Эд Макбейн - Privileged Conversation

“Where are you now?”

“Home. The house. They all went...”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to us.”

“Neither do I.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Five,” the stage manager warns.

“I love you, David. Please hurry before...”

She stops herself dead.

“I love you, too,” he says.

“Tuesday,” she says.

“Tuesday,” he repeats.

And is gone.

The letter is waiting in her mailbox when she conies down to the lobby on Saturday morning.

It reads:

The detective is the same one who ran the lineup for her and David back in July. His name is Clancy...

“No relation,” he says at once, though Kate doesn’t understand the reference...

...and he seems happy to see her again, happy to be of assistance to “one of the tribe” as he puts it. Kate has never thought of herself as being particularly Irish, except for her looks, but she’s grateful for the ties that seemingly bind. Clancy could not look less Irish. He has brown hair and brown eyes and a mouth that seems perpetually set in a skeptical sneer. He also needs a shave. She suspects he had a tough Friday night here in the big bad city.

The letters she has collected as evidence of whatever crime the lunatic is committing are now on Clancy’s desk, bathed in sunshine on this hot, sticky, what-else-is-new, late Saturday morning. Clancy is sitting in shirtsleeves, the better to promote the image of hardworking cop. A pistol is holstered at his waist on the right-hand side of his belt. He is smoking, of course. He looks like a cop on a television show. Except for the fact that they don’t smoke on television these days. To Kate’s enormous surprise, he opens the top drawer of his desk, and removes from it a pair of white cotton gloves. He pulls on the gloves. They give him a somewhat comical appearance, like a vagabond at a society tea.

“Has anyone but you handled these?” he asks.

“Well... yes. I showed them to a friend.”

“His name?”

“Rickie Diaz.”

“How do you spell the first name?” Clancy asks, and opens a thick black notebook.

“With an ‘i-e.’”

Clancy scribbles the name into his book.

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“O-kay,” he says, and opens the first of the envelopes.

He reads the letters in sequence.

He looks up every now and then and nods across the desk to her.

At last, he sighs heavily, lights a fresh cigarette, and says simply, “Yeah.”

She wonders Yeah what?

She waits.

“Your typical nut,” he says.

But this she already knows.

“Nine times out of ten, they’re harmless,” he says.

Which is reassuring.

“But this is a crime,” he says.

Good, she thinks.

“What’s the crime?”

“Aggravated Harassment.”

She nods.

He opens the top drawer of his desk again, takes out a paperback book with a blue and black cover. Upside down, she reads the title of the book:

Clancy opens the book, begins leafing through it.

“I think it’s two-thirty,” he says idly, though the clock on the wall behind his desk reads eleven twenty-seven.

He keeps leafing through the book.

“No, it’s two-forty point three-oh,” he says, and turns the book toward her. “This is the Penal Law,” he says.

She reads:

§ 240.30. Aggravated harassment in the second degree.

A person is guilty of aggravated harassment in the second degree when, with intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm, he or she :

1. Communicates or causes a communication to be initiated by mechanical or electronic means or otherwise, by telephone, or by telegraph, mail or any other form of written communication, in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm; or

2. Makes a telephone call, whether or not a conversation...

“He hasn’t called me,” she says, looking up sharply.

“Not yet, ” Clancy says.

Which is somewhat less than reassuring.

...whether or not a conversation ensues, with no purpose of legitimate communication; or 3. Strikes, shoves, kicks or otherwise...

“The rest doesn’t apply,” Clancy says.

Thank God, she thinks.

“What’s Aggravated Harassment in the first degree?” she asks.

“Has to do with race, color, religion and so on. That’s a felony. Second degree is just an A-mis.”

“What’s that?”

“A class-A misdemeanor.”

“Like stealing my bike , right?”

“Well... yeah.”

“Then this isn’t a very important crime, right?”

“I would say harassing someone is important.”

“Important enough for anyone to pay attention?”

“Oh, sure.”

“So how do I stop him?”

“You file a complaint. There’s not much to go on here, but hopefully we can find him.”

“How?”

“Well, there may be latents on the letters here. He may have a record, or he may have been in the service, or in government employment, there are fingerprint records we can look at. If we locate him, we check his handwriting against what we have here. Then there are two ways we can go.”

Kate waited.

“We can have somebody talk to him, we’ve got...”

“ Talk to him?”

“Yeah, we’ve got people here who are very good at this. Take the guy aside, tell him Listen, you want to go to jail, or you want to be reasonable here? Leave the girl alone, don’t bother her no more, that’s the end of it, you don’t hear from us again. But you try to contact her, you write to her, you phone her...”

“He hasn’t...”

“I know, I’m just saying. You phone her, you go near her building, you even walk on her block , we’re gonna come after you and put you away. Lots of times, they listen.”

She is thinking This guy isn’t going to listen to anybody talking to him. This guy is nuts .

“What if he doesn’t listen?” she asks.

“You let us know he’s still bothering you, and we arrest him and charge him with the A-mis.”

She is thinking What if he kills me between the time you talk to him and the time I tell you he’s still bothering me?

“Each letter he sent constitutes one count of the crime, you see. What’ve we got here, eight, nine letters?”

“Ten.”

“Okay, that’s ten counts of Aggravated Harassment. But the most he can get is two years in jail, even though technically there are ten counts of the crime. It’s complicated. If he gets off with less than the max...”

She is thinking What happens when he gets out of jail?

“...the judge can grant an order of protection, which if he comes near you again is contempt of court and yet another crime.”

“I’m very afraid this person will try to hurt me,” she says levelly, trying to keep the quaver out of her voice.

“I realize that. But what I’m trying to tell you, Miss Duggan, you’re not entirely helpless in this matter. We can look into it for you, if you want to file a complaint, or there’re people in the D.A.’s Office you can talk to, if you prefer that, the Sex Crimes Unit down there.”

She is thinking Jesus, what am I getting into here?

“Do they ever just stop? ” she asks. “On their own?”