The Mugger 87th Precinct Series, Book 2 - By Ed McBain Page 0,11

store, and the big A&P, and the bakeshop, and Sam’s candy store there on the corner. God, how many ice cream sundaes had he eaten in Sam’s? He was tempted to stop in and say hello, but he saw a stranger behind the counter, a short, bald-headed man, not Sam at all, and he realized with painful clarity that a lot of things had changed since he was a carefree adolescent.

The thought was sobering as well as painful, and he wondered for the fiftieth time why he had come back to Riverhead, why he was walking toward De Witt Street and the home of Peter Bell. To talk to a young girl? What could he say to a seventeen-year-old kid?

He shrugged his wide shoulders. He was a tall man, and he was wearing his dark-blue suit tonight, and his blond hair seemed blonder against the dark fabric. When he reached De Witt, he turned south and then reached into his wallet for the address Peter had given him. Up the street, he could see the yellow brick and cyclone fence of the junior high school. The street was lined with private houses, mostly wooden structures, here and there a brick dwelling tossed in to break the monotony. Old trees grew close to the curbs on either side of the street, arching over the street to embrace in a blazing, autumn-leaved cathedral. There was something very quiet and very peaceful about De Witt Street. He saw the bushels of leaves piled near the gutter, saw a man standing with a rake in one hand, the other hand on his hip, solemnly watching the small, smoky fire of leaves burning at his feet. The smell was a good one. He sucked it deep into his lungs. This was a lot different from the crowded, bulging streets the 87th Precinct presided over. This was a lot different from crowded tenements and soot-stained buildings reaching grimy concrete fingers to the sky. The trees here were of the same species found in Grover’s Park, which hemmed in the 87th on the south. But you could be sure no assassins lurked behind their stout trunks. That was the difference.

In the deepening dusk, with the street lamps going on suddenly, Bert Kling walked and listened to the sound of his footsteps and—quite curiously—he was glad he had come.

He found Bell’s house, the one in the middle of the block, just as he’d promised. It was a tall, two-family, clapboard-and-brick structure, the clapboard white. A rutted concrete driveway sloped upward toward a white garage at the back of the house. A flight of steps led to the front door. Kling checked the address again and then climbed the steps and pressed the bell button set in the doorjamb. He waited a second, and the door buzzed, and he heard the small click as he twisted the knob and shoved it inward. He was in a small foyer, and he saw another door open instantly, and then Peter Bell stepped into the foyer, grinning.

“Bert, you came! I don’t know how to thank you.”

Kling nodded and smiled.

Bell took his hand. “Come in, come in.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Jeannie’s still here. I’ll introduce you as a cop friend of mine, and then Molly and me’ll take off, okay?”

“Okay,” Kling said. Bell led him to the open doorway. There were still cooking smells in the house, savory smells that heightened Kling’s feeling of nostalgia. The house was warm and secure, welcome after the slight nip there had been in the air outside.

Bell closed the door and called, “Molly!”

The house, Kling saw immediately, was constructed like a railroad flat, one room following the other, so that you had to walk through every room in the house if you wanted to get to the end room. The front door opened into the living room, a small room furnished with a three-piece sofa-and-easy-chair set that had undoubtedly been advertised as a “Living Room Suite” by one of the cheaper furniture stores. There was a mirror on the wall over the sofa. A badly framed landscape hung over one of the easy chairs. The inevitable television set stood in one corner of the room, and a window under which was a radiator occupied the other corner.

“Sit down, Bert,” Bell said. “Molly!” he called again.

“Coming,” a voice called from the other end of the house, an end he suspected was the kitchen.

“She’s doing the dishes,” Bell explained. “She’ll be right in. Sit down, Bert.”