The Big Bad City by Ed McBain

Author:Ed McBain [McBain, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: General, Thrillers, Detective and mystery stories, Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Police Procedural, Police, Carella; Steve (Fictitious character), 87th Precinct (Imaginary place)
ISBN: 9780671025694
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 1999-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

"No, sir, we're trying to find out who killed her."

"Are you saying she got killed because I wouldn't give her the two thousand?"

"We don't know why she got killed, sir. You just told us she was in serious trouble. If we can learn what kind of trouble ..."

"She sounded ... I don't know. She kept going on about past and present, the past affecting the present, it all sounded like religious bullshit. She said she would pray for me, and I told her to pray that I get the

four thousand back I loaned her four years ago. Then she said..." He shook his head. "She said, "I love you, Vince," and hung up."

They allowed him the moment, both detectives standing by silently, feeling somewhat foolishly intrusive in what was essentially a private reflection.

"Did she mention having received a letter?" Carena asked.

"No."

"Did she mention any recent decisions she'd made?"

"No. Just said she was in serious trouble and needed two thousand dollars."

"Didn't say for what?"

"No." He shook his head again. "What kind of trouble could a nun be in, will you please tell me? The trouble was her being a nun in the first place, that was the goddamn trouble."

There was another awkward silence.

"I used to tell a lot of nun jokes in my act," he said. "It was my way of getting back at her for having left. Every night, another nun joke. There has to be a thousand nun jokes out there. Even when she left the convent, I kept doing nun jokes. It was as if I knew she'd go back in one day. I kept hoping she was really out for good, I kept hoping she'd come home again soon, but I guess I knew, I guess I knew she wasn't really finished with it. The day I heard she went back in again, I thought, What's the use? I stopped telling nun jokes that very night. I haven't told a nun joke since. Because, you see, my sister was the biggest nun joke of them all."

That afternoon, everything broke at once.

First, the rain came.

It had not rained for almost two weeks now, and the storm that broke over the city at a quarter past three seemed determined to make up for lost time. Lightning crashed and thunder bellowed. Raindrops the size of melons or so some long-time residents claimed, came pouring down from the black sky overhead, drilling the dimmed afternoon, pelting the sidewalks, splashing and plashing and plopping and sloshing until the gutters and drains overflowed like the tub in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, poor Mickey overwhelmed. The rain was relentless. It made everyone happy to be indoors, even cops.

Particularly happy on" that rainy afternoon were Carena and Brown, who got back to the squad room to find a fax from a doctor named George Lowenthal, who said he had indeed performed a surgical procedure on a woman named Katherine Cochran, in the month of April, four years ago.

Equally happy were Meyer and Kling. The address and phone number Marilyn Monroe had given the pawnbroker were big surprise non-existent.

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