Ed McBain - Shotgun

“You rotten son of a bitch,” Cindy said to Kling.

“It’s all right, Dave,” Kling said from the bottom of the steps. “I can handle it.”

“Oh, you certainly can handle it, you bastard,” Cindy said.

“Are you all right?” Anne Gilroy asked.

“I’m fine, Anne,” Kling answered.

“Oh, Anne is it?” Cindy shouted, and swung the dispatch case at her. Murchison stepped into the line of fire, deflected the case with the back of his arm, and then yanked Cindy away from the girl and shouted, “Now goddamn you, Cindy, do you want to wind up in the cooler?”

By this time a crowd of patrolmen had gathered in the muster room, embarrassing Kling, who liked to maintain a sort of detective-superiority over the rank and file. The patrolmen were enormously entertained by the spectacle of Sergeant Murchison trying to keep apart two very dishy blondes, one of whom happened to be Kling’s girl, while Kling stood by looking abashed.

“All right, break it up,” Kling said to them, also sounding like a cop. The other cops thought this was amusing, but none of them laughed. Neither did any of them break it up. Instead, they crowded into the doorway, ogled the girl in the red-and-blue mini, ogled Cindy too (even though she was more sedately dressed in a blue shift), and then glanced first at Kling and then to Murchison to see who would make the next move.

Neither of them did.

Instead, Cindy turned on her heel, tilted her nose up, and marched down the steps and past Kling.

“Cindy, wait, let me explain!” Kling cried, obviously thinking he was in an old Doris Day movie, and immediately ran up the street after her.

“I want to press charges,” Anne Gilroy said to Murchison.

“Oh, go home, Miss,” Murchison said, and then went up the steps and shoved past the patrolmen in the doorway and went back to the switchboard, where the most he’d have to contend with was something like a lady bleeding to death on the sidewalk.

Carella wondered why everybody always seemed to swim up out of unconsciousness. He himself was suddenly and completely conscious, no swimming up, no dizzying ascending spiral, none of that crap, he merely opened his eyes, and knew exactly where he was, and got to his feet, and felt the very large bump at the back of his head, felt it first as a radiating nucleus of pain on his skull, then actually touched it with his fingertips, causing it to hurt even more. There was no blood, thank God for that, his attacker had spared him the indignity of a cracked skull. Belatedly, he looked behind the door just to make sure another little surprise wasn’t being planned, and then drew his revolver and went through each room of the apartment because it’s always good to lock the barn door after the horse has gone. Satisfied that he was alone, he went back into the bedroom.

The top dresser drawer was closed.

It had been open when he’d come into the apartment, so it was reasonable to assume he’d surprised an intruder in the act of ransacking it. He went to it now and began doing a little ransacking himself. The drawer was divided into clearly masculine and feminine halves. On Rose Leyden’s side of the drawer there were nylon stockings, panties, garter belts, bras, and handkerchiefs, as well as a small circular tin box once containing throat lozenges but now holding stray earrings, bobby pins, and buttons. On Andrew Leyden’s side there were socks (blue solids, black solids, and gray solids), handkerchiefs, undershorts, a lone athletic supporter, and, at the very rear of the drawer, a mint-condition Kennedy half dollar. Carella closed the drawer and went through the rest of the dresser. Rose Leyden’s side contained folded sweaters, blouses, slips, scarves, and nightgowns. Andrew Leyden’s side contained ironed dress shirts and sports shirts, and folded sweaters. Carella closed the last drawer and walked to the closet.

The same system seemed to apply here as did in the dresser. The single clothes bar was again divided, with Rose Leyden’s dresses, slacks, and suits occupying perhaps two thirds of the space, and Andrew Leyden’s suits, trousers, and sports jackets filling the remaining third. His ties were on a tie bar nailed to the inside of the door. A shoe rack ran the length of the closet. Rose’s pumps and slippers rested on it beneath her hanging clothes; Andrew’s were on the rack below his clothes. Everything very neat, everything His and Hers.

So what had the intruder wanted in the top dresser drawer?

And had the intruder been Walter Damascus?

Carella’s head began to hurt a little more.

Kling used his own key on the door, and then twisted the knob, and shoved the door inward, but Cindy had taken the precaution of fastening the safety chain, and the door abruptly jarred to a stop, open some two-and-a-half inches, but refusing to budge further.

“Cindy,” he shouted, “take off this chain! I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you!” she shouted back.

“Take off this chain, or I’ll break the door off the hinges!”

“Go break your bimbo’s door, why don’t you?”

“She’s not a bimbo!”

“Don’t defend her, you louse!” Cindy shouted.

“Cindy, I’m warning you, I’ll kick this door in!”

“You do, and I’ll call the police!”

“I am the police.”

“Go police your bimbo, louse.”

“Okay, honey, I warned you.”

“You’d better have a search warrant,” she shouted, “or I’ll sue you and the city and the—”

Kling kicked in the door efficiently and effortlessly. Cindy stood facing him with her fists clenched.

“Don’t come in here,” she said. “You’re not wanted here. You’re not wanted here ever again. Go home. Go away. Go to hell.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you ever again as long as I live, that’s final.”

“What are you so sore about?”

“I don’t like liars and cheats and rotten miserable liars. Now get out of here, Bert, I mean it.”

“Who’s a liar?”

“You are.”

“How am I—”

“You said you loved me.”

“I do love you.”

“Ha!”

“That girl—”

“That slut —”

“She’s not a slut.”

“That’s right, she’s a sweet Irish virgin. Go hold her hand a little, why don’t you? Get out of here, Bert, before I hit you again.”

“Listen, there’s nothing—”

“That’s right, there’s nothing, there’s absolutely nothing between us ever again, get out of here.”

“Lower your voice, you’ll have the whole damn building in here.”

“All snuggly-cozy, arm-in-arm, batting her eyes—”

“She had information—”

“Oh, I’ll just bet she has information.”

“... about the Leyden case. She came to the squadroom—”

“I’ll just bet she has information,” Cindy repeated, a bit hysterically, Kling thought. “I’ll bet she has information even Cleopatra never dreamt of. Why don’t you get out of here and leave me alone, okay? Just get out of here, okay? Go get all that hot information, okay?”

“Cindy—”

“I thought we were in love—”

“We are.”

“I thought we—”

“We are, dammit!”

“I thought we were going to get married one day and have kids and live in the country—”

“Cindy—”

“So a cheap little floozy flashes a smile and—”

“Cindy, she’s a nice girl who—”

“Don’t you dare!” Cindy shouted. “If you’re here to defend that little tramp—”

“I’m not here to defend her!”

“Then why are you here?”