Evan Hunter: Romance

KLING MADE HIS CALL FROM AN OUTSIDE PHONE BECAUSE HE didn’t want to be turned down in a place as public as the squadroom. He didn’t want to risk possible derision from the men with whom he worked day and night, the men to whom he often entrusted his life. Nor did he want to make the call from anyplace at all in the station house. There were pay phones on every floor, but a police station was like a small town, and gossip traveled fast. He did not want anyone to overhear him fumbling for words in the event of a rejection. He felt that rejection was a very definite possibility.

So he stood in the pouring rain a block from the station house, at a blue plastic shell with a pay phone inside it, dialing the number he’d got from the police directory operator, and which he’d scribbled on a scrap of paper that was now getting soggy in the rain. He waited while the phone rang, once, twice, three times, four, five, and he thought, She isn’t home, six, sev…

“Hello?”

Her voice startled him.

“Hello, uh, Sharon?” he said. “Chief Cooke?”

“Who’s this, please?”

Her voice impatient and sharp. Rain pelting down everywhere around him. Hang up, he thought.

“This is Bert Kling?” he said.

“Who?”

The sharpness still in her voice. But edged with puzzlement now.

“Detective Bert Kling,” he said. “We… uh… met at the hospital.”

“The hospital?”

“Earlier this week. The hostage cop shooting. Georgia Mowbry.”

“Yes?”

Trying to remember who he was. Unforgettable encounter, he guessed. Lasting impression.

“I was with Detective Burke,” he said, ready to give up. “The redheaded hostage cop. She was with Georgia when…”

“Oh, yes, I remember now. How are you?”

“Fine,” he said, and then very quickly, “I’m calling to tell you how sorry I am you lost her.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“I know I should have called earlier…”

“No, no, it’s appreciated.”

“But we were working a difficult case…”

“I quite understand.”

Georgia Mowbry had died on Wednesday night. This was now Sunday. She suddenly wondered what this was all about. She’d been reading the papers when her phone rang. Reading all about yesterday’s riot in the park. Blacks and whites rioting. Black and whites shooting each other, killing each other.

“So… uh… I know how difficult something like that must be,” he said. “And I… uh… just thought I’d offer my… uh… sympathy.”

“Thank you,” she said.

There was a silence.

Then:

“Uh… Sharon…”

“By the way, it’s Sharyn,” she said.

“Isn’t that what I’m saying?”

“You’re saying Sharon.”

“Right,” he said.

“But it’s Sharyn.“

“I know,” he said, thoroughly confused now.

“With a ‘y,’ ” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Right. Thank you. I’m sorry. Sharyn, right.”

“What’s that I hear?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“That sound.”

“Sound? Oh. It must be the rain.”

“The rain? Where are you?”

“I’m calling from outside.”

“From a phone booth?”

“No, not really, it’s just one of these little shell things. What you’re hearing is the rain hitting the plastic.”

“You’re standing in the rain?”

“Well, sort of.”

“Isn’t there a phone in the squadroom?”

“Well, yes. But…”

She waited.

“I… uh… didn’t want anyone to hear me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I… I didn’t know how you’d feel about… something like this.”

“Something like what?”

“My… asking you to have dinner with me.”

Silence.

“Sharyn?”

“Yes?”

“Your being a chief and all,” he said. “A deputy chief.”

She blinked.

“I thought it might make a difference. That I’m just a detective/third.”

“I see.”

No mention of his blond hair or her black skin.

Silence.

“Does it?” he asked.

She had never dated a white man in her life.

“Does what?” she said.

“Does it make a difference? Your rank?”

“No.”

But what about the other? she wondered. What about whites and blacks killing each other in public places? What about that, Detective Kling?

“Rainy day like today,” he said, “I thought it’d be nice to have dinner and go to a movie.”

With a white man, she thought.

Tell my mother I’m going on a date with a white man. My mother who scrubbed white men’s offices on her knees.

“I’m off at four,” he said. “I can go home, shower and shave, pick you up at six.”

You hear this, Mom? A white man wants to pick me up at six. Take me out to dinner and a movie.

“Unless you have other plans,” he said.

“Are you really standing in the rain?” she asked.

“Well, yes,” he said. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have other plans?”

“No. But…”

Bring the subject up, she thought. Face it head-on. Ask him if he knows I’m black. Tell him I’ve never done anything like this before. Tell him my mother’ll jump off the roof. Tell him I don’t need this kind of complication in my life, tell him…

“Well… uh… do you think you might like to?” he asked. “Go to a movie and have dinner?”

“Why do you want to do this?” she asked.

He hesitated a moment. She visualized him standing there in the rain, pondering the question.

“Well,” he said, “I think we might enjoy each other’s company, is all.”

She could just see him shrugging, standing there in the rain. Calling from outside the station house because he didn’t want anyone to hear him being turned down by rank. Never mind black, never mind white, this was detective/ third and deputy chief. As simple as that. She almost smiled.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but do you think you could give me some kind of answer? Cause it’s sort of wet out here.”

“Six o’clock is fine,” she said.

“Good,” he said.

“Call me when you’re out of the rain, I’ll give you my address.”

“Good,” he said again. “Good. That’s good. Thank you, Sharyn. I’ll call you when I get back to the squadroom. What kind of food do you like? I know a great Italian…”

“Get out of the rain,” she said, and quickly put the phone back on the cradle.

Her heart was pounding.

God, she thought, what am I starting here?

The redheaded woman was telling him that she’d been receiving threatening phone calls. He listened intently. Six phone calls in the past week, she told him. The same man each time, speaking in a low voice, almost a whisper, telling her he was going to kill her. At a table against one wall of the room, a short man in shirtsleeves was fingerprinting a bearded man in a black T-shirt.

“When did these calls start?”

“Last week,” the woman said. “Monday morning was the first one.”

“Okay, let’s take down some more information,” the man said, and rolled an NYPD Detective Division complaint form into his typewriter. He was wearing a.38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. Like the man taking fingerprints at the table against the wall, he too was in shirtsleeves. “May I have your address, please?”