Romance Read online

  Copyright © 1995 by Hut Corporation

  All rights reserved.

  WARNER BOOKS

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: April 2005

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56028-3

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  ALSO BY ED McBAIN

  The 87th Precinct Novels

  Cop Hater • The Mugger • The Pusher (1956) The Con Man • Killer’s Choice (1957) Killer’s Payoff • Killer’s Wedge • 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)

  The Matthew Hope Novels

  Goldilocks (1978) Rumpelstiltskin (1981) Beauty and the Beast (1982) Jack and the Beanstalk (1984) Snow White and 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)

  Other Novels

  The Sentries (1965) Where There’s Smoke • Doors (1975) Guns (1976) Another Part of the City (1986) Downtown (1991)

  AND AS 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 (1984) Criminal Conversation (1994)

  Short Story Collections

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

  Children’s Books

  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)

  This is for

  my son and daughter-in-law,

  Mark Hunter

  and

  Lise Bloch-Mohrange Hunte

  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

  KLING MADE HIS CALL FROM AN OUTSIDE PHONE BECAUSE HE didn’t want to be turned down in a place as public as the squadroom. He didn’t want to risk possible derision from the men with whom he worked day and night, the men to whom he often entrusted his life. Nor did he want to make the call from anyplace at all in the station house. There were pay phones on every floor, but a police station was like a small town, and gossip traveled fast. He did not want anyone to overhear him fumbling for words in the event of a rejection. He felt that rejection was a very definite possibility.

  So he stood in the pouring rain a block from the station house, at a blue plastic shell with a pay phone inside it, dialing the number he’d got from the police directory operator, and which he’d scribbled on a scrap of paper that was now getting soggy in the rain. He waited while the phone rang, once, twice, three times, four, five, and he thought, She isn’t home, six, sev …

  “Hello?”

  Her voice startled him.

  “Hello, uh, Sharon?” he said. “Chief Cooke?”

  “Who’s this, please?”

  Her voice impatient and sharp. Rain pelting down everywhere around him. Hang up, he thought.

  “This is Bert Kling?” he said.

  “Who?”

  The sharpness still in her voice. But edged with puzzlement now.

  “Detective Bert Kling,” he said. “We … uh … met at the hospital.”

  “The hospital?”

  “Earlier this week. The hostage cop shooting. Georgia Mowbry.”

  “Yes?”

  Trying to remember who he was. Unforgettable encounter, he guessed. Lasting impression.

  “I was with Detective Burke,” he said, ready to give up. “The redheaded hostage cop. She was with Georgia when …”

  “Oh, yes, I remember now. How are you?”

  “Fine,” he said, and then very quickly, “I’m calling to tell you how sorry I am you lost her.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “I know I should have called earlier …”

  “No, no, it’s appreciated.”

  “But we were working a difficult case …”

  “I quite understand.”

  Georgia Mowbry had died on Wednesday night. This was now Sunday. She suddenly wondered what this was all about. She’d been reading the papers when her phone rang. Reading all about yesterday’s riot in the park. Blacks and whites rioting. Black and whites shooting each other, killing each other.

  “So … uh … I know how difficult something like that must be,” he said. “And I … uh … just thought I’d offer my … uh … sympathy.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  There was a silence.

  Then:

  “Uh … Sharon …”

  “By the way, it’s Sharyn,” she said.

  “Isn’t that what I’m saying?”

  “You’re saying Sharon.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “But it’s Sharyn.“

  “I know,” he said, thoroughly confused now.

  “With a ‘y,’ ” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. “Right. Thank you. I’m sorry. Sharyn, right.”

  “What’s that I hear?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That sound.”

  “Sound? Oh. It must be the rain.”

  “The rain? Where are you?”

  “I’m calling from outside.”

  “From a phone booth?”

  “No, not really, it’s just one of these little shell things. What you’re hearing is the rain hitting the plastic.”

  “You’re standing in the rain?”

  “Well, sort of.”

  “Isn’t there a phone in the squadroom?”

  “Well, yes. But …”

  She waited.

  “I … uh … didn’t want anyone to hear me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I … I didn’t know how you’d feel about … something like this.”

  “Something like what?”

  “My … asking you to have dinner with me.”

  Silence.

