The Con Man (87th Precinct) - By Ed McBain Page 0,49

here’re the pearls,” O’Neill said, reaching into his pocket and handing the young man a leather sack. “I’m certainly much obliged to you fellows. This means I’ll be able to go home.”

“Not for a long while,” the young man said.

O’Neill looked up. He was staring into the open end of a .38 Detective’s Special. “What?” he said.

The young man grinned. “The old diamond switch,” he said, “only with pearls. You’ve got my thousand, and the pearls in this sack you gave me are undoubtedly paste. Where are the real ones the jeweler appraised?”

“Listen,” Parsons said, “you’re making a mistake, Mac. You’re—”

“Am I?” The young man was already frisking O’Neill. In two seconds, he located the sack of real pearls. “Tomorrow morning, I’d be sitting around in my apartment waiting for my partner to arrive with his five hundred dollars. Only, my partner would never show up. My partner would be out spending his share of the thousand dollars he conned from me.”

“This is the first time we ever done anything like this,” O’Neill said, beginning to panic.

“Is it? I’ve got a few other people who may be willing to identify you,” the young man said. “Come on, we’re taking a little ride.”

“Where to?” Parsons asked.

“To the 87th Precinct,” the young man said.

The young man’s name was Arthur Brown.

The tattoo parlor was near the Navy yards, and so the specialties of the house were anchors, mermaids, and fish. There were also dagger designs, and ship designs, and mothers in hearts.

The man who ran the place was called “Popeye.” He was called Popeye because a drunken sailor had once jabbed out his left eye with his own tattooing needle. Judging from Popeye’s present condition, he may very well have been drunk himself when he’d lost his eye. He was certainly ossified now. Carella reflected upon the man’s profession and concluded that he wouldn’t trust him to remove a small splinter with a heated needle, no less decorate his flesh with a tattooing tool.

“Come and go, come and go,” Popeye said. “All th’ time. In an’ out, in an’ out. From all ov’ the worl’. I decorate ’em. Me. I color their fleshes.”

Carella was not interested in those who came and went from all over the world. He was interested in what Popeye had told him just a few minutes before.

“This couple,” he said, “tell me more about them.”

“Han’some guy,” Popeye said. “Ver’ han’some. Big, tall, blond feller. Walk like a king. Rish. You can tell when they rish. He had money, this feller.”

“You tattooed the girl?”

“Nancy. Tha’ was her name. Nancy.”

“How do you know?”

“He called her that. I heard him.”

“Tell me exactly what happened?”

“She in trouble? Nancy in trouble?”

“She’s in the biggest kind of trouble,” Carella said. “She’s dead.”

“Oh.” Popeye squinched up his face and looked at Carella with his good eye. “Tha’s a shame,” he said. “Li’l Nancy’s dead. Automobile accident?”

“No,” Carella said. “Arsenic.”

“Wha’s that?” Popeye asked.

“A deadly poison.”

“Too bad. Li’l girls should’n take poison. She cried, you know? When I was doin’ the job. Bawled like a baby. Big han’some bassard jus’ stood there an’ grinned. Like as if I was brandin’ her for him. Like as if I was puttin’ a trademark or somethin’ on her. Sick as a dog, poor li’l Nancy.”

“What do you mean, sick?”

“Sick, sick.”

“How?”

“Pukin’,” Popeye said.

“The girl vomited?” Carella asked.

“Right here in th’ shop,” Popeye said. “Got th’ can all slobbed up.”

“When was this?”

“They’d jus’ come from lunch,” Popeye said. “She was talkin’ about it when they come in th’ shop. Said they didn’t have no Chinese res’rants in her hometown.”

“Is there a Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood?”

“One aroun’ th’ corner. Looks like a dump, but has real good food. Cantonese. You dig Cantonese?”

“What else did she say?”

“Said th’ food was ver’ spicy. Tha’ figgers, don’t it?”

“Go on.”

“Han’some said he wanted a tattoo on the li’l girl’s hand. A heart an’ N-A-C.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah.”

“Why N-A-C?”

Popeye cocked his head so that his dead socket stared Carella directly in the face. “Why, tha’s their names,” he said.

“What do you mean, names?”

“‘Nitials, I mean. N is her initial. N for Nancy.”

Carella felt as if he’d been struck by lightning.

“The A is jus’ ‘and,’ you know. Nancy and Chris. Tha’ was his name. Chris. N. A. C.”

“Goddammit!” Carella said. “Then the Proschek girl’s tattoo meant Mary and Chris. I’ll be a son of a bitch!”

“Wha’?” Popeye said.

“How do you know his name was Chris?” Carella asked.

“She said so. When he said, ‘N-A-C,’ she said, ‘Why don’t we put th’