87th Precinct 21 - Eighty Million Eyes Read online

  Praise for Ed McBain & the 87th Precinct

  “Raw and realistic…The bad guys are very bad, and the good guys are better.” —Detroit Free Press

  “Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series…simply the best police procedurals being written in the United States.” —Washington Post

  “The best crime writer in the business.” —Houston Post

  “Ed McBain is a national treasure.” —Mystery News

  “It’s hard to think of anyone better at what he does. In fact, it’s impossible.” —Robert B. Parker

  “I never read Ed McBain without the awful thought that I still have a lot to learn. And when you think you’re catching up, he gets better.”

  —Tony Hillerman

  “McBain is the unquestioned king…light years ahead of anyone else in the field.” —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “McBain tells great stories.” —Elmore Leonard

  “Pure prose poetry…It is such writers as McBain who bring the great American urban mythology to life.” —The London Times

  “The McBain stamp: sharp dialogue and crisp plotting.”

  —Miami Herald

  “You’ll be engrossed by McBain’s fast, lean prose.” —Chicago Tribune

  “McBain redefines the American police novel…he can stop you dead in your tracks with a line of dialogue.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “The wit, the pacing, his relish for the drama of human diversity [are] what you remember about McBain novels.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “McBain is a top pro, at the top of his game.” —Los Angeles Daily News

  Eighty Million Eyes

  AN 87TH PRECINCT NOVEL

  Ed McBain

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 1966 Hui Corporation

  Republished in 2011

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781612181608

  ISBN-10: 1612181600

  This is for Judy and Fred Underhill

  The city in these pages is imaginary.

  The people, the places are all fictitious.

  Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The man was sitting on a bench in the reception room when Miles Vollner came back from lunch that Wednesday afternoon. Vollner glanced at him, and then looked quizzically at his receptionist. The girl shrugged slightly and went back to her typing. The moment Vollner was inside his private office, he buzzed her.

  “Who’s that waiting outside?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, sir,” the receptionist said.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “He wouldn’t give me his name, sir.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Sir, he’s sitting right here,” the receptionist said, her voice lowering to a whisper. “I’d rather not—”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Vollner said. “This is my office, not his. What did he say when you asked him his name?”

  “He—he told me to go to hell, sir.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll be right out,” Vollner said.

  He did not go right out because his attention was caught by a letter on his desk, the afternoon mail having been placed there some five minutes ago by his secretary. He opened the letter, read it quickly, and then smiled because it was a large order from a retailer in the Midwest, a firm Vollner had been trying to get as a customer for the past six months. The company Vollner headed was small but growing. It specialized in audiovisual components, with its factory across the River Harb in the next state, and its business and administrative office here on Shepherd Street in the city. Fourteen people worked in the business office—ten men and four women. Two hundred six people worked in the plant. It was Vollner’s hope and expectation that both office and factory staffs would have to be doubled within the next year, and perhaps trebled the year after that. The large order from the Midwest retailer confirmed his beliefs, and pleased him enormously. But then he remembered the man sitting outside, and the smile dropped from his face. Sighing, he went to the door, opened it, and walked down the corridor to the reception room.

  The man was still sitting there.

  He could not have been older than twenty-three or twenty-four, a sinewy man with a pale, narrow face and hooded brown eyes. He was clean-shaven and well dressed, wearing a gray topcoat open over a darker gray suit. A pearl-gray fedora was on top of his head. He sat on the bench with his arms folded across his chest, his legs outstretched, seemingly quite at ease. Vollner went to the bench and stood in front of him.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  “Nope.”

  “What do you want here?”

  “That’s none of your business,” the man said.

  “I’m sorry,” Vollner answered, “but it is my business. I happen to own this company.”

  “Yeah?” He looked around the reception room, and smiled. “Nice place you’ve got.”

  The receptionist, behind her desk, had stopped typing and was watching the byplay. Vollner could feel her presence behind him.

  “Unless you can tell me what you want here,” he said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  The man was still smiling. “Well,” he said, “I’m not about to tell you what I want here, and I’m not about to leave, either.”

  For a moment, Vollner was speechless. He glanced at the receptionist, and then turned back to the man. “In that case,” he said, “I’ll have to call the police.”

  “You call the police, and you’ll be sorry.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Vollner said. He walked to the receptionist’s desk and said, “Miss Di Santo, will you get me the police, please?”

  The man rose from the bench. He was taller than he had seemed while sitting, perhaps six feet two or three inches, with wide shoulders and enormous hands. He moved toward the desk and, still smiling, said, “Miss Di Santo, I wouldn’t pick up that phone if I was you.”

