Mischief Read online

  “The 87th Precinct series [is] one of the great literary accomplishments of the last half-century.”

  —Pete Hamill,Daily News (New York)

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

  —Robert B. Parker

  Praise for the 87th Precinct Novels from America’s Unparalleled, Award-Winning Master of Crime Fiction

  Ed McBain

  MISCHIEF

  “A great cast of oddball characters…. You get a whiff of the madness that can send an angry city reeling into chaos.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Masterful…. A page-turner!”

  —Denver Post

  “It’s a dandy…. McBain serves up a smashing read.”

  —Sarasota Herald-Tribune

  “Ingenious.”

  —Mystery News

  “Ingenious…richly satisfying!”

  —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Gripping…gritty…engrossing…. McBain knows these cops and their city like Satan knows sin.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

  Edgar Award nominee!

  “Crisp and fresh…savagely brutal…[with] unexpected and amusing twists.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “McBain plays fair and square with the complications that arise from this clever setup. Over and over, he keeps telling us to keep an eye on the money, which slips through more hands than a third-grade bathroom pass.”

  —The New York Times

  “Tight, plotting, crackling police work, and bizarre people…a witty tale of counterfeit money that grows before the reader’s eyes.”

  —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

  “Captivating stuff.”

  —St. Petersburg Times (FL)

  “An instant classic…. It’s McBain at his best. And there’s none better.”

  —The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)

  “McBain’sMoney is a sure bet…. [His] writing remains young, vigorous, sharp, and entertaining.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The complications flow so effortlessly and the tone is so irresistibly ebullient that you can relax in the hands of a master.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

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

  —The London Times

  THE LAST DANCE

  “The fiftieth novel of the 87th Precinct is one of the best, a melancholy, acerbic paean to life—and death—in the fictional big city of Isola…. This is McBain in classic form, displaying the writing wisdom gained over more than forty years of 87th Precinct novels to deliver a cop story that’s as strong and soulful as the urban heart of America he celebrates so well.”

  —Publishers Weekly(starred review)

  “Having stripped down and refined his language over the years to the point where it now conceals as much as it reveals, McBain forces us to think twice about every character we meet inThe Last Dance, even those we thought we already knew.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  Praise for

  CANDYLAND

  A Novel in Two Parts

  by EVAN HUNTER & ED McBAIN

  APeople Magazine “Page-Turner of the Week”

  “Hunter provides a compelling psychological portraiture…. McBain easily matches his achievement with an inspired police procedural, topped off with a completely unexpected and satisfying twist at the end.”

  —People

  “A tour de force….”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The plot is fabulous and the ending whapped me in the eyeballs.”

  —Larry King, USA Today

  Books By Evan Hunter

  NOVELS

  The Blackboard Jungle (1954) Second Ending (1956) Strangers When We Meet (1958) A Matter of Conviction (1959) Mothers and Daughters (1961) Buddwing (1964) The Paper Dragon (1966) A Horse’s Head (1967) Last Summer (1968) Sons (1969) Nobody Knew They Were There (1971) Every Little Crook and Nanny (1972) Come Winter (1973) Streets of Gold (1974) The Chisholms (1976) Love, Dad (1981) Far from the Sea (1983) Lizzie (1985) Criminal Conversation* (1994) Privileged Conversation (1996) Candyland* (2001) The Moment She Was Gone* (2002)

  SHORTSTORYCOLLECTIONS

  Happy New Year, Herbie (1963) The Easter Man (1972)

  CHILDREN’SBOOKS

  Find the Feathered Serpent (1952) The Remarkable Harry (1959) The Wonderful Button (1961) Me and Mr. Stenner (1976)

  SCREENPLAYS

  Strangers When We Meet (1959) The Birds (1962) Fuzz (1972) Walk Proud (1979)

  TELEPLAYS

  The Chisholms (1979) The Legend of Walks Far Woman (1980) Dream West (1986)

  *Available in paperback from Pocket Books

  **Available in hardcover from Simon & Schuster

  Also by Ed McBain

  THE87THPRECINCTNOVELS

  Cop Hater* • The Mugger • The Pusher* (1956) The Con Man • Killer’s Choice (1957) Killer’s Payoff* • Killer’s Wed • Lady Killer (1958) ’Til Death • King’s Ransom (1959) Give the Boys a Great Big Hand • The Heckler* • See Them Die (1960) Lady, Lady, I Did It! (1961) The Empty Hours • Like Love (1962) Ten Plus One (1963) Ax (1964) He Who Hesitates • Doll (1965) Eighty Million Eyes (1966) Fuzz (1968) Shotgun (1969) Jigsaw (1970) Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here (1971) Sadie When She Died • Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man (1972) Hail to the Chief (1973) Bread (1974) Blood Relatives (1975) So Long As You Both Shall Live (1976) Long Time, No See (1977) Calypso (1979) Ghosts (1980) Heat (1981) Ice (1983) Lightning (1984) Eight Black Horses* (1985) Poison • Tricks (1987) Lullaby* (1989) Vespers* (1990) Widows* (1991) Kiss (1992) Mischief* (1993) And All Through the House (1994) Romance (1995) Nocturne (1997) The Big Bad City* (1999) The Last Dance* (2000) Money, Money, Money* (2001) Fat Ollie’s Book** (2003)

