Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

“Where’s Elizabeth?” he said.

“I don’t have to answer that.” she said.

“Yes, you do. She’s my daughter. Where is she? I’ve been calling the apartment, there’s no answer there.”

“Talk to my lawyer,” Kathy said flatly.

“I’m talking to you. Where’s my daughter?”

She did not answer him.

“Kathy, what have you done with her?” he said.

“She’s in Jersey, all right?” she said, sighing.

“Where? With your parents?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell is she doing there?”

“I’m working again. You know that. I can’t find baby-sitters who’ll put up with the different shifts I have to...”

“Why didn’t you discuss this with me?”

“Why? Is somebody on the squad moonlighting as a sitter?”

“I have a right to know what plans you make for my daughter.”

“Our daughter.” Kathy said. “And I’m not sure you do have that right.”

They were approaching Fourteenth Street now, the subway entrance with its orange globes on the corner, the Chemical Bank behind it. The bus stop was on Fourteenth itself. She would catch the M-14 there, and it would take her crosstown to First Avenue — if she was heading home. He did not know if she was heading home. He reached for her arm.

“Kathy,” he said, “can’t we just...?”

She pulled away at once, as though burned by his touch. They stood facing each other.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She did not answer him.

“Where are you going now?” he asked.

“Where do you think? Home.”

“Let me come with you.”

“No.”

“Kathy... what’s happening? Can you please tell me what’s...”

“We’re getting a divorce,” she said. “I thought you knew.”

“I mean... Jesus, do we have to snarl at each other like animals?” People were coming up out of the subway now, a train must have just pulled in. They stood looking at each other as a crowd of strangers streamed past them into the night. The wind was fierce. Their eyes were watering. She kept searching his face.

At last she sighed and said, “I’m sorry, Bry. This is as difficult for me as it is for you.”

“No, I don’t think it is,” he said.

“Believe me.”

“Then call it off.”

“No.”

“Let’s pretend it’s eight years ago, Kath. Let’s pretend you’re just out of Bellevue Nursing, and I’m a young cop investigating...”

“Bry, don’t. Please.”

“Do you remember that day?” he said.

Softly, she said, “I remember it.”

“Detective Bryan Reardon, Miss,” he said, re-enacting the moment for her. “I understand you were in the grocery store when the...”

“Please,” she said.

“... robbery took place.” he said, his voice trailing. He looked into her eyes. “We might not have met at all,” he said. “It was pure chance that...”

“I’m sorry we did,” she said.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I mean it.”

“Kathy,” he said, “I don’t want this divorce.”

“I do,” she said, and turned to start for the corner.

“Kathy, wait,” he said. “Please.”

She hesitated.

“Look at me,” he said.

She would not meet his eyes. Her head was ducked against the wind. She kept staring past his shoulder, down the avenue.

“Look at me and tell me you don’t love me anymore,” he said.

She raised her head. A sharp gust of wind almost lifted the nurse’s cap from where it was pinned to her blonde hair. Her left hand came up, caught it in time. He saw that she no longer wore her wedding band.

“I don’t love you anymore,” she said.

“Kathy,” he said, “honey...”

“I don’t love you, Bry,” she said, more firmly this time, and started to turn again. “Goodnight,” she said.

He reached for her at once, grabbing her by the shoulders.

“Don’t touch me!” she said sharply, pulling away from him so fiercely that she almost lost her balance.

He backed off, his hands dropping. She glared at him for a moment, her face contorted, oh, Jesus, that beautiful Irish phizz. And then, without another word, she turned and went around the corner, out of sight.

He stood looking after her.

Then he put his hands in his pockets and walked off.

This goddamn city, a cop spent more time in court trying to make a case stick than he did on the streets making the arrest in the first place. Nine times out of ten, your man plea-bargained, walked away with a Mickey Mouse sentence, and was back on the streets again a few years later, working at the same old stand. Sometimes Reardon felt the courts were more in sympathy with the bad guys than with the guys who were trying to lock them up. Even the goddamn buildings down here were intimidating.

This morning, he had taken the subway to Chambers Street, and walked through City Hall Park, and then past the County Court Building where the words The True Administration of Justice Is the Firmest Pillar of Good Government (bullshit, he’d thought) were chiseled into the huge peristyle on the facade, and then to the Criminal Courts Building on Centre Street, where another chiseled legend seemed to mock further the efforts of law enforcement officers, this time reading Where Law Ends, There Tyranny Begins. So what else is new? he’d thought. What could you call what was happening in the streets today if not tyranny? Sometimes he thought he was in the wrong line of work.

And now, he sat in a wood-paneled courtroom with silvery winter light slanting through the tall windows, the jury box on his left, the judge in his solemn robes of justice on his right, and said again to Jurgens’s defense attorney, because the attorney had repeated the question, “That’s right, I made the arrest.”

The defense attorney’s name was Barrows. He was a rotund little man wearing a brown suit and a cream-colored shirt. His hair was the color of his dun-colored tie. He wore eyeglasses, and he often took them off to make a point, holding them in his hand and wagging them in a witness’s

face.

“On the basis of the girl’s identification,” Barrows said.

“Is that a question?” Reardon said.

“It is a question,” Barrows said. “Did you arrest Harold Jurgens on the basis of Frances Monoghan’s identification?”

“On the basis of her identification and on other evidence,” Reardon said. “His fingerprints were on the girl’s handbag. Before he raped her,

he...”

“Your Honor,” Barrows said, “I move that last be stricken. We are here precisely to determine whether or not...”

“Granted,” Judge Abrahams said.

“May I answer the question as regards evidence?” Reardon said.

“Please,” Abrahams said.

“The handbag was patent leather,” Reardon said, “we got some very good latents from it. The Fingerprint Section identified the prints as belonging to Harold Jurgens, a convicted rapist who’d previously served three years at Attica. On the basis of such evidence, I made application for an arrest warrant with a No-Knock provision...”

“Why the No-Knock?” Abrahams asked.

Reardon looked over to the defense table, where the accused — Harold Jurgens, a sallow-faced man in his mid-thirties — sat listening to every word.

“On information and belief that the man was armed and dangerous,” he said. “Your Honor, when he raped her, he brandished...”

“Your Honor,” Barrows said, looking pained.

“Sustained,” Abrahams said. “Strike that.”

“Mr. Reardon, isn’t it true,” Barrows said, “that you asked for the No-Knock provision so that you could gain an advantage over Mr. Jurgens?”