The Con Man by Ed McBain Read Free Book Online Page B

daughter is dead.
    Proschek sat with his indignation in his eyes, and then his anger spread to his mouth and bubbled from his lips. “She’s not dead,” he said.
    “She is, Mr. Proschek,” Kling said. “Sir, I’m sorry, but—”
    “She’s not dead,” Proschek said firmly.
    “Sir—”
    And, again, he said, “She’s not dead!”
    Kling turned to Carella. Carella shoved himself off the desk effortlessly. “Mr. Proschek,” he said, “we’ve compared the dead girl’s teeth with the dental chart you gave to the Missing Persons Bureau. They’re identical, sir. Believe me, we wouldn’t have had this happen—”
    “There’s been a mistake,” Proschek said.
    “There’s been no mistake, sir.”
    “How could she be dead?” Proschek asked. “She came here to start a new life. She said so. She wrote that to me. So how could she be dead?”
    “Her body—”
    “And you wouldn’t find my daughter drowned. My daughter was an excellent swimmer. My daughter won a medal in high school for her swimming. I don’t know who that girl is, but she’s not Mary Louise.”
    “Sir—”
    “I’d have broke her neck if she wore a tattoo. You said this dead girl has a tattoo on her hand. My Mary Louise would never even have considered a thing like that.”
    “That’s what we wanted to find out from you, sir,” Carella said. “You told us she didn’t have a tattoo. In that case, she must have acquired the tattoo in this city. We know she wasn’t drowned, yousee. She was dead before she entered the water. So if we can tie in the tattoo with—”
    “That dead girl isn’t my daughter,” Proschek said. “You brought me all the way from Pennsylvania, and she isn’t even my daughter. Why are you wasting my time? I had to lose a whole day just to come here.”
    “Sir,” Carella said firmly, “that girl is your daughter. Please try to understand that.” Proschek stared at him hostilely. “Did she have any friends named Mac?” Carella asked.
    “None,” Proschek said.
    “MacDonald, MacDougall, MacMorrow, MacManus, MacThing, Mac-Anything?”
    “No.”
    “Are you certain?”
    “My daughter didn’t have many boyfriends,” Proschek said. “She…she wasn’t a very pretty girl. She had good coloring, fair, like her mother—blue eyes and blonde hair, that’s a good combination—but she didn’t…She wasn’t very pretty. I…I used to feel sorry for her. A man…It doesn’t matter if a man isn’t good looking. But, to a girl, looks are everything. I used to feel sorry for her.” He paused and looked up at Carella and then repeated, as if to clarify his earlier statements, “She wasn’t very pretty, my daughter.”
    Carella looked down at Proschek, knowing the coal miner had used the past tense, knowing that the girl was already dead in Proschek’s mind, and wondering why the man fought the knowledge now, fought the indisputable knowledge that his daughter was dead and had been dead for at least three months.
    “Please think, Mr. Proschek,” he said. “Did she ever mention anyone named Mac?”
    “No,” Proscheck said. “Why should Mary Louise mention a Mac? That girl isn’t Mary Louise.” He paused, got a sudden idea, and said, “I want to see that girl.”
    “We’d rather you didn’t,” Carella said.
    “I want to see her. You say she’s my daughter, and you show me dental charts, and that’s all a lot of crap. I want to see that girl. I can tell you whether or not she’s Mary Louise.”
    “Is that what you called her?” Carella asked. “Mary Louise?”
    “That’s what I baptized her. Mary Louise. Everybody else called her just plain Mary, but that wasn’t the way I intended it. I intended it Mary Louise. That’s a pretty name, isn’t it? Mary Louise. Mary is too…plain.” He blinked. “Too plain.” He blinked again. “I want to see that girl. Where is that girl?”
    “At the mortuary,” Kling said.
    “Then take me there. A relative’s supposed to identify a…a body,