  THEMATTHEWHOPENOVELS

  Goldilocks (1978) Rumpelstiltskin (1981) Beauty & the Beast (1982) Jack & the Beanstalk (1984) Snow White & Rose Red (1985) Cinderella (1986) Puss in Boots (1987) The House That Jack Built (1988) Three Blind Mice (1990) Mary, Mary (1993) There Was a Little Girl (1994) Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear (1996) The Last Best Hope (1998)

  OTHERNOVELS

  The Sentries (1965) Where There’s Smoke • Doors (1975) Guns (1976) Another Part of the City (1986) Downtown (1991) Driving Lessons (2000) Candyland* (2001)

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 1993 by Hui Corp.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-7583-6

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  This is for

  Judy and Michel Cornier

  The City in these pages is imaginary. The people, the places are all fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique.

  1.

  THE LUMINOUS DIALof his watch showed ten minutes past two in the morning. The rain had tapered off at about midnight. He would not have come out if it’d still been raining. Thesewriters didn’t work in the rain. Didn’t want to get their spray cans all wet. Some writers.Scribblers was more like it. Each one scribbling right over the one befo
re him. Kept on scribbling and scribbling till all there was left of a clean white wall was a barbed-wire tangle of words and names you couldn’t even read.

  The wall he’d chosen tonight was a new one.

  You could almost smell the fresh cement.

  New walls attracted these writers the way honey did bears. Put up a new wall or a new fence, wouldn’t be ten minutes before they were out spraying it. Gave them some kind of thrill, he supposed. He’d once read something about burglars defecating in people’s shoes while they were in an apartment stealing things. Added insult to injury. Wasn’t enough they were in there taking a man’s possessions, they had to go and soil his belongings besides, let him know what contempt they had for him. This was the same thing. Person sprayed his paint scribbles on a wall or a fence, he was telling the citizens of this city he wasshitting on them.

  He hoped it wouldn’t start raining again.

  There were lightning flashes in the distance, rumbles of thunder, but he didn’t think the rain was moving any closer to where he was standing here waiting for someone to show up.

  This was a two-lane street here running under the highway. Your writers never sprayed where their work wouldn’t be seen, they always picked a street or a road with traffic on it, so every time you went by you could ooh and aah over the terrific mess they’d made of the wall. There weren’t any leaves on the trees yet, no protection that way, nothing to create any kind of shadow, just these naked branches reaching up toward the parkway where every now and again a car’s headlights drilled the blackness of the night. Spring was slow coming this year. This was the twenty-third of March, a dreary Monday morning. Even though spring had arrived officially three days earlier, it had been raining on and off ever since. Cold, too. Walking in the cold dank rain, he had worked out his plan.

  Tonight would be the first of them.

  If anybody showed.

  If not, he’d do it tomorrow night.

  No rush at all.

  Get it done in time enough.

  Three of them altogether, one plus one plus one.

  He figured these writers had to do their dirty work at night, didn’t they, you never saw any of them doing it during the daytime. Probably scouted a new wall or fence during the day, came back at night to mess it up. If anybody showed tonight, he’d wait till they did some messing up before he did a little messing of his own. Catch ’em in the act,bam ! The gun in the pocket of his coat was a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson.

  Lightning way way off in the distance now.

  Low growl of thunder far far away.

  On the highway overhead, a car’s tires hissed on the still-wet roadway. There was a penetrating chill on the air, made a man wish he was home in his own bed, instead of out here waiting for some jackass who didn’t know what he was in for.

  Well, comeon , he thought. Can’t stand out here allnight , can I? Catch pneumonia out here, night like this one. He never had much cared for the month of March, his own time of year was the fall. Something about the fall always reached him. Nothing uncertain about the fall, you knew where you stood. March, April, forget it. Third day of spring, you’d think it was still the dead of winter, chill out here working its way clear into a man’s bones. His gloved hand in the pocket of his coat felt warm around the walnut grip of the pistol.

  One plus one plus one again.

  Then retire.

  Thing was, he was beginning to realize this might take longer than he’d figured. No way of telling when or evenif anybody would show, he could be standing out here all night long and nobody’d come and he’d just have to do it all over again each time out, night after night. Wait in the dark till—

  Hold it.

  Coming up the street. Hands in his pockets. Kid of seventeen, eighteen, looking this way and that, had to be up to some kind of mischief. He moved deeper into the shadow cast by the highway overhead. Lightning again in the distance. Not even the sound of thunder this time, too far away. Another car sped by overhead, tires hissing, headlights casting fallout into the naked branches of the trees. He pulled still farther back into the shadows.

