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  KISS

  A Novel of the 87th Precinct

  by

  ED McBAIN

  .

  -----------------KISS -------------

  .

  She was standing at the center of the subway

  platform, waiting for the uptown train to come in, when

  the man stepped up to her and punched her.

  She felt shocking pain and then immediate outrage,

  how _dare he? And then she remembered that this was the

  city in which she'd been born and bred, and in this city

  crazy things happened, and when they happened you

  tried to protect yourself. So she stepped back and

  away from him--a glimpse of red, he was wearing a

  red woolen hat--and was swinging her handbag at his

  head when he shoved her toward the edge of the

  platform.

  He's crazy, she thought, he's a lunatic,

  and she said out loud, "_Stop it, are you crazy?"

  but he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the very

  edge of the platform, trying to throw her over,

  struggling with her. She screamed, she pulled

  away, tried to pull away, heard her coat

  tearing up the back when he reached for her again.

  Each time she moved away from the edge of the

  platform, he shoved her back again. The red hat,

  a brown jacket, blue jeans--she saw all

  these in almost subliminal flashes. He was only

  an inch or so taller than she was, but he was much

  stronger, and when finally he put all his strength

  into what seemed a last, desperate shove, she

  lost her balance and fell backward onto the

  tracks. In the moment before she went over, she

  saw his boots. Brown leather boots with a

  white--

  A train was coming.

  She heard its thunder up the track, and from where

  she was crouched on her knees she turned to see

  its lights in the distance. She scrambled to her

  feet, tried to get back onto the platform, it

  was almost waist high, put her hands flat onto

  it, and tried to hoist herself up as if she were in a

  swimming pool and bouncing up out of the water. But

  there was no water here, there was no buoyancy

  to help her, there was only the high platform and the

  rattling sound of the train coming closer. Help me,

  she said to no one, Oh dear God, help me, and

  grabbed the edge of the platform with both hands, the

  train rumbling closer, thrusting herself up from the

  elbows, swinging one leg over the rim, scrabbling

  for purchase, the other leg over and up now, she was

  -on the platform now, the train not thirty -----

  feet away and screeching out of the darkness.

  Her pantyhose were laddered, her coat split

  up the back seam. She was wearing only a light

  wool dress under the coat. Shivering from the cold,

  or her fear, or perhaps both, her eye throbbing where

  the man had punched her, both hands bruised from

  trying to cushion her fall to the tracks, knees

  scraped raw and bleeding, she lay flat on the

  platform, hugging the platform, sobbing, sucking in

  great gobs of air.

  She did not know how long it was before a

  Transit Authority policeman came to her.

  .

  Five feet eight inches tall, blonde and

  buxom and blue-eyed and bursting with red-cheeked

  health, Birgitta Rundqvist marched into the station

  house at three o'clock on the afternoon of December

  , the Friday before the big New Year's

  Eve weekend. It was eight degrees

  Fahrenheit outside, but she was wearing only a

  lightweight red parka over a red

  reindeer-patterned sweater, a short black

  mini, red pantyhose, and little cuffed black

  boots. The desk sergeant thought she looked like

  Little Red Riding Hood. Birgitta told him

  she wanted to talk to a detective. When he

  asked her why, she said she had just witnessed a

  murder attempt.

  This was a rarity. Someone in this city actually coming

  to the police to report having witnessed a crime.

  The desk sergeant figured if you lived long

  enough, you saw everything. He buzzed the

  squadroom.

  Upstairs, Detective Meyer Meyer was

  sitting at his desk, minding his own business,

  typing up a report. Across the room, Andy

  Parker and Fat Ollie Weeks were talking about

  the new police commissioner. Parker and Weeks

  got along fine together. That's because they were both

  bigots. Weeks was perhaps a bigger bigot than

  Parker, but nobody can be only a little bit

  pregnant, although Weeks did in fact look a

  little bit pregnant--in fact about three months

  gone.

  Obese and a trifle smelly, his belly

  hanging over his belt buckle, his fat, round

  face set with little pig eyes, Weeks was here

  -visiting his good old buddies at the --------

  Eight-Seven, his own bailiwick being the

  Eight-Three, all the way uptown in

  Diamondback. Parker was always happy to see

  him. In Weeks's presence, and by comparison,

  Parker seemed nattily dressed--even though he

  was sporting a three-day beard stubble and a wrinkled

  suit. Whenever anyone questioned Parker's appearance,

  he told them he was on a stakeout. Whenever

  anyone questioned Weeks's appearance, he told them

  to go fuck themselves. Parker liked him a lot.

  "The new commissioner's a scholar," Weeks

  said.

  "A professor," Parker said, nodding in

  agreement.

  "Used to teach criminology down there in that

  shitty little town the mayor snatched him from."

