Tricks полностью

The station wagon pulled up to the curb in front of the liquor store on Culver and Ninth. The big woman behind the wheel was a curly-haired blonde in her late forties, wearing a blue dress with a tiny white floral print, a cardigan sweater over it. A kid was sitting beside her on the front seat. Three more kids were in the back of the car. The kids looked perhaps eleven or twelve years old, no older than that.

They threw open the doors and got out of the car.

"Have fun, kids," the blonde behind the wheel said.

The kids were all dressed like robbers.

Little black leather jackets, and little blue jeans, and little white sneakers, and little billed caps on their little heads, and little black masks over their eyes. They were all carrying shopping bags decorated with little orange pumpkins. They were all holding little toy pistols in their little hands. They went across the sidewalk in a chattering little excited group, and one of them opened the door to the liquor store. The clock on the wall behind the counter read 5:15 p.m. The owner of the store looked up the moment the bell over the door sounded.

"Trick or treat!" the little kids squealed in unison.

"Come on, kids, get out of here," the owner said impatiently. "This is a place of business."

And one of the little kids shot him in the head.

Parker had shaved and was back in the squadroom, rummaging through the file cabinets containing folders for all the cases the detectives had successfully closed. In police work, there was no such thing as a solution. You never solved a case, you closed it out. Or it remained open, which meant the perpetrator was already in Buenos Aires or Nome, Alaska, and you'd never catch him. The Open File was the graveyard of police detection.

"I feel like a new man," Parker said. In fact, he looked like the same old Parker, except that he had shaved. "Muldoon," he said, "Muldoon, where are you, Muldoon?"

"You really gonna call a sixty-year-old lady?" Brown asked.

"Peaches Muldoon, correct," Parker said. "If she was well-preserved at fifty, she's prolly still got it all in the right places. Where the fuck's the file?"

"Look under Aging Nurses," Hawes said.

"Look under Decrepit Broads," Brown said.

"Yeah, bullshit, wait'll you see her picture," Parker said.

The clock on the squadroom wall read 5:30 p.m.

"Muldoon, here we go," Parker said, and yanked a thick file from the drawer.

The telephone rang.

"Who's catching?" Parker asked.

"I thought you were," Brown said.

"Me? No, no. You're up, Artie."

Brown sighed and picked up the phone.

"Eighty-Seventh Squad," he said, "Brown."

"Artie, this is Dave downstairs."

Sergeant Murchison, at the muster desk.

"Yeah, Dave."

"Adam Four just responded to a 10-20 on Culver and Ninth. Liquor store called Adams Wine & Spirits."

"Yeah?"

"They got a homicide there."

"Okay," Brown said.

"You got some people out, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Who? Can you take a look for me?"

Brown reached across the desk for the duty chart.

"Kling and Carella are riding together," he said. "Meyer and Genero are out solo."

"Any idea which sectors?"

"No."

"Okay, I'll try to raise them."

"Keep in touch."

"Will do."

Brown hung up.

"What?" Hawes asked.

"Homicide on Culver. There goes the neighborhood."

The telephone rang again.

"Take a look at this picture," Parker said, coming over to Brown's desk. "You ever see a body like this one?"

"Eighty-Seventh Squad, Hawes."

"Look at those tits," Parker said.

"Hello, who am I talking to, please?" a woman's voice asked.

"Detective Hawes."

"Legs that won't quit," Parker said.

"My husband's gone," the woman said.

"Yes, ma'am," Hawes said, "let me give you the number for…"

"My name is…"

"It'll be best if you call Missing Persons, ma'am," Hawes said. "They're specially equipped to deal with…"

"He disappeared here in this precinct," the woman said.

"Still…"

"Does that look like a fifty-year-old broad?" Parker asked.

The telephone rang again. Brown picked up.

"Eighty-Seventh Squad, Brown," he said.

"Artie? This is Genero."

"Yeah?"

"Artie, you won't believe this."

"What won't I believe?" Brown asked. He looked up at Parker, covered the mouthpiece, and whispered, "Genero."

Parker rolled his eyes.

"It happened again," Genero said.

"My name is Marie Sebastiani," the woman on Hawes's phone said. "My husband is Sebastian the Great."

Hawes immediately thought he was talking to a bedbug.

"Ma'am," he said, "if your husband's really gone…"

"I'm at this restaurant, you know?" Genero said. "On Culver and Sixth?"

"Yeah?" Brown said.

"Where they had the holdup last night? I stopped by to talk to the owners?"

"Yeah?"

"My husband is a magician," Marie said. "He calls himself Sebastian the Great. He's disappeared."

Good magician, Hawes thought.

"And I go out back to look in the garbage cans?" Genero said. "See maybe somebody dropped a gun in there or something?"

"Yeah?" Brown said.