  The kid was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket. High-topped sneakers. Turned to look over his shoulder. Turned back again, looked left and right, looked dead ahead, then stopped under the highway, and took a flashlight from his pocket. Light splashed onto the new cement wall. His face cracked into a grin, as if he were looking at a beautiful naked woman. Stood there with the flashlight playing on the wall, moving the flashlight over the wall, inch by inch, raping the clean empty wall with his eyes and the beam of the light. Then he reached inside his jacket and took out a spray can of paint and stood back from the wall a moment, studying it, the flashlight in his left hand, the spray can in his right, deciding where he should start his masterpiece.

  He was spraying red paint onto the wall, spraying anS , and then aP , and then anI , and then aD , when he heard movement behind him, and turned sharply and saw a man wearing a black wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes, a dark coat with the collar pulled up high on his neck, a gun in his hand.

  “Here,” the man said.

  And shot him twice in the face.

  The boy lay still and silent on the ground under the highway, his life’s blood oozing out of his face, the spray can lying beside him. He shot the boy one more time, in the chest this time, and then he reached down to pick up the can in his gloved hand, and pressed the button on top of the can, and squirted red paint all over the boy’s face oozing blood, his chest oozing blood, red paint and red blood mingling while overhead another car pierced the night with its headlights and sped off into the distance where now there was no lightning at all.

  DURING THE EMPTY HOURSof the night, the rain had changed to snow; it was that kind of spring. At nine o’clock that morning, it was still snowing.

  “I remember, EasterSunday once, it was snowing,” Parker said. “This is nothing unusual.”

  “March twenty-third, it’s unusual to be snowing,” Kling said.

  “Not if it could snow on Easter,” Parker said.

  “I remember once,” Meyer said, “Passover and Easter Sunday fell on the very same day.”

  “That happens all the time,” Carella said.

  “That’s because the Jews stole Passover from Easter,” Parker said, blithely unaware.

  Meyer didn’t even bother.

  The snow kept falling from the dull gray March sky. Beyond the grilled-mesh windows that protected the squad room from the brickbats of society, the day was blustery and bleak.

  Andy Parker was looking over the report the graveyard shift had filed on the dead graffiti writer. The paper told him Baker One had found the kid early this morning, under the River Highway on North Eleventh. Kid’s name was Alfredo Herrera, street name Spider. That’s what he was probably trying to write on the wall,SPIDER , when somebody pumped two into his face and another in his chest and painted him red for good measure. Served him right, Parker thought, fuckin writer. But didn’t say. Meanwhile, the city had to spend time and money trying to find out who done it, when who gave a shit, really?

  “We supposed to inform next of kin on this, or what?” he asked no one.

  “Unless they already did,” Carella said.

  “That’s what I’m askin,” Parker said. “Willis typed this up, did he already call whoever, or what?”

  “What does it say there?”

  “It doesn’t say anything.”

  “Is a next of kin listed?”

  “I don’t see any.”

  “How’d they make I.D.?”

  “Driver’s license.”

  “Well, there must’ve been an address on the license.”

  “I don’t have thelicense here,” Parker said testily, “I only have Willis’sreport here, where it says theymade him from the license.”

  “Better call the Property Clerk’s Office,” Kling suggested. “See if they’ve got the license there.”

  “Why don’t I just callWillis , ask him
did he notify the parents, or what?”

  “He’s probably asleep by now,” Meyer suggested tactfully.

  “So fuck him,” Parker said. “He leaves this shit on my desk to follow up, he should’ve also left a note telling me did he notify next of kin. Who’s got his number?”

  “Got enough spit?” Kling asked, but looked up the number in his notebook and read it off to Parker, who began dialing immediately.

  Willis picked up on the fourth ring. It was obvious he’d been sleeping. Parker plunged ahead regardless. Willis told him the motorized blues had found the body at a little past six this morning, that it had been removed to the morgue, and that no one had had time to notify next of kin before the shift was relieved. Parker asked him if he knew where the kid’s driver’s license was. Willis was awake now and getting irritable.

  “Why do you need the license?” he asked.

  “So I can get an address for him.”

  “His address is on the report,” Willis said. “I typed it in from the driver’s license.”

  “Oh,” Parker said.

  “Right under his name. Do you see where it says address?” he asked testily. “That’s where I typed it in.”

  “Yeah, I see it now,” Parker said.

  “Why didn’t you see it in the first place,” Willis said, “wake a man up he just fell asleep.”

  “Yeah, I should’ve,” Parker said, and looked at the phone receiver when he heard what sounded like an angry click on the other end of the line. Shrugging, he turned to Carella. “The address was right here all along,” he said. “You want to see if there’s a phone number for him?”

  “Don’t you know how to look up a phone number?” Carella asked.

  “I hate to call some kid’s mother, tell her he’s dead.”

  “Yeah, well, learn how to do it,” Carella said.

  “Thanks a whole fuckinlot ,” Parker said, and opened his desk drawer and pulled out a worn telephone directory. “Probably be ten thousand people named Herrera, this city,” he said to the phone book, and shook his head.