  Miss Di Santo wet her lips and looked at Vollner.

  “Call the police,” Vollner said.

  “Miss Di Santo, if you so much as put your hand on that telephone, I’ll break your arm. I promise you that.”

  Miss Di Santo hesitated. She looked again to Vollner, who frowned and then said, “Never mind, Miss Di Santo,” and without saying another word, walked to the entrance door and out into the corridor and toward the elevator. His anger kept building inside him all the way down to the lobby floor. He debated calling the police from a pay phone, and then decided he would do better to find a patrolman on the beat and bring him back upstairs personally. It was 2:00, and the city streets were thronged with afternoon shoppers. He found a patrolman on the corner of
Shepherd and Seventh, directing traffic. Vollner stepped out into the middle of the intersection and said, “Officer, I’d—”

  “Hold it a minute, mister,” the patrolman said. He blew his whistle and waved at the oncoming automobiles. Then he turned back to Vollner and said, “Now, what is it?”

  “There’s a man up in my office, won’t tell us what his business is.”

  “Yeah?” the patrolman said.

  “Yes. He threatened me and my receptionist, and he won’t leave.”

  “Yeah?” The patrolman kept looking at Vollner curiously, as though only half-believing him.

  “Yes. I’d like you to come up and help me get him out of there.”

  “You would, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “And who’s gonna handle the traffic on this corner?” the patrolman said.

  “This man is threatening us,” Vollner said. “Surely that’s more important than—”

  “This is one of the biggest intersections in the city right here, and you want me to leave it.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to—”

  “Mister, don’t bug me, huh?” the patrolman said, and blew his whistle, and raised his hand, and then turned and signaled to the cars on his right.

  “What’s your shield number?” Vollner said.

  “Don’t bother reporting me,” the patrolman answered. “This is my post, and I’m not supposed to leave it. You want a cop, go use the telephone.”

  “Thanks,” Vollner said tightly. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t mention it,” the patrolman said breezily, and looked up at the traffic light, and then blew his whistle again. Vollner walked back to the curb and was about to enter the cigar store on the corner, when he spotted a second policeman. Still fuming, he walked to him rapidly and said, “There’s a man up in my office who refuses to leave and who is threatening my staff. Now just what the hell do you propose to do about it?”

  The patrolman was startled by Vollner’s outburst. He was a new cop and a young cop, and he blinked his eyes and then immediately said, “Where’s your office, sir? I’ll go back there with you.”

  “This way,” Vollner said, and they began walking toward the building. The patrolman introduced himself as Ronnie Fairchild. He seemed brisk and efficient until they entered the lobby, where he began to have his first qualms.

  “Is the man armed?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Vollner said.

  “Because if he is, maybe I ought to get some help.”

  “I think you can handle it,” Vollner said.

  “You think so?” Fairchild said dubiously, but Vollner had already led him into the elevator. They got out of the car on the tenth floor, and again Fairchild hesitated. “Maybe I ought to call this in,” he said. “After all…”

  “By the time you call it in, the man may kill someone,” Vollner suggested.

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” Fairchild said hesitantly, thinking that if he didn’t call this in and ask for help, the person who got killed might very well be himself. He paused outside the door to Vollner’s office. “In there, huh?” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, okay, let’s go.”

  They entered the office. Vollner walked directly to the man, who had taken his seat on the bench again, and said, “Here he is, officer.”

  Fairchild pulled back his shoulders. He walked to the bench. “All right, what’s the trouble here?” he asked.

  “No trouble, officer.”

  “This man tells me you won’t leave his office.”

  “That’s right. I came here to see a girl.”

  “Oh,” Fairchild said, ready to leave at once now that he knew this was only a case of romance. “If that’s all…”

  “What girl?” Vollner said.

  “Cindy.”

  “Get Cindy out here,” Vollner said to his receptionist, and she rose immediately and hurried down the corridor. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a friend of Cindy’s?”

  “You didn’t ask me,” the man said.

  “Listen, if this is just a private matter—”

  “No, wait a minute,” Vollner said, putting his hand on Fairchild’s arm. “Cindy’ll be out here in a minute.”

  “That’s good,” the man said. “Cindy’s the one I want to see.”

  “Who are you?” Vollner asked.

  “Well, who are you?”

  “I’m Miles Vollner. Look, young man—”

  “Nice meeting you, Mr. Vollner,” the man said, and smiled again.

  “What’s your name?”

  “I don’t think I’d like to tell you that.”

