Ed McBain - Ten Plus One

The young blonde who walked into the squadroom while Bert Kling was poring over the files was Cindy Forrest. She was carrying a black tote bag in one hand and a manila folder under her arm, and she was looking for Detective Steve Carella, ostensibly to give him the material in the folder. Cindy—by her own admission—was a nineteen-year-old girl who would be twenty in June and who had seen it all and heard it all, and also done a little. She thought Steve Carella was an attractive man in a glamour profession—listen, some girls have a thing for cops—and whereas she knew he was married and suspected he had four dozen kids, she nonetheless thought it might be sort of interesting to see him again, the marriage contract being a remote and barely understood cultural curiosity to most nineteen-year-olds going on twenty. She didn’t know what would happen with Carella when she saw him again, though she had constructed a rather elaborate fantasy in her own mind and knew exactly what she wished would happen. The fact that he was married didn’t disturb her at all, nor was she very troubled by the fact that he was almost twice her age. She saw in him a man with an appealing animal vitality, not too dumb for a cop, who had just possibly seen and heard even more than she had, and who had most certainly done more than she had, her own experience being limited to once in the back seat of an automobile and another time on a bed at a party in New Ashton. She could remember the names of both boys, but they were only boys, that was the thing, and Steve Carella seemed to her to be a man, which was another thing again and something she felt she ought to experience now, before she got married herself one day and tied down with kids.

She hadn’t consulted Carella on the possibility as yet, but she felt this was only a minor detail. She was extremely secure in her own good looks and in an undeniable asset called youth. She was certain that once Carella understood her intentions, he would be happy to oblige, and they would then enter into a madly delirious and delicious love affair that would end some months from now because, naturally, it could never be; but Carella would remember her forever, the nineteen-year-old going on twenty who had shared those tender moments of passion, who had enriched his life, who had rewarded him with her inquiring young mind and her youthful, responsive body.

Feeling like Héloise about to keep an assignation with Abelard, she walked into the squadroom expecting to find Carella—and instead found Bert Kling.

Kling was sitting at his own desk in a shaft of sunlight that came through the grilled window and settled on his blond head like a halo. He was suntanned and muscular, and he was wearing a white shirt open at the throat, and he was bent over the papers spread on his desk, the sun touching his hair, looking very healthy and handsome and young.

She hated him on sight.

“I beg your pardon,” she said.

Kling looked up. “Yes, miss?”

“I’d like to see Detective Carella, please.”

“Not here right now,” Kling answered. “Can I help you?”

“Who are you ?” Cindy asked.

“Detective Kling.”

“How do you do?” She paused. “You did say Detective Kling?”

“That’s right.”

“You seem so”—she hesitated on the word, as if it were loathsome to her—”young. To be a detective, I mean.”

Kling sensed her hostility immediately, and immediately reacted in a hostile manner. “Well, you see,” he said, “I’m the boss’s son. That’s how I got to be a detective so fast.”

“Oh, I see.” She looked around the squadroom, obviously annoyed by Kling, and the room, and Carella’s absence, and the world. “When will he be back? Carella?”

“Didn’t say. He’s out making some calls.”

With a ghoulishly sweet grin, Cindy said, “And they left you to mind the store. How nice.”

“Yeah,” Kling answered, “they left me to mind the store.” He was not smiling, because he was not enjoying this little snotnose who came up here with her Saturday Evening Post face and her college-girl talk. “So since I’m minding the store, what is it you want, miss? I’m busy.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Nothing. I’ll wait for Carella, if you don’t mind.” She was opening the gate in the slatted rail divider when Kling came out of his chair swiftly and abruptly.

“Hold it right there!” he snapped.

“Wh-what?” Cindy asked, her eyes opening wide.

“Just hold it, miss!” Kling shouted, and to Cindy’s shocked surprise, he pulled a pistol from a holster clipped to his belt and pointed it right at her heart.

“Get in here,” he said. “Don’t reach into that bag!”

“What? Are you…?”

“In!” Kling shouted.

She obeyed him instantly, because she was certain he was going to shoot her dead in the next moment. She had heard stories about cops who lost their minds and went around shooting anything that moved. She was also beginning to wonder whether he really was a cop, and not simply a stray hoodlum who had wandered up here.

“Empty your bag on the desk,” Kling said.

“Listen, what the hell do you think you’re…?”

“Empty it, miss,” he said menacingly.

“I’m going to sue you, you know,” she said coldly, and turned over her bag, spilling the contents onto the desk.

Kling went through the pile of junk rapidly. “What’s in that folder?” he asked.

“Some stuff for Detective Carella.”

“On the desk.”

She put the folder down. Kling loosened the ties on it, and stuck his hand into it. He kept the gun trained at Cindy’s middle, and she watched him with growing exasperation.

“All right?” she asked at last.

“Put your hands up over your head as high as you can get them.”

“Listen, I don’t have to…”

“Miss,” he said warningly, and she raised her hands.

“Higher. Stretch.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d really like to frisk you, but this’ll have to do.”

“Oh, boy, are you getting in trouble,” she said, and she reached up for the ceiling. He studied her body minutely, looking for the bulge of a gun anywhere under her clothes. He saw only a trim, youthful figure in a white sweater and a straight black skirt. No unexplainable bulges.

“All right, put your hands down. What do you want with Carella?”

“I want to give him what’s in that folder. Now, suppose you explain…”

“Miss, a couple of years back we had a girl come in here asking for Steve Carella, who happened to be out making a call. None of us could help her. She said she wanted to wait for Steve. So she marched through that gate, just the way you were about to do, and then she pulled out a .38, and the next thing we knew, she told us she was here to kill Carella.”

“What’s that got to do with…?”

“So, miss, I’m only the boss’s son and a very dumb cop, but that dame put us through hell for more hours than I care to remember. And I know enough to come in out of the rain. Especially when there’s lightning around.”

“I see. And is this what you do with every girl who comes into the squadroom? You frisk them?”

“I didn’t frisk you, miss.”

“Are you finished with me?”

“Yes.”

“Then go frisk yourself,” Cindy said, and she turned away from him coldly and began putting the junk back into her bag.

“Let me help you with that,” Kling said.

“Mister, you’d better just stay as far away from me as possible. I don’t have a .38, but if you take one step closer to me, I’ll clonk you right on the head with my shoe.”