  "He always refers to himself as _we, you notice

  that? _We this, _we that. _We feel the number of

  policemen on the street has nothing to do with

  crime prevention ..."

  "_We have learned over the years that community

  interaction is paramount. ..."

  "_We this, _we that."

  "Like he's two people," Weeks said, and turned

  suddenly to look at Meyer. "You listening to this?"

  he asked.

  "No," Meyer said.

  "You ought to," Weeks said. "You might learn

  a few things about this new commissioner we got."

  "I know enough about the new commissioner," Meyer

  said.

  "Without your people," Weeks said, "there wouldn't _be

  this new commissioner."

  The new police commissioner was black.

  So was the new mayor.

  Weeks was saying that if it hadn't been for the

  Jews in this city, a black mayor wouldn't have

  been elected, and if a black mayor hadn't

  been elected, there wouldn't now be a black

  police commissioner. Meyer himself hadn't voted

  for the new mayor, but neither the new mayor nor the

  new commissioner was on anyone's Top Ten list

  at the moment, and it was always easy to blame the

&nbsp
; failings of one minority group on yet another

  minority group. Crouched behind his typewriter,

  pecking out his report with the index fingers of both

  hands, blue eyes squinting at the page in the

  roller, bald head gleaming in the late afternoon

  light that streamed through the grilled windows, Meyer

  -wanted nothing less than an argument about ----

  either the new commissioner _or the new mayor. He

  busied himself with indifference.

  "Maybe the new commissioner can show your people where

  Bethtown is," Weeks said, and nudged Parker

  with his elbow.

  Bethtown was the city's smallest sector,

  across the River Harb and reached either by ferry or

  bridge. Weeks was making a joke. The new

  commissioner had been quoted in yesterday's papers

  as asking his driver where Calm's Point, one of the

  city's _largest sectors, was located. Meyer

  agreed that the man was a small-town hick in bib

  overalls, so why was Weeks virtually _insisting

  that Meyer defend him? He was about to tell

  Weeks to stuff the new commissioner up his ass when

  the telephone rang.

  "Eighty-Seventh Squad," he said,

  "Detective Meyer." He listened for a moment,

  raised his eyebrows in surprise, said, "Send

  her up," and then put the receiver back on the

  cradle. Birgitta came into the squadroom

  some three minutes later. Weeks looked her

  up and down. So did Parker. Meyer offered her

  the chair alongside his desk.

  She told him who she was, told him she

  worked as a nanny for a Mrs. David Feinstein

  on Barber Street in Smoke Rise ...

  "I'm from Stockholm," she said.

  Which was why she was dressed for the tropics,

  Meyer supposed.

  ... told him she was just wheeling the baby into the

  house when she saw this automobile come roaring

  around the corner ...

  Across the room, Parker burst out laughing at

  something Weeks had just said. What Weeks had just

  said was that he loved eating Danish. He had

  overheard the girl's faint accent and had

  mistaken her for Danish. Parker found this

  hysterical.

  "... aiming straight for this woman," she said.

  "What woman?" Meyer asked.

  "This woman walking on the sidewalk."

  "The car was _aiming for her?"

  "Yes, sir," Birgitta said. "It jumped

  onto the curb, it tried to run her over."

  "When was this?"

  "Just before lunch. I had to wait for Mrs.

  Feinstein to get back before I could come here."

  "What kind of car was it?"

  ---"A Ford Taurus." ----------------

  "What color?"

  "Gray. A sort of metallic gray."

  "Did you notice the license plate

  number?"

  "I did."

  A proud little nod. She watched television a

  lot, Meyer guessed. He supposed they had

  television in Sweden, didn't they? They

  certainly had it in Smoke Rise.

  "Can you tell me the number, please?" he

  said.

  "DB ," Birgitta said.

  He wrote it down, showed it to her, and said,

  "Is this it?"

  "Yes," she said. "Exactly."

  "It wasn't an out-of-state plate, was it?"

  "No, no."

  He wondered if they had states in Sweden.

  Sweden had Volvos, that he knew.

  "Did you see who was driving the car?"

  "I did."

  "Man or woman?"

  "A man."

  "Can you tell me what he looked like?"

  "Not really. It all happened very fast. He

  turned the corner, and aimed the car at her, and

  tried to hit her. And she threw herself over this low

  wall in front of the house next door to ours, and

  he just drove off."

  "Was he white or black, did you

  notice?"

  "White."

  "Can you tell me anything else about him?"

  "He was wearing a red woolen hat."

  Big day for red, Meyer thought.

  "How about the woman?" he said. "Anyone you

  know?"

  "No."

  "Not anyone you might have seen in the

  neighborhood? Before this, I mean."

  "No, I'm sorry."

