wish to investigate. Meanwhile, I'll be running on back to Sarasota, Tony, give me a call when you break the case, I'll send you a crate of oranges. So, yes, maybe he should drop in on the First, it wasn't everyone in this city who had Police Department connections. On the other hand, if he could not convince Tony the Bear that he'd had nothing whatever to do with the murder of Arthur Crandall, he might find himself sharing a cell with Charlie Bonano--why were so many people in this city named Charlie? Except for _Charlie's _News, which was a store selling books, and magazines, and cards, and newspapers, Michael did not know a single Charlie in Sarasota.
Did not know any other Charlies in the
97 entire state of _Florida, for that matter. But here in New York, three of them in the same night, and two of them named Charlie _Wong. Remarkable. The very same night. Two Charlie Wongs. He wondered if Charlie was as common a name as Wong, and he thought of asking Connie--once they were finished with all this kissing--what the statistics on the frequency of Charlies in any given location might be. She showed no indication of wanting to stop the kissing, however, until a light snapped on overhead and someone shouted, "Hey! What the hell are you doing down there?"
They broke apart at once and looked immediately heavenward because this sounded like a demand from a vengeful God instead of a person shouting from the fourth-floor window of the tenement to the right of the hotel--which, they now discovered, was where the shout had come from: a light was showing in the fourth-floor window, silhouetting the person doing all the yelling.
"I'm gonna call the police!" the person --man or woman, it was difficult to tell-- shouted.
"No, don't do that!" Michael yelled, and he yanked Connie out of the glare of the moonshine and ran over the snow and into the shadows created by the rear of Crandall's building. They both listened. They could sense but not see the person up there straining to catch a glimpse of them in the dark. "I know you're still there!" the voice shouted. They said nothing. A window slammed shut. They waited. Silence.
The light upstairs went out. The backyard was dark and still again. She grinned at him. He grinned back. And then he leaped up like Superman for the fire-escape ladder, caught the bottom rung on the first try, and yanked it down. There was a small Christmas tree on one of the filing cabinets, decorated with Christmas ornaments and lights that Michael now turned on to add a bit more illumination than was flowing in from the street lamp outside. The lights had a blinker on them. In fits and starts--on again, off again, yellow, green, red, and blue--Michael and Connie took in the rest of the office. From the looks of the place, there'd been one
hell of a party here. Someone had
99 decorated the single large room with red and green streamers strung from wall to wall, crisscrossing the office like the rows and rows of protective barbed wire around the base camp at Cu Chi. Dangling from the streamers were cardboard cutouts of Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, all of whom --together with the Easter Bunny and the Great Pumpkin and St. Valentine's day, especially St. Valentine's Day--Michael had learned to distrust in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in February of 1968, when Jenny (then) Aldershot forgot to send him a card asking him to be her valentine. And when, too, what with all that hardware flying around, he'd begun to doubt he'd ever get back home again to Jenny or anyone else, ever get back to shore again. He should have known then and there that one day she'd start up with a fat bastard bank branch manager, oh well, live and learn. In addition to the streamers and the dangling reminders of Christmases past, there was a huge wreath hanging in the front window, which Michael hadn't noticed when he was looking up at the window from the street outside. There were also a great
Did not know any other Charlies in the
97 entire state of _Florida, for that matter. But here in New York, three of them in the same night, and two of them named Charlie _Wong. Remarkable. The very same night. Two Charlie Wongs. He wondered if Charlie was as common a name as Wong, and he thought of asking Connie--once they were finished with all this kissing--what the statistics on the frequency of Charlies in any given location might be. She showed no indication of wanting to stop the kissing, however, until a light snapped on overhead and someone shouted, "Hey! What the hell are you doing down there?"
They broke apart at once and looked immediately heavenward because this sounded like a demand from a vengeful God instead of a person shouting from the fourth-floor window of the tenement to the right of the hotel--which, they now discovered, was where the shout had come from: a light was showing in the fourth-floor window, silhouetting the person doing all the yelling.
"I'm gonna call the police!" the person --man or woman, it was difficult to tell-- shouted.
"No, don't do that!" Michael yelled, and he yanked Connie out of the glare of the moonshine and ran over the snow and into the shadows created by the rear of Crandall's building. They both listened. They could sense but not see the person up there straining to catch a glimpse of them in the dark. "I know you're still there!" the voice shouted. They said nothing. A window slammed shut. They waited. Silence.
The light upstairs went out. The backyard was dark and still again. She grinned at him. He grinned back. And then he leaped up like Superman for the fire-escape ladder, caught the bottom rung on the first try, and yanked it down. There was a small Christmas tree on one of the filing cabinets, decorated with Christmas ornaments and lights that Michael now turned on to add a bit more illumination than was flowing in from the street lamp outside. The lights had a blinker on them. In fits and starts--on again, off again, yellow, green, red, and blue--Michael and Connie took in the rest of the office. From the looks of the place, there'd been one
hell of a party here. Someone had
99 decorated the single large room with red and green streamers strung from wall to wall, crisscrossing the office like the rows and rows of protective barbed wire around the base camp at Cu Chi. Dangling from the streamers were cardboard cutouts of Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, all of whom --together with the Easter Bunny and the Great Pumpkin and St. Valentine's day, especially St. Valentine's Day--Michael had learned to distrust in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in February of 1968, when Jenny (then) Aldershot forgot to send him a card asking him to be her valentine. And when, too, what with all that hardware flying around, he'd begun to doubt he'd ever get back home again to Jenny or anyone else, ever get back to shore again. He should have known then and there that one day she'd start up with a fat bastard bank branch manager, oh well, live and learn. In addition to the streamers and the dangling reminders of Christmases past, there was a huge wreath hanging in the front window, which Michael hadn't noticed when he was looking up at the window from the street outside. There were also a great
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