Ed McBain - Kiss

"They're related," he said. "First Man Up, Stevie, you know the rules.”

"First Man Up is when a previous homicide investigation is in progress. That doesn't apply here.”

"You were investigating an attempted murder, Stevie. That's the same thing.”

"No, it's not.”

"Besides, you can close this one out in a minute.

It's a suicide. The man hung himself from the ceiling.”

"I thought you said there was a head injury.”

"That's what the M.E. said. I'm saying he hung himself.”

"Either way, it has to be investigated as a homicide. You know that, Ollie. That means the whole nine yards.”

"So be my guest," Ollie said, and took another bite.

"No," Carella said. "It's your case.”

"You think so?”

"I know so.”

"Well, maybe so, who knows?" Ollie said.

"But I wonder what my lieutenant'll say about that. 'Cause I'll tell you, Stevie, the Eight-Three is up to its ass in homicides right now, and what we don't need is a fuckin 'nother one that's related to a case the Eight-Seven is already working. You know what I think the Loot'll say? I think he'll say this is your case, even if he has to talk to the Chief of Detectives about it, who by the way he plays poker with every Tuesday night.”

Ollie bit into another hamburger.

Carella looked at him.

"Yep," Ollie said.

I was beginning to wonder if I still had a husband, Teddy signed.

"I'm sorry I'm late, honey,”

Carella said, signing and speaking and trying to take off his overcoat at the same time, his fingers and his words getting lost in the sleeves, "something of an emergency.”

Teddy wasn't buying emergencies tonight.

Teddy had eaten alone with the children, her husband nowhere in sight, her TDD calls to the squadroom-four of them-going unanswered.

On her last call, she'd typed, WHERE - THE HELL R U? GA. The GA stood for GO AHEAD, but no one was going ahead, no one was answering her calls. She stood fiery-eyed and beautiful, arms folded across her chest, waiting for him to go ahead now. Carella tried to kiss her on the cheek, but she turned away.

"I really am sorry," he said. "Are the kids in bed already?”

Yes, the kids were already in bed, the kids had in fact been asleep for the past hour or so, this was now ten-thirty on a Monday night, and tomorrow was a school day. He knew he should go down the hall to look in on them, but he didn't dare turn his back on Teddy for fear she would clobber him with a hammer or something, in which case he would have to arrest her for assault. He had never seen her quite this angry. Well, yes, maybe two or three times, but in those instances he hadn't been the object of her anger. He wondered what she was really angry about. He'd come home late before, he was a cop, cops were always coming home late.

And this time, there really had been- "We almost had a riot," he said, and signed the word to her, spelling it out letter by letter, Rather-I-O-That, giving it emphasis so that she'd know he hadn't been hanging around downtown, frivolously putting away a few brews with the boys. She still wasn't buying it. Her blazing eyes were telling him that anything short of World War III was unjustifiable cause for him being late tonight. But why? What had happened to bring this on?

"I mean it," he said, "the whole damn station house was out there in the street trying to contain it," not daring to mention that he hadn't had dinner yet, and was starving to death.

What had happened ...

And he told this to her as his stomach rumbled and roared, fingers flying in the sign language she had taught him, mouth exaggerating each word in support of his hands ...

... was I went back to the precinct after I left the courthouse, and then Ollie called 'cause he had a stiff hanging in the basement, and he claimed it was rightfully mine, it's a long story, honey, but anyway I didn't get finished up there in Diamondback till eight-thirty, and then I had to go back to the squadroom to talk to the lieutenant about it, and what happened was some guy decided not - to take the parkway uptown because the traffic was too heavy, big fat white guy driving a Caddy, decided to come uptown on the precinct streets instead. So he was stopped at a traffic light when a black guy with a pail of water, a greasy sponge, and a squeegee came over to the car, ready to wash his windshield for him, and the white guy waved him away ...

Slow down, Teddy signed.

But at least she was listening.

... but the black guy kept on coming. So the white guy rolled down his window-this is how he reported it to us later-and told the black guy his windshield was clean, he didn't need it washed, and the black guy slapped the sponge onto it, anyway, and wiped a big smear of grease all over it, and started walking away. The light had changed by then, but the white guy got out of the car and yelled, Hey, you, wiseguy, or something like that, and when the black guy kept on walking he went after him and yanked him by the back of his collar and almost pulled him off his feet. He dragged him back to the car and was trying to force him to clean off all that shmutz he'd left on the windshield, when all at once there was a crowd in the streets, and the next thing you knew the white guy was running for his life.

David-Car happened to be cruising by, and the two cops in it-one white, one black-saw what appeared to be ten thousand black people chasing a fat white man through the streets in what looked like a bona fide lynching. So they got out of the car and took the white man in custody and started making the usual cop noises, okay, let's break it up, nothing here anymore, let's all go home, move it on now, let's go, but the usual noises weren't washing tonight. The crowd wanted blood, and the cops were the only thing preventing the satisfaction of this desire. So the crowd started surging forward, rocking the police car, at which point the shotgun cop, who happened to be the black one, got on the pipe and called in a 10-13. This was at a quarter to nine, while I was still talking to the lieutenant ...

You must be hungry, she signed. Let me put your dinner in the microwave.

... about the guy hanging from the basement ceiling, remember I told you about Fat Ollie's homicide? Anyway, I had to get out in the street with everybody else because we had this riot about to erupt over one fat white guy who'd chased one skinny black guy away from his car and then got annoyed when the guy messed up his windshield. Cleaning windshields is a form of extortion, anyway, you know, in that the driver's trapped inside his car and anybody approaching it-this one happened to be a skinny little guy, but some of them are this tall and this wide-appears threatening. But try to explain that to a bunch of people who are festering over all the bad things the black people in this city have to live with, just try to explain it.

"This is delicious, honey," he said, gobbling down his food and at the same time signing with his free hand.

Anyway, we finally got everybody to go home before one of those professional-agitator black ministers arrived on the scene, in which case the damn thing would have gone on all night or all week or all month. The fat white guy drove off steaming because his windshield was still dirty and he was now late for a dinner party in the bargain.

The skinny black guy pranced for the television cameras while all his pals made faces in the background, all of them famous for five minutes. By the time we all got back to the station house, it was past ten o'clock- "I came straight home," he said. "Why are you so angry?”

Because I thought something had happened to you, she signed, and then rolled her eyes as if this were something any idiot should understand. He was taking her in his arms when the telephone rang. He went to it at once, and picked up the receiver.