  "Did you talk to her at all?"

  "No. I took the baby inside the house, and

  when I came out again, she was gone."

  "What'd she look like, can you tell me that?"

  "She had blonde hair. Like mine. But

  longer. And she was a little shorter than I am."

  "How old would you say she was?"

  "In her thirties."

  ---"Did you notice the color of her -----

  eyes?"

  "I'm sorry."

  "What was she wearing?"

  "A mink coat. No hat. Dark boots.

  We still have snow on the ground up there."

  Smoke Rise. Like the country up there. Hard

  to believe it was part of the Eight-Seven, but it

  was. Big, expensive houses, rolling

  woodlands, even a stream running through some of the

  choicer lots. Smoke Rise. Where a man

  driving a gray Ford Taurus had tried to run

  down a blonde woman in a mink coat.

  "Anything else you can tell me?" Meyer said.

  "That's all," Birgitta said. "He was

  trying to kill her. Will you do something about it?"

  "Of course," he said.

  The first thing he did was call Motor

  Vehicles to request a computer check on the

  license plate number Birgitta had given

  him. The MVB reported that the car in question was

  registered to a Dr. Peter Gundler who lived

  downtown in the Quarter. Meyer wrote down the

  doctor's address and then called Auto Theft.

  The detective he spoke to there took down the

  license plate number, the name and address of the

  registered owner, asked for the year and make of the car,

  settled for the make alone, and told Meyer he'd

  get back to him in ten minutes. He got back

  in seven to report that the good doctor's car had

  been reported stolen on Christmas Day, nice

  present, huh? Meyer thanked him and hung up.

  Easy come, easy go, he thought.

  There were times when Detective Steve

  Carella looked positively Chinese. As he

  sat in the sunlight that angled through the grilled

  squadroom windows, the light touching his face in

  a way that made his dark eyes appear more

  slanted, pondering the Ballistics report on

  his desk like a Buddhist monk studying a prayer

  scroll, it seemed conceivable that he'd been

  left on his parents' doorstep by a silk

  merchant from the Orient. He looked up from the

  report, glanced at the clock. Five minutes

  to eleven. Ballistics wouldn't be out to lunch

  yet. He was picking up the phone to dial, when

  she came down the corridor and stopped just

  outside the gate in the slatted-rail divider.

  His first impression was one of paleness.

  ---A tall, slender blonde woman -----

  wearing a long gray cavalry officer's coat.

  Taking a crumpled tissue from her pocket now,


  blowing her nose, returning the tissue to the

  pocket, hesitating outside the gate.

  "Mrs. Bowles?" he said.

  "Yes?"

  "Come in, please," he said, and put the phone

  back on its cradle.

  She had found the latch on the gate. She

  opened it and walked to his desk. Long, firm

  strides, pale horse, pale rider. He

  asked if he could take her coat ...

  "Yes, please."

  ... and then carried it to the rack in the corner,

  near the water cooler. Under the coat, she was

  wearing a black sweater, a pleated watch-plaid

  skirt, and black stockings. She resembled a

  student at a private girl's school.

  "Please sit down," he said, and offered her the

  chair alongside his desk. She looked very

  grave. Straight blonde hair sitting on her

  head like a burnished helmet. Dark eyes

  solemn. Face raw from the wind outside.

  "Someone's trying to kill me," she said.

  "Yes," he said, and nodded.

  She had called not a half hour earlier. When

  a woman on the phone tells you someone has

  made two attempts on her life, you ask her

  to come in immediately. She was here now. And now she was

  telling him how she'd been coming from a baby shower

  on Silvermine Oval and was waiting on the

  subway platform at Culver and Ninth to take a

  train uptown to Smoke Rise, the Barber

  Street station up there, do you know it? In Smoke

  Rise? Waiting for the train when a man pushed her

  onto the tracks. This was two weeks ago, a

  little more than two weeks ago. And then, yesterday,

  he'd tried to kill her again. Tried to run her

  over with an automobile. The same man.

  Closer to home this time.

  This was all news to Carella.

  The Transit Authority cop to whom Emma

  Bowles had sobbingly poured out the information on the

  night of December twelfth hadn't filed a

  report with the Eight-Seven, and Meyer hadn't

  told Carella about his visit from the Swedish

  nanny yesterday. So he listened now while

  Emma told him that she'd gone out for a little walk

  before lunch yesterday, strolling up Barber Street

  -and into Smoke Rise, and suddenly this ------

  gray car that might have been a Lincoln

  Continental came tooling around the corner and

  climbed the sidewalk chasing her, and would have hit

  her if she hadn't jumped over this little stone wall

  bordering one of the houses.

  "The same man was driving the car," she said.

  "The one who pushed me off the platform."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Positive," she said. "And I know who he

  is."