  “Sharyn?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your being a chief and all,” he said. “A deputy chief.”

  She blinked.

  “I thought it might make a difference. That I’m just a detective/third.”
>
  “I see.”

  No mention of his blond hair or her black skin.

  Silence.

  “Does it?” he asked.

  She had never dated a white man in her life.

  “Does what?” she said.

  “Does it make a difference? Your rank?”

  “No.”

  But what about the other? she wondered. What about whites and blacks killing each other in public places? What about that, Detective Kling?

  “Rainy day like today,” he said, “I thought it’d be nice to have dinner and go to a movie.”

  With a white man, she thought.

  Tell my mother I’m going on a date with a white man. My mother who scrubbed white men’s offices on her knees.

  “I’m off at four,” he said. “I can go home, shower and shave, pick you up at six.”

  You hear this, Mom? A white man wants to pick me up at six. Take me out to dinner and a movie.

  “Unless you have other plans,” he said.

  “Are you really standing in the rain?” she asked.

  “Well, yes,” he said. “Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Have other plans?”

  “No. But …”

  Bring the subject up, she thought. Face it head-on. Ask him if he knows I’m black. Tell him I’ve never done anything like this before. Tell him my mother’ll jump off the roof. Tell him I don’t need this kind of complication in my life, tell him …

  “Well … uh … do you think you might like to?” he asked. “Go to a movie and have dinner?”

  “Why do you want to do this?” she asked.

  He hesitated a moment. She visualized him standing there in the rain, pondering the question.

  “Well,” he said, “I think we might enjoy each other’s company, is all.”

  She could just see him shrugging, standing there in the rain. Calling from outside the station house because he didn’t want anyone to hear him being turned down by rank. Never mind black, never mind white, this was detective/ third and deputy chief. As simple as that. She almost smiled.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but do you think you could give me some kind of answer? Cause it’s sort of wet out here.”

  “Six o’clock is fine,” she said.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Call me when you’re out of the rain, I’ll give you my address.”

  “Good,” he said again. “Good. That’s good. Thank you, Sharyn. I’ll call you when I get back to the squadroom. What kind of food do you like? I know a great Italian …”

  “Get out of the rain,” she said, and quickly put the phone back on the cradle.

  Her heart was pounding.

  God, she thought, what am I starting here?

  The redheaded woman was telling him that she’d been receiving threatening phone calls. He listened intently. Six phone calls in the past week, she told him. The same man each time, speaking in a low voice, almost a whisper, telling her he was going to kill her. At a table against one wall of the room, a short man in shirtsleeves was fingerprinting a bearded man in a black T-shirt.

  “When did these calls start?”

  “Last week,” the woman said. “Monday morning was the first one.”

  “Okay, let’s take down some more information,” the man said, and rolled an NYPD Detective Division complaint form into his typewriter. He was wearing a .38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. Like the man taking fingerprints at the table against the wall, he too was in shirtsleeves. “May I have your address, please?”

  “314 East Seventy-first Street.”

  “Here in Manhattan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Apartment number?”

  “6B.”

  “Are you married? Single? Div … ?”

  “Single.”

  “Are you employed?”

  “I’m an actress.”

  “Oh?” Eyebrows going up in sudden interest. “Have I seen you in anything?”

  “Well … I’ve done a lot of television work. I did a Law & Order last month.”

  “Really? That’s a good show. I watch that show all the time. Which one were you in?”

  “The one about abortion.”

  “No kidding? I saw that. That was just last month!”

  “Yes, it was. Excuse me, Detective, but …”

  “That’s my favorite show on television. They shoot that right here in New York, did you know that? Will you be doing any more of them?”

  “Well … right now I’m rehearsing a Broadway play.”

  “No kidding? What play? What’s it called?”

  “Romance. Uh, Detective …”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Well, it’s sort of complicated to explain. The thing is, I have to get back to the theater …”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “And I’d like to …”

  “Hey, sure.” All business again. Fingers on the typewriter keys again. “You say these calls started last Monday, right? That would’ve been …” A glance at the calendar on his desk. “December …”

  “December ninth.”

  “Right, December ninth.” Typing as he spoke. “Can you tell me exactly what this man said?”

  “He said, ’I’m going to kill you, miss.’ ”

  “Then what?”

  “That’s all.”

