Ed McBain - Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

“Which apartment is it?” Meyer asked.

“Twenty-four. Second floor front.”

They climbed to the second floor. A cat in the hallway mewed and then eyed them suspiciously.

“She smells the law on us,” Meyer said. “She thinks we’re from the ASPCA.”

“She doesn’t know we’re really street cleaners,” Carella said.

Meyer stooped down to pet the cat as Carella knocked on the door. “Come on, kitty,” he said. “Come on, little kitty.”

“Who is it?” a woman’s voice shouted. The voice sounded startled.

“Mrs. Livingston?” Carella said to the door.

“Yes? Who is it?”

“Police,” Carella said. “Would you open the door, please?”

“Po—”

And then there was silence.

The silence was a familiar one. It was the silence of sudden discovery and hurried pantomime. Whatever was going on behind that tenement door, Mrs. Livingston was not in the apartment alone. The silence persisted. Meyer’s hand left the cat’s head and went up to the holster clipped to the right side of his belt. He looked at Carella curiously. Carella’s.38 was already in his hand.

“Mrs. Livingston?” Carella called.

There was no answer from within the apartment.

“Mrs. Livingston?” he called again, and Meyer braced himself against the opposite wall, waiting. “Okay, kick it in,” Carella said.

Meyer brought back his right leg, shoved himself off the wall with his left shoulder, and smashed his foot against the lock in a flat-footed kick that sent the door splintering inward. He rushed into the room behind the opening door, gun in hand.

“Hold it!” he yelled, and a thin man in the process of stepping out onto the fire escape, one leg over the sill, the other still in the room, hesitated for a moment, undecided.

“You’ll get wet out there, mister,” Meyer said.

The man hesitated a moment longer, and then came back into the room. Meyer glanced at his feet. He was wearing no socks. He glanced sheepishly at the woman who stood opposite him near the bed. The woman was wearing a slip. There was nothing under it. She was a big blowzy dame of about forty-five with hennaed hair and a drunkard’s faded eyes.

“Mrs. Livingston?” Carella asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “What the hell do you mean busting in here?”

“What was your friend’s hurry?” Carella asked.

“I’m in no hurry,” the thin man answered.

“No? You always leave a room by the window?”

“I wanted to see if it was still raining.”

“It’s still raining. Get over here.”

“What did I do?” the man asked, but he moved quickly to where the two detectives were standing. Methodically, Meyer frisked him, his hands pausing when he reached the man’s belt. He pulled a revolver from the man’s waist and handed it to Carella.

“You got a permit for this?” Carella asked.

“Yeah,” the man said.

“You’d better have. What’s your name, mister?”

“Cronin,” he said. “Leonard Cronin.”

“Why were you in such a hurry to get out of here, Mr. Cronin?”

“You don’t have to answer nothing, Lennie,” Mrs. Livingston said.

“You a lawyer, Mrs. Livingston?” Meyer said.

“No, but—”

“Then stop giving advice. We asked you a question, Mr. Cronin.”

“Don’t tell him nothing, Lennie.”

“Look, Lennie,” Meyer said patiently, “we got all the time in the world, either here or up at the squad, so you just decide what you’re going to say, and then say it. In the meantime, go put on your socks, and you better put on a robe or something, Mrs. Livingston, before we get the idea a little hanky-panky was going on in this room. Okay?”

“I don’t need no robe,” Mrs. Livingston said. “What I got, you seen before.”

“Yeah, but put on the robe anyway. We wouldn’t want you to catch cold.”

“Don’t worry about me catching cold, you son-of-a-bitch,” Mrs. Livingston said.

“Nice talk,” Meyer answered, shaking his head. Cronin, sitting on the edge of the bed, was pulling on his socks. He was wearing black trousers. A black raincoat was draped over a wooden chair in the corner of the room. A black umbrella dripped water onto the floor near the night-table.

“You were forgetting your raincoat and umbrella, weren’t you, Lennie?” Carella said.

Cronin looked up from lacing his shoes. “I guess so.”

“You’d both better come along with us,” Carella said. “Put on some clothes, Mrs. Livingston.”

Mrs. Livingston seized her left breast with her left hand. She aimed it like a pistol at Carella, squeezed it briefly and angrily, and shouted, “In your eye, cop!”

“Okay, then, come along the way you are. We can add indecent exposure to the prostitution charge the minute we hit the street.”

“Prosti—! What the hell are you talking about? Boy, you got a nerve!”

“Yeah, I know,” Carella said. “Let’s go, let’s go.”

“Why’d you have to bust in here anyway?” Mrs. Livingston said. “What do you want?”

“We come to ask you some questions about your missing son, that’s all,” Carella said.

“My son? Is that what this is all about? I hope the bastard is dead. Is that why you broke down the door, for Christ’s sake?”

“If you hope he’s dead, why’d you bother to report him missing?”

“So I could get relief checks. He was my sole means of support. The minute he took off, I applied for relief. And I had to report him missing to make it legit. That’s why. You think I care whether he’s dead or alive? Some chance!”

“You’re a nice lady, Mrs. Livingston,” Meyer said.

“I am a nice lady,” she answered. “Is there something wrong about a matinee with the man you love?”

“Not if your husband doesn’t disapprove.”

“My husband is dead,” she said. “And in hell.”

“You both behave as if there was a little more than that going on, Mrs. Livingston,” Carella said. “Get dressed. Meyer, take a look through the apartment.”

“You got a search warrant?” the little man asked. “You got no right to go through this place without a warrant.”

“You’re absolutely right, Lennie,” Carella said. “We’ll come back with one.”

“I know my rights,” Cronin said.

“Sure.”

“I know my rights.”

“How about it, lady? Dressed or naked, you’re coming over to the station house. Now which will it be?”

“In your eye!” Lady Livingston said.

The patrolmen downstairs all managed to drop up to the Interrogation Room on one pretense or another to take a look at the fat redheaded slob who sat answering questions in her slip. Andy Parker said to Miscolo in the Clerical Office, “We take a mug shot of her like that, and we’ll be able to peddle the photos for five bucks apiece.”

“This precinct got glamour, that’s what it’s got,” Miscolo answered, and he went back to his typing.

Parker and Hawes went downtown for the search warrant. Upstairs, Meyer and Carella and Lieutenant Byrnes interrogated the two suspects. Byrnes, because he was an older man and presumably less susceptible to the mammalian display, interrogated Martha Livingston in the Interrogation Room off the corridor. Meyer and Carella talked to Leonard Cronin in a corner of the squadroom, far from Lennie’s overexposed paramour.

“Now, how about it, Lennie?” Meyer said. “You really got a permit for this rod, or are you just snowing us? Come on, you can talk to us.”

“Yeah, I got a permit,” Cronin said. “Would I kid you guys?”

“I don’t think you’d try to kid us, Lennie,” Meyer said gently, “and we won’t try to kid you, either. I can’t tell you very much about this, but it can be very serious, take my word for it.”