The Mugger 87th Precinct Series, Book 2 - By Ed McBain Page 0,36

a deep breath, his massive shoulders heaving.

“Now, what’s the real story, Sixto?” he said softly.

“Thass the real story,” Sixto said. “Thass the way it happen.”

“What about these other girls you’ve been mugging?”

Sixto looked at Havilland unblinkingly. For a moment, he seemed incapable of speech. Then he said, “What?”

“These other girls all over the city? How about it, Sixto?”

“What?” Sixto said again.

Havilland moved off the table gracefully. He took three steps to where Sixto was standing. Still smiling, he brought his fist back and rammed the knuckles into Sixto’s mouth.

The blow caught Sixto completely by surprise. His eyes opened wide, and he felt himself staggering backward. Then he collided with the wall and automatically wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. A red smear stained the tan of his fingers. He blinked his eyes and looked across at Havilland.

“What for you hit me?” he asked.

Tell me about the other girls, Sixto,” Havilland said, moving toward him again.

“What other girls? What are you crazy or something? I hit a hooker to get back my—”

Havilland lashed out backhanded, then swung his open palm around to catch Sixto’s other cheek. Again, the hand lashed back, forward, back, forward, until Sixto’s head was rocking like a tall blade of grass in a stiff breeze. He tried to cover his face, and Havilland jabbed out at his stomach. Sixto doubled over in pain.

“Ave Maria,” he said, “why are you—”

“Shut up!” Havilland shouted. Tell me about the muggings, you spic son of a bitch! Tell me about that seventeen-year-old blonde you killed last week!”

“I dinn kill—”

Havilland hit him again, throwing his huge fist at Sixto’s head. He caught Sixto under the eye, and the boy fell to the floor, and Havilland kicked him with the point of his shoe.

“Get up!”

“I dinn—”

Havilland kicked him again. The boy was sobbing now. He climbed to his feet, and Havilland punched him once in the stomach and then again in the face. Sixto crumpled against the wall, sobbing wildly.

“Why’d you kill her?”

Sixto couldn’t answer. He kept shaking his head over and over again, sobbing. Havilland seized his jacket front and began pounding the boy’s head against the wall.

“Why, you friggin spic? Why? Why? Why?”

But Sixto only kept shaking his head, and after a while his head lolled to one side, and he was unconscious.

Havilland studied him for a moment. He let out a deep sigh, went to the washbasin in the corner, and washed the blood from his hands. He lighted a cigarette then and went to the table, sitting on it and thinking. It was a damn shame, but he didn’t think Sixto was the man they wanted. They still had him on the Carmen thing, of course, but they couldn’t hang this mugger kill on him. It was a damn shame.

In a little while, Havilland unlocked the door and went next door to Clerical. Miscolo looked up from his typewriter.

“There’s a spic next door,” Havilland said, puffing on his cigarette.

“Yeah?” Miscolo said.

Havilland nodded. “Yeah. Fell down and hurt himself. Better get a doctor, huh?”

In another part of the city, a perhaps more orthodox method of questioning was being undertaken by Detectives Meyer and Temple.

Meyer, personally, was grateful for the opportunity. In accordance with Lieutenant Byrnes’s orders, he had been questioning known sex offenders until he was blue in the face. It was not that he particularly disliked questioning; it was simply that he disliked sex offenders.

The sunglasses found alongside the body of Jeannie Paige had borne a small “C” in a circle over the bridge. The police had contacted several jobbers, one of whom identified the © as the trademark of a company known as Candrel, Inc. Byrnes had extricated Meyer and Temple from the sticky, degenerate web at the 87th and sent them shuffling off to Majesta, where the firm’s factory was located.

The office of Geoffrey Candrel was on the third floor of the factory, a soundproofed rectangle of knotty-pine walls and modern furniture. The desk seemed suspended in space. A painting on the wall behind the desk resembled an electronic computing machine with a nervous breakdown.

Candrel was a fat man in a big leather chair. He looked at the broken sunglasses on his desk, shoved at them with a pudgy forefinger as if he were prodding a snake to see if it were still alive.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was thick. It rumbled up out of his huge chest. “Yes, we manufacture those glasses.”

“Can you tell us something about them?” Meyer asked.

“Can I tell you