Ed McBain: Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

Friday morning.

Rain.

When he was a kid, he used to walk six blocks to the library in the rain, wearing a mackinaw with the collar turned up, and feeling very much like Abraham Lincoln. Once there, he would sit in the warmth of the wood-paneled reading room, feeling strangely and richly rewarded while he read and the rain whispered against the streets outside.

And sometimes, at the beach, it would begin raining suddenly, the clouds sweeping in over the ocean like black horsemen in a clanging cavalry charge, the lightning scraping the sky like angry scimitar slashes. The girls would grab for sweaters and beach bags, and someone would reach for the portable record player and the stack of 45-rpms, and the boys would hold the blanket overhead like a canopy while they all ran to the safety of the boardwalk restaurant. They would stand there and look out at the rain-swept beach, the twisted, lipsticked straws in deserted Coca-Cola bottles, and there was comfort to the gloom somehow.

In Korea, Bert Kling learned about a different kind of rain. He learned about a rain that was cruel and driving and bitter, a rain that turned the earth to a sticky clinging mud that halted machines and men. He learned what it was to be constantly wet and cold. And ever since Korea, he had not liked the rain.

He did not like it on that late Friday morning, either.

He had started the day by paying a visit to the Missing Persons Bureau and renewing his acquaintance there with Detectives Ambrose and Bartholdi.

“Well, well, look who is here,” Bartholdi had said.

“The Sun God of the 87th,” Ambrose added.

“The Blond Wonder himself.”

“In person,” Kling said dryly.

“What can we do for you today, Detective Kling?”

“Who did you lose this week, Detective Kling?”

“We’re looking for a white male between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four,” Kling said.

“Did you hear that, Romeo?” Ambrose said to Bartholdi.

“I heard it, Mike,” Bartholdi answered.

“That is an awful lot to go on. Now how many white males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four do you suppose we have records on?”

“At a conservative estimate,” Bartholdi answered, “I would say approximately six thousand seven hundred and twenty-three.”

“Not counting the ones we ain’t had time to file yet.”

“With bulls from all over the city popping in here at every hour of the day, we don’t get much time to do filing, Detective Kling.”

“That’s a shame,” Kling said dryly. He wished he could shake the feeling he constantly experienced in the presence of older cops who’d been on the force longer than he. He knew he was a young detective and a new detective, but he resented the automatic assumption that because of his age and inexperience he must, ipso facto, be an inept detective. He did not consider himself inept. In fact, he thought of himself as being a pretty good cop, Romeo and Mike be damned.

“Can I look through the files?” he asked.

“But of course!” Bartholdi said enthusiastically. “That’s why they’re here! So that every dirty-fingered cop in the city can pore over them. Ain’t that right, Mike?”

“Why, certainly. How else would we keep busy? If we didn’t have dog-eared record cards to retype, we might have to go outside on a lousy day like this. We might have to actually use a gun now and then.”

“We prefer leaving the gunplay to you younger, more agile fellows, Kling.”

“To the heroes,” Ambrose said.

“Yeah,” Kling answered, and he searched for a more devastating reply, but none came to mind.

“Be careful with our cards,” Bartholdi cautioned. “Did you wash your hands this morning?”

“I washed them,” Kling said.

“Good. Obey the sign.” He pointed to the large placard resting atop the green filing cabinets.

SHUFFLE THEM, JUGGLE THEM, MAUL THEM, CARESS THEM — BUT LEAVE THEM THE WAY YOU FOUND THEM!

“Got it?” Ambrose asked.

“I’ve been here before,” Kling said. “You ought to change your sign. It gets kind of dull the hundredth time around.”

“It ain’t there for entertainment,” Bartholdi said. “It’s there for information.”

“Take care of the cards,” Ambrose said. “If you get bored, look up a dame named Barbara Cesare, also known as Bubbles Caesar. She was reported missing in February. That’s over there near the window. She was a stripper in Kansas City, and she came here to work some of our own clubs. There are some very fine art photos in her folder.”

“He is just a boy, Mike,” Bartholdi said. “You shouldn’t call his attention to matters like that.”

“Forgive me, Romeo,” Ambrose said. “You’re right. Forget I mentioned Bubbles Caesar, Kling. Forget all about them lovely pictures in the February file over there near the window. You hear?”

“I’ll forget all about her,” Kling said.

“We got typing to do,” Bartholdi said, opening the door. “Have fun.”

“That’s Caesar,” Ambrose said as he went out. “C-A-E-S-A-R.”

“Bubbles,” Bartholdi said, and he closed the door behind him.

Kling, of course, did not have to look through 6,723 missing persons cards. If anything, the haphazard estimate given by Bartholdi was somewhat exaggerated. Actually, some 2,500 persons were reported missing annually in the city for which Kling worked. If this was broken down on a monthly basis, perhaps a little more than 200 people per month found their way into the files of the Missing Persons Bureau. The peak months for disappearances are May and September, but Kling, fortunately, was not particularly concerned with those months. He restricted himself to scouring the files covering January, February, and the early part of March, and so he didn’t have very many folders to wade through.

The job, nonetheless, did get somewhat boring, and he did — since he was studying the February file, anyway — take a peek into the folder of the missing exotic dancer, Bubbles Caesar. He had to admit, after studying the several photos of her in the folder, that whoever had named this performer had a decided knack for the mot juste. Looking at the pictures of the stripper made him think of Claire Townsend, and thinking of Claire made him wish it was tonight instead of this morning.

He lighted another cigarette, ruefully put away Miss Caesar’s folder, and got back to work again.

By 11:00 that morning, he had turned up only two possible nominations for the Missing Persons Award. He went down the hall and had both sheets photostated. Bartholdi, who did the job for him, seemed to be in a more serious frame of mind now.

“These what you were looking for, kid?” he asked.

“Well, they’re only possibilities. We’ll see how they turn out.”

“What’s the case, anyway?” Bartholdi asked.

“One of our patrolmen found a severed hand in a bag.”

“Psssssss,” Bartholdi said and he pulled a face.

“Yeah. Right in the street. Near a bus stop.”

“Psssssss,” Bartholdi said again.

“Yeah.”

“A man or a woman? The hand, I mean.”

“A man,” Kling said.

“What kind of a bag? A shopping bag?”

“No, no,” Kling said. “An airlines bag. You know these bags they give out? These little blue ones? This one came from an outfit called Circle Airlines.”

“A high-flying killer, huh?” Bartholdi said. “Well, here are the stats, kid. Good luck with them.”

“Thanks,” Kling said. He took the proffered manila envelope and went down the corridor to a phone booth. He dialed Frederick 7-8024 and asked to talk to Steve Carella.

“Some weather, huh?” Carella said.

“The end,” Kling answered. “Listen, I dug up two possibles from the files here. Thought I’d hit the first before lunch. You want to come with me?”