Ed McBain - McBain's Ladies - The Women of the 87th Precinct

There were times, of course, like now when he wished the ship could do a little more than fifteen knots. It was eight-twenty, and she’d promised to be there at eight on the dot, and whereas he never grew weary of her mental image he much preferred her in person.

Now! For the first time! Live! On our stage! In person! Imported from the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris…

There must be something wrong with me, Carella thought. I’m… never really here. I’m always…

He spotted her instantly. By this time, he was not surprised by what the sight of her could do to him. He had come to accept the instant quickening of his heart and the automatic smile on his face. She had not yet seen him, and he watched her from his secret vantage point, feeling somewhat sneaky, but what the hell!

She wore a black skirt and a red sweater, and over that a black cardigan with red piping. The cardigan hung open, ending just below her hips. She had a feminine walk which was completely unconscious, completely uncalculated. She walked rapidly because she was late, and he heard the steady clatter of the black pumps on the pavement and he watched with delighted amusement the men who turned for a second look at his wife.

When she saw him, she broke into a run. He did not know what it was between them that made the shortest separation seem like a ten-year stretch at Alcatraz. Whatever it was, they had it. She came into his aims, and he kissed her soundly, and he wouldn’t have given a damn if 20th Century-Fox had been filming the entire sequence for a film titled The Mating Season Jungle.

“You’re late,” he said. “Don’t apologize. You look lovely. We have to make a stop, do you mind?”

Her eyes questioned his face.

“A tattoo parlor downtown. Guy thinks he may remember Mary Louise Proschek. We’re lucky. This is business, so I was able to check out a sedan. Means we don’t have to take the train home tonight. Some provider, your husband, huh?”

Teddy grinned and squeezed his arm.

“The car’s around the corner. You look beautiful. You smell nice, too. What’ve you got on?”

Teddy dry-washed her hands.

“Just soap and water? You’re amazing! Look how nice you can make soap smell. Honey, this won’t take more than a few minutes. I’ve got some pictures of the Proschek girl in the car, and maybe we can get a make on them from this guy. After that, we’ll eat and whatever you like. I can use a drink, can’t you?”

Teddy nodded.

“Why do people always say they can ‘use’ a drink? What, when you get right down to it, can they use it for?” He studied her and added, “I’m too talkative tonight. I guess I’m excited. We haven’t had a night out in a long while. And you look beautiful. Don’t you get tired of my saving that?”

Teddy shook her head, and there was a curious tenderness in the movement. He had grown used to her eyes, and perhaps he missed what they were saying to him, over and over again, repeatedly. Teddy Carella didn’t need a tongue.

They walked to the car, and he opened the door for her, went around to the other side, and then started the motor. The police radio erupted into the closed sedan.

“Car 21, Car 21, Signal 1. Silvermine at North 40th …”

“I’ll be conscientious and leave it on,” Carella said to Teddy. “Some pretty redhead may be trying to reach me.”

Teddy’s brows lowered menacingly.

“In connection with a case, of course,” he explained.

Of course, she nodded mockingly.

“God, I love you,” he said, his hand moving to her thigh. He squeezed her quickly, an almost unconscious gesture, and then he put his hand back on the wheel.

They drove steadily through the maze of city traffic. At one stoplight, a traffic cop yelled at Carella because he anticipated the changing of the light from red to green. The cop’s rain gear was slick with water. Carella felt suddenly like a heel.

The windshield wipers snicked at the steady drizzle. The tires whispered against the asphalt of the city. The city was locked in against the rain. People stood in doorways, leaned out of windows. There was a gray quietness to the city, as if the rain had suspended all activity, had caused the game of life to be called off. There was a rain smell to the city, too, all the smells of the day captured in the steady canopy of water and washed clean by it. There was, too, and strange for the city, a curious sense of peace.

“I love Paris when it drizzles,” Carella said suddenly, and he did not have to explain the meaning of his words because she knew at once what he meant, she knew that he was not talking about Paris or Wichita, that he was talking about this city, his city, and that he had been horn in it and into it and that it, in turn, had been born into him.

The expensive apartment houses fell away behind them, as did the line of high-fashion stores, and the advertising agency towers, and the publishing shrines, and the gaudy brilliance of the amusement area, and the stilled emptiness of the garment district at night, and the tangled intricacy of the narrow side streets far downtown, the pushcarts lining the streets, filled with fruits and vegetables, the store windows behind them, the Italian salami, and the provolone, and the pepperoni hanging in bright red strings.

The tattoo parlor nestled in a side street on the fringe of Chinatown, straddled by a bar and a laundromat. The combination of the three was somewhat absurd, ranging from the exotica of tattooing into the netherworld of intoxication and from there to the plebeian task of laundering clothes. The neighborhood had seen its days of glory perhaps, but they were all behind it. Far behind it. Like an old man with cancer, the neighborhood patiently and painfully awaited the end and the end was the inevitable city housing project. And in the meantime, nobody bothered to change the soiled bedclothes. Why bother when something was going to die anyway?

The man who ran the tattoo parlor was Chinese. The name on the plate glass window was Charlie Chen.

“Everybody call me Charlie Chan,” he explained. “Big detective, Charlie Chan. But me Chen, Chen. You know Charlie Chan, detective?”

“Yes,” Carella said, smiling.

“Big detective,” Chen said. “Got stupid sons.” Chen laughed. “Me got stupid sons, too, but me no detective.” He was a round fat man, and everything he owned shook when he laughed. He had a small mustache on his upper lip, and he had thick fingers, and there was an oval jade ring on the forefinger of his left hand. “You detective, huh?” he asked.

“Yes,” Carella said.

“This lady police lady?” Chen asked.

“No. This lady’s my wife.”

“Oh. Very good. Very good,” Chen said. “Very pretty. She wants tattoo, maybe? Do nice butterfly for her on shoulder. Very good for strapless gowns. Very pretty. Very decorative.”

Teddy shook her head, smiling.

“Very pretty lady. You very lucky detective,” Chen said. He turned to Teddy. “Nice yellow butterfly maybe? Very pretty?” He opened his eyes seductively. “Everybody say very pretty.”

Teddy shook her head again.

“Maybe you like red better? Red your color, maybe? Nice red butterfly?”

Teddy could not keep herself from smiling. She kept shaking her head and smiling, feeling very much a part of her husband’s work, happy that he’d had to make the call, and happy that he’d taken her with him. It was curious, she supposed, but she did not know him as a cop. His function as a cop was something almost completely alien to her, even though he talked about his work. She knew that he dealt with crime, and the perpetrators of crime, and she often wondered what kind of man he was when he was on the job. Heartless? She could not imagine that in her man. Cruel? No. Hard, tough? Perhaps.