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King’s Ransom

[An 87^th Precinct Mystery]

Ed McBain

Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

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1

The long curve of the bay window faced the River Harb and the late-afternoon traffic of tugboats and barges plying their way between the two states. The scene beyond the window was clear with the pristine snappishness of October growing into November, each orange-and-gold leaf boldly shrieking its color against a sky too blue, too cold.

The room itself was clouded with cigar smoke and cigarette smoke, lacking the sharply defined clarity of the outdoors, hazing over the people who had come to the room to transact business. The smoke hovered on the air like the breath of banished ghosts, clinging like early-morning cemetery mist to the wide hand-pegged planks of the flooring, rising to the exposed hand-hewn timbers in the ceiling. The room was immense, but it was cluttered now with the trivia of an extended skull-cracking session, ash trays overbrimming with butts, used and half-used glasses strewn about the room like the debris of a drunken army in retreat, empty bottles cluttering the tables, the men themselves exhausted and drawn as if they too, like the clinging shifting smoke, were ready to dissipate into the air.

With dogged weariness, the two men sitting opposite Douglas King rapped out their staccato argument with the precision of vaudeville tap dancers. King listened to them silently.

“All we’re asking, Doug, is that you think in terms of net profit, that’s all,” George Benjamin said.

“Is that a lot to ask?” Rudy Stone said.

“Think of shoes, yes. Don’t forget shoes. But only as they apply to net profit.”

“Granger Shoe is a business, Doug, a business. Profit and loss. The black and the red.”

“And our job,” Benjamin said, “is to keep Granger in the black, okay? So keep that in mind, and think of net profit, and then take another look at these shoes.”

He rose from his position in the easy chair. He was a thin waspish man wearing black-rimmed spectacles which overpowered the narrowness of his face. He moved with the swiftness of a bird of prey, walking rapidly, almost gliding to the brass-stemmed, glass-topped teacart which stood some few feet from the sofa. The top of the cart was covered with women’s shoes. Benjamin picked up one of these shoes now and, with the same swift gliding movement, a peculiar grace which gave the impression that he was walking several inches above the actual surface of the expensive flooring, walked to where King sat in noncommittal silence. He extended the shoe to him.

“Is that a shoe to stimulate sales?” he asked.