Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

The cop — whose name was Randolph Hasty — didn’t know what to do at first. He knew he was not empowered to toss this lady unless circumstances reasonably indicated that she had committed, was committing, or was about to commit a violation of the criminal laws of the state. Hasty had only Parrish’s word that a crime had actually taken place. But even if a crime had occurred, and he didn’t yet know that for a fact, he was positive he’d be in very deep shit if he, as a male cop, went rummaging through this female’s panties and bra. He wasn’t even sure he could march into the ladies’ room without a search warrant. It was all very puzzling. Hasty admitted this in his report. Well, sort of admitted it. What he wrote, actually, was: “The initial evidence at the scene was unclear as to 901.151.” Which was Florida’s Stop and Frisk statute.

It got even more puzzling in the next ten minutes.

The more Hasty kept looking at the lady with the blonde wig and the big tits, the more something seemed funny about her. Too much lipstick on her mouth, too much eye makeup. Voice a little husky. It occurred to him that perhaps she wasn’t a woman at all.

In which case, maybe he could search her.

Him.

If a criminal offense had, in fact, already taken place.

At which point Parrish told him that the lady, or the gentleman as the case may have been, had struck him above the eye with his or her handbag, causing the bleeding cut which was positive evidence of the crime of Battery, a first-degree misdemeanor — if Parrish was telling the truth. Parrish went on to explain that he suspected the woman in the purple dress wasn’t a woman at all, which conclusion Hasty had already reached, but was instead a man in drag cruising a known homosexual bar for the explicit purpose of gay-bashing.

“Are you accusing this person here of Battery?” Hasty asked.

“I am,” Parrish said.

“Miss,” Hasty said, “are you a male?”

The sultry blonde in the purple dress said nothing.

“If this person is a male,” Hasty said to Parrish, “I think I can maybe search her.”

“This person is a male,” Parrish said.

“What is your name. Miss?” Hasty said.

The blonde still said nothing.

“His name is Mark Delassandro,” Parrish said.

“Very well. Miss,” Hasty said, and began his frisk.

With some embarrassment, he found a pair of foam-rubber breasts inside Delassandro’s bra, and foam-rubber buttocks enhancers inside his panties. He did not find Parrish’s wallet anywhere on Delassandro’s person. Nor did he find it anywhere in the ladies’ room, which he entered after a discreet knock on the door, and a brusque “Police officer!”

“I find no evidence of a crime having been committed,” he told Parrish.

“How about him hitting me with his handbag?” Parrish asked. “Isn’t that a crime?”

“Are you willing to make a sworn statement to that effect?” Hasty asked.

“I am,” Parrish said.

At the police station — what was discreetly known as the Public Safety Building in staid Calusa — Bloom interviewed Mark Delassandro and learned that he and Parrish had been living together as lovers since the middle of July. He further learned that they had gone together to Scandal’s that night (Delassandro in the dress and wig and shoes and padded lingerie Parrish had purchased for him at a Calusa boutique called Trash and Stuff) and that the cut above Parrish’s eye had been precipitated by a quarrel that started at about ten-thirty that night.

The continuing gospel according to Mark maintained that the quarrel had begun because Parrish was flirting outrageously with a muscular twenty-year-old twit wearing a navy blue T-shirt and a dragon tattoo, who after two martinis began boasting to everyone at the bar that in New York City he had engorged organs larger than the one at Radio City Music Hall. Sitting there in drag all sexy and slinky while Mr. America flexed and boasted and Parrish adoringly batted his eyelashes, Delassandro had felt enormous discomfort, extreme jealousy, and something close to female helplessness. So he picked up his handbag and swung it at Parrish’s head, hoping to knock his left eye out of its socket, but instead inflicting only a relatively minor cut over the eye.

The story about the wallet was sheer nonsense, Delassandro claimed. Parrish never even carried a wallet because it showed a bulge that spoiled the cut of his tailor-made trousers and detracted from the natural bulge he was flaunting. As for the so-called sexual solicitation, he and Parrish often played Hooker-John in public, for kicks, a sort of game that seemed exciting and theatrical. But yes, he had hit Parrish with his handbag. And yes, he had tried to put out his eye.

Battery, for sure, Matthew thought.

Attempted Aggravated Battery as a second charge.

“What’d you charge him with?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Bloom said.

Matthew looked at him.

“Let me tell you something, Matthew,” Bloom said. “On my block, this was a routine family dispute that should’ve been settled on the street by the responding blue. Okay, it wasn’t. So there I was with an unsigned admission of Batt with a tack-on of attempted Agg-Batt in that Delassandro said he was trying to put out Parrish’s eye, which was certainly intent to cause great bodily harm, permanent disability, or permanent disfigurement as defined in the statutes under 784.045, are you following me?”

“I’m following you,” Matthew said.

“So. If I threw Delassandro in jail — he was only twenty-four years old — he’d be fish in ten seconds flat. If he got convicted after trial, he’d be facing a year in prison on the Batt charge and five more on the Agg-Batt attempt. So I asked myself a question. I asked myself, ‘Morrie, is two fags having an argument a good enough reason to send this kid to prison, where they’ll paint tits on his back and rape him day and night?’ And you know the answer I got?”

“What answer did you get?”

“I got, ‘Morrie, I think you better let him go with a warning.’ You understand me?”

“Sure. You’re softhearted.”

“Bullshit,” Bloom said. “Parrish wouldn’t give us the statement he’d promised, and Delassandro refused to sign the confession, told me he’d made the whole thing up. A family dispute, plain and simple. So I asked myself, ‘Morrie, do you have a case?’ And you know the answer I got?”

“Morrie, you do not have a case.”

“Correct. Morrie, you do not have a case.”

“So you let Delassandro walk.”

“I let him walk,” Bloom said. “And you and me never had this conversation.”

“Have you looked him up since the murder?”

“Delassandro? He’s living in San Francisco. He did not kill Parrish. Matthew, if that’s what you’re thinking. He did not come back with his pocketbook to stab the man in the heart with it. As I was saying, Matthew, but you weren’t listening…”

“I was listening.”

“I was saying that what you’ve got here is a no-good fag prick who was kept in style by his straight brother from Kansas…”

“Indiana.”

“Wherever, who suddenly can’t take it any longer. He starts an argument with Parrish when he sees all those prancing queers…”

“Your star witnesses, Morrie.”

“Sure, and don’t think the S.A. isn’t worried about that. But they heard and saw the argument, Matthew, that’s all that matters. And then the brother wakes up even madder than when he went to bed. The priest next door hears the two of them screaming their heads…”

“What priest?” Matthew asked at once.

“You got your witness list, I’m sure he’s on it.”