Ed McBain - Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

It hadn’t been easy for Hernandez to become a detective in the city’s police. To begin with, he’d found a certain amount of prejudice within the department itself, brotherhood edicts notwithstanding. And, coupled with this was a rather peculiar attitude on the part of some of the citizens of the precinct. They felt, he soon discovered, that since he was “one of them” he was expected to look the other way whenever they became involved in police trouble. Well, unfortunately, Frankie Hernandez was incapable of looking the other way. He had sworn the oath, and he was now wearing the uniform, and he had a job to perform.

And besides, there was The Cause.

Frankie Hernandez had to prove to the neighborhood, the people of the neighborhood, the police department, the city, and maybe even the world that Puerto Ricans were people. Colleagues the likes of Andy Parker sometimes made The Cause difficult. Before Andy Parker, there had been patrolmen colleagues who’d made The Cause just as difficult. Hernandez imagined that if he ever became chief of detectives or even police commissioner, there would be Andy Parkers surrounding those high offices, too, ever ready to remind him that The Cause was something to be fought constantly, day and night.

So for Frankie Hernandez, life was always real. Sometimes, in fact, it got too goddamn real.

“No, I never got that feeling, Cotton,” he said.

“I guess it’s the rain,” Hawes answered, and he yawned.

The S.S. Farren had been named after a famous and honorable White Plains gentleman called Jack Farren. But whereas the flesh-and-blood Farren was a kind, amiable, sympathetic, lovable coot who always carried a clean handkerchief, the namesake looked like a ship that was mean, rotten, rusty, dirty, and snot-nosed.

The captain of the ship looked the same way.

He was a hulk of a man with a three-days’ beard stubble on his chin. He picked his teeth with a matchbook cover all the while Carella talked to him, sucking air interminably in an attempt to loosen breakfast from his molars. They sat in the captain’s cabin, a coffin of a compartment, the bulkheads of which dripped sweat and rust. The captain sucked at his teeth and prodded with his soggy matchbook cover. The rain slanted outside the single porthole. The compartment stank of living, of food, of human waste.

“What can you tell me about Karl Androvich?” Carella asked.

“What do you want to know?” the captain said. His name was Kissovsky. He sounded like a bear. He moved with all the subtle grace of a Panzer division.

“Has he been sailing with you long?”

Kissovsky shrugged. “Two, three years. He in trouble? What did he get himself into since he jumped ship?”

“Nothing that we know of. Is he a good sailor?”

“Good as most. Sailors ain’t worth a damn today. When I was a young man, sailors was sailors.” He sucked air between his teeth.

“Ships were made of wood,” Carella said, “and men were made of iron.”

“What? Oh, yeah.” Kissovsky tried a smile that somehow formed as a leer. “I ain’t that old, buddy,” he said. “But we had sailors when I was a kid, not beatniks looking for banana boats so they can practice that... what do you call it... Zen? And then come back to write about it. We had men! Men!”

“Then Androvich wasn’t a good sailor?”

“Good as most until he jumped ship,” Kissovsky said. “The minute he jumped ship, he became a bad sailor. I had to make the run down with a man short in the crew. I had the crew stretched tight as it was. One man short didn’t help the situation any, I can tell you. A ship is like a little city, buddy. There’s guys that sweep the streets, and guys that run the trains, and guys that turn on the lights at night, and guys that run the restaurants, and that’s what makes the city go, you see. Okay. You lose the guy who turns on the lights, so nobody can see. You lose the guy who runs the restaurant, so nobody eats. Either that, or you got to find somebody else to do the job, and that means taking him away from another job, so no matter how you slice it, it screws up the china closet. Androvich screwed up the china closet real fine. Besides, he was a lousy sailor, anyway.”

“How so?”

“Out for kicks,” Kissovsky said, tossing one hand upward in a salute to God. “Live, live, burn, burn, bright like a Roman candle, bullshit! Every port we hit, Androvich went ashore and come back drunk as a fish. And dames? All over the lot! It’s a wonder this guy didn’t come down with the Oriental Crud or something, the way he was knocking around. Kicks! That’s all he was looking for. Kicks!”

“A girl in every port, huh?” Carella said.

“Sure, and drunk as a pig. I used to tell him you got a sweet little wife waiting for you home, you want to bring her back a present from one of these exotic tomatoes, is that what you want to do? He used to laugh at me. Ha, ha, ha. Big joke. Life was a big joke. So he jumps ship, and he screws up the chocolate pudding. That’s a sailor, huh?”

“Did he have a girl in this city, too, Captain Kissovsky?”

“Lay off the captain crap, huh?” Kissovsky said. “Call me Artie, okay, and I’ll call you George or whatever the hell your name is, and that way we cut through the fog, okay?”

“It’s Steve.”

“Okay. Steve. That’s a good name. I got a brother named Steve. He’s strong as an ox. He can lift a Mack truck with his bare hands, that kid.”

“Artie, did Androvich have a girl in this city?”

Kissovsky sucked air through his teeth, maneuvered the matchbook folder around the back of his mouth, and thought. He spit a sliver of food onto the deck, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know.”

“Who would know?”

“Maybe the other guys in the crew, but I doubt it. Anything happens on this tub, I know about it. I can tell you one thing. He didn’t spend his nights sitting around holding hands with little Lulu Belle or whatever the hell her name is.”

“Meg? His wife?”

“Yeah, Meg. The one he’s got tattooed on his arm there. The one he picked up in Atlanta. Beats me how she ever got him to come up with a ring.” Kissovsky shrugged. “Anyway, she did get him to marry her, but that don’t mean she also got him to sit home tatting doilies. No, sir. This kid was out to live! No doilies for him. Doilies are for the Sands Spit commuters, not for the Karl Androviches. You know what he’d do?”

“What?” Carella asked.

“We’d pull into port, you know. I mean here, this city. So he’d wait like two weeks, living it up all over town, shooting his roll, before he’d call home to say we were in. And maybe this was like about two days before we were going to pull out again. Buddy, this kid was giving that girl the business in both ears. She seems like a nice kid, too. I feel a little sorry for her.” He shrugged and spit onto the deck again.

“Where’d he go?” Carella asked. “When he wasn’t home? Where’d he hang out?”

“Wherever there are dames,” Kissovsky said.

“There are dames all over the city.”

“Then that’s where he hung out. All over the city. I’ll bet you a five-dollar bill he’s with some dame right now. He’ll drop in on little Scarlett O’Hara or whatever the hell her name is, the minute he runs out of money.”

“He only had thirty dollars with him when he vanished,” Carella said.

“Thirty dollars, my eye! Who told you that? There was a big crap game on the way up from Pensacola. Androvich was one of the winners. Took away something like seven hundred bucks. That ain’t hay, Steve-oh. Add to that all of January’s pay, you know we were holding it until we hit port, and that adds up to quite a little bundle. And we were only in port here two days. We docked on the twelfth, and we were shoving off on the fourteenth, Valentine’s Day. So a guy can’t spend more than a grand in two days, can he?” Kissovsky paused thoughtfully. “The way I figure it, he started back for the ship, picked up some floozie, and has been living it high on the hog with her for the past month or so. When the loot runs out, Androvich’ll be home.”