.
So it was all pretty simple, considering. When I said simple, Rick McNair gave me a look as much as to say I was fooling. He was a good guy and Terry was a good kid, but they weren’t swift.
Rick McNair hugged me hard, close to tears. “Anything you ever want and it’s in my power, you got it, Norm.”
“One thing, then, right now. That.45 piece, Rick — toss it in the river. As a favor to me, huh?” He wanted to know why, now the trouble had passed, but I stalled on that and Rick went off to fulfill his promise.
I couldn’t tell him that I might not be able to watch out for him another time. Or that some white folks just can’t handle pressure.