Ed McBain - He Who Hesitates

"What are you talking about?" she said. "I told my boss I had a headache. I can't just walk back in now and tell him—"

"We could meet later," Roger said. "For supper."

"Are you—" She stopped the words and let out her breath in exasperation, and then stared at him solemnly and angrily for several moments, and then said, "What the hell is it?"

"Nothing."

"Two minutes ago, you were kissing me as if—"

"It's just that I promised somebody—"

"Well, what scared you off, that's all I want to know. Don't you like the way I kiss?"

"I like the way you kiss."

"Well, then what? I mean, if you're afraid of being seen with a colored girl, I mean taking a colored girl up to your room—"

"It's not that."

"I mean, we can always go back to my house, where we'll be surrounded by colored people and also by rats running out of the walls, and leaky pipes, and exposed wiring, and—"

"There are rats where I'm staying, too."

"Of course, my mother might not like the idea of my bringing home a white man. She might actually begin singing the same old tune she's been singing ever since I was a darling little pickaninny, 'Honeychile stay away from de white man, he is only out to get in yo sweet little pants and rob you of yo maiden.'"

"Look, Amelia—"

"The only thing my mother doesn't know, made of iron though she is, is that her darling little Amelia was robbed of her 'maiden' on a rooftop the summer she was twelve years old, and it wasn't a white man who did it, or even a white boy. It was six members of a street gang called the Persian Lords, the biggest blackest niggers you ever saw in your life." Amelia paused. Bitterly, she said, "My duena was away on vacation that summer, I guess. At the beach, don't you know? Sand Harbor, where all the society ladies spend their time, naturally. What the hell is it, Roger?"

"Nothing."

"You're not a faggot, are you?"

"A what?"

"A fairy, a pansy."

"No."

"Then why—"

"I'll meet you later, that's all," Roger said. "It's just that my friend — the one I told you about?"

"Yes?"

"I have to see him, that's all."

"He's a very convenient friend."

"I have to see him," Roger said.

Amelia sighed.

"I have to."

Amelia sighed again.

"Come on, let's go back," he said.

"I'll give you my home number," she said. "I won't go back to the drugstore, not after I told him I had a headache."

"All right."

"Will you call me?"

"Yes. Yes, I think so."

"Why do you only think so?"

"Because I ... Amelia, please don't . . . don't push me, huh? Just don't push me."

"I'm sorry."

"I'll try to call you. We'll have supper together."

"Sure."

They barely spoke on the subway ride back. They sat side by side, and occasionally Amelia would turn to look at him, but he was busy thinking about Molly and about what he had to do. It was foolish to even imagine any other way.

He had to go to the police, that was all there was to it.

He left her off on the corner of her block. It was almost twelve noon. The wind swept through the narrow street, and she clutched her collar to her throat and ducked her head.

"Call me," she said.

"I'll try."

"I'll be waiting." She paused. In a whisper, she said, "I like the way you kiss, white man," and then she turned and went up the street and into one of the tenements.

He watched her until she was out of sight, and then began walking toward Grover Avenue and the police station.

6

It was beginning to snow.

The flakes were large and wet and they melted the moment they touched the asphalt streets, melted on the tops of parked automobiles, and on the lids of garbage cans standing alongside shining wet tenement stoops. In the park, on the stone wall bordering the edge of the park, and on the rolling ground and jutting boulders of the park itself, the snow was beginning to stick, covering only lightly and in patches, but sticking nonetheless. He walked alongside the stone wall with its pale-white, almost transparent covering of snow, and looked across at the police station and then took a deep breath and sucked in his belly and crossed the street.

He went up the steps. There were seven of them.

There were two doors. He tried the knob of the one on the left, but the door did not open. He reached for the knob directly to the right of the first one. The door opened on a very large room with grilled windows running its entire length on the left-hand side and with a large raised wooden counter that looked something like a judge's bench in front of the windows. A hand-lettered sign on top of the counter, bold black on white, read ALL VISITORS MUST STOP AT DESK. There were two uniformed policemen behind the muster desk. One of them was wearing sergeant's stripes. The other was sitting behind a switchboard and was wearing earphones. A railing had been constructed some four feet in front of the desk, with lead-pipe stanchions bolted to the floor, and with a horizontal piece of pipe forming the crossbar. An electric clock was on the wall opposite the desk. The time was twelve-fifteen. Two wooden benches flanked a hissing radiator on that same wall, and a small white sign, smudged, and lettered in black with the words DETECTIVE DIVISION, pointed to an iron-runged staircase that led to the upper story. The walls were painted a pale green and looked dirty.

Two men were standing in front of the muster desk, both of them handcuffed to the pipe railing. A patrolman stood to the side of the two men as the desk sergeant asked them questions. Roger walked to one of the benches opposite the muster desk, and sat.

"When did you pick them up?" the sergeant asked the patrolman.

"As they were coming out, Sarge."

"Where was that?"

"1120 Ainsley."

"What's that? Near Twelfth? Thirteenth?"

"Thirteenth."

"What's the name of the place?"

"Abigail Frocks," the patrolman said.

"She does?" the sergeant asked, and all the men — including the two in handcuffs — burst out laughing. Roger didn't see what was so funny.

"It's a dress loft up there on Ainsley," the patrolman said. "I think they use it for storing stuff. Anyway, there's hardly ever anybody up there, except when they're making deliveries or pickups."

"Just a loft, huh?"

"Yeah."

"They got a store, too?"

"Yeah."

"In this precinct?"

"Yeah, it's just a little place on Culver."

"Abigail Frocks, huh?" the sergeant said, and all the men giggled again. "Okay, boys, what were you doing coming out of Abigail Frocks?" the sergeant said, and again everyone giggled.

"We was after the pigeons," one of the men said, suppressing his laughter and becoming serious all at once. He seemed to be about twenty-five years old, badly in need of a haircut, and wearing a gray suede jacket with gray ribbing at the cuffs and at the waist.

"What's your name, fella?" the sergeant asked.

"Mancuso. Edward Mancuso."

"All right, now what's this about the pigeons, Eddie?"

"We don't have to tell him nothing," the second man said. He was about the same age as Mancuso, with the same shaggy haircut, and wearing a dark-brown overcoat. His trousers seemed too long for him. "They got us in here for no reason at all. We can sue them for false arrest, in fact."

"What's your name?" the sergeant asked.

"Frank Di Paolo, you know what false arrest is?"

"Yeah, we know what false arrest is. What were you doing coming down the steps from that dress loft?"

"I want a lawyer," Di Paolo said.

"For what? We haven't even booked you yet."

"You got nothing to book us on"

"I found jimmy marks on the loft door," the patrolman said drily.

"That must've been from some other time it got knocked over," Di Paolo said. "You find any burglar's tools on us?"