Like Love (87th Precinct), page 18
“No.”
“Neither have I. How can a man kill his own brother?”
“He didn’t want to lose him,” Hawes said.
“He lost him,” Carella answered flatly, and then he sighed again and said, “Come on, I’ll buy you a beer. You want a beer?”
“All right,” Hawes said.
They went down the corridor together. Outside the clerical office, they both stopped to say good night to Miscolo. As they came down the iron-runged steps to the first floor, Carella said, “What time are you coming in tomorrow?”
“I thought I’d get in a little early,” Hawes said.
“Trying for a line on Petie?”
“He’s still with us, you know.”
“I know. Anyway, Bert thinks he’s got a lead on that numbers bank. We may be hitting it tomorrow, and that’ll shoot the whole damn afternoon. Be a good idea to get in early.”
“Maybe we ought to skip the beer.”
“I’d just as soon, if it’s okay with you,” Carella said.
It had begun raining harder by the time they came out into the street.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph © Dragica Hunter
Ed McBain was one of the many pen names of the successful and prolific crime fiction author Evan Hunter (1926-2005). Born Salvatore Lambino in New York, McBain served aboard a destroyer in the US Navy during World War II and then earned a degree from Hunter College in English and psychology. After a short stint teaching in a high school, McBain went to work for a literary agency in New York, working with authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and P.G. Wodehouse, all the while working on his own writing on nights and weekends. He had his first breakthrough in 1954 with the novel The Blackboard Jungle, which was published under his newly legal name Evan Hunter and based on his time teaching in the Bronx.
Perhaps his most popular work, the 87th Precinct series (released mainly under the name Ed McBain) is one of the longest running crime series ever published, debuting in 1956 with Cop Hater and featuring over fifty novels. The series is set in a fictional locale called Isola and features a wide cast of detectives including the prevalent Detective Steve Carella.
McBain was also known as a screenwriter. Most famously he adapted a short story from Daphne Du Maurier into the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). In addition to writing for the silver screen, he wrote for many television series, including Columbo and the NBC series 87th Precinct (1961-1962), based on his popular novels.
McBain was awarded the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1986 by the Mystery Writers of America and was the first American to receive the Cartier Diamond Dagger award from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. He passed away in 2005 in his home in Connecticut after a battle with larynx cancer.
Ed McBain, Like Love (87th Precinct)
