Ed McBain: Blood Relatives

“I understand completely,” Kling said.

“So please don’t get upset,” Augusta said.

“I’m not upset,” Kling said. “It’s just that most of these guys I’ve worked with a long time, and I’ve got to invite them. I’m not only talking now about the ones I want to invite — like Steve or Meyer or Hal or Cotton or the Lieutenant or Bob or—”

“Bert, that’s half the squad already!”

“No, honey, there are sixteen men on the squad.”

“And if you add wives to that—”

“Not all of them are married. Gus, I’ll tell you the truth, I’d really like to invite all of them, I mean it. Because these are guys I work with, you know. So how can I invite some of them and not others? I may be on the job, say, with Andy Parker one night, and some hood’ll get the drop on me, and Andy’ll remember I didn’t invite him to my wedding, and he’ll forget to shoot the hood.”

“Yeah,” Augusta said.

“So from that aspect alone, it’s really, well, important to keep good working relations with the guys on the squad. But from the other aspect, too, of liking most of these guys, though I can’t honestly say I’m crazy about Andy Parker, still, he’s not too bad a person when you understand him, from that aspect I’d really like them to be there to share my wedding with me. You understand, Gus?”

“Yeah,” she said, and sighed. “Well, Bert, then I guess we’ll just have to figure on more people than we did originally.”

“How many did we figure originally?”

“About seventy, seventy-five.”

“Maybe we can still keep it down to that.”

“I don’t see how,” Augusta said.

“Well, let’s look at that list again, okay?”

They looked at the list again. He did not mention to her that tomorrow morning he would begin questioning a dozen or more known sex offenders. They talked only about the wedding. Then they went out to brunch, and strolled the city. There were outdoor flea markets, and sidewalk art exhibits, and even an antiques show with stalls set up against the curbstones of four barricaded city blocks. For a little while it felt like Paris.

On Monday morning he became a cop again.

In the penal law of the state for which Kling worked, all sex offenses were listed under Article 130. PL 130 .35, for example, was Rape 1st Degree, which was a Class B felony. PL 130 .38 was Consensual Sodomy, a Class B misdemeanor. PL 130.55 was Sexual Abuse 3rd Degree, another Class B misdemeanor. There were eleven separate sex offenses listed under Article 130, which noted, incidentally, that “a person shall not be convicted of any offense defined in this Article, or of an attempt to commit the same, solely on the uncorroborated testimony of the alleged victim, except in the case of Sexual Abuse 3rd Degree.” There were some cops who found it amusing that the exception to this note did not also apply to the third definition of Sexual Misconduct, which was “engaging in sexual conduct with an animal or a dead human body,” it perhaps being reasonable to assume that neither of these victims could possibly give any testimony at all.

There were other cops who found nothing at all amusing about Article 130. A great many criminals shared their opinion. Sex offenders were the least-respected convicts in any prison society; if a violator of Article 130 could have pretended that he was an ax murderer instead, or an arsonist, or a man who had filled a ditch with fourteen poisoned wives, he’d have preferred that to entering the prison as a sex offender. There had to be something terribly wrong with a man who’d committed a sex crime — any sort of sex crime. Or so the reasoning went, inside the walls and outside as well.

When it came to degrees of criminality, there were very few opinions that cops and crooks did not mutually share: Kling, on that Monday morning when he returned to work, found himself questioning these sex offenders with a rising sense of revulsion. Their names had been selected the morning before, and instructions had been left with the desk sergeant to have his uniformed force round them up for questioning first thing Monday morning. They were here now, a baker’s dozen of them in the squadroom or waiting outside on benches in the corridor. Carella and Kling were sharing the interrogations. There was not a single man in that squadroom who did not know he was there because a teenage girl had been found murdered and presumably sexually abused last Saturday night. The news had been in all the papers and on all the television shows. If you’re a sex offender, you get used to the fact that any time somebody so much as gets felt up in the subway, the cops’ll be around to talk to you about it. But this was a big one. This was a homicide.

Kling started each of his interrogations with the exact same words. He told the man sitting opposite him why he was there, and he made certain the man knew he was not being charged with anything. A girl was found murdered, however, and there had been indications (he did not reveal which indications) that sex may have been a contributing factor, and since the man sitting opposite him was a known offender, Kling would appreciate it if he could account for his whereabouts on Saturday night between the hours of 10:30 and 11:30. Each of the men invariably (and reasonably) protested that just because he’d once taken a fall for Sodomy Three or Rape Two or any one (or more) of the other eleven crimes listed under Article 130, this was no reason for the police to pick him up and drag him into the station house every time some little girl had her skirt lifted. There was such a thing as rehabilitation, you know, and it didn’t help a man to be constantly reminded of his past errors. Kling immediately apologized for a system that forced a man to carry forever the burden of his criminal record, but if the man could only understand that Kling was trying to establish his innocence rather than his guilt, why then, the man would simply excuse the inconvenience and answer the questions and go on about his business.

Sure, the man would invariably say. Until the next time.

But he answered the questions.

The fifth man who approached Kling’s desk had black wavy hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a navy-blue jacket over a paleblue sports shirt. His trousers were a dark blue too, but they did not quite match the jacket. Jacket and trousers alike were rumpled, and there was a beard stubble on the man’s face. He pulled out the chair opposite Kling and sat immediately.

“Mr. Donatelli?” Kling said.

“Yes, sir,” Donatelli said. His voice was low. His pale-blue eyes looked at the filing cabinets, the water cooler, the electric fan, the dock on the squadroom wall, anything but Kling.

“James Donatelli?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Donatelli,” Kling said, “have you got any idea why we asked you to come up here?”

“Yes, sir, I suppose it has to do with the little girl who was killed,” Donatelli said.

“That’s right,” Kling said.

“I had nothing to do with that,” Donatelli said.

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.”

“You know,” Donatelli said, “a man takes one fall in his life on an offense of this nature, he’s right away listed as some kind of maniac. I had nothing to do with that girl’s murder, and I’m happy to be able to tell you that.”

“That’s good, Mr. Donatelli, because no one’s accusing you of anything. I’m sorry we have to inconvenience you this way, but—”

“That’s all right,” Donatelli said, and waved the apology aside with an open hand. “But what is it you want to know? I’d like to get this over with, I’ll be losing half a day’s pay as it is.”