  “Officer, ask him what his name is.”

  “What’s your name, mister?” Fairchild said, and at that moment the receptionist came back, followed by a tall blonde girl wearing a blue dress and high-heeled pumps. She stopped just alongside the receptionist’s desk and said, “Did you want me, Mr. Vollner?”

  “Yes, Cindy. There’s a friend of yours here to see you.”

  Cindy looked around the reception room. She was a strikingly pretty girl of twenty-two, full-breasted and wide-hipped, her blonde hair cut casually close to her head, her eyes a cornflower blue that echoed the color of her dress. She studied Fairchild and then the man in gray. Puzzled, she turned again to Vollner.

  “A friend of mine?” she asked.

  “This man says he came here to see you.”

  “Me?”

  “He says he’s a friend of yours.”

  Cindy looked at the man once more, and then shrugged. “I don’t know you,” she said.

  “No, huh?”

  “No.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Listen, what is this?” Fairchild said.

  “You’re going to know me, baby,” the man said.

  Cindy looked at him coldly, and said, “I doubt that very much,” and turned and started to walk away. The man came off the bench immediately, catching her by the arm.

  “Just a second,” he said.

  “Let go of me.”

  “Honey, I’m never gonna let go of you.”

  “Leave that girl alone,” Fairchild said.

  “We don’t need fuzz around here,” the man answered. “Get lost.”

  Fairchild took a step toward him, raising his club. The man whirled suddenly, planting his left fist in Fair child’s stomach. As Fairchild doubled over, the man unleashed a vicious uppercut that caught him on the point of his jaw and sent him staggering back toward the wall. Groggily, Fairchild reached for his gun. The man kicked him in the groin, and he fell to the floor groaning. The man kicked him again, twice in the head, and then repeatedly in the chest. The receptionist was screaming now. Cindy was running down the corridor, shouting for help. Vollner stood with his fists clenched, waiting for the man to turn and attack him next.

  Instead, the man only smiled and said, “Tell Cindy I’ll be seeing her,” and walked out of the office.

  Vollner immediately went to the phone. Men and women were coming out of their private offices all up and down the corridor now. The receptionist was still screaming. Quickly, Vollner dialed the police and was connected with 87th Precinct.

  Sergeant Murchison took the call and advised Vollner that he’d send a patrolman there immediately and that a detective would stop by either later that day or early tomorrow morning.

  Vollner thanked him and hung up. His hand was trembling, and his receptionist was still screaming.

  In another part of the 87th Precinct, on a side street off Culver Avenue, in the midst of a slum as rank as a cesspool, there stood an innocuous-looking brick building that had once served as a furniture loft. It was now magnanimously called a television studio. The Stan Gifford Show originated from this building each and every Wednesday night of the year, except during the summer hiatus.

  It was a little incongruous to see dozens of ivy-league, narrow-tied advertising and television men trotting through a slum almost every day of
the week in an attempt to put together Gifford’s weekly comedy hour. The neighborhood citizens watched the procession of creators with a jaundiced eye; the show had been on the air for three solid years, and they had grown used to seeing these aliens in their midst. There had never been any trouble between the midtown masterminds and the uptown residents, and there probably never would be—a slum has enough troubles without picking on a network. Besides, most of the people in the neighborhood liked the Stan Gifford Show, and would rush indoors the moment it took to the air. If all these nuts were required to put together the show every week, who were they to complain? It was a good show, and it was free.

  The good show, and the free one, had been rehearsing since the previous Friday in the loft on North Eleventh, and it was now 3:45 P.M. on Wednesday afternoon, which meant that in exactly four hours and fifteen minutes, a telop would flash in homes across the continent announcing the Stan Gifford Show to follow, and then there would be a station break with commercial, and then the introductory theme music, and then organized bedlam would once again burst forth from approximately twenty million television sets. The network, gratuitously giving itself the edge in selling prime time to potential sponsors, estimated that in each viewing home there were at least two people, which meant that every Wednesday night at 8:00 P.M., eighty million eyes would draw a bead on the smiling countenance of Stan Gifford as he waved from the screen and said, “Back for more, huh?” In the hands of a lesser personality, this opening remark—even when delivered with a smile—might have caused many viewers to switch to another channel or even turn off the set completely. But Stan Gifford was charming, intelligent, and born with an intuitive sense of comedy. He knew what was funny and what was not, and he could even turn a bad joke into a good one simply by acknowledging its failure with a deadpan nod and a slightly contrite look at his adoring fans. He exuded an ease that seemed totally unrehearsed, a calm that could only be natural.