Ed McBain - He Who Hesitates

"What is it you think I've done?" Roger asked suddenly.

"Done?" Parker said. He picked up his shield and put it back into his coat pocket, turning on the stool and looking at Roger as though seeing him for the first time. "Who said you did anything?"

"I mean, all these questions."

"Your friend here has been in jail, how many times, Ralphie? Three, four? For possession once, I remember that, and weren't you in for burglary, and—"

"Twice is all," Ralph said.

"Twice is enough," Parker said. "That's why I'm asking you questions, Roger." Parker smiled. "Why? Did you do something?"

"No."

"You're sure now?"

"I'm sure."

"You didn't kill anybody with a hatchet, did you?" Parker said, and laughed. "We had a guy got killed with a hatchet only last month."

"An ax," the counterman said.

"What's the difference?" Parker asked.

"There's a difference," the counterman said, and shrugged.

"To who? To the guy who got hit with it? What does he care? He's already singing with the choir up there." He laughed again, rose, walked to where he had hung his coat, and put it on. He turned to the counterman. "What do I owe you, Chip?" he asked.

"Forget it," the counterman said. "Mark it on the ice."

"Uh-uh," Parker said, shaking his head. "You think I'm a coffee-and-cruller cop? You want to buy me, you got to come higher. What do I owe you?"

The counterman shrugged. "Twenty-five," he said.

"How much higher?" Ralph said. "I know guys who bought you for a fin, Parker."

"Ha ha, very funny," Parker said. He put a quarter on the counter and then turned to face Ralph. "Why don't you try to buy me sometime, pal? Sometime when I catch you red-handed with a pile of shit in your pockets, you try to buy your way out of it, okay?"

"You can't fix narcotics, Parker, you know that."

"Yeah, worse luck for you, pal." He waved at the counterman. "So long, Chip," he said. "I'll see you."

"Take it easy, Andy."

At the door, Parker turned. He looked at Roger without a trace of a smile and said, "If I see you hanging around too long with our friend here, I may have to ask you some more questions, Roger."

"All right," Roger said.

"I just thought you might like to know."

"Thanks for telling me."

"Not at all," Parker said, and smiled. "Part of the service, all part of the service." He opened the door, went out into the street, and closed the door noisily behind him.

"The son of a bitch," Ralph whispered.

4

It was just the idea of going in there that he didn't like. He stood across the street from the police station, looking at the cold gray front of the building and thinking he wouldn't mind telling them all about it if only it didn't mean going in there. He supposed he could have told that detective in the luncheonette, but he hadn't liked the fellow and he had the feeling that telling this could be easy or hard depending on whether he liked the fellow he was telling it to. It seemed to him that Ralph, who was a convicted burglar and a narcotics user (according to the detective, anyway), was a much nicer person than the detective had been. If he was sure he could find somebody like Ralph inside there, he'd have no qualms at all about just crossing the street and marching right in and saying he was Roger Broome, and then telling them about it.

He supposed he would have to begin it with the girl, and end it with the girl, that would be difficult, too. Telling them about how he had met the girl. He couldn't see himself sitting opposite a stranger at a desk someplace inside there and telling them how he had met the girl, Molly was her name. Suppose they gave him a detective like that fellow Parker in the luncheonette, how could he possibly tell him about the girl, or about how they'd met or what they'd done. The more he thought about it the harder it all seemed. Walking across the street there and climbing those steps seemed very hard, and telling a detective about the girl seemed even harder, although the real thing, the important thing didn't seem too hard at all, if only he could get past the other parts that were so very difficult.

He would have to tell them first, he supposed, that he hadn't been looking for a girl at all last night, although he didn't know why that would be important to them. Still, it seemed important and he thought he should explain that first. I wasn't looking for a girl, he could say. I had just finished my supper, it was around seven o'clock at night, and I had gone back to the room and was just sitting there watching the street and thinking how lucky I'd been to have sold the salad bowls so high and to have made a new contact here in the city, that store in the Quarter.

Yes, he supposed he could tell them. He supposed he could walk in there and tell them all about it.

Last night, he had thought he should call his mother back home in Carey and tell her the good news, but then it seemed to him the happiness he was feeling was a very private sort of thing that shouldn't be shared with anybody, even if it was someone as close as his own mother, that was the trouble with Carey. That small house in Carey, and his mother's bedroom right next door, and Buddy sleeping in the same room with him, all sort of cramped together, there was hardly any time to be alone, to feel something special of your own, something private. And the room in Mrs. Dougherty's house, it was pretty much the same as being home, having to go down the hall for the toilet, and always meeting somebody or other in the hall, the room itself so small and full of noises from the street and noises from all the pipes. What Carey missed, and what the room here in the city missed, was a secret place where a person could be happy by himself, or cry by himself, or just be by himself.

He left the room feeling pretty good, this must have been about seven-thirty, maybe eight o'clock, but not looking for any company, instead really trying to get out of that small room and into the streets, into the larger city, so that the happiness he was feeling could have a little space to expand in, a little space to grow. He wasn't looking for a girl. He just came out of the room and down the steps and into the street — it was very cold last night, colder than today — and he pulled up his coat collar and stuck his hands in his pockets and just started walking south, not knowing where he was going, but just breathing the air into his lungs, cold and sharp and even hurting a little bit, it was that cold.

He must have gone six or seven blocks, maybe it was more, when he really began to feel the cold. It hit his feet all at once, and he felt his toes were going to fall right off if he didn't get inside someplace quick. He was not a drinking man, he didn't usually drink more than a beer or two, and he didn't much like bars, but he saw a bar up ahead and he knew if he didn't get inside someplace real quick he was going to have frostbite, well, he didn't know if he was really going to have frostbite, but it sure felt like it.

He couldn't remember the name of the bar, he supposed they would want to know its name and exactly what street it was on.

He must have come six or seven blocks,^ was all, walking straight south on Twelfth Street, from the rooming house. But he didn't know what avenue that would have been. He thought the bar had a green neon sign in the window. Anyway, he went in, and took a table near the radiator because his feet were so cold. That was how he happened to meet Molly. He wasn't really No, he thought.

No, it doesn't sound right, that's the difficult part about telling it.

He could visualize it all in his head, just the way it had happened, but he knew that going into that police station and telling it to a detective it would come out all wrong, he just knew it. Sitting face to face with somebody he didn't know and telling him about how the girl had come to the table after he'd been sitting there a couple of minutes, no, he knew it wouldn't come out right, even though he could see it plain as day inside his head, just the way it had happened, her coming to the table and stopping there and looking down at him with a very peculiar annoyed look on her face, her hands on her hips.