Ed McBain by Learning to Kill: Stories Page B

strong. Go talk to her. Who knows?"
    "No, I couldn't," Falco said.
    "Faintheart..."
    "No, no, it isn't that," Falco said.
    "Then what?"
    "I ... I would tremble. I don't think I'd be able to ... control myself. She is very beautiful."
    The wind lifted her skirt again. This time she did not notice it at all because Panza's red boat was pulling up to the dock. She ran to the edge of the dock, and her legs flashed in the deepening dusk, and Falco watched those legs, with his palms sweating again. Panza came out of the boat and embraced his daughter, slobbering a kiss onto her with his fat mouth and his dripping mustache. She hugged him tightly. Falco watched. Panza said something to her, and she nodded mutely in answer, her lips not moving. And then she and Panza walked away from the boat and down the dock, and past Falco's boat full of mackerel. And Falco watched her as she walked by, and wet his lips again, and kept watching her until she was out of sight, and even then the picture of her was still in his mind.

    She came to the dock two, sometimes three, times a week. He learned from the others that her mother was dead, and that she did modeling, a job where she did not need her voice, only her body. She was always dressed like a queen, always with clothes that showed the firmness of her body. She lived alone with Panza, they told him, though she could easily have afforded a high-class apartment uptown. She preferred to look after old Panza in the shack where he lived near the docks.
    The voice, they said, was something psychological, and this Falco could not understand. They said it had happened to her when she was a little girl, something that paralyzed her throat muscles, something with a stumblebum who had come down to the docks shortly after her mother had died, and found the young girl alone. The doctors could do nothing for this voice of hers that was missing, it was all psychological, all part of this something that had happened to her long ago.
    But he didn't care about her voice.
    He watched her whenever she came to the dock.
    Always, he watched.
    And then one day, he came in very early because he knew it was a day she would be on the dock and she was there as always, sitting on a crate near the loading platform, her legs crossed with the sun flashing on them, the skirt pulled back over her knees. Her head was thrown back with the blonde hair trailing over her shoulders. She sucked in a deep breath, and he watched and thought suddenly,
Why, she knows I'm here. She knows I'm watching her.
    He dried his hands on a rag and climbed up out of the boat and onto the rotted, wooden planking of the dock. He walked over to her, and she did not look at him. She kept looking out over the water as if he were not there at all.
    He cleared his throat and made a small sound, but she showed no indication of having heard him, and he wondered about her ears, because sometimes dummies could not hear, but everyone said her ears were all right.
    He cleared his throat again and then said, "Are you waiting for your father?"
    She turned then and looked at him. Her eyes were very cold, her mouth was unsmiling. She did not answer, not by voice which she could not, and not by any movement of her head.
    "Are you ... are you waiting for your father?" he asked again.
    This time her eyes met his squarely, and her mouth curled into obvious distaste. He had seen that look before. He had seen it on the women in the marketplace the times he had gone down to the fish stand his brother operated. It was a look that said, "You are a fish peddler," and this girl, this Panza's daughter, did not need any voice when she could cast looks like that one.
    He began to feel warm again, but a different kind of warmth this time. He felt blood rise to his face, and when the girl turned her back to him and lifted one knee, cupping that knee with her clasping hands, he stood there like an idiot for a moment longer, and then he turned and walked slowly back to his boat,