Ed McBain - The Con Man

They kept matching.

Jamison did not lose as much now. O’Neill kept losing, and he got angrier with each flip of the coin. Finally, he looked at both men and said, “Say, what is this?”

“What’s what?” Parsons asked.

“I’ve dropped nearly six hundred dollars so far.” He turned to Jamison. “How much have you lost?”

Jamison did a little mental calculation. “Oh, about two hundred thirty-five, something like that.”

“And you?” O’Neill said to Parsons.

“I’m winning,” Parsons said.

O’Neill looked at his two companions with a long, steady gaze. “You wouldn’t be trying to fleece me by any chance, would you?” he asked.

“Fleece?” Parsons asked.

“You wouldn’t be a pair of swindlers by any chance, would you?” O’Neill asked.

Jamison could hardly keep the grin off his face. Parsons winked at him.

“What makes you say that?” Parsons asked.

O’Neill rose suddenly. “I’m calling a cop,” he said.

The grin dropped from Jamison’s face. “Hey, now,” he said, “wait a minute. We were just—”

Parsons, sitting secure with Jamison’s $235 and O’Neill’s $600 in his pocket, said, “No need to get sore, Frank. A game’s a game.”

“Besides,” Jamison said, “we were only—”

Parsons put an arm on his sleeve and winked at him. “The breaks are the breaks, Frank,” he said to O’Neill.

“And crooks are crooks,” O’Neill said. “I’m getting a cop.” He started away from the table.

Jamison’s face went white. “Charlie,” he said, “we’ve got to stop him. A joke is a joke, but Jesus—”

“I’ll get him,” Parsons said, rising. He chuckled. “God, he’s a weird duck, isn’t he? I’ll bring him right back. You wait here.”

O’Neill had already reached the door. As he stepped outside, Parsons called, “Hey, Frank! Wait a minute!” and ran out after him.

Jamison sat at the table alone, still frightened, telling himself he would never again be party to a practical joke.

It wasn’t until a half hour later that he realized the joke was on him.

He told himself it couldn’t be.

Then he sat for another half hour.

Then he went to the nearest police station and told a detective named Arthur Brown the story.

Brown listened patiently and then took a description of the two professional coin-matchers who had conned Jamison out of $235.

P. T. Barnum rolled over in his grave, chuckling.

The Missing Persons Bureau is a part of the Detective Division, and so the two men Bert Kling talked to were detectives.

One was called Ambrose.

The other was called Bartholdi.

“Naturally,” Bartholdi said, “we got nothing to do here but concern ourselves with floaters.”

“Naturally,” Ambrose said.

“We only got reports on sixteen missing kids under the age of ten today, but we got nothing to do but worry about a stiff been in the water for six months.”

“Four months,” Kling corrected.

“Pardon me,” Bartholdi said.

“With dicks from the 87th,” Ambrose said, “you got to be careful. You slip up by a couple of months, they jump down your throat. They got very technical flatfoots at the 87th.”

“We try our hardest,” Kling said drily.

“Humanitarians all,” Bartholdi said. “They worry about floaters. They got concern for the human race.”

“Us,” Ambrose said, “all we got to worry about is the three-year-old kids who vanish from their front stoops. That’s all we got to worry about.”

“You’d think I was asking to spend the night with your sister,” Kling said. “All I want is a look at your files.”

“I’d rather you spent the night with my sister,” Bartholdi said. “You might be disappointed since she’s only eight years old, but I’d still rather.”

“It ain’t that we don’t believe in interdepartmental cooperation,” Ambrose said. “There ain’t nothing we like better than helping out fellow flatfoots. Ain’t that a fact, Romeo?”

Romeo Bartholdi nodded. “Tell him about our war record, Mike.”

Ambrose said, “It was us who went to the Pacific after World War II to help clear up all that unidentified dead problem.”

“If you cleaned up the whole Pacific Theater,” Kling said, “you should be able to help me with one floater.”

“The trouble with flatfoots,” Bartholdi said, “is they got no heads for clerical work. We’ve got a dandy filing system here, you see? If we let dicks from all over the city come in and foul it up, we’d never be able to identify anybody anymore.”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve got such a real nice filing system,” Kling said. “Do you plan on keeping it a secret from the rest of the department, or will you throw open the files during Open School Week?”

“Another thing I like about the bulls from the 87th,” Ambrose said, “is that they are all so comical. When one of them is around, you can hardly keep from wetting your pants.”

“With glee,” Bartholdi said.

“That’s what makes a good cop,” Ambrose expanded. “Humor, humaneness, and devotion to detail.”

“Plus, the patience of Job,” Kling said. “Do I get a peek at the goddamn files, or don’t I?”

“Temper, temper,” Bartholdi said.

“How far back do you want to go?” Ambrose asked.

“About six months.”

“I thought she was in the water for only four?”

“She may have been reported missing before then.”

“Clever, clever,” Bartholdi said. “God, this city would fall to smoldering ashes were it not for the 87th Precinct.”

“All right, screw you,” Kling said, turning. “I’ll tell the lieutenant your files aren’t open for our inspection. So long, fellers.”

“He’s running home to mama,” Bartholdi said, unfazed.

“Mama’s liable to be upset,” Kling said. “Mama doesn’t mind a good joke, but not on the city’s time.”

“All work and no play...” Bartholdi started and then cut himself short when he saw that Kling actually was leaving. “All right, sorehead,” he said, “come look at the files. Come drown in the files. We’ve got enough missing persons here to keep you going for a year.”

“Thanks a lot,” Kling said, and he followed the detectives down the corridor.

“We try to keep them cross-indexed,” Ambrose said. “This ain’t the IB, but we do our level best. We got ’em alphabetically, and we got ’em chronologically — according to when they were reported missing — and we got ’em broken down male and female.”

“The boys with the boys, and the girls with the girls,” Bartholdi said.

“There’s everything you need in each of the separate folders. Medical reports where we could get ’em, dental charts, even letters and documents in some of the folders.”

“Don’t mix the folders up,” Bartholdi said. “That would mean getting a beautiful blonde police stenographer in to straighten them out again.”

“And we don’t cotton to beautiful blondes around here,” Ambrose said.

“We kick ’em out in the street whenever they come knocking.”

“That’s because we’re both respectable married men.”

“Who resist all temptations,” Bartholdi concluded. “Here are the files.” He made a grandiloquent sweeping gesture with one arm, indicating the banks and banks of green filing cabinets that lined the walls of the room. “This is April, and you want to go back six months. That’d put you in November.” He made a vague gesture with one hand. “That’s over there someplace.” He winked at Ambrose. “Now, are we cooperating, or are we?”

“You’re the most cooperative,” Kling said.