Ed McBain - He Who Hesitates

"I could take you there," Roger said.

"Would you?"

"Sure."

"Just for a minute. Just to see what it's like."

"Sure."

"I'd appreciate that," Molly said. Her eyes were still lowered. She was blushing furiously.

"I'll get your coat," Roger said, and stood up.

As he helped her into it, she glanced up over her shoulder and said, "How did you kill it? The rat, I mean."

"I squeezed it in my hands," Roger said.

The headwaiter was leading the detective and the woman to a table as Roger checked his coat. The woman was wearing a pale blue dress, a jumper he supposed you called it, over a long-sleeved white blouse. She smiled up at the headwaiter as he pulled out the chair for her, and then sat, and immediately put both hands across the table to cover the detective's hands as he sat opposite her. "Thank you," Roger said to the hatcheck girl, and put the ticket she handed him into his jacket pocket. The headwaiter was coming toward the front of the restaurant again. He looked French. Roger hoped this wasn't a French restaurant.

"Bon jour, monsieur," the headwaiter said, and Roger thought Oh boy. "How many will you be, sir?"

"I'm alone," Roger said.

"Out, monsieur, this way, please."

Roger followed the headwaiter into the restaurant. For a moment, he thought he was being led to the other end of the room, but the headwaiter was simply making a wide detour around a serving tray near one of the tables. He stopped at a table some five feet away from the detective and the woman.

"Voild, monsieur," the headwaiter said, and held out a chair.

"How about the table over there?" Roger said. "Near the wall."

"Monsieur?" the headwaiter said, turning, his eyebrows raised.

"That table," Roger said, and pointed to the table immediately adjacent to the detective's.

"Out, monsieur, certainement," the headwaiter said, and shoved the chair back under the table with an air of annoyed efficiency. He led Roger to the table against the wall, turned it out at an angle so that Roger could seat himself on the cushioned bench behind it, and then moved it back to its original position. "Would monsieur care for a cocktail?"

"No," Roger said. "Thank you."

"Would you like to see a menu now, sir?"

"Yes," Roger said. "Yes, I would."

The headwaiter snapped his fingers. "La carte pour monsieur," he said to one of the table waiters and then made a brief bow and disappeared. The table waiter brought a menu to Roger and he thanked him and opened it.

"Well, what do you think?" the detective said.

The woman did not answer. Roger, his head buried in the menu, wondered why the woman did not answer.

"I suppose so," the detective said.

Again, the woman did not answer. Roger kept looking at the menu, not wanting to seem as if he were eavesdropping.

"Well, sure, you always do," the detective said.

The funny thing, Roger thought, without looking up from the menu, was that the detective was doing all the talking. But more than that, he seemed to be holding a conversation, saying things that sounded as if they were answers to something the woman had said each time, only the woman hadn't said a single word.

"Here are the drinks," the detective said, and Roger put down his menu and looked up as a waiter in a red jacket brought what looked like two whiskey-sodas to the table. The detective picked up his glass and held it in the air and the woman clinked her glass against his, but neither of the two said a word. The woman took a short sip of her drink and then put it down. Glancing briefly at their table, Roger saw that she was wearing a wedding band and an engagement ring. The woman, then, was the detective's wife.

The detective took a long swallow of his drink, and then put the glass down. "Good," he said.

His wife nodded and said nothing. Roger turned away and picked up the menu again.

"Did Fanny finally get there?" the detective asked.

Again, there was a long pause. Roger frowned behind his menu, waiting.

"Did she give you any reason?" the detective said.

Another pause.

"What kind of excuse is that?" the detective said.

Roger put down his menu and turned.

The woman's elbows were on the table, her hands were poised in front of and a trifle below her face. Her fingers were long and slender. The nails were manicured and polished a bright red. As she moved her hands in a fluid, swift series of gestures, the nails danced like tiny flames.

For a moment, Roger didn't know what she was doing. Was she kidding, was that it?

And then he saw her face behind the hands.

Her face was more lovely than he realized, the black hair combed sleekly back from the woman's forehead, the black eyebrows arched high over deep brown eyes, no, one eyebrow was dropping now, dipping low over her left eye in a sinister frown, the woman's mouth was curling into a sneer, her nostrils were dilating, her hands moved differently now, they moved in the exaggerated slick oiliness of a silent movie villain, the woman's fingers touched her upper lip, twirled an imaginary mustache, the detective laughed, the mask of villainy dropped from her face, her eyes sparkled with humor, the white teeth flashed behind her lips, the smile broke on her face like the sound of bells, and all the while her long slender fingers moved, the detective watching her hands, and then shifting his attention to her face again, the entire face in constant motion, her mouth and her eyes augmenting the music of her hands, the sound of her hands, her face open and honest and naive, the face of a little girl, mugging, exaggerating, acting, explaining. Why, she's talking with her face and her hands! Roger thought, and suddenly realized the woman was a deaf-mute.

He turned away because he didn't want her to think he was staring at her handicap.

But the detective was laughing. His wife had apparently finished her story about Fanny, whoever that was, and now the detective was laughing fit to bust, sputtering and choking and damn near slapping the table top, so that Roger himself was forced to smile and even the waiter, who had padded up the table to take Roger's order, smiled with him.

"I'd just like some eggs," Roger said.

"Oui, monsieur, how would you like your eggs?"

"Gee, I don't know," Roger said.

"Would monsieur care for an omelette, perhaps?"

"Oh, yes," Roger said. "Yes, that's good. What kind of omelettes do you have?"

"Cheese, mushroom, onion, jell—"

"Mushroom," Roger said. "That sounds good. A mushroom omelette. And some coffee. With it, please."

"Oui, monsieur," the waiter said. "Any salad?"

"No. No, thanks."

"Oui, monsieur," the waiter said, and moved away from the table.

". . . began talking to Meyer at first and Meyer listened for a few minutes and then asked the priest if he would mind telling this to me instead. I was pretty surprised when he came over to my desk, because we don't usually get priests up there, honey — not that it isn't a very religious place, and holy and all that."

He grinned at his wife, and she returned the grin. God she's beautiful, Roger thought.

"Anyway, I introduced myself, and it turns out the pries is Italian, too, so we went through the Are you Italian, too? routine for a couple of minutes, and we traced my ancestry back to the old country, it turned out the priest wasn't born anywhere near my parents, but anyway he gits down at the desk and he's got a slight dilemma, so I say, What's the dilemma, Father, meanwhile thinking my own dilemma is I haven't been inside a church since I was a kid, suppose he asks me to say five Hail Marys?

"The priest tells me that he had a woman in the confessional this morning, and the woman confessed to the usual number of minor sins and then, unexpectedly, said she had bought a gun which was in her purse at the moment, right there in the confession box, and she was going to take it to the shop where her husband worked and wait for him to come out on his lunch hour when she would shoot him dead. She was telling this to the priest because she expected to shoot herself immediately afterwards, and she wanted the priest's absolution in advance.