  “He calls you ‘miss’? No name?”

  “No name. Just ’I’m going to kill you, miss.’ Then he hangs up.”

  “Have there been any threatening letters?”

  “No.”

  “Have you seen anyone suspicious lurking around the building or … ?”

  “No.”

  “… following you to the theater or …”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you the truth, miss …”

  “This may be a good place to pause,” Kendall said.

  Both actors shaded their eyes and peered out into the darkened theater. The woman playing the actress said, “Ashley, I’m uncomfortable with …” but Kendall interrupted at once.

  “Take fifteen,” he said. “We’ll do notes later.”

  “I just want to ask Freddie about one of the lines.”

  “Later, Michelle,” Kendall said, dismissing her.

  Michelle let out a short, exasperated sigh, exchanged a long glance with Mark Riganti, the actor playing the detective who adored Law & Order, and then walked off into the wings with him. The actor playing the other detective stood chatting at the fingerprint table with the bearded actor playing his prisoner.

  Sitting sixth row center, Freddie Corbin turned immediately to Kendall and said, “They wouldn’t be wearing guns anywhere near a thief being printed.”

  “I can change that,” Kendall said. “What we’ve really got to talk about, Freddie …”

  “It spoils the entire sense of reality,” Corbin said.

  His full and honorable name was Frederick Peter Corbin Ill, but all of his friends called him Fred. Kendall, however, had started calling him Freddie the moment they’d been introduced, which of course the cast had picked up on, and now everybody associated with this project called him Freddie. Corbin, who had written two novels about New York City cops, knew that this was an old cop trick. Using the familiar diminutive to denigrate a prisoner’s sense of self-worth or self-respect. So you think you’re Mr. Corbin, hah? Well, Freddie, where were you on the night of June thirteenth, huh?

  “Also,” he said, “I think he’s overreacting when he discovers she’s an actress. It’d be funnier if he contained his excitement.”

  “Yes,” Kendall said. “Which brings us to the scene itself.”

  Kendall’s full name was Ashley Kendall, which wasn’t the name he was born with, but which had been his legal name for thirty years, so Corbin guessed that made it his real name, more or less. Frederick Peter Corbin III really was Corbin’s real real name, thank you. This was his first experience with a director. He was beginning to learn that directors d
idn’t think their job was directing the script, they thought their job was changing it. He was beginning to hate directors. Or at least to hate Kendall. He was beginning to learn that all directors were shitheads.

  “What about the scene?” he asked.

  “Well … doesn’t it seem a bit familiar to you?”

  “It’s supposed to be familiar. This is police routine. This is what happens when a person comes in to report a …”

  “Yes, but we’ve witnessed this particular scene a hundred times already, haven’t we?” Kendall said. “A thousand times. Even the detective reacting to the fact that she’s an actress is a cliché. Asking her if he’s seen her in anything. I mean, Freddie, I have a great deal of respect for what you’ve done here, the intricacy of the plot, the painstaking devotion to detail. But …”

  “But what?”

  “But I think there might be a more exciting way to set up the fact that her life has been threatened. Theatrically, I mean.”

  “Yes, this is a play,” Corbin said. “I would assume we’d want to do it theatrically.”

  “I know you’re a wonderful novelist,” Kendall said, “but …”

  “Thank you.”

  “But in a play …“

  “A dramatic line is a dramatic line,” Corbin said. “This is the story of an actress surviving …”

  “Yes, I know what it …”

  “… a brutal murder attempt, and then going on to achieve a tremendous personal triumph.”

  “Yes, that’s what it’s supposed to be about.”

  “No, that’s what it is about.”

  “No, this is a play about some New York cops solving a goddamn mystery.“

  “No, that’s not what it’s …”

  “Which you do very well, by the way. In your novels. There’s nothing wrong with stories about cops …”

  “Even if they are crap,” Corbin said.

  “I wasn’t about to say that,” Kendall said. “I wasn’t even thinking it. All I’m suggesting is that this shouldn’t be a play about cops.”

  “It isn’t a play about cops.”

  “I see. Then what is it?”

  “A play about a triumph of will.”

  “I see.”

  “A play about a woman surviving a knife attack, and then finding in herself the courage to …”

  “Yes, that part of it’s fine.”

  “What part of it isn’t fine?”