CANDYLAND
Emma Boyle of the Special Victims Unit is assigned to the case of a young prostitute’s murder. As the foggy events of the night in question come into focus, Benjamin Thorpe becomes a viable suspect. The excruciating suspense is classic McBain — and the combined impact of both halves of CANDYLAND is unforgettable.
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Chapter 1
The brunette is telling Ben that what he’s done with the space is truly remarkable. She’s a lawyer with the firm, and he can’t possibly imagine her knowing anything at all about matters architectural, so he guesses she’s flirting with him, although in an arcane legal sort of way.
The name of the law firm is Dowd, Dawson, Liepman and Loeb. It is on the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh floors of the old Addison Building on Eighteenth Street and Ninth Avenue. The brunette is telling him that his multilevel concept echoes the very precepts of the law, exalted justice on high, abject supplicants below. Through the huge cathedral windows Ben designed for the eastern end of the space, he can see storm clouds gathering.
The brunette is drinking white wine. Ben is drinking a Perrier and lime. This is DDL&L’s first party in their new offices. They have invited all their important clients as well as the architect and interior designer who together restructured and redecorated the two top floors of the building. It is now ten minutes past six on the twenty-first of July, a Wednesday. Ben flew in this morning and is scheduled to take the eight a.m. flight back to Los Angeles tomorrow. He listens to the brunette telling him how wonderful he is. She is full figured and wearing a very low cut red cocktail dress.
He looks out again at the threatening sky.
Ben’s firm is called Ritter-Thorpe Associates. The company was Frank Ritter’s before Ben became a partner, hence the top billing. There are seven architects altogether, but Frank and Ben are the only partners. Their receptionist, Agata, is a Chicano girl they hired straight out of a high school in the Venice ghetto. She greets him warmly in her accented English, and then puts him through to Frank who, she informs him, “hass joss return from a meeting.”
“How’d it go?” Frank asks at once.
“Good,” Ben says. “Lots of nice comments, half a dozen people asking for a card.”
“Any mention of those windows that popped?”
“No, no. Why should there be? That was a long time ago, Frank.”
“Only six months.”
“Nobody mentioned it.”
“You should have had a model made.”
“Well…”
“Tested it in a wind tunnel.”
“Spilled milk,” Ben says. “Anyway, it worked out all…”
“We’re lucky it happened when it did. Every window in the place could have blown out.”
“Well, nobody mentioned it.”
“Still,” Frank says.
He’s not too subtly suggesting that Ben’s been letting too many details slip by nowadays. The air exchange for the storage room in the house in Santa Monica. The support for the free-standing staircase in the Malibu beach house. Minor details. Well, the windows popping out here in New York wasn’t so minor, they were lucky nobody got hurt. But that was the structural engineer’s fault, not Ben’s. Still, the architect always takes the blame.
“Did anybody say when we can expect final payment?” Frank asks.
“I didn’t bring it up.”
“Big party, no check,” Frank says.
“I’m sure it’ll be coming soon.”
“Unless they plan to bring up the windows again.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll see,” Frank says, and sighs. “When are you coming back?”
“I’m on the eight o’clock flight tomorrow morning.”
“What time is it there, anyway?”
Ben looks at his watch.
“Five past seven.”
“What are your plans?”
“Dinner. Sleep.”
“Fly safely,” Frank says, and hangs up.