Free Nocturne by Ed McBain

the Second had ruled England from 1377 to 1399 and was the son of Edward the Black Prince. The present-day
     Richard the Second was named Richard Weinstock, and his father was Irving the Tailor. He was five feet ten inches tall and
     weighed two hundred and forty pounds, all of it muscle and bruised bones. He had dark hair and brown eyes, and he played fullback
     on the team.
    Richard the Third, whose true and honorable name was Richard O’Connor, had freckles and reddish hair and greenish eyes and
     he was six feet three inches tall and weighed two-ten. His fifteenth-century namesake was the third son of the duke of York,
     a mighty feudal baron. Richard’s left arm was withered and shrunken, but this did not stop him from being a fierce fighter
     and a conniving son of a bitch. The king, that is. The present-day Richard was known to cheat on French exams, but he had
     two strong arms and very good hands and he played wide receiver on the Pierce Academy team.
    All three Richards had come down to the city for the weekend. They were not due back at school till Monday morning. All three
     Richards were wearing the team’s hooded parka, navy blue with a big letter P in white on the back. Just below the stem of
     the P, there was a white logo in the shape of a football, about three inches wide and five inches long. The patch indicated
     which team they played on. Over the left pectoral on the front of the parka, the name of the school was stitched in white
     script lettering, Pierce Academy , ta-ra.
    The Richards Three.
    At four-thirty on that gelid morning, it was doubtful that any of the three, despite the similarity, knew his
own
name. Turning back to yell “Fuck you!” and “Go eat
shit
!” at the bouncer who’d told them the club was now closed and then politely but firmly showed them the front door, they came
     reeling out onto the sidewalk and stood uncertainly toggling their parkas closed, pulling the hoods up over their heads, wrapping
     their blue and white mufflers, trying to light cigarettes, burping, farting, giggling, and finally throwing their arms around
     each other and going into a football huddle.
    “What we need to do now,” Richard the First said, “is to get ourselves laid.”
    “That’s a good idea,” Richard the Third said. “Where can we find some girls?”
    “Uptown?” Richard the First suggested.
    “Then let’s go uptown,” Richard the Second agreed.
    They clapped out of the huddle.
    Uptown, Yolande was climbing into another automobile.
    The three Richards hailed a taxi.
    Jimmy Jackson’s kids knew there was a black Santa Claus because they’d seen one standing alongside a fake chimney and ringing
     a bell outside a department store downtown on Hall Avenue after their mother had taken them to sit on the lap of a white Santa
     Claus inside. The white Santa apparently hadn’t listened all that hard because James Jr. hadn’t got the bike he’d asked for,
     and Millie hadn’t got this year’s hot doll, and Terrence hadn’t got this year’s hot warrior. So when the doorbell rang at
     a quarter to five that Sunday morning, they ran to wake up their father because they figured this might be the black bell-ringing
     Santa coming back to make amends for the white department-store Santa’s oversights.
    Jimmy Jackson was only mildly annoyed to be awakened by his kids so early on a Sunday morning when his mother-in-law was coming
     to visit, not to mention his sister Naydelle and her two screaming brats. He became singularly
irritated
, however, when he opened the door and found it wasn’t no joke but was
really
two honkie dicks, just like they’d said through the wood, standing there with gold and blue badges in they hands. On a Sunday
     no less, did the motherfuckers have no consideration whatever?
    The kids were asking if he would make pancakes, since everybody was up, anyway.
    Jackson told them to go ask they mother.
    “So whut is it?” he said to the cops.
    “Mr. Jackson,”