Ed McBain: Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

Don’t be disgusting, Steve, Teddy cautioned with her hands.

“Where the hell is she? That’s what I’d like to know,” Carella said. “And where’s Chirapadano? And whose damn hands are those? And where’s the rest of the body? And what’s the motive in this thing? There had to be a motive, doesn’t there? People just don’t go around killing other people, do they?”

You’re the detective. You tell me.

“There’s always a motive,” Carella said, “that’s for sure. Always. Dammit, if we only knew more. Did Bubbles and the drummer go off together? Did she dump the sailor because she wanted the drummer? And if so, did she get tired of him and knock him off? Then why cut off his hands, and where’s the rest of the body? And if they aren’t his hands, then whose are they? Or are Bubbles and the drummer even connected with the hands? Maybe we’re off on a wild goose chase altogether. Boy, I wish I was a shoemaker.”

You do not wish you were a shoemaker, Teddy told him.

“Don’t tell me what I wish,” Carella said. “Boy, you’re the most argumentive female I’ve ever met in my life. Come here and kiss me before we start a real fight. You’ve been looking for one ever since I got home.”

And Teddy, smiling, went into his arms.

The very next day, Carella got the fight he was spoiling for.

Oddly, the fight was with another cop.

This was rather strange because Carella was a fairly sensible man who realized how much his colleagues could contribute to his job. He had certainly avoided any trouble on the squad prior to this, so it could only be assumed that the Hands Case — as the men had come to call it — was really getting him down.

The fight started very early in the morning, and it was one of those fights that seem to come about full-blown, with nothing leading up to them, like a summer storm that suddenly blackens the streets with rain. Carella was putting a call in to Taffy Smith, the other girl who’d shared the apartment with Bubbles Caesar. He mused that this damned case was beginning to resemble the cases of television’s foremost private eye, with voluptuous cuties popping out of the woodwork wherever a man turned. He could not say he objected to the female pulchritude. It was certainly a lot more pleasant than investigating a case at an old ladies’ home. At the same time, all these broads seemed to be leading nowhere, and it was this knowledge that rankled in him, and which probably led to the fight.

Hernandez was sitting at the desk alongside Carella’s, typing a report. Sunshine sifted through the grilled windows and threw a shadowed lacework on the squadron floor. The door to Lieutenant Byrnes’s office was open. Someone had turned on the standing electric fan, not because it was really hot but only because the sunshine — after so much rain — created an illusion of heat.

“Miss Smith?” Carella said into the phone.

“Yes. Who’s this, please?”

“Detective Carella of the 87th Detective Squad.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Taffy Smith said.

“Miss Smith, we’d like to talk to you about your missing roommate, Bubbles Caesar. Do you suppose we could stop by sometime today?”

“Oh. Well, gee, I don’t know. I’m supposed to go to rehearsal.”

“What time is your rehearsal, Miss Smith?”

“Eleven o’clock.”

“And when will you be through?”

“Gee, that’s awfully hard to say. Sometimes they last all day long. Although maybe this’ll be a short one. We got an awful lot done yesterday.”

“Can you give me an approximate time?”

“I’d say about three o’clock. But I can’t be sure. Look, let’s say three, and you can call here before you leave your office, okay? Then if I’m delayed or anything, my service can give you the message. Okay? Would that be okay?”

“That’d be fine.”

“Unless you want me to leave the key. Then you could go in and make yourself a cup of coffee. Would you rather do that?”

“No, that’s all right.”

“Okay, then, I’ll see you at three, okay?”

“Fine,” Carella said.

“But be sure to call first, okay? And if I can’t make it, I’ll leave a message. Okay?”

“Thank you, Miss Smith,” Carella said, and he hung up.

Andy Parker came through the slatted rail divider and threw his hat at his desk. “Man, what a day,” he said. “Supposed to hit seventy today. Can you imagine that? In March? I guess all that rain drove winter clear out of the city.”

“I guess so,” Carella said. He listed the appointment with Taffy on his pad and made a note to call her at 2:30 before leaving the squadroom.

“This is the kind of weather you got back home, hey, Chico?” Parker said to Hernandez.

Frankie Hernandez, who’d been typing, did not hear Parker. He stopped the machine, looked up, and said, “Huh? You talking to me, Andy?”

“Yeah. I said this is the kind of weather you got back home, ain’t it?”

“Back home?” Hernandez said. “You mean Puerto Rico?”

“Sure.”

“I was born here,” Hernandez said.

“Sure, I know,” Parker said. “Every Puerto Rican you meet in the streets, he was born here. To hear them tell it, none of them ever came from the island. You’d never know there was a place called Puerto Rico, to hear them tell it.”

“That’s not true, Andy,” Hernandez said gently. “Most Puerto Ricans are very proud to have come from the island.”

“But not you, huh? You deny it.”

“I don’t come from the island,” Hernandez said.

“No, that’s right. You were born here, right?”

“That’s right,” Hernandez said, and he began typing again.

Hernandez was not angry, and Parker didn’t seem to be angry, and Carella hadn’t even been paying any attention to the conversation. He was making out a tentative schedule of outside calls that he hoped he and Hawes could get to that day. He didn’t even look up when Parker began speaking again.

“So that makes you an American, right, Chico?” Parker said.

This time, Hernandez heard him over the noise of the typewriter. This time, he looked up quickly and said, “You talking to me?” But whereas the words were exactly the words he’d used the first time Parker had spoken, Hernandez delivered them differently this time, delivered them with a tightness, an intonation of unmistakable annoyance. His heart had begun to pound furiously. He knew that Parker was calling upon him to defend The Cause once more, and he did not particularly feel like defending anything on a beautiful morning like this one, but the gauntlet had been dropped, and there it lay, and so Hernandez hurled back his words.

“You talking to me?”

“Yes, I am talking to you, Chico,” Parker said. “It’s amazing how you damn people never hear anything when you don’t want to hear—”

“Knock it off, Andy,” Carella said suddenly.

Parker turned toward Carella’s desk. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he said.

“Knock it off, that’s all. You’re disturbing my squadroom.”

“When the hell did this become your squadroom?”

“I’m catching today, and it looks like your name isn’t even listed on the duty chart. So why don’t you go outside and find some trouble in the streets, if trouble is what you want?”

“When did you become the champion of the people?”

“Right this minute,” Carella said, and he shoved back his chair and stood up to face Parker.

“Yeah?” Parker said.

“Yeah,” Carella answered.

“Well, you can just blow it out your—”

And Carella hit him.

He did not know he was going to throw the punch until after he had thrown it, until after it had collided with Parker’s jaw and sent him staggering backward against the railing. He knew then that he shouldn’t have hit Parker, but at the same time he told himself he didn’t feel like sitting around listening to Hernandez take a lot of garbage on a morning like this, and yet he knew he shouldn’t have thrown the punch.