Ed McBain: Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

“Now I’m ready for anything,” he said, grinning.

“What is there to be ready for? On a day like this, you already said there’s nothing but prostitution.”

“I’m ready for that, too,” Genero answered. “Come on, Max. Close up the shop, and we’ll go find two delicious broads. What do you say?”

“Stop giving an old man ideas. My wife should only find me with a delicious broad. A knife she’ll stick in my back. Get out, get out, go walk your beat. Go arrest the other drunkards and vagrants. Leave me in peace. I’m running here a bar and grill instead of a tailor shop. Every drunkard cop on the beat, he stops in for wine. The government should allow me to deduct the wine as part of my overhead. One day, in the wine bottle, I’m going to put poison instead of wine. Then maybe the fercockteh cops of the 87th will leave me alone, already. Go. Get lost. Go.”

“Ahhh, you know you love us, Max.”

“I love you like cockroaches.”

“Better than cockroaches.”

“That’s right. I love you like water rats.”

Genero pulled on his gloves. “Well, back to the bridge,” he said.

“What bridge?”

“The bridge of the ship. That’s a joke, Max. The rain, get it? Water. A ship. Get it?”

“Already the television world lost a great comic when you decided to be a cop,” Max said, shaking his head. “Back to the bridge.” He shook his head again. “Do me a favor, will you?”

“What’s that?” Genero asked, opening the door.

“From the bridge of this ship... ”

“Yeah?”

“Jump!”

Genero grinned and closed the door behind him. It was still pouring outside, but he felt a lot better now. The sweet wine fumed in his stomach, and he could feel a warm lassitude seeping through his limbs. He sloshed through the puddles in an almost carefree manner, squinting through the driving rain, whistling tunelessly.

The man — or perhaps the tall woman, it was difficult to tell — was standing at the bus stop. The tall woman — or perhaps the man, it was impossible to see clearly in the rain — was dressed entirely in black. Black raincoat, black slacks, black shoes, black umbrella, which effectively hid the head and hair. The bus pulled to the curb, spreading a huge canopy of water. The doors snapped open. The person — man or woman — boarded the bus and the rain-streaked doors closed again, hiding the black-shrouded figure from view. The bus pulled away from the curb, spreading another canopy of water that soaked Genero’s trouser legs.

“You stupid... ” he shouted, and he began brushing water from his trousers, and that was when he saw the bag resting on the sidewalk alongside the bus stop sign.

“Hey! Hey!” He yelled after the bus. “You forgot your bag!”

His words were drowned in the gunning roar of the bus’s engine and the steady drumming of the rain.

“Damnit,” he muttered, and he walked to the sign and picked up the bag. It was a small, blue overnight bag, obviously issued by an airline. In a white circle on the side of the bag, stenciled there in red letters, were the words: CIRCLE AIRLINES.

Beneath that, in white script lettering, was the slogan: We circle the globe.

Genero studied the bag. It was not very heavy. A small leather fob was attached to the carrying straps, and an identification tag showed behind a celluloid panel. But whoever owned the bag had neglected to fill in the NAME and ADDRESS spaces. The identification tag was blank.

Sourly, Genero unzipped the bag and reached into it.

He drew back his hand in terror and revulsion. An instant thought rushed across his mind — God, not again — and then he gripped the bus stop sign for support because he was suddenly dizzy.

In the detective squadroom of the 87th Precinct, the boys were swapping reminiscences about their patrolman days.

Now you may quarrel with the use of the word “boys” to describe a group of men who ranged in age from twenty-eight to forty-two, who shaved daily, who went to bed with various and assorted mature and immature women, who swore like pirates, and who dealt with some of the dirtiest humans since Neanderthal. The word “boys,” perhaps, connotes a simplicity, an innocence that would not be entirely accurate.

There was, however, a spirit of boyish innocence in the squadroom on that dreary, rainy March day. It was difficult to believe that these men who stood in a fraternal knot around Andy Parker’s desk, grinning, listening in attentiveness, were men who dealt daily with crime and criminals. The squadroom, in effect, could have been a high-school locker room. The chatter could have been that of a high-school football team on the day of the season’s last game. The men stood drinking coffee from cardboard containers, completely at ease in the grubby shopworn comfort of the squadroom. Andy Parker, like a belligerent fullback remembering a difficult time in the game against Central High, kept his team huddled about him, leaned back in his swivel chair, and shook his head dolefully.

“I had a pipperoo one time, believe me,” he said. “I stopped her coming off the River Highway. Right near Pier Seventeen, do you know the spot?”

The boys nodded.

“Well, she crashed the light at the bottom of the ramp, and then made a U-turn under the highway. I blew the whistle, and she jammed on the brakes, and I strolled over to the car and said, ‘Lady, you must be the Mayor’s daughter to be driving like that.’”

“Was she?” Steve Carella asked. Sitting on the edge of the desk, a lean muscular man with eyes that slanted peculiarly downward to present an Oriental appearance, he held his coffee container in big hands and studied Parker intently. He did not particularly care for the man or his methods of police investigation, but he had to admit he told a story with gusto.

“No, no. Mayor’s daughter, my eye. What she was — well, let me tell the story, will you?”

Parker scratched his heavy beard. He had shaved that morning, but five o’clock shadow came at an earlier hour for him, so that he always looked somewhat unkempt, a big shaggy man with dark hair, dark eyes, dark beard. In fact, were it not for the shield Parker carried pinned to his wallet, he could easily have passed for many of the thieves who found their way into the 87th. He was so much the Hollywood stereotype of the gangster that he’d often been stopped by overzealous patrolmen seeking suspicious characters. On those occasions, he immediately identified himself as a detective and then proceeded to bawl out the ambitious rookie, which pastime — though he never admitted it to himself — gave him a great deal of pleasure. In truth, it was possible that Andy Parker purposely roamed around in other precincts hoping to be stopped by an unsuspecting patrolman upon whom he could then pull his rank.

“She was sitting in the front seat with a two-piece costume on,” Parker said, “a two-piece costume and these long black net stockings. What the costume was, it was these little black panties covered with sequins, and this tiny little bra that tried to cover the biggest set of bubs I ever seen on any woman in my entire life I swear to God. I did a double take, and I leaned into the car and said, ‘You just passed a stop light, lady, and you made a U-turn over a double white line. And for all I know, we got a good case against you for indecent exposure. Now how about that?’”

“What did she say?” Cotton Hawes asked. He alone of the detectives surrounding Parker’s desk was not drinking coffee. Hawes was a tea drinker, a habit he’d picked up as a growing boy. His father had been a Protestant minister, and having members of the congregation in for tea had been a daily routine. The boy Hawes, for reasons best known to his father, had been included in the daily congregational tea-drinking visits. The tea, hefty, hot, and hearty, had not stunted his growth at all. The man Hawes stood six feet two inches in his stocking feet, a redheaded giant who weighed in